A Day on Mount Putuo

The day began early with a 6 AM departure by bus, for a several hour ride until we took a ferry ride for about an hour to a nearby island, where we had lunch. Fishy was the best way to describe lunch as that was the theme. Supposedly about a third of China’s seafood comes from the island port that we were at, so most of our food had shrimp or fish favor. Since I have pretty much sworn off Chinese food, I didn’t eat much. We then took a fifteen minute speed boat ride to Putuo Island. Below is a picture from the ferry ride across to the first island. Notice the very brown water—that is because of all of the silt in the water from a nearby river emptying into the bay. All of the water around Putuo was very brown from all of the muddy silt. I am not sure if this is natural, or if it is pollution from all of the construction near the length of the river.

Once we landed on Putuo Island, or Mount Putuo as it is sometimes called, we dropped off our bags and began a long hike up some winding paths. Though it was quite pretty, it was also very hot and humid. It was around noon, but because China has only one time zone, it was more like two in the afternoon. (Yes, you heard that correctly, China has only one time zone for the entire country. That means that in western China the sun would rise around 10 AM and set around 11 PM. I don’t know why China has decided on one time zone, but they seem to have in spite of all the countries around it.) The picture below has a nice description on Putuo for you to read to better understand the significance of the island.
We continued our very hot and sweaty hike up to a temple for the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. There we lit three sticks of incense and dropped them into the cauldron in front of the shrine. I am sure there was more to the ceremony than this, but I think this was supposed to bring me luck or answer my prayers or something. I wished for the sun to go behind a cloud for the rest of the day, but that prayer was not answered by the Goddess of Mercy. This temple is shown below.

However we kept hiking up and stopping to see rocks that were supposed to be turtles, but really looked like rocks. The pictures below are of the more spectacular views out over the ocean. In the second one you can see a famous statue off in the distance.
Eventually we did get to the top, only to descend to our hotel back near where we started. The funny part of this is that we entered the back door to the hotel, and it looked VERY sketchy. We were worried about the conditions until we made our way into the front section of the hotel that was much better. Below Helen and Reza walk into the back door very concerned about our sleeping arrangements for the evening!

Everyone was quite happy to go and crank the air conditioning in the rooms and watch some Chinese TV for a while. After a short break we met for dinner in the hotel, which again had a very fishy theme. It was interesting that at the restaurants on these islands they had kiddy pools in the restaurants where you could go and pick the seafood you wanted for dinner. It was like picking your lobster in the states, but considerably less hygienic (and very smelly)! No one at our table ate much for dinner. You can see most of our meal below. Notice the traditional circular table where you take what you want from the dishes into your bowl. During the meal you just keep rotating the table to get what you want to eat.

After dinner we all went out scavenging for food in the local stores. We did find ice cream bars, Oreos, juice drink, and water to tide us over for the evening. Then we all went to the ocean. Though there wasn’t any swimming allowed, there were many people out on the beach running around and enjoying the sand. After some time in the sand we played some cards in the room (Jose and I won) and went to bed.