I slept decently on Sunday evening and woke around 7:30 a.m. China time. This is a late wake-up time for me, but given that I had been awake for so many hours travelling half-way around the world for two days prior, I was happy with 7 solid hours of sleep. I enjoyed a great breakfast in my hotel (more on the food in China in a later post) and set off for a solo adventure in the city.
My destination was Gulang Island, which is also known as Piano Island, and which I learned is a well-known (in China) tourist destination just a short distance off the coast. The island gets its name because the first piano brought to China over a hundred years ago was located on this island, and many of the homes on the island place a high priority on music. Because no vehicles, motorcyles, or bicycles are permitted on the island, rumor has it that it is a quiet place where you can hear piano music coming out of the windows.
The photo below was taken as we were getting off the ferry over to the island. It was very crowded, hot, and humid in Xiamen and on the ferry, which I later learned would be the typical weather of the week. My shirt was soaked with sweat in under an hour from leaving my hotel.
A view of the coastline of the island. Notice the Chinese-style boat on the sand and the orange flower-topped trees (similar to the trees on Xiamen University's campus).
Once we disembarked from the ferry the pathways wandered through a shopping area.
Wouldn't you know it that within a short distance I experienced my first McDonald's sighting in China. We don't have Ronald McDonald figurines at our local McDs in Dallas, but I sighted many around Xiamen!
One of the primary tourist attractions on the island is Sunlight Rock, a giant boulder perched on a hill in the center of the island. This is the view from below the rock, after I had walked through the shopping area of the island.
As you can see from the photo above, you can walk up to the top of the rock, where you are rewarded with panoramic views of the harbor and of Xiamen city. The photo below was taken shortly after I purchased my ticket to enter the park, and depicts the gates to the entrance to a buddhist temple on the way up to the top of the rock.
Many of the passageways were narrow and wound steeply up the rock. The roots on this tree are typical of what I saw on the journey up.
Once at the top of the rock, I was rewarded with beautiful views of the island and the surrounding area.
It was also steaming hot, and buckets and buckets of sweat poured off my body. Seriously, I am from Florida and I live in Texas so you would think that I would be used to heat and humidity. But honestly, this heat was intense and it caught me off guard. I started using the tissues that I had brought for the bathrooms (more on that later) as handkerchiefs to keep the sweat from forming pools on my body. Below is the view from the rock looking towards Xiamen.
After coming off the rock, the next step was to take the cable car over to the aviary on the other side of the island. The cable car ride over was peaceful, and I particularly enjoyed watching the Chinese people laugh at one another as they stumbled or banged their head (or suffered other unfortunate mishaps) while entering the cable cars at the end point.
I attended the first five minutes of the bird show at the aviary. I should have realized this before entering the show area, but after a short time I grew very tired of not understanding a word of what the lady entertainer was trying to get the bird to say. She said something and then tried to get the bird to repeat it, which the bird would never do on the first try. Then the entertainer and the bird repeated this game several times before the bird finally squeaked something into the microphone, at which point everyone in the audience laughed and I figured that the bird had said what she had wanted the bird to say. Fun once, but not repeatedly.
Once I knew that I would not be able to understand anything at the show, I realized that this would really annoy me. Therefore, I backed out and explored the rest of the aviary, where peacocks were in abundance over the property. And yes, mom and dad, they squawked just as loudly in China as they did at the Fort Wayne Zoo in Indiana!
This is a shot of the beach taken from the viewpoint on top of the rock.
And this is a view of the beach once I made my way down off the rock and through the aviary. No one was swimming in the water (I think because of rough currents and unsanitary conditions) , but many people were enjoying boat rides around the island. Notice the huge tanker boats in the background. This is a major shipping channel so large boats are a common sight off the coast.
And last but not least, the view of Xiamen from the ferry as we crossed back over to mainland China.
This was an enjoyable excursion for me and it was relatively easy for a western tourist that doesn't speak any Chinese. Mainly I didn't talk to anyone and just observed, followed the masses, and took a ton of photos to document the experience.
And the shower I took about 30 seconds after arriving back at my hotel, to get all the pooled sweat and salt off of my body, was AWESOME!
And the shower I took about 30 seconds after arriving back at my hotel, to get all the pooled sweat and salt off of my body, was AWESOME!
Was that sushi on the mcd's sign next to Ronald?
ReplyDeleteGlad you had a first good day in China.