Shaolin Temple

Today we took an excursion to Shaolin Temple, about a two hour drive outside Zhengzhou. Our tour guide, Tim, was great, singing songs and telling jokes.



Did you know we had a movie star on the bus?



No, it's just another cutie from China.



We entered the temple area first. It is the birthplace of Zen Buddhism and Kung Fu. Henan is the seat of Chinese culture.







The Chinese culture is all about harmony. Everything in life should be balance, including good and evil. These statues represent that balance.









This statue represents cuteness.



If you can see the face, you will notice it is actually three faces, one forward and two facing each other. They represent Buddhism, Taoism, and Confuciousism.



People take one of these incense sticks and pray to Buddha. The smell is quite overpowering, but our guide says it keeps all mosquitos away!







These two trees are common to China and Japan. They are grafted together representing how these two countries are dependent on each other.



We walked up and down thousands of stone steps while touring the temple area. Dan picked the perfect day for his back to go out. I loved carrying a 25 pound sack of potatoes up and down and up and down. Not. The kids would slide down the ramps on the far side. It's been nice traveling with a bunch of really well-behaved children.



I would have liked to lie down with lying Buddha.



After the temple area, we went to the Pagoda Forest. This is basically the graveyard for monks. The bigger the pagoda the better a monk you were. There are carvings representing the life of each monk on the pagodas. This one from 2002 has a laptop computer carved on the side.





Next we headed to lunch. Dan took all the pictures today. I should have had him take one of the table AFTER all the food was on it. There were 10 different dishes and they were all delicious.



Last, we went to the Kung Fu show. This guy did a kind of Kung Fu yoga exhibition. He was quite limber. We didn't get a pic of the guy who was able to force a needle through a plate of glass to pop a balloon on the other side. I thought that was fascinating.



Tomorrow we get the kids' passports and then we are out of this polluted air. I feel sorry for the 400 bazillion gillion people who have to live in this day in and day out. My throat hurts constantly and Anna is always rubbing her eyes.