Huangzhou: Continued

The things we saw in Huangzhou:

Walking around the most beautiful lake, West Lake, we watched the coolest water/laser/light show. The lasers played different moving images through the mist to start the show. The actual water show could have been a ballet it was so perfectly performed with the music and lights.

The main night market street was lined with just that: markets with various people showing and selling the fruits of their talents. One man was making and selling combs made from the antlers of some type of animal.
Another was drawing portraits of people.
All sorts of necklaces, beaded shoes, and rugs were being sold.
One man was selling a fruit-cabob that looked too good to eat.
There was a shop that had all sorts of costumes you could dress up in and they'd take your photo using all sorts of medieval props.
My absolute favorite was a man wearing traditional Chinese robes and hat doing a one man puppet/theatre show to tell stories of Chinese myths and legends. In order to see the stage you'd have to sit down on a little stool and peek inside a little eyehole, and as you'd watch the show he'd tell you the story/legend of that particular painting while in rhythm to his little hand clapper instrument. It was all very enticing and from the moment he called us over, there was a large crowd to "watch the foreigners" watch the puppet show. The storyteller was a very happy man with smiling eyes and face and so we couldn't turn him down. As he was telling the story Taylor would respond to his rhyming, rhythmic poetry, and apparently his responses were extremely funny because everyone burst out laughing, which continually drew in a greater laughing audience. They loved whatever was going on.

The following day we went to their temple, a large 5 story pagoda on Huangzhou's biggest hill. We climbed the paved road to get there and were able to see the entire city from the top floor. The one side of the city reminded me of a little resort town, and on top of every hill to be seen there was a pagoda temple, and then the lake in the middle of it all. Looking out the other side was the city. We had to laugh that their temple had a restaurant on the 3rd floor, and all the other floors only boasted of empty space. It was high on a hill, and lit up bright red at night. On our way down we wandered a different way and found a little village on the other side of the hill, and the way they looked at us it seemed as though they had never seen a foreigner ever. We were off the 'tourist path' and walking the back roads. This is what I love about China. We found a little alleyway down, which happened to be the front stoop of a neighborhood of houses and we were able to peek inside a couple. It amazes me every time to see the way they live. We ended up on the other side of the city and were lost, and had to take a taxi back.

We found a brass museum. I couldn't understand what all of the pieces were, but there were lots of bronze statues, and one grandma was walking around with her one year old grandson--way cute Chinese kid--and was telling him to worship the statues. So this little boy who looked like he was only one foot tall would waddle over to one statue at a time and clasp his little chubby hands together and shake them back and forth in worship.

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While visiting another art exhibit close to Taylor's work the other day the entrance sign read: NO PSYCOPATHS CAN ENTER UNLESS WITH GUIDE.