In Ancient Culture Street is the Temple of Matsu. Throughout the Temple were boards giving information about the Goddess. Aside from their claim that the real woman who became an object of worship was a Tianjin resident the story differs little from the general legend of Matsu or Mazu throughout the coasts of East Asia. Generally she is recognized to have been a real woman born in 960 on an island in Fujian province of China. The child is said to have been a silent baby who did not cry for some time after she was born and developed an interest in Buddhism in early childhood. She took instruction in the religion from the age of thirteen and developed powers to predict the weather and perform healing acts. Her particular concern was for the welfare of fishermen and it is said she even walked out on the waves of the sea to rescue people. It is also commonly said that she went up to a mountain and was taken up to heaven when she was 28 years old. The patterns of this story are reflected in religions worldwide and appear in the Christian Bible among others.

For Buddhists, Matsu is a Bodhisattva and for others she is a goddess. The boards in the Tianjin temple tell that an Emperor came to test her holiness during her life and it is true that various Emperors gave their imprimatur to her deity as the centuries progressed. There are variations in the story in different locations but it is remarkable that the dates given for her birth and death are so firm. It is certain that a remarkable woman of saintly character lived on the coast of China from 960 to 988, most likely in Fujian province, and that she was a devout Buddhist recognized in her own lifetime and in her own locality as a person of advanced spiritual knowledge.

It is sad to see objects of devotion in such a context. There is a history of lack of respect for the divine here, not only in the Cultural Revolution era, but I wonder if it is a longer term characteristic of a country where church has served to bolster state for millennia. In a roofed verandah by the gate were carved steles of Buddha figures, most of which had their faces smashed off.

We went from there to Li Shan, Mount Li, and climbed the stairs to a crevice where Chiang Kai Shek attempted to hide when Communist troopers invaded his residence, killing all of his guards. The residence was at the Huaqing Palace and he ran to the mountain in an unsuccessful attempt to hide. We are told the rational for the capture was to get him to agree to cooperate with the Red Army to defeat the Japanese and soon he signed that agreement. The misnomer ‘peaceful’ was used for the ‘Xian Incident’ (remember the dead guards – maybe they were ‘incidental casualties’).

From there we went to a warehouse where we were forced to endure the attentions of salespeople who followed us (one each) round the shop urging us to buy and letting us know they would give us a ‘special price’. Everything in Xian is at a special price. Ellen saw a beautiful malachite necklace and I succeeded in getting it for her at 60% off by being totally non-negotiable. I walked off and let the staff haggle amongst themselves about accepting my one and final offer. They came back and said yes.

The emperor’s tomb was next and I sat in the shade and had an ice cold juice while Ellen went in and sent me phone messages – “Boring!”, etc. We got back on the bus and drove to a restaurant that was once a warehouse and had been hastily furnished like a factory canteen where we were charged double the normal price for a sparse menu of Chinese food that we believe gave me diarrhoea a couple of days later. The only drinks were beer and water. The water was free and about as cool as tap water from a hot mains pipe.

Finally we arrived at the highlight of the trip, the Warriors. They are only one part of the area of Qin Shi Huang’s burial site, their hallways unsealed and invaded shortly after their entombment and the proud images of the Emperor’s soldiers smashed to a collection of fragments, thus creating the biggest jigsaw puzzle in the world, now being put together piece by piece by patient archaeologists. One of our new friends bought a book and had it signed by one of the farmers who discovered the wonder. He seemed unimpressed by the Laowai invaders now inspecting his trove and behaved rudely in carrying out his role of celebrity. This really is a wonder of the world, created at the request of one of the most successful and megalomaniac tyrants and conquerors who ever lived. The enormous area which is the site of Qin Shi Huang’s tomb dwarfs the pyramids. Only a small portion of it has been excavated by archaeologists. Much of the Terracotta Army is not to be uncovered until scientists have a solution for the rapid fading of the original bright colours under exposure to air and light.

Everyone was weary from the hot day and constant harassment to buy and the bus headed back to the city. To our dismay it pulled into a parking area and we were asked to get off again as the driver ‘had to clean the bus’. It was no surprise that we were to take shelter in a Chinese supermarket. I went to our guide, Bruce by English name, and told him that in Australia we would not accept any of the commercial pressure that had gone on during our trip and said that if they wanted us to buy stuff they should say so instead of lying to us about the bus needing to be cleaned. No cleaning was taking place. When he and I went inside to keep cool by the door we found all the other non-Chinese ignoring the shelves and as a group they approached him about the same issue. He said that the Chinese like to look at products they can’t buy in their own cities. Maybe so, the others were distributed around the aisles. I told him he should inform his boss that this sort of thing is insulting to foreign visitors.

I neglected to say we had no lunch stop because the planned restaurant had closed and the bus driver refused to look for another. Shining girl was less impressed than me, and that’s saying something.

The site also has Red Pandas. I had never even heard of them but they are creatures which look like a red raccoon and lend credibility to the racoon side of the debate about whether pandas are related to bears or racoons. I wondered if Red Pandas are related to Giant Pandas. Their gentle natures and eating habits are similar but Red Pandas only require a donation of fifty yuan before they allow someone to cuddle them. SG cuddled a gorgeous little creature but had to wear plastic gloves as it sat munching a piece of apple in her lap. We were told that the reason for the gloves is that some people are allergic to the fur. I would have thought they were to keep human germs from infecting the Pandas but when one English woman said, “I don’t mind, I’m not allergic” she was allowed to handle it without the gloves.

Our American friend was in the party again and I also chatted with a lovely American lady who was in China for the second time, studying Chinese. She had taught previously. It was such a contrast to see her taking care not to block people’s view and being conscious of the effect of her presence on the convenience of others. Such un-Chinese behaviour.

We had the driver let us off near my bank on the way back and then we window shopped again and got lost as usual before getting a taxi to Grandma’s Kitchen. The food was good when we actually found something that was both on the menu and in the kitchen. That was about it for Chengdu. Being a fast reader I managed to read The Da Vinci Code, much to the chagrin of my daughter, who was still reading one of the author’s other books after several days.

I was soaked through and the American and I had both slipped on the slimy pathways. He went first and seemed to be going to keep sliding down a flight of steps and as I rushed and stooped to help him I went down too. Neither of us was hurt and we all had a good laugh but the pathway was on the edge of a steep slope and if we had fallen that way we would have slid at speed a long distance on the muddy hill slope and likely done ourselves some damage.

There are various small shrines and rock-cut sculptures on the hill, some modern and some old. The older ones have taken on green moss and the pink sandstone has weathered to create beautiful hues. The temple and information buildings are well worth seeing and Da Fo is wonderful. He is truly enormous with each curl on his head carved on a block of stone as big as an average kitchen stool. The rain continued heavily and people were forbidden from descending the steps on either side of the Buddha to see the view from the bottom (of the cliff) but even from only the level of his head it was an excellent experience. Da Fo is a huge Buddha carved out of a cliff. One of us pressed a wrong button on the camera and I was a bit brain-fagged and couldn’t figure out how to reset it so I only got thumbnail sized pictures. It happens!

There is a lot of talk around about Putonghua, known as Mandarin Chinese, which is based on the Beijing dialect, being almost useless to one who wants to travel around China because of the multitude of mutually unintelligible local dialects. It’s not true. It is true that each area has its own ‘hua’ (dialect, language). China is like an enormous Britain in the density of dialects and I think it is because it is a tonal language that the dialects verge on being mutually unintelligible, however, the more educated a Chinese is the more skilled in Putonghua so wherever you go someone will understand you. Most Chinese TV programmes are in Putonghua so most Chinese people have some grasp of the central dialect. If you’ve got the time and the energy and you want to come to China for any length of time learn Mandarin. Maybe your accent is terrible. The solution to that is to learn to write Mandarin Chinese. Another amazing thing about China is that every Chinese dialect uses the same written characters for the same meaning so you will find taxi drivers who can’t understand you offering you a piece of paper and a pen to write your meaning. Funnily enough, some of them have so little knowledge of the world that they think English, French or German are huas and therefore have the same writing. It surprises them when you can’t write the characters which could show your meaning.

I wish I had applied myself to read and write Chinese so I could communicate with people from all the districts of China but with a few hundred words of Mandarin I got started and now I have a lot of fun having conversations with people in my kindergarten level Chinese. It’s a big thrill getting my meaning across to someone who speaks a totally different language to my own.