Yesterday I went climbing in the hills north of the house for the second day in a row. Yesterday I finally completed one of my long term goals, reaching a tower visible from the house and the road, but much harder to reach than one would guess. There are networks of nice paths, often paved, throughout Chinese mountains, especially in the more populated provinces. In Beijing there is a network of paths linking temples constructed by Cixi, the Empress Dowager who ruled China until 1908 if I'm not mistaken. She created these paths to gain merit by making pilgrimages less arduous for the pilgrims, now they are a great boon to Beijing residents, allowing for endless day hikes through ruins and past temples. Most of the paths in the mountains where I am lead to the terraces up in the mountains, or to graveyards. I believe a large amount of concrete paths are made in order to ease the construction of graves, as it requires transporting a great deal of rocks and concrete not to mention ceramic tiles and carved stone. Incidentally, smaller Buddhist temples are often located near areas with many graves, as they can organize plenty of monks for the ceremonies and people are likely to donate money to the monks so that they will pray for the souls of the deceased buried nearby.

I found that the tower I wanted to reach was built just above a temple. The denizens of said locale were friendly, and I was nearly converted by a monk who lived there. He was from just south of Cangnan, from the southernmost area of Wenzhou prefecture, and also one of the poorer parts. While I was riding the bus back from Canton, the bus driver who was from the Northeast said as we drove through that it looked like the rest of China in the Eighties, and that it was straight out of the third world. He said it in measured verse so it was much funnier than my translation. So this monk from the most southerly part of the prefecture regaled me with tales of adepts who could communicate with the spirit world, and thereby know the past and the future as well as read your thoughts. He explained that Buddhists were different from Christians in that Christians only need to believe in the religion. Buddhists train and therefore anyone can become a Buddha if he makes the effort. He also told me about a large Buddhist monastery in the US which is called 万佛城 or Myriad Buddha City which is probably in California. I just typed it into my favorite search engine, and sure enough, its in California. If anyone is interested the proper name for it is 万佛圣城 or The Sagely City of Ten-thousand Buddhas, a middling translation, but there it is. After being nearly converted I escaped while they were busy chanting the sutras. I made it to the tower, which was just a reconstruction of a previous tower. The reconstruction was an earlier one from the nineties, lots of the reconstruction of destroyed temples is very recent. I have taken several pictures of the tower from different vantages and will post them for your viewing pleasure.
After I viewed the tower I scrambled past some graves up to the path on the ridge and followed it for a distance. (The first picture in today's entry is after I climbed up the ridge and am looking down at the tower.)
The next day (yesterday) I went back again and found my way to the same path along the ridge. I walked along it through some magnificent scenery and finally found my way to a Taoist temple where I was served tea flower tea, which you can read all about here:My weblog about Tea

This is a nicely finished stone bowl. The sides are all of even thickness and it is pretty smooth. There is a lot of stone work like this. One brainstorm I had is that Some of the larger stone basins were made to be set outside to catch rainwater for drinking, and are useful because they would be harder to carry away than earthenware jugs as the big ones are taller than my knee and probably weigh just under 800 pounds. This bowl is set next to a fireplace, and looks perfect for grilling kebabs over a bed of hot coals.

The last picture is of an advertisement for horse and donkey transport. It lists a contact name and two phone numbers. I expect most of his work is bringing construction materials up the mountain for grave builders. I only included it because readers in the US might be tickled to know that a man who runs donkey caravans has two cell phones.