Addictions are bad.....because the Bible tells me so...

This post is dedicated to Jessica. To answer her comment in my "Dedication Post" to my puppies, I finally found something that reminds me of her.



She is a Grey's Addictomy....

Trip # 1 Part 3

Ok....I finally got some time to finish bloggin my trip. This is going to be a long one....so here I go...

The Second day, we visited Mt. Emei National Park...it was tiring....we walked ALL DAY.....

We started out by taking the tour bus to a bus station where we had to get off to take the transit bus provided by the Mt. Emei National Park.

Then after about 15mins, we arrived to the Wannian Cable-Car Station where we took these cool looking cable cars!



The Cable Car sits six per cart and runs on a single metal cable. It recently reconstructed a few years ago after the last one broke down and killed a few peepz. I wasn't too worried since it was still fairly new....after all....it was a great experience!



The ride was smooth and the view was great. Although I'm always afraid of height, just by looking at the great view and the wild nature created by God...it relaxes me.



Here's a pic of the great view taken on the cable car!



It only took about 15 mins to go from the bottom of Mt. Emei to Wannian Temple, which is to about half way up the mountain. Wannian Temple used to be a royal temple and only the Emperor and his families are allowed. It's now a popular tourist attraction, and where people come to worship it's idols.

If you pay attention to the left side of the picture, you will see a open window where you actually have to pay to go in. Imagine if people have to pay to go to church? I think if that's the case....our church would be pretty rich. The right window sells incense that you will see in the next picture. People spend soooo much money on buying them and all they do is burn it.....I call it "Money Burning"....they might as well just burn their money to the idols....



Estimates of the number of Buddhists in China range widely, from 100 million to 607.4 million, or about 8 - 46.5% of the Chinese population. Funny huh? Here in China, you won't find a lot of religious believers due to the previous government regulations. However, you will still see a lot of people that came from all over China just to worship these idols. They don't necessary believe in the religion but they are doing it out of hope, to hope that just maybe if they worship these idols, it would grant them what they wished for. I guess you could say that this is a very superstitious culture....

Below is a pic that I've mentioned in the previous paragraph. Look at all these people with giant incense....

They burn it and at the same time pray to the idols, then they stick it down and leave it burning in a big pit like the one in the pic.



I find it weird that you can find both Buddhism and Taoism in the same temple, but many Chinese identify themselves as Taoist and Buddhist at the same time so I guess it's not so weird to them. Here is a pic of how Taoist worships their idols....



Inside the Taoist temple (BTW...I forgot the name), you will find a huge dumbo which the Taoists believe it to be the strongest animal.



For some reason, there is a superstitcious believe that if you rub the back feet of this dumbo....it will bring you good luck. Trust me when I say this....in this religion...there is a million superstitcious believe sayings of "If you do this or do that, it you bring you good luck/wealth/health/marriage/job/ and who knows what else." At the end....they don't even know what to believe any more....they do it just because...or "Maybe it will work".



One thing I find it really funny was that their temples are basically money machines for them. It's no different from a store that sells antiques, religious products, and souvenirs or a tourist attraction that you have to pay to go to. It's pretty sad that they use their own temple as a market place to make a living.

Here is a pic of a shop right outside of the temple.



Of course. Besides the temples, Buddhas, and dumbo....there is also other things that made Mt. Emei one of the most famous place in China.

Mt. Emei was classified as one of the top 4 mountain in China. It's constantly covered in a sea of clouds and it's trees/plants covers 92% of the mountain.

Here is a view at the mountain from the temple.




I also find the designs of these old buildings very interesting!



After visiting the temple, we headed out for more hiking to this area where you can visit another attraction Mt. Emei was famous for. The Monkeys! It's funny how they classified the Monkeys in 3 categories, the civilized, the gangsters, and the robbers.

The civilized monkeys will mind their own business and only take food when you hand it to them.



The gangster monkeys will hit you up by standing in the middle of the road to block you or hug onto your leg so you can't go unless you give them food.



The robber monkeys will just straight out jack you. One of them came up next to me and straight up stripped my water bottle out of my hand. Another guy in front of us barely bought some monkey food package and this one monkey was waiting for him on the roof top. He waited for the guy to come out, then hopped down and ripped the food right out of the guy's pocket.




For the safety and health of these wonderful creatures, this is the only permitted Monkey Food you are allow to feed the monkeys with. It's small package with some corn pops in it....well...they look like corn pops.......don't know what they taste like....



The hike took about 2 hours but the beautiful views was rewarding and made it enjoyable.



My friend Teresa took her shoes off and went into the water.....it was ICE COLD!



Theres a lot of funny signs along the way so I took some pics of it.

Wow....if trees and grass can bring joy and happiness ....why do they ask the idols for it? They should ask the Creator of these trees and grass for joy and happiness....



Not only did I not passed quickly....I stopped and took a pic of this sign....



Are you serious? JOKING MONKEY ZONE??? ROTFL!!!!



If you can't really read it....it says "Ecological Monkey Area". Wow....what a difference from "Joking Monkey Zone"



This is a cute bench I saw....it would really look nice in my backyard.....I WANT IT!!



We got to try some more tea before we left! For those of you that mentioned about the last tea looking nasty or weird.....this is what tea looks like w/o the leafs...



Since I can't go to Disneyland....this really excited me when I saw it!








Finally......this is one of my favorite pic that I took over the lake. It looks so......simple and peaceful.....it's so nice to be able to get away from our busy life once in a while and just enjoy the rest of the world other then our own.



Well....this is pretty much my exciting trip and I hope there is more to come! My next trip I want to go on is to see some PANDAS!

Trip # 1 Part 2

I've been extremly busy lately that I haven't really had time to finish the rest of my trip but if I don't do it now....I will never find time to....so here I go.

Let's see where I've left off.....

Ok....anyways....LeShan was pretty kool with the Big O Buddha and all but it was really tiring caz of the whole claming up and down....by the time we got back up to the top....I was exausted!!! The first thing I did was that I went and bought me a good old fasion COKE! Anywayz...we found our tour guide and he instructed us to this little hidden place where they have these very special tea.(very expansive too)

Here is a pic of my Coke next to our teas.

Tea is very popular in China and especially around here. There are soooo many different kind of tea and who knows how many ways of making it. One of the most popular activity here is drink tea. People actually gather and share the taste of the tea and they do this as an enjoyment and for relaxation. These teas are nothing like the ones you've tasted in the US chinese restaurants. It tastes so much better and you will find it quite unique if you learn to like it.

Here is a pic of my cup of tea!

After our tea time, we headed over to our hotel....which was ok for the price that we paid for....I can pretty much sleep anywhere so it wasn't a big deal to me. We settled in very quickly and headed out for dinner. Food was once again....ok....for the price we paid for....lol....n e wayz we ate pretty fast caz we didn't want to miss the show.

This show is called "The Sound of Emei" which consisted a serious of tricks, martial arts, hand shadow, puppets, and a very famous trick called "Face Off". I recorded this on video and if you have time, hit me and and I'll show it to you. Overall it was a really good show, I really enjoyed it and had an embarrasing but yet interesting moment

Here are some pics I took from the show but it doesn't even show half of what was in the show because there was just so many different performance....so I have most of it on video.

Ok....I'm going to have to call it a day for now....I still have another part to this trip that I'd like to share.... but I've been working for the past 24 hours in the last 28 hours.....and I can hardly keep my eyes opened....see yall later when I feel better....

Trip # 1 Part 1

I finally got a chance to go out to visit some of China's famous locations. This past weekend was fun! I got to visit the LeShan Grand Buddha and Mt. Emei!

My friend Teresa and I decided to go on a tour to this famous mountain (which I don't know the name in English) but ended up changing the plan due to the storm I've mentioned in the previous post. After checking with the traveling agency, they suggested that we go on a 2 days, 1 night trip to Mt. LeShan and Mt. Emei.

The trip cost us $280RMB but we both got our own hotel room (No, we did not share a room), it was $60RMB extra....so it was $340RMB total (around $45USD). The cost included all the meals, hotel, and transportation. It's pretty cheap if you ask me.... However, we do have to pay for the extra cost such as this show we saw and a cable car we took to go up Mt. Emei

On Sat. morning, I got up, showered, got dressed, packaged, then head off to Teresa's hotel about 10 mins away in a taxi. We ate breakfast at the hotel then waited for the bus to come pick us up. Around 9:30AM, the bus finally picked up everyone and ready to head off to Mt. LeShan.

It took about 1 hour and 30mins to get there and we stopped by a local restaurant for lunch. After lunch, we drove for another 10-15 mins or so to the LeShan Grand Buddha.

After a 20min hike, we arrived to Lingyun Temple. It's a buddhist temple right by the Grand Buddha. In China, although most of the population are atheist, some people still went and prayed to these Idols "Just because". They believe that maybe these Idols can bring them good luck and protections...but doesn't really believe in the religion itself.

After visiting the temple, we headed off to see the Grand Buddha....

The LeShan Grand Buddha is the tallest stone Buddha statue in the world. Standing 71 meters tall, the statue depicts a seated Maitreya Buddha with his hands resting on his knees. His shoulders are 28 metres wide and his smallest toenail is large enough to easily accommodate a seated person. The construction was started in 713 AD and took 90 years to complete.

It took us about an hour to go from the top of the cliff to the bottom....

Here's a pic from we took at the top....

Half way down....

A view at the bottom from half way down....



A pic from the bottom.....

Here's half of the stairs we took to get to the bottom...



Before we started to head back up..... I saw this on the wall....REPRESENT!

ps. I did not do this if that's what you're wondering.....

Lesson 101: Never take a Taxi in China....

A few nights ago, there was a mad storm......and the wind was blowing so hard that I could hardly stood on my feet.....

In the moring when I left work....I saw a pretty fun sight and decided to take a picture of it....

As you all know....Chinese people drive pretty crazy.....but wait until you come and see their Taxi in action. They might not be the best at following traffic laws....but they sure can get you anywhere you want to go. Even here.....

Time Difference....

Here is a pic that I took in our China Office. It shows the different time in China and US so they can know the time when replying email or chatting with the customers.

In case if you don't know.... China is 15 hours ahead of US, and here is a secret quick short cut formula to figure out what time it is in China...

US Time + 3 hours and flip the AM-PM = China time

For example:
7:00 AM US time + 3 Hours and flip the AM to PM = 10PM in China.

However, since China is 15 hours ahead of US....to figure out the date....you usually just count a day ahead. So 7:00 PM US Time on Monday is actually 10:00 AM China Time on Tuesday.

It's funny how if you think about it....China lives in the future! well not much....only 15 hours ahead but it's still cool.....at least I think it is.....

My wonderful co-workers...

This week is the "Chinese Labor Week" so the offices here in Chengdu will have a break for the whole week. However, since our US office is still operating some people volunteered to work overtime. Since everyone working overtime will work our day shift, I've been working the day shift with them this whole week.

Yesterday, my co-workers who were here working OT(Over Time) came to my desk all at once to invite me to dinner. It was such a surprise so I was not sure at first but I though it could be a good time to get to know them better...so why not? After work, we all hopped on the bus and to get to the restaurant we had to take 2 buses. Once we're there, we waited for everyone to get there so we can start eating.

What really amazed me is how much these girls can eat.....I think some of them ate twice as much as me and I tell ya...I was really really full!! They kept on eating for like another hour after I was done and they're all like 1/2 of my size......weight wise.....I envy these people....they can eat all they want and not gain a pound....

Anyways.....I had lot's of fun that night so it was all good.....

Here is a pic we took after the feast!

From the left: Me, Cathy, Maggie, Yolanda, I forgot her name...you can't see her face anyways, Lex's girlfriend and I fogot her name too, Lex, Leonard, Amanda, Jojo, and Helen.

Floor Toilet....

I've always wonder why people here in China are always so skinny but yet they can eat 3 times as much as I can. Their secret is the Floor Toilet! Here in China, their toilet is built into the ground so there is no nasty toilet seats with pee all over it. All you have to do is lower your pants, squat, and do your thing! I guess that position helps pressure all the food that you eat, out of your system so you can feel 10 lbs lighter after you're done. (BTW, those are just my theory of why they're skinny....not actual fact) Once you're done, there is a little foot pedal that you step on to flush it so you don't even have to touch anything with your hands. I actually kinda like it more than the sit down toilets except those times you are really tired and just want to sit down and relax but you can't caz you get tired just squating like that for awhile. Anywayz....I have a sit down toilet at my apt so I get to relax as long as I want!