PutuoShan Island

Last weekend was a long weekend for us folk out here in China. They have what's called by some, "deathday". It's simply a day in which family and friends gather and pray and remember those that have passed.

So on Wednesday I bought my ticket to Ningbo where I would meet a fellow Canadian, and the Australian and American from the Harbin trip.

We stayed in Ningbo for one night, then first thing in the morning headed out to PutuoShan Island. We took the bumpiest bus ride of my life out to the ferry - which was incredibly fast and rather bumpy on the choppy waves. But I was cool with that, I slept for most of the trip, the windows were placed too high to comfortably look out of, anyway.

PutuoShan Island is considered a very holy piece of land. It has a population of about 3000 permanent residences and a lot of those are the monks that live in the island's many temples, nunneries, and monasteries.

After spending far too long looking for a hotel that wouldn't rip us off we wandered around the island, visiting the beaches and the temples, posing with the statues, and just generally taking it easy.

That is, until we climbed the mountain.

Ok, I am all for climbing mountains. I love mountains. I think mountains are swell and superb. I've always wanted to climb a mountain. Who doesn't wanna climb 297m of Mother Nature? I would just prefer it if I didn't have the beginning symptoms of "hacking-up-a-lung-itis". I'd also prefer it if not everyone else was at least half a foot taller than me - or if that extra height was in their torso and not their mile-long legs. I would have preferred it I hadn't forgot my belt back home and didn't have to constantly readjust my jeans. And finally, mountain climbing is that much more satisfactory if the battery in your camera does not die out when you finally get to the peak. I'm just sayin'.

The view really was simply stunning.

Y'know when someone mentions something like "a buddhist retreat in the mountains" and people usually picture this mountainous landscape with a temple stuck here and there among the trees and monks are wandering around doing the things that monks do and there's this peaceful fog or mist settling around the peaks? It looked exactly like that. Unbelievable. I'll be getting pictures from the others this weekend.

Mountain climbing is exhausting. So we went to bed at about 9:30.

The next day we relaxed in the hotel room for most of the morning until we found another footpath that led to another monastery that was so much fun it deserves its own post. So keep tuned for that in the next few days.