Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang

We ended up spending about 8 days in Beijing. I bought about 100 pounds of books, we also saw friends (including William who happened to be in town) and Little Sister (here pictured in her dorm room):

Meimei's dorm room

and I took one daytrip into the very distant suburbs (well beyond the city of Fangshan) mainly to see a large set of Tang-period stone classics. These stones are interesting to me because on them are inscribed the names of tens of thousands of donors. Today, the stones are stashed in heaps within caves half-way up a mountain near the Yunju temple.

Tang-period stone classics on Shijing Shan

During our last week in China, we were based in Shanghai, but took a two-day trip to Changzhou, Wuxi, and Yangzhou. I was primarily looking for research material, but we also took the occasion to see Gina's cousin and his fiancee:

With Liu Yang in Changzhou

Finally, we went on a quick trip to Xiaoshan (east of Hangzhou) to deliver several pounds of Gina's mother's dried turnip to Gina's brother (pictured here with Saosao):

With Gege and Saosao

and where we also ate (very!) stinky tofu and duck heads:

Zhejiang-style stinky tofu

Duck heads