Leshan and some Emeishan

On March 17, some Chengdu USAC and the Shanghai USAC students met in front of the international building at the school in order to take the bus to Leshan to see the biggest Buddha in the world. We arrived in Leshan around 11:30 a.m. and took a boat tour to see the cliff Buddha.

A guy trying to get his duck back, who kept flying and swimming away

On the boat: Kailey, Bjoernar, Marissa and I


Some of the Shanghai students. The girl in the white is also from the University of Florida

The giant Buddha!







We then had lunch in Leshan.

Steve and Silas (Shanghai students) with Laura in the middle


The other table

We arrived in Emeishan around 3 p.m. and checked into the hotel.

The lobby


Waiting area

On the way to our room, which I shared with Caitlin

Our room! It was so nice!


The bathroom only had glass doors, so we had to pull the curtain over the door in order to have privacy.

We all met in the lobby at 4 p.m. and walked to Baoguo temple.

On the way there

The whole group: Shanghai and Chengdu, minus a few who wanted to stay at the top of the mountain to see the sunrise the next morning.




Messing around



Laura, Kailey and I posed with these carvings pretending to be the figures, but I didn't think it was appropriate to post those pictures. I think I'll just keep them to myself... (unless convinced otherwise)



Baoguo Temple: Laura and I




Caitlin and I on the way to the biggest monastery at Emeishan



















What people do here, as was explained to me by one of my classmates, is to go to their favorite monk, go to the monk that is a certain number of monks away from their favorite one (I don't remember how many), and then look at the number on the glass in front of that monk. This number supposedly tells them something about their future.






You can see the number on the glass at the bottom.


Caitlin and I then walked back to our rooms and ate dinner at the hotel with everyone at 6:30 p.m. After dinner, some people went to play cards and drink; others went to get pedicures. I, however, went to walk around for a little while. I walked through some souvenir shops and haggled with a woman over an object that our Culture teacher had shown us before. It's a fish on the outside, but when you open it, there are pictures of a couple having sex. Our professor told us that this was used in ancient times by parents to teach their children about sex since they weren't allowed to talk about it. The mothers of daughters, for instance, would slip this fish into the daughter's belongings as she left for her new husband's home. The woman whom I haggled with had originally wanted RMB 28 for it, but I eventually got her down to only RMB 4. However, I still didn't buy it because I know that my professor only bought his for RMB 3. I gave her a chance to go down again, but she didn't, so I just left. I kept walking and found this park with odd statues in it.

The park




Around 9 p.m., Laura, Kailey, Caitlin, Emma and I walked to the outdoor "hot springs" (a.k.a. jacuzzis) on the hotel premises. Most of the other students were already there. We relaxed in there until about midnight and then headed back to our rooms to go to sleep.