May 12, 2013 - Wutai Mountain and Taiyuan

A wonderful night's sleep (9 hours) with the window open - mountain air ! Soon to be followed by a very hot day (33) in our ultimate destination. Four temples were the order of the morning to be followed by a Buddhist vegetarian lunch. Afternoon: one last temple then a three hour drive across more of the same as yesterday. There are 1000's of temples on Wutai Mountain. This is not actually one mountain but five peaks in the Wutai range and is one of the five sacred mountains in China. It is the least touristy (mostly Chinese) but that is...

Oct 16, 2007 - Tiayuan/Night Train

This morning we left Pingyao and headed for the Shuanglin Temple just outside the city. This temple is unusual in that it depicts some female figures and most figures appear life-like, not scary. There was a class of art students making clay sculptures of some of the heads and figures. They were a funny bunch and we had our pictures taken with them. The large buddha in the main temple seems to be made of stone, plaster and metal and is painted. The side temples had more human looking figures which were under very ornate awnings. This temple...