Adventures in Guangzhou!

Upon arrival, Xiamen looked almost exactly as I had heard--it was clean, bright, modern, and amazingly quaint for a city of over a million people. Having been occupied by the Portuguese, British, French, and Dutch, there was beautiful colonial architecture everywhere. In truth, it was a bit weird. Kelly remarked that it looked remarkably similar to Havana. As in Cuba. Cuba? China? Same sentence? Sure, why not.

Our friends and guidebooks all agreed that the place to stay in Xiamen is actually not in Xiamen at all, but rather a quick four minute ferry ride away on the island of Gulangyu. They were right. Gulangyu was a foreigner's residency for almost two hundred years and, as such, reflects the colonial styles of its former residents. The grounds themselves are devoid of any trash and the island is incredibly peaceful, mostly because there is not a single automobile there (people either walk or use electric golf cart-like vehicles). After finding a cheap hotel overlooking the water, we went in search of some Xiamen seafood.

Being right on the coast, Xiamen is known for it's cuisine from the water and almost every restaurant boasts of having the best. I suppose this makes sense--no one's going to claim they have the 3rd best. What's interesting is that virtually every single restaurant on the island, regardless of size, price, or quality, all keep these tubs outside their main entrance which hold the night's offerings. Kelly and I walked into one place, glancing at the various creatures as we went to sit down. We asked for a menu and the waitress looked at us a little funny. Yup, it turns out we walked right by the "menu."

Though they had a small form in print, you were pretty much supposed to check out the tubs and just pick out your meal that way. There's no choice in method of preparation--the chef just does what he/she thinks is best. It's actually quite liberating! So we picked out some shrimp, some mini clams, and reluctantly passed on a tasty-looking but overpriced flat fish of some sort. We were not disappointed--it was all incredibly fresh and the taste reflected that. Yum!

The next morning we set out to see what Gulangyu had to offer. After a quick breakfast from a cute old Chinese couple running a western-style cafe, we headed over to "Underwater World," Xiamen's aquarium. Having never visited an aquarium in China, I was excited to see how it shaped up. First thing's first--there were some bizarre fish in that place! I suppose it's not surprising, given that I'm halfway across the world, but there were so many unfamiliar creatures that at times they almost seemed fake. I'm amazed that some of the richer and more industrious aquariums in the States haven't worked out a way to import some of these crazy looking things. Very cool stuff.

Second, most of the tanks were painfully small. There were some rather large fish/mammals swimming around in tanks smaller than my bookcase. It's sad in the U.S. as well, but this seemed even more cruel. Even worse though, was the quality of the tanks. It appeared that the water was really murky and/or downright dirty for quite a few of the exhibits, sometimes so bad as to obscure whatever was on display. I'd be willing to throw in a few extra kuai on the admission ticket in order to step up the cleanings around there. By far the worst part of all was looking at the exhibit with the tortoises. Visitors had thrown in tons of loose change, presumably for good luck, and the entire bottom of the tank was covered with coinage. Just to top it all off, though, there were a couple of empty plastic water bottles tossed in.

Third, they let you get right up close and take flash photography of anything. This was cool for me, in that I had fun taking some shots of cool-looking fish, but I just can't believe it's good for the fish to have the flashes and lasers from digital cameras constantly bombarding their cages. Call me crazy.

Fourth, it was immensely entertaining to attend the dolphin/seal show in Chinese. They did pretty much all of the same tricks as they do in America, except the M.C. was speaking in Chinese. I can't quite explain it, but it just seemed entertaining to have the trainer chatting away at the animal in Chinese. Furthermore, I'm not sure if people just had no concept of protocol, but the guard on duty kept having to go up to people and tell them to sit down. Of course right as those people sat, people on the other side of the "theater" got up and walked right up to the edge of the pool. Did they not notice or did they not care? Not sure.

Upon exiting the show, we decided to it was a good time to head back to the mainland (or main island, in this case) and explore. After eating a tasty lunch of Brazilian Barbeque, we hit up the train station to secure our return tickets (yes, it is *still* annoying not being able to buy roundtrip tickets) and caught a taxi out to Nanputuo Si, a temple originally from the Tang Dynasty about 1000 years ago. While I know a number of foreigners who get easily "templed out" after seeing so many, I still enjoy entering the temple grounds and seeing the various deities and holy structures. This temple, on the far south end of the city, did not disappoint me either.

Much like other temples I've visited in China, there are the busy areas in the front of the complex where people walk by the statues of the four warrior kings guarding the main Buddha figure. This is interesting, but I usually enjoy exploring farther back where there are smaller buildings and quieter areas where the monks spend time looking at scripture and meditating. This particular temple had an interesting grotto that contained, literally, hundreds (if not over a thousand) of small figurines. I'm not entirely clear as to what they were representing, but they sure did look interesting.

I'm going to blog the rest of the trip tomorrow, but if you're ansy for some photos, click on the flickr link (on the side) for some cool pictures...