Day 2 in China and we woke up to a beautiful morning. It got very bright outside very early! After a good breakfast, buffet style (like most hotels), we got on the bus and have a 6 hours journey to HeFei in Anhui.
The beautiful morning.
To Hefei!
As usual, the people in the buses are asleep and this is one of the few chances for me to read and catch up with my
Integrated Photonics. For the internship at A*Star. I managed to finish 2 chapters or so in 2 days!
Then the first stop at 1p.m. was for lunch! Once again, my appetite works itself up.
And I started to notice that every meal we have is accompanied by 2 bottles of beer
which really delights some of our beer drinking friends.
One interesting thing on the road is there is such a thing as the round overhead bridge:
The bridge connects to all 4 corners and is really cool, I immediately wanted to walk on one!
Well, on with the guided tour first. First stop: The memorial temple, then the tomb of Judge Bao. 包拯 Yep, he's the famous upright judge that has a very long drama series based on him and his famous cases. We are visiting his birthplace!
The Entrance
His statue!
Looks real right?
They are wax scenes of his famous cases.
The 3 different swords are those that cuts different person's head. The dragon one for the emperor's relatives, the tiger for the various ministers, the dog for commoners.
Well, one funny thing we encountered about China is the funny English translation of their signs... here are a few, plus one from day 1.
Those were hilarious when we saw it!
Well, back to the trip, there was a well, called Lianquan Well: There's a story that the good and righteous people who drink from this well will be cured of any sickness. The corrupt will have negative effects!
The place is quite beautiful in any sense, and we (I meant the rest of us who have cameras) are just happy to take the photos of beautiful pictures away. The following shall also contain the real tomb of Lord Bao.
Group Photo!
The General looks not so nice and is shorter than the scholar, reflecting the emphasis of society at that time.
Tomb of the family members of Lord Bao
Going down!
Into a tunnel.
The picture on the side showing the 24 PARAGONS OF FILIAL PIETY.
The tomb itself! The place is surprisingly cooler than the outside and well ventilated.
There's a tower here, where we gone up to the top floor and saw the surrounding scenery. There was some kites that was very high flying too!
And on the way down, there are bells, pictures, etc... many things to see and to explore. I came down earlier to buy the origins of my surname, 黄. It was a letter that later on Lu Chen explained it to me.
Anyway, this is very tired and enough for a one-day-journey's worth. And we had an early dinner.
After dinner, the boys took a longer rest in our newly checked in hotel while the girls just gone and changed something, put some stuffs, and was ready in 5-10 minutes to go shopping! Wow, that was really fast.
The girls are ready to rock and roll.
We, the boys, were just a bit later than them: 15-30 minutes later, couldn't catch up to them and had to move on and on and on....to 女人街 ladies street, after moving across the 步行街 walking street (which is where the girls are, but too bad we didn't knew. So began a 3-hour journey with the goal of catching up with the girls! Just that little did we know it would be 3 hours.
Me in my full gear! Bottle, umbrella, jacket, and scarf. The wind was quite cold! And it did rained, a little.
We had to go through a dark place to get there.
A whole shop for Coke! Sells other stuffs too.
Is there such a word?
Yay! Just got my wish fulfilled! This is after the rest of the boys are resting/eating in McD, and Ronald, Wu Peng, and me gone on and find the ladies street. It turns out that we were too late and the street is largely closed, just a few hawkers, not impressive compared to the walking street. And we had to go back and tell the others the news. The others happened to NOT be in McD! We walked around a little, circled the block searching for them, and it turns out that they were up in the round bridge! Which was the reason I got my wish fulfilled.
Anyway, before taking the cab back, we happened to stumble upon this dumpling shop and since Renny had said (earlier in the day, at the bus) that he wanted to find the most delicious 小龙包, we decided to go in and have a supper!
Another funny translation.
Nice dumplings... there's juice inside it!
Andy's sad cause his dumpling's juice just gone wasted.
After the adventure of the day, I get to fill my bottle with the water cooler in the shop! Yay! And the cab fare back is ridiculously cheappppppppppppp! Really Really very cheap than Lu Chen also don't wanna share the cost of the cab with the other 3 of us. Well there's 12 of us in 3 cabs and we made it back to hotel safely! End of day 2.
