Jinan, Springs and Big Buddah

June 6, 2008. Therice and Melissa

We started the day off with an early morning wake-up call that was difficult to not ignore. After eating breakfast at the hotel, we got on a bus for over 2 hours to travel back to Ji-nan, the capital of the Shandong province. Ji-nan holds a population of 2 million, in a province of 6 million. Our tour guide, Lisa, informed us that Jinan was special, because in the local custom, all strangers are addressed as laoshi, meaning teacher. After the very sleepy bus ride, we arrived at the train station to check-in our baggage for the train ride the following day. While that may seem sort of strange, the reason for doing so was that we would be taking the bullet train to Beijing, which does not allow check in luggage. So, our luggage had to go the slow way.
What generated great excitement though, was the KFC across the street from the train station. After all the bags were checked in, many members of the group decided to “go to the bathroom” at the KFC. Who knew that fried chicken was so good at 10 o’clock in the morning?

Our first sightseeing stop of the morning was at Baotu spring, also known as the first spring under heaven. Jinan is known for it’s many springs, but Baotu is especially known for it’s power to provide luck and happiness to the drinkers of its water. In fact, throughout history many emperors visited the spring or were given its waters to provide them with eternal happiness. Strangely enough, the water from the spring is supposedly clean enough to drink, although only a few brave souls from our group tried it.

Also in the spring complex were the rain brook, and the shuyu springs. The rain brook is special because it looks like it has rain falling on its surface on the sunniest of days. Unfortunately for us, it was actually raining, so this theory was unable to be tested. The Shuyu springs were the site of the writings of the poems of Li Qing Zhao. A superstition goes that if you can place a coin on the surface of the spring, actually a pond, and the coin does not sink, then whatever you wish for will come true. However, due to the rain and the fish living in the water, the surface tension was not enough to keep any coin afloat. Many of our classmates lost both their money and their wishes trying this out.

In addition to fish, two seals lived at the Baotu complex. We were quite surprised to see them, although I’m sure they were not surprised to see us. Our group felt sorry for the seals, kept in such a confined space, and tried to plan a seal escape. However these plans never came to fruition, for fitting a seal onto a train would be no easy task.

After leaving the Baotu spring, we ate lunch at the Luguo mansion. In our private room, the topic of discussion went from 90’s childrens TV-shows to Starwars. After leaving lunch, Lisa taught us a Chinese tongue twister:

Zou yi zouniu yi niujian dao liu shu lou yi lou

We drove through the city for a time, then came to a forest on a hill, known as the 1000 Buddhas Hill. Surprisingly, this hill, standing at 258 meters tall, is the tallest mountain in Jinan. Driving up through the gate, we had no idea what we were in for. As we rounded a corner, a 5-story tall golden Buddha came into our sight. With eyes looking in two opposite directions, this Buddha imposed on all surrounding structures. While all us were in absolutely awe of this gargantuan Buddha, that would barely fit in the view of our cameras, we were even more shocked to find that this structure was not even really recognized as “famous” or considered a popular spot for tourists. Apparently, this structure is considered nothing compared to the Buddha made out of an entire mountain located in Sichuan.

After a few group pictures by this Buddha, we walked a little ways to the Zen Buddha temple located on the side of this hill. Inside this temple, there was a little man who you could say could be considered a kind of doctor. If you needed something fixed in your body, he would “center your qi” by concentrating. He would move all your energy with his fingers to the center of your body. By doing this, he would eliminate all negative energy inside of you, which would apparently heal you. This treatment left us with tingling fingers and relaxed muscles.

When everyone’s problems were healed, we exited the temple to a square where Li Laoshi taught the group taichi, which many of us had been wanting to learn. Taichi is very popular in China, for it is considered both a form of exercise and meditation. We were taught 3 different moves, and it was surprisingly hard to do considering the slow speed that it should be taken at.
After this, we left the 1000 Buddhas Hill and got on our tour bus once again to head on over to the Daming Lake. It was fairly large and very beautiful, especially with the abundant plant life growing on and around the lake. Unfortunately the rain and a group of Chinese people, who had clearly never seen Americans before, ruined the tranquility. This group decided to stop right in front of the place we were resting and proceeded to stare, point, and take pictures of us. Having been in China for about 2 weeks now, all of us have been getting used to this response to our presence, so once they moved away somewhat, but were still eyeing us, Josh O. decided to strike-up a conversation with them. We were happy with our ability to converse simply with them in Chinese, however rude they had been to us, and we ended the conversation soon. But, they continued to stand there, and eventually two men came up to Josh R. and asked to take a picture with him. His response was to ask for 5 yuan in return. So, a group of us crowded into a frame with these Chinese people and the picture was taken. However, after the picture they ran off, and the promised 5 yuan never appeared.

This was our last stop of the day, so we got back on our bus to go out to eat dinner and then check in to our hotel, the Yuquan Simpson Hotel. The hotel is huge, nice, and surprisingly modern; it includes a large indoor swimming pool, a sauna, steam-room, spa, and a huge ping-pong club! Tomorrow we hope to shop all morning in Jinan then take the bullet train to Beijing, the last stop in China.