佛山

Be warned that the following is a somewhat gushy account of our trip
last week to Foshan. Don't read it if you are prone to travel jealousy or
dread the vacation slideshow.

I loved Foshan. Even though it was dirty and crowded with hostile
people and the bad air was exacerbated by both a caterpillar hacking
down a building and cigarette smoke in close quarters. It is a city that
wears its heart on its sleeve. Beggars and buses and temples and vendors
share the same streets. All its dirty laundry is hanging out for everyone
to see (literally). It may be a little ghetto but it is rich and interesting.
Foshan has past and present and future and reality and legend all
together in its smoggy haze.


We first visited an Ancestor Temple/Huang Feihong memorial. This
is a very interesting combination considering Huang was a famous kung
fu master. Who made movies. We looked around for a few hours at all
the traditional buildings and black and white photographs of gong fu
movie stars and historical relics and stone sculptures... and INCENSE.
You have never seen so much incense in your entire life. They have to
put it in troughs.


The Ancestor Temple portion was neat. (I'm sorry I don't have more
pictures of it, but it would have been disrespectful and awkward.) We
stared down massive frowning statues while people around us bowed at
turbo speed and hucked coins wildly. Outside huge vats of incense smoked
and old ladies played mah-jong. There was an archway of filialty and the
tree to end all trees.

It deserves two pictures.

No, it is not some special Chinese tree that produces red paper. People
write their wish on a piece and throw it up there.

Then it was off to the Nanfeng Ancient Kiln. It was almost abandoned.
We paid the entry fee and wandered around old buildings of brick and
dust filled with pots of every size. Eventually we came across a large hot
room where men shuffled terra-cotta on what seemed to be a giant
chimney. Turns out it's the oldest operational kiln in the world. People
have been making pottery on it for about 500 years, and still are today!

Yes, way! It truly is the ancient kiln.

Then we proceeded to wander about the Ancient Q/Ming Village. (We
do a lot of wandering here in China.) It was also nearly abandoned. We
ran into some people singing Chinese opera and a mini-temple--a room
with the typically angry statue and three cups full of fortune. My destiny
apparently involves the number fourteen. Also worth mentioning is the
more modern sculpture we affectionately dubbed "The Cellulite Ladies."

Not the Cellulite Ladies.

Just outside was a series of pottery shop streets. That's it. Shop after
shop of Buddhas and sculptures and dragons and pots and teacups and
soldiers and dolls and everything you could imagine of every shape and
size and color and glaze, all handmade and ridiculously cheap, staffed
with ladies with bad perms who painstakingly wrap your purchase in
scraps of styrofoam and newspaper. It was insane. But such is China.

I love you!