Leshan Giant Buddha

We went to see the Leshan Budda. It is a World UNESCO site and is a two-hour drive from Chengdu.
Construction of this giant Buddha was started in 713 AD during the Tang Dynasty, and was led by a monk named Haitong.  It was carved into a cliff face overlooking the Dadu river and the Min river.  The Giant Buddha was built to calm the swift rivers and protect the boatmen.

There are two ways to approach the Buddha. One is on foot to climb the mountain and see the Buddha from its head. The other way is by boat to see the whole body.  We went on foot and saw its big face!

Can you see the people on cliff? You could go down on the stairs on the cliff to see the Buddha from the ground level. It was too crowded, with heavy rain, so we decided not to do it. We will definitely go back and do it next time.  

The Buddha is 71m tall, his ears stretch for 7 m and his shoulders span 28m and each of his toes is 8.5m long. It is HUGE!!!

There is a beautiful temple behind the Buddha.

We had a relaxing day trip.

 

Dragon Boat Festival

June 23rd was a Chinese national holiday called Dragon boat festival (Duan wu Jie). It was the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. Chinese people celebrate this holiday by eating Zongzi (rice wrapped in bamboo leaves)  and watching dragon boat races.

 

Here is a quotation from Wikipedia about this holiday. "The best-known traditional story holds that the festival commemorates the death of poet Qu Yuan (c. 340-278 BCE) of the ancient state of Chu during the Warring States Period of the Zhou Dynasty.  A descendant of the Chu royal house, Qu served in high offices. However, when the king decided to ally with the increasingly powerful state of Qin, Qu was banished for opposing the alliance; he was accused of treason. During his exile, Qu Yuan wrote a great deal of poetry, for which he is now remembered. Twenty-eight years later, Qin captured Ying, the capital of Chu. In despair, Qu Yuan committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.

 

It is said that the local people, who admired him, dropped sticky rice triangles wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river to feed the fish. The rice was wrapped so that fish would not eat Qu Yuan's body and eat the rice instead.[6] This is said to be the origin of zongzi. The local people were also said to have paddled out on boats, either to scare the fish away or to retrieve his body. This is said to be the origin of dragon boat racing."

 

 In Japan, we have similar celebration which is held on May fifth. This is called " Kodomono hi" (Children's day). Although it doesn't have the same meaning as remembering Qu Yuan, Japanese eat the same thing called "Chimaki" in Japanese to celebrate all children's well being.

 

Among the Japanese expat wives, we made "Zongzi" together.This is how we made the Zongzi that day and the boiled bamboo leaves were in the center.

 

 

 

Inside the sticky rice is seasoned beef and nuts.  The rice is wrapped in bamboo leaves like Origami.

 

 

 

The leaves are tied to the rice with cooking thread.  These are Zongzi!  They can be boiled or steamed as they are for thirty minutes.

 

 

Sneak Peak of a Classroom

This is my classroom on the second floor at the new McDonald International School Building.  It will the be the classroom for second grade literacy.  Most classrooms 1st - 5th will look similar as the space will not change much.  The exceptions to this will be Kindergarten classrooms which will be larger and equipped (some of them) with restrooms in the rooms. 

It is hard to see but I will have a view of the Cascades!  It is not obvious in the video but they kept the old chalkboards and mount them on sliding walls that goes up and down.  When raised, the walls reveal a "closet" for backpacks and coats.  When lowered, the walls hide the closet and will be usable chalkboards.  The projector will be mounted on the ceiling.  Yay!  It was a big hit with all the teachers to no longer have a tech cart in the middle of the room that everyone trips over on a regular basis.  We also have air conditioning in the form of a ceiling fan.  Hey, this IS still a public school.

Sneak Peak of the New Library

Here is a sneak peak at our new library and computer lab at McDonald International.  It is on the third floor with a spectacular view of the mountains.  This video is a couple months old but the room was close to completion by then.  Books and the rest of the furniture will be moved in August.

A Hong Kong Visit

We went to Hong Kong last weekend. It was a two-hour airplane ride to get there.  Although Hong Kong is included in China, the city used to be a British colony. It was returned to China in 1997 and since then, Hong Kong has been a Special administrative region of the People's Republic of China.  This means the city is under a different law/system from mainland China. 

 For example,  the money is different: Hong Kong uses Hong Kong dollars, Mainland China uses Yuan.

These are the Hong Kong dollar bills.

These are Chinese Yuan bills.

In mainland China, the government controls what people read and watch. For example, many books in English are banned and internet access is limited.  But Hong Kong is not under this policy. So, we could access to internet sites such as YouTube, Google, and Facebook, and I could buy a couple of books, about China in English, which I have never seen
in Mainland China.

There are more differences particularly because of the British influence. People in Hong Kong speak Cantonese, which is a different Chinese language from Mandarin.  Mandarin is spoken in most places in Mainland China. Also Hong Kongers (also called Hong Kongese) can speak English very well. People drive on the other side of the road from the Mainland and the U.S. The drivers in the cars sit on the right side of the cars.

Did you know there is a Disneyland in Hong Kong?  This was the first time in Jay's life that he had been to Disneyland, so he was very excited. But as soon as we arrived there, Jay got sick and he couldn't ride many of the attractions...Too bad.  We managed to see the parade and fireworks. Jay had a good time...

  

The next day Jay felt even worse so we remained in the hotel room and we couldn't go into the city of Hong Kong. We will go back in the future..M

One last look at our room...

As we prepare to end the school year, I took one nostalgic video of our classroom before we move to our new building.  It has changed a little from April,as all good rooms should do, to reflect the ever growing progress of kids.

It was a learning experience as I used my camera phone and the system burped an unhappy burp when I tried to mail it to my home PC.  It is a truncated video but should still provide some entertainment value.

Hot Pot and Sichuan Opera

The area we live in is famous for its hot cuisine. One of the popular
cuisine is a hot pot. There are many " 火鍋”(means " fire pot" )
restaurants in Chengdu.  There is a pot in the middle of table and you
put whatever you choose such as meat, chicken, fish and
vegetable,(literally, whatever!)  into boiling broth and you eat as
they cook.

You can choose a broth base, hot chili pepper, chicken, beef, and fish
head, etc. We ordered “Red pepper oil" and white base. We have young
children so kids eat white broth base, which is not hot. As you can
see, "Red pepper oil" is beef base broth with very spicy chili oil and
hot pepper floating! We ordered slice beef, sausage, backchoy, Chinese
cabbage, mushrooms, ground shrimp, etc.

The restaurant is famous for its show as well as its hotpot. Sichuan
is known of the opera.  And one of the operas has "face changing "
man.  We could enjoy this wonderful face changing man while we were
eating the hot pot.  Jay could see the man who changed his faces many
times in front of him. But we don't know how the man did!! Literally
the man could change his face/masks while you are blinking! I heard
it's a national secret and our Chinese friend who took us there even
didn't know how to do!! It's simply entertaining!!