Golden Temple

This morning Kathryn and I biked around Kunming to pick up a dress she had made. Biking in China is an adventure, made more adventurous by the fact that I am wearing a skirt. However, cheap Chinese bikes have locks built in to the back wheel, which makes a lot of sense.

After lunch, Kathryn sent me to visit the Golden Temple, which is really made of bronze. It's a Taoist temple from the 1600s with a 14 ton bell from the 1400s. The bell is huge. I rung it for 2Y, which is about 35 cents. Personally, I found the bell tower more impressive, since it's three stories high and gives good views of the city.

Getting there was an adventure: I gave the cabbie a piece of paper saying, "I want to go to the Golden Temple" in Chinese, which went well until he accidentally drove to the exit and wanted to tell me that. He wrote me a note that I assume says as much, but I told him I couldn't read it. I think he understood that I couldn't speak but couldn't figure out that I hadn't written the characters myself. Oh well. On the way home I tried to say where I wanted to go in Chinese, which utterly failed, but I handed him the paper and he drove me home.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.8