A Gazebo, a Pagoda, and Roast Duck

We did not feel the earthquake today. It's 10pm Monday here in China, and I didn't even know about the earthquake until a few minutes ago when I went online.

Callie is doing well. She loves to play and laugh and be outside, but there's also moments, few though they are, almost of borderline terror where she suddenly gets a scared look in her eyes and comes running for one of us, insisting we pick her up, and then clinging tightly to us lest we set her down.

She loves the telephone in our hotel room. We've disconnected one of them so she can play with it. Her idea of playing with it is having me talk on it while she presses the buttons. When I say "Bye," she looks up and says, "Bye," by which she means, "You pick that up and start talking on it again while I press the buttons." It's tremendously fun for one of us.

Though the purpose of our time in China is obvious, there are many side benefits. One of them is the fun Anna and I have shared. Like this afternoon. Sara put Callie down for a nap, and so instead of making Anna be quiet in the room, she and I went for one of our many walks. This time we walked to a large gazebo-like structure out in the middle of a pond, sat down and played several games of UNO. Surrounding us was the warm breezy air, the pond full of fish, and people frequenting a tea house across the way.

I know Anna enjoys this even though her mouth may say otherwise. I hugged her at one point this morning and said, "I sure am glad for all this Daddy-daughter time." She grinned and said, "I'm more interested in Anna-money time."

We visited a tea house today where we treated to four different kinds of tea, and then we were treated to the opportunity of buying some tea. I think the women enjoyed that.

We also visited the Xichang (?) buddhist temple. There were several buildings and statues on the premises (one hall had large statues of 500 of Buddha's disciples!), but very peaceful, and the nature was great: a large banyan tree, a large pond populated by turtles, open courtyards, breezy halls. Physically beautiful, but spiritually depraved. There were many, many, many worshippers there in various buildings (it didn’t seem crowded because of the size of the complex), and they were bowing before statues, praying, burning incense, touching relics, placing offerings.

Isabel was surprised because there’s usually not many people there. When she asked someone, she found out it was “the founder of the Buddhas birthday.” I don’t know what that means. Buddha’s birthday? I looked it up online but couldn't determine anything. A fifteen-story pagoda stood in one of the courtyards. As we exited, a lady with three turtles in a bowl tried to sell us one.

Isabel took us to a traditional Chinese restaurant where we lunched on mushroom and pork soup, roast duck, beef, broccoli, fried noodles (in which were mixed various foods, including squid), watermelon, and coke, no ice. We persuaded Isabel to eat with us and were delighted to learn more about our guide.

Fuzhou is beautiful; tomorrow will probably be our last sight of it.