Climbing our mountain

Behind the Xiamen University campus and easily visible from our apartment is a mountain which provides a major source of entertainment to outdoorsy Xiada students. We had climbed partway up once before when we visited the Nanputuo temple. Two philosophy students and one of our neighbor, Deborah's law students accompanied us on our climb over the mountain. Our goal was to find a path over the mountain and into the botanical garden, something that Guo, a grad student in philosophy, had done many times...although not with a baby in the backpack like Michael was carrying! with a few false starts we did find a path with only a little scrambling, and working together got everybody up in about an hour or so. Thomas was really excited about it -- and happy to be away from people "because I am tired of being stared at.."



Here is a child who is so used to being photographed that when we reached a small temple on the mountain, she went and posed by the stone dragon.


This was a small temple to Guan yin, the goddess of mercy. A very comical moment was Helen trying to teach Sophia to kneel on the cushions and bow three times.



I finally got the chance to use the hikers' tea set I had picked up at the supermarket. People bring their own tea and are provided with hot water at various "scenic spots for drinking tea" . This is a very Fujian custom, not necessarily practiced with as much fervor elsewhere in China, but here it is so popular that nearly every store has a little tea set set up for the store owner to drink tea with customers. We had a good explanation of the niceties of serving tea Fujian style, and also a discussion of good tea vs. bad tea, how to store it (sealed in the refrigerator for no more than 2 months). One of the students proposed we visit his city in the interior of Fujian and experience more of the local tea culture.

Lots of places along the path have characters highlighting the beauty of the scene or naming the rock. I liked the mature bamboo plant in front of this one.

At the top of the mountain is a small army base and military museum, which amused everyone.

Finally we ended up in the botanical gardens. The best part is that it costs $6 (a lot of money to the students) to get in via the road or front gate, but our path had gotten us in free! We had a nice walk through some familiar landscapes form our previous trips here, but it was getting to be lunch time, so went out the front gate and took a bus back to campus -- its a bit of a ride since we have to go around the mountain by bus instead of over it.

Finally we had a nice lunch with the students..and came home to showers, homework and more mundane affairs.