Putoshan

The school plans a three day trip after our teaching time is over. We
might be the most aggressive, or independent group of teachers they
have ever had, as we essentially planned the trip and told them what we
wanted to do. At any rate, we ended up going to Putoshan Island on the
first day. It’s an island that holds particular significance in the
Buddhist religion, as there are many temples on the island. The Puto
mountain at the heart of this island is one of the four most important
Buddhist mountains in China. We loaded up at 6:30 in the morning to
make the trek there. We had the Vice director, Emily and a tour guide
with us- and of course the driver of the van. They were surprised at
the amount of luggage we had, but we were packing for 6 weeks- so of
course there was a lot of stuff.
We were taken to the island on a ferry that held motor vehicles which
is not a problem, except the night before, I was re-reading my “travel
cautions in China” (and laughing at all the things we had already
experienced that were on the list) and one of the things they mentioned
in passing is multiple accidents involving overweight ferries. So as
umpteen tour buses and semis fought to get on the ferry, I was
admittedly a little nervous.
We made it across safely and continued our adventure to Puto island.
We had actually landed on one of the other 130 islands in this
particular archipelago- (good word for a one who teaches geography huh)
and it was a very large island. We traveled to another boat station
and took another boat across the water to the actual Putoshan island.
The first stop was lunch, and we entered one of the different
restaurants near the big temples. As we walked in, there were low red
tubs holding any kind of seafood you could imagine. Eels, crabs,
shrimp, big fish, small fish- multiple unidentifiable sea creatures. I
got a little nervous as I don’t particularly care for sea food, but
what the heck-we’d eaten sparrow and rabbit already… the lunch was
good- not too many unidentified things, and we continued to the
temples. They were absolutely beautiful. I’ll put some pictures on,
but there were many tributes to the goddess of mercy- Guanyin. One in
particular is a large golden statue that stands 33 meters tall.
For dinner that night, we went to a local restaurant that was like the
one at lunch, except that was all they served were the creatures
located in the same red tubs. We walked in and our tour guide told us
to pick out what we wanted… oh boy- yes, I’d like an entire stingray
please, actually, no- the eel and some sea turtle is actually what I
was hungry for. It was an interesting experience. The Crab was taken
out of the shell for those who enjoyed it, and the shrimp was so fresh
(since it’d been swimming minutes earlier in their designated red tub)
that it looked borderline appealing. Needless to say, Ang and I
ordered fried rice- and that’s it. David and Kristy went for it with
crab, shrimp and clams- Amy and Karen had shrimp and crab as well. The
crab was a big hit as it was apparently tender and the spices were
good. I thought the fried rice was to die for. Ok, not really, but it
worked. We ended up staying at the second hotel the guide tried to get
us into. We had been at one earlier and were in our rooms and
everything, then the hotel came out and said that they didn’t take
foreigners… (which we later found out meant that the standards were not
good enough for foreigners).
We ended up visiting the beach the next day(though it was too hot to
really enjoy the way we normally would). It was pretty once you got to
the beach areas, but the water was kind of this murky shade of brown
everywhere, so we were a little skeptical of ever entering it. We saw
some sand sculptures and other nice areas about the island. Then it
was back to the ferry, and on our way to Shanghai- “The whore of the
East.”