You know it’s hot when you can literally see sweat droplets rising and forming on the back of your hand. I sweat in places I never knew existed today! More than 40 degrees and high, high humidity. We spent the day running from shade patch to shade patch!
Stephen woke up with a cold and so the rest of us took the 30 passenger ferry to the island in the middle of Dong Ting Lake. Dong Ting Lake lies as a natural border between Hunan and Hubei provinces, and Yueyang City is on its southern banks. Once again, we were the only visible foreigners to visit the island today and it was really enjoyable to take in the sights with the other Chinese tourists.
While the lake is said to have its own monster (just like our own local lake), it was the site of the original dragon boat races. In fact the original legend began here. Dong Ting is essentially a resevoir basin for the Yangtze River and is really a rather shallow lake with many freighters carrying rice from port to port and up and down the river. There are also a plethora of fishing vessels. Trawlers and shrimp boats. We’ve been eating the bony fish and hard shelled shrimp all week, bathed in their spicy sauces. Both are local delicacies. The shrimp is eaten with beer much like chicken wings back home. I think it is partly because they are hand peeled and it becomes a slow snack rather than a meal.
There is also a legend about an ancient king and two princesses. The tale tells much like a Romeo and Juliet story, as the king loved the princesses and apparently they loved him too (yes both). The king was going to meet them and they him when he died. When they arrived and found he had died in the lake, the died of broken hearts and there is a tomb on the island where they are said to be buried. We skirted the tomb area, as Matthew let us know that it is not certain how much truth there is to the tale. We weren’t terribly surprised. 🙂
There are two temples on the island. The first one is the buddhist temple and we watched as Matthew burned incense and genuflected before an angry looking statue. I felt bad as I had told him that our religion wouldn’t allow for us to burn incense there and asked him to explain the process to us. He took it to mean that he should show us, and that was not the intention. Oh well. It was interesting and it didn’t hold much meaning for him, but he is versed in how to go about it. The temple has a circitous route around the main worship hall holding 300(!) bronze buddhas, each depicting a different attribute of buddha. It reminded me of the Catholic saints in a way. I asked if buddhists would focus their worship on the buddha with the characteristic they felt they needed and he agreed that that was the purpose behind them. Such an empty place. China really isn’t a very religious place if you consider the masses, but it reflected the feeling that all people are really looking for hope when they struggle. If faced with insurmountable difficulties in life, as we all are at times, we look for answers and hope whereever we think we can find it.
As we left to walk down the stone staircase, one of the temple guides set off firecrackers to the side of the stairs and we all jumped out of our skin! It was good for a laugh and shook off some of the gloom of the place. 🙂
The next temple was the temple in worship of the god of the lake. There the worshippers focused on wishing and then hanging their prayer banners in two trees that were growing in the courtyard of the temple. At this point I asked if we could turn around. It was incredibly hot and Matthew had stepped in to take Stephen’s role of carrying the stroller up and down stairways while I carried Samuel.
Next up we crossed a stone bridge with exquisite pink lotus blooms on either side. It was really breathtaking. If I ever get to return to the island, I hope I can come in the spring with everything blooming and a more moderate temperature. Because of the heat, we pushed on.
Around a bend, we came up on an enclosed inlet with a large stone bridge crossing it. People were paddling paddle boats around and giant Koi fish were following them for a feeding. There was a treed walkway and a landscaped dragon cut into the dam that enclosed the inlet from the main lake. We walked up Monkey Hill, passed the drooling dragon in front of a well, and came to the terraced tea growing up the mountainside. They bushes were protected from the searing sun by tall trees over head and they were lush and green. I tried a nibble of a sprout and it tasted a lot like black tea. These were Silver Needle Tea bushes. The finest Silver Needle tea grows here and I was so excited to see it first hand as it is a regular item in my tea cabinet.
Facing heat exhaustion by this point and with sweat literally running down my nose and dripping off the end, we stopped for a couple of cold waters and headed to the tea tasting room and the drying factory. The tea leaves are picked as lush, flat, green leaves in the springtime and then brought to the factory area to be fried in dry cookers. They are then sifted and sorted and dried on giant round screens. The hostess showed us how the tea can be reused five times and how the flavour changes (and does not weaken) with each new hot water bath. The fifth time, the leaves themselves are eaten too. The special visual aspect of this tea is in its cartesian diver type dance that it does. Those flat lush leaves are dried into a pine needle type appearance. When the hot water is poured over them, they steep until they open just enough to float vertically in the water. They then bob up and down in that position as they steep. It’s really quite neat to watch. And believe it or not, but the Chinese once again proved themselves genius, as that hot tea was a srefreshing a that cold water we had been drinking!
Samuel was offered the chance to touch a golden turtle that they had brought out of the lake and onward we went. On the path leading away from the tea house, we looked down at the inlet and there were two long-necked, black swans being crowded around by a huge group of Koi. We soon realized that when the swans ate form their floating feeding platform, the koi were gaining a meal too. It was striking seeing the black swans surrounded by the frothing orange fish!
We had taken our time getting back and ended up missing our boat back and narrowly missed the next one as well. I think it was a combination of Matthew’s persuasiveness and the foreigners red faces that caught us a ride on that ferry! We were so happy to get in our air conditioned van at the other shore.
It was a scorching hot day, but soooo worth it to go on our last adventure here in Yueyang. It’s been a tremendous blessing to get to know “Samuel’s China”. Tomorrow we drive back to Changsha and reconnect with our guide, Vicky, who aided us during Samuel’s adoption trip. Less than 48 hours and we meet Isaiah!
Please be praying for Stephen and my Mom’s health, for Samuel’s heart as a new big brother and of course, our little Isaiah. His world is about to change dramatically. Lord, please grow all our hearts just the right amount to be what he needs.
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