Seven Wonders of China (5/5)

August 11, 2010

To protect the Shibaozhai temple, the Chinese government had a six-hundred foot high, thirty-three foot thick dike built to protect it.  When completed, the dike will surround the temple and cliff.

7. Forbidden City, Beijing

The Forbidden City is the largest, ancient palace in the world and is one of the most visited tourist sites on the planet.  This palace covers more than 7 million square feet in central Beijing next to Tiananmen Square.  That is the size of eighty football fields and the palace is surrounded by a moat.

In the early fourteen hundreds, the emperor moved the capital of China to Beijing to establish better control over the country.  It took a million laborers and artists fourteen years to build.  The Forbidden City has 9,999.5 rooms—as close as man can get to the palace of the gods, which is supposed to have ten-thousand rooms.

Before the Forbidden City became a tourist attraction, the penalty for sneaking inside was death usually by being beheaded.  Once the empresses and concubines of the emperor moved into the Forbidden City, none were allowed to leave.  Twenty-four emperors ruled China from inside the walls of this palace.

See The Han Dynasty or return to The Seven Wonders of China – Part 4

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Seven Wonders of China (4/5)

August 11, 2010

Mount Wudang is home to eight palaces, seventy-two temples in caves, thirty-nine bridges, thirty-six nunneries, twelve pavilions, and two temples.

During the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1643 AD), Mt. Wudang was known as a grand spectacle of all ages and is one of the best examples of ancient-religious architecture anywhere.

The Golden Hall, a temple built on Mt. Wudang in the 15th century is the largest copper building in China. The ninety-ton structure was plated in Gold in Beijing before being moved to the mountain.

6. Shibaozhai  (Precious Stone Fortress)

Near the banks of China’s Yangtze River, a twelve story, five-hundred year-old Buddhist temple made of wood clings to a cliff without the support of a single nail.  Before the temple was built, devout Buddhists climbed the cliff risking their lives to worship the Buddhist statutes on the mountain.  The temple was built to resist high winds and remedy this problem.

To protect and save the temple against rising water due to construction of China’s Three Gorges Dam, the Chinese government had a radical and ambitious solution.

See Li River Cruise or return to The Seven Wonders of China – Part 3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Seven Wonders of China (3/5)

August 10, 2010

The Great Wall of China was not built by one man, one king or emperor but is a product the collective effort of the Chinese people over centuries.  The Great Wall united the country in its construction and still unites the Chinese today as a symbol of pride.

4. Leshan Buddha

Everything about this Buddha is BIG. More than a thousand years old, it took almost a century to carve the Leshan Buddha from the solid rock cliff. The Buddha looks out over a river and legend says the rugged, unpredictable river sunk many boats drowning people until the Buddha was carved from the cliff.

It is thought that the rocks cut from the cliff while the Buddha was being constructed tumbled into the river and calmed the currents.  However, today, air pollution as in acid rain from industry is threatening the Buddha. Maintaining the Buddha has become a challenge. About two million people visit each year.

5. Mount Wudang

To the Chinese, Mt. Wudang is the first mountain under heaven. Ornate palaces may be found on the mountains slopes.  Temples, pavilions and bridges are all designed to harmonize with the landscape.  This mountain is also the home of Wudang Kung Fu.  A martial art that is still active today after seven hundred years.  In Chinese terms, Wudang is a small town of 20,000 people that is a fascinating mix of tradition and modernity.

See The Prince’s Garden or return to The Seven Wonders of China – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Seven Wonders of China (2/5)

August 9, 2010

2. Hanging Monastery

Another popular tourist site is the fifteen-hundred year old wooden Hanging Monastery.   The monastery is suspended fifteen stories above the valley floor on the side of a sheer cliff.  It is a mystery why the monastery was built there and why.

One reason might be the floods that once plagued the valley. Today, a dam controls the water. The monastery was built in an indentation in the cliff below an overhand.

What cannot be seen from the valley floor is the Hanging Monastery was built into the cliff’s face. More than forty caves and rooms were dug into the rock.  This process allowed supports to be built into the cliff.  The thin wooden pillars are only there for decoration and were added in the last century.

3. The Great Wall

One of the world’s greatest treasures is the almost four-thousand mile Great Wall, which took two-thousand years to complete.

The early great wall was made of layers of pressed earth and straw. The Qin Dynasty completed the first wall.  The Han Dynasty extended the wall toward Mongolia.  The Ming Dynasty built the wall stronger of stone and mortar.  The Chinese used smoke and fire to send messages over long distances to warn of enemy attacks.

See Traveling the Great Wall or return to The Seven Wonders of China – Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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When in China, Buyer Beware (a first-hand experience)

July 18, 2010

If you are buying electronics or paying for a service in China, you should not expect things to work the same as in your home country.

However, a foreigner’s experience may not be the same, since many Chinese treat foreigners differently than another Chinese, whom they may treat “very” rudely, and if you have a Chinese face, don’t expect to be treated as if you are not Chinese.

A Chinese, American friend visiting China recently had a problem with his Sony laptop. Since he never used the laptop on the Internet in the US, he went without security protection. Then, in the hotel, he decided to use the Sony to check his Yahoo e-mail and to send e-mails, but decided to buy Norton Internet Security first.

My friend sent me this e-mail telling me his story.

“Chinese technicians don’t know how to handle a US laptop. To prevent a virus, I purchased Norton Security Software in Shanghai and had a store person install it.

“First, without asking me, he converted the entire system from English to Chinese, and that’s when things started to get really messed up. The next morning, my son discovered that the supposedly installed Norton Internet Security program wasn’t there! When we went to log onto to the Internet, a warning appeared that said we had ‘no virus protection’ on the Sony, so we had to go back to the store to find out why.

         “Then my five-year-old Chinese cell phone stopped working, so I bought a ‘new’ Nokia mobile phone, which is supposed to be a good-name brand. That Nokia cost me 1,600 yuan (about 235 American dollars). Guess what, after 24 hours, the thing quit working.

“When I returned to the story to find out why, I was told I would have to pay another company for a service plan so I could use the phone. The salesperson then turned the original receipt over and pointed at some Chinese that was so small you needed a magnifying glass to read it.  It said, ‘The customer has to take the phone to a Nokia check center at People’s Square to have it tested.’ Only with a test result that says, ‘No man-made damage by the purchaser,’ would the store consider an exchange or perhaps a refund.”

This 2008 video is almost 48 minutes long but may be worth your time.

In fact, before you visit China, I recommend you become “very” familiar with the China Law Blog. Contrary to popular Western opinions, China does have laws and courts.

See China’s Growing Legal System

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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