The Tea Shop

From a local Linfen tea shop I sometimes hang around at.

Shaolin Temple (少林寺)

genuine monk sold products.


The famous pagoda forest (塔林)






Chinese chess (象棋)



Some really old trees, like 2,000+




Buddha Phone! actually I'm not sure that's a buddha, I think it actually might be Bodhidharma (菩提达摩),  but I still thought it was funny.

















Was pretty excited to get out to Shaolin Temple (少林寺) even though I knew it would be really touristy. Some of these pictures are from the surrounding area as well, including Song Mountain (嵩山). The temple itself was pretty typical as far as Chinese Temples go， but the pagoda forrest (塔林) was definitely cool, made me want to watch the movie again. Anyways, this is a big post, but I hope you enjoy what I was able to pull out of the the crowd.

Zhengzhou (郑州)

Grand Shanghai City Mall (大上海城). We ate dinner at the Golden Hans place in the upper right. It was pretty good, but more importantly they brewed their own beer on site, which is not a common in China. I tried all three varieties, a typical barley brewed one (大麦), a wheat (小麦) and a stout (黑啤酒), and then I went for seconds on the stout since they were only 6元 a pint (that's less then $1).


Giant bottle of Makers in Grand Shanghai City.


27' Pagoda (二七塔); a tower to commemorate the 1927 workers uprising in Shanghai against the feudal lords now sits in the center of one of Zhengzhou's largest shopping centers.


guess…


Dried meat at the super market.




Bus station waiting to go to Shaolin Temple.


Hui noodles (烩面)， a Zhengzhou specialty; its got mutton in it.


Reginal boazi (包子)


These last few are all from Zhengzhou University (郑州大学)








“In God's name I swear your eating hot dogs, not you"


I love you… ice cream

Had a long weekend because of Tomb Sweeping Day (清明节), so I went down to Zhengzhou with some friends to get out of Linfen for a few days.