The keeping of extra cash.
This morning, we slept in because we were so tired. So we took our time getting ready to go out. We walked to a resturant on the corner to grab breakfast/lunch. Some really good pork was there. Yummy. Chinese do pork better than anyone on the planet. I payed the check and they skipped out on 1RMB of change. Its not that big a deal, chinese people like to round things off. At first, I didn't think they may have been trying to keep an extra buck, because if they do that to everyone, they can make some extra money. It wasn't till later on in the evening that i realized more places do this.
Afterwards we walked up to the Nanjing Lu subway station and headed out to go to Yufo Si (Yufo Temple). Oh man, was this place neat. Very pretty. It was great to see a difference finally. Actually, the only real difference in this temple was the color, it was Yellow instead of red, which, I have to say, does a lot. There was also alot to look at and it was very pretty. In addition, this temple contains an all jade buddha. Unfortunately they would not allow pictures or video to be taken so I whipped out a pen and some paper adn started making a brief sketch of everything. It was very beautiful. Lets see.
Across a rectangular room, whose floored was covered in a yellow/gold rug, a semicircle add on was added. In this stood a ornate wood and glass case. Inside was a jade Buddha siting in the lotus position with one hand touching the ground and the other in a hand pose. He was a greenish white color. Apparently it was carved from one chunk of jade. It was very pretty.
The room had 8 pillars holding up the roof, as corners of a square centering in the center of the room. There was a sunroof in the very center and on the sides of the molding on the whole place there were a total of 668 tiny Buddhas all facing the center of the room. Painted on the ceiling were lotus blossoms. On the walls hung wood carvings of famous scenes from Buddhist literature and history. It was very kool.
After that room, we walked around and took fotos. One of the rooms had these 3 giant sitting Buddhas. Another room had a buddha standing while other people/creatures were coming to see him. Very neat. At one point, I walked into one of the areas and I saw a monk/guard sitting there doing something on his cellfone. Very funny to see. I thought the whole point of buddhism was to free yourself of the trappings of this world...like cellfones! There were alot of white people at this place and most of them were German. I found myself tagging along on a tour group for a couple minutes and I seemed to understand the gist of what the chinese dude, who's German was very good, was saying. I was impressed and so were the few German people that I talked to briefly. I was wondering if he was gonna point it out, and he finally did. He pointed out the swastika on the buddha's chest. Basically said, "You should recognize this...." And went on to say that this is a very old symbol. And that "Der Furher" took the opposite of this and turned it on its edge. "I didn't know Buddhists were Nazis!?!?!"
We took fotos in those circular doorways. I put my feet on the walls and stood up. This got a couple monks sitting down somewhere, they started giggling. SWEET! I hope I just broke some monks vow of silence! That would be soooo kool.
We took off and grabbed a taxi back to the subway station where we headed over to the Pearl Tower. It was super crowded and I was looking for a foto shop because my camera was spent. I couldn't find one. The view was great. WE didnt' go up in the tower (which would later come up and bite my ass. Yumi wanted to go but she didn't tell me and I told her that i heard from two people the view wasn't all that good, read entry of May 7th). We ended up walking down by the river and taking fotos of things. We got some Hagen Daas and I got yelled at to wait in line for a seat when all I wanted to do was take out. I was like, "Dude! know the details before you yell!" As we walked around later, I had a person trying to sell stuff poke me. I yelled at her. DON"T POKE ME and that stoppped their pestering real quickly. I found a foto shop to do fotos at but they wanted 80RMB for what i wanted. I laughed in their face. We just walked around the rest of the day.
We went shopping on Nanjing Lu again and Yumi bought a bunch of stuff. I was looking for things, but couldn't find anything useful. We went and grabbed some food off the strip and this was where all the chinese resturants are...in the alleyway. The service sucked and the menu translation was really bad. I ordered what it said was Pig and WonTons, but what I got was Lima Beans and Pig's Feet. I HATE EATING THE FEET OF ANY ANIMAL! THERE IS NO MEAT! Yumi said its because of the cartilage or collogen there that help make your skin look good. But I don't like it. So, i just had the vegetables and garlic. And beer. Which made me feel much better. We weren't all that hungry. On the check, they tried to rip me off by about 5 RMB. So pathetic. You think I am that stupid not to be able to read prices of what we ordered. And yes, they were trying to rip us off, it wasn't a mistake that they made either. We walked around the city a bunch more. Tried to find more Nanjing Lu, but we couldn't so we walked down to Haui Hai Lu and went to shops n stuff. It was ok.
When all the shops started closing we headed back to XinTianDi to check out the nitelife. Boy was it lame. Prices were super high for crappy drinks, so we left after looking in a couple bars. And it had started raining. So we took a taxi back to the hotel and went to the hotel resturant for some drinks. That was nice. We had a real good time.
Time for bed, we need to get up for Suzhou tomorrow, which should be fun. We are going to meet Daisy and her grandmother and buy some silk.