So you’re in Beijing, and you’ve seen all the highlights. Now what? Easy: go to Dongyue Temple. At first it looks like any other, but once you start exploring the 76 departments of Taoist justice you’ll be captivated, bewildered, and terrified at what might happen when your own judgment day comes.
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I had a visitor while I was on the Coromandel Peninsula, and while I tend to do things slowly, this particular friend and I go really slowly. Opera Point was supposed to be a quick walk, 15 minutes each way. We somehow turned it into two and a half hours. How did we do this?
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“Go, go!” my guide urged me, “join in, take pictures!” “But it’s a funeral” I said, hesitating, “I can’t take pictures at a funeral!” And yet I did. You just don’t go crashing funerals where I come from. In my culture funerals are generally sad, serious affairs and while the general public is usually able to attend, you normally wouldn’t go to the ceremony for a complete stranger. And if you did, you would never take pictures like a gawking tourist.
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“After a tedious climb, we at last saw the head of the gorge, a wonderful sight on which not many eyes have gazed. It is closed by a semi-circle of cliffs, precipitous and black. And wedged, as it were, between three mountain peaks, lies an enormous glacier. Not a long river of ice but a mighty mass of ice, breaking off sharp at the top of the stupendous peaks.”
-A. Maud Moreland, 1911
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I had arrived in Shaxi the previous evening, and my timing was impeccable. Today was Friday, market day. Shaxi has not only its main market in the centre of town, but also just across the river you’ll find the animal market, where locals buy and sell their horses, pigs, cows, and goats.
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I put a protective hand over my camera and grimaced as the wind whipped up the sand again, flinging it once more against my bare feet, my face, and in fact all my exposed skin with the agony of a million tiny pinpricks. Too late I ducked behind a rock and as the wind died…
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The water started coming down, in a light spray at first, then heavier and more intense, until tiny reflective droplets coated my glasses and I could barely see. The wind picked up too, rocking our little boat precariously as we paddled further into the waterfall. I suddenly remembered to look up, and saw only…
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As I got off the bus at Dambatenne, I got a warning. ‘Careful’, the driver said, ‘yesterday two person die.’ What? ‘Yes,’ he said, indicating lightning with his hands and pointing up the hill, ‘Big storm. Two are die.’ It’s true that the previous afternoon there had been a big storm in…
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A few months ago I found myself waaaaay down the South end of the South island of New Zealand, wondering just which direction to go in next (Duh…North?) when I realized that the Southern Wild Food Festival was coming to Invercargill. I like food. It’s no secret. And wild food? Sure, why not? …
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Any visit to Tibet is full, and I mean full, of visits to monasteries. During the 11 days I spent in Tibet I spent hour upon hour wandering through ancient dark halls scented with incense and old wood, walking over creaking timber floors and looking at imposing statues behind dusty glass. Sera…
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