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We were woken up early this morning with Chinese music that was being piped through our own little speaker, just above our beds. Crap music, a chinese man speaking very broken english, and it was 6.45.....gooood morning!
We wer'nt feeling tip-top as you can imagine, but crawled into the shower and attempted to put the room back together, grabbed some brekkie consisting of eggs toast and chicken sausages and got ready for our first venture off the boat. After sailing 170km over night we had reached our first point if call in Fengdu - the city of ghosts! After getting off the boat we were driven in golf buggies up the hills in the gorgeous sun to the actual 'city of ghosts'. It's only small and consists if maybe two dozen buildings, the oldest ones bring built over 1600 years ago, all in traditional Chinese architecture and beautifully colored. It's know in china as the city of ghosts because believers of the daoism religion believe that this is the last place that the spirits of dead people visit before being sent to heaven or hell, though they believe that the spirit from every single person passes through, not Just believers of that particular religion.
As you walk through, you literally follow the path that the spirits supposedly take, after gates at the entrance you come to the first stop, the bridges of health, wealth and marriage. It's 3 small stone bridges in a courtyard with a small pool of water beneath the middle one. Its the first test and its said that as spirits pass over the bridge, the bad people will fall into the pool beneath and good people will pass straight over (I walked over and surprisingly made it to the other side in one piece!) there's a number of other tests that the spirits have up take on their journey through the city, for example the test of faithfulness to see if you have remained faithful in relationships which consists of picking up a huge semi-sphere of metal and balancing it on a small pointed metal mound?! You can also visit the city to pray to various gods, the most popular being health and wealth that stand facing opposite each other, your supposed to choose which one you will pray too...(I chose health!)
The spirits journey through the city is all a build up to their final judging to decide wether they will go to heaven or hell. After they have passed their final point of call; the 'looktower pagoda' where spirits can take a final look over the world, they enter the final building, a 1600 year old masterpiece, lined on both sides with statues of either devil like under-takers, ready to take people to hell, or smiling, happy characters ready to escort you to heaven. At the end of the building is the 'jade emperor' who makes the final decision, he's about 6 meters tall and covered in gold and bright colors, on a podium and behind long velvet curtains!
We made a new friend walking round who just made the whole day even better - the hat man! He was a hilarious old Chinese guy who was our companion for the day after me and AZ brought straw hats from him. Though he could barely walk, he still smiled and danced his way round the 'city' with us, repeating his only English word - 'hello' and attempting to copy any dance moves we threw at him haha.
We got a call from Debbie today which wad good considering we were all starting to wander if she was still alive! Due to horrendous weather and conditions, falling off her bike, breaking her gears and getting flooded up mountainsides she is unfortunately having to abandon her bike journey. Which for her is obviously very disappointing but she's actually in genuine danger and she can't help the weather! So she's going to cycle for a few more weeks, get to Chengdu and sell her beloved Jane so she can continue with her backpack. We're meeting in Naning and going over the border to Vietnam together at the end of November which is good news for us all and gives her some drive for the next leg!
Nights aboard the boat are pretty quiet (to put it politely!) the Chinese men sat in special rooms smoking and gambling , the other westerners were rarely seen and 4 of us just sat watching the cities come and go, chatting and playing cards, not really what we had all pictured but nice all the same and due to the massively extortionate drink prices I had resorted to drinking my favorite chrysanthemum tea! Haha
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