MAY DAY TRIP TO THE "ZHOU'S"

Marvin Wu, who owns Rainbow Tourism has arranged many trips for us.  He actually attended Shandong Normal University (our teaching assignment!) as a student, majoring in the Tourism Industry.  He learned his English there as well.  We really like his dry sense of humor.  We're very comfortable with him.  Anyway. . . He puts together tours for the BYU China Teachers. It's really fun for us to get together with the other teachers that we got to know in Provo last August for our training to be teachers here in China.  Marvin has a really good business sense, and makes good money off of us all.

Marvin Wu - our tour director for all of the BYU Teacher trips

     This past week-end, we enjoyed another wonderful outing.  We traveled to Hangzhou (pronounced Haung Joe) on Saturday, at around 6:30 PM.  We are always met at the airports we fly into for these tours by someone holding a "BYU" sign.  We were transported to our hotel in a small bus.  We stayed in the Holiday Inn.  We enjoyed a good night's sleep in accommodations that reminded us of home, before we began the tour on April 30th.

    The first place we visited was the famous West Lake and took a fun boat ride there.  

We came at the most beautiful time of year.  So many flowers are in bloom, and the temperatures were perfect.  Keeping in mind the very small window of temperature comfort for the human body. . . that's saying something!

Since it was the May Day National Holiday, there were lot of tourists and lots of boats on the lake.

Interesting boats on West Lake

Beautiful Pagoda on West Lake

West Lake has these interesting markers which are actually pictured on the back of the One Yuan bill in China's money

We also enjoyed the "Lingering Garden" while in Hangzhou.  Here's some nice pictures below.

 We were serenaded, as we wandered around the park, enjoying the beautiful scenery.

 This is an ancient Chinese costume worn by this musician.

Beautiful Hupao Springs

There was lots of entertainment, including this nicely dressed Chinese lady singing to all of the tourists

There is probably something missing in the translation, but I think I agree. . . . ???

 We enjoyed walking through the Hupao Spring Park. Our Travel guide told us that It was known as "Digging Tiger Springs" as well.

Legend says that a temple stood at the sight of Hapao Spring. The temple was inhabited by a Monk during the Tang Dynasty. Realizing that there was no water available for drinking, the Monk had planned to move the temple. The night before the move, the Monk had a dream that a fountain would appear, thus solving the problem with the lack of water. Sure enough, when he awoke the next morning, two tigers appeared from Mt. Hengshan and began to dig at the spot. This caused water to spring forth, solving the Monks dilemma.

The fountain was named Hapao Spring which means Tiger Running Spring. Although this is a nice story, the fountain itself is formed by underground water seeping through cracks in sandstone. It is considered an excellent choice of water to drink for health, the water is tasty, cold and sweet.  I had some, and it was good. The Buddhist monastery located near the spring and surrounding areas have been converted into the Hupao Spring Forest Park.

 People were lined up to put the spring water into their bottles and containers.  This man filled my bottle for me before he finished filling his large jug.  The Chinese are always very polite and courteous.

 This extra-large tea pot is just outside one of the Tea-rooms there.  It offers a quiet place to sit down and enjoy a cup of tea.

Statue of the "Digging" Tiger

Since we weren't there with our grand kids, we found some other cute little kids to take pictures of. 

 We took a bus ride to Suzhou, and it was only supposed to take us an hour an a half, but due to heavy traffic because of the holiday, AND a car accident on the freeway, it took us about four and a half hours to get there.  Thank goodness we had fun friends to visit and sing with on the bus as we took the slow route.