Shaxian! Datian!

will shoe — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:06:47 +0000

Some pictures from recent trips to some towns / cities near Sanming. I need to make some changes to the blog, I think, before I can post these a bit bigger.

Taken from the side of XianJing Mountain in Datian.

About picture #1: We took a walk up the road along XianJing Mountain on my first afternoon in Datian — it took us about 30 minutes to drive there from Datian and we saw few cars or people once we arrived. There were old-style Chinese houses on the way to the top and a lot of rice fields. Near the top you could look down and see the laddered rice fields on the sides of a lot of mountains. These things look just like topo maps and you see them a lot driving through the countryside. They are really pretty. Note that on this mountain we were high enough so that a lot of the smog/pollution was below us, hence the rarely glimpsed blue sky.

Taken in Shaxian at a small hike / tourist attraction. A couple of different people told me this is China's largest "lying Buddha".

A not-so-old Buddhist temple in Shaxian, again mostly for tourists. It was pretty, though.

We took a meandering boat ride on QiXing (Seven Stars) Lake in HuMei (Beautiful Lake) near Datian. I learned (a little) how to play MahJong.

The city of Shaxian from afar.

An iron bridge near Datian. Getting there in a car involved asking multiple people to move motorcycles, piles of woods, driving over piles of dirt, etc. Clearly a car hadn't been through that way in a while.

Self-portrait in Shaxian

We took a walk up the road along XianJing Mountain on my first afternoon in Datian — it took us about 30 minutes to drive there from Datian and we saw few cars or people once we arrived. There were old-style Chinese houses on the way to the top and a lot of rice fields. Near the top you could look down and see the laddered rice fields on the sides of a lot of mountains. These things look just like topo maps and you see them a lot driving through the countryside and they are beautiful. Note that on this mountain we were high enough so that a lot of the smog/pollution was below us, hence the rarely glimpsed blue sky.

Having Fun All The Time » sightseeing

Shaxian! Datian!