Peaceful Gardens

Every where you go they give you a total explanation of how they make everything, which gives you a new appreciation for the items so hopefully you will buy some. Our first stop today was to the lacquer factory. Now some people would think this was boring, but since I took several classes in wordworking, I was totally into it. They had painted a beautiful Murial on the outside of the building with lacquer.

This was my favorite piece. It is a wedding box. It was about 4'x 3'. When a girl got married she was to go to the groom's house for two weeks. Her family was to prepare two weeks full of meals and the men of the house would hike this thing over to the groom's house. This would hold her food for two weeks. It was gorgeous. Gary gaged when I told him I bought it for $7,000USD, I didn't I just scared him.

This living room set was made just for this Empress.
GREAT WILD GOOSE PAGODA -

Our tour guide went on and on about this monk and how special he was for the country. So all of us wanted our picture by his statute. We were surprised when we went to get our picture taken, we found out it was made out of papermachet and moved when we leaned upon it.

XIAN WALL - most of all of china's major cities were built with walls around them. This was one of the guard/drum towers.
One thing about the Chinese they are beautiful gardeners, all over China their streets are lined with meticulous gardens.

Don't ask (they were really testing out if they could squat properly for a certain room)
GUILIAN - after flying into Guilian, John asked if we wanted to go downtown for dinner, so Opal and Kathy went off shopping ..
Lyle, Karen, Lee, Tina and John (removed from the picture) spent a very nice dinner on the street.
KFC - they are everywhere
How this little girl thought she was going to sell her wares to Lee after calling him "a happy Buddha" is beyond me, but he still bought.