The summer of my first year in China my parents came to visit. We spend a few days in and around Urumqi so my parents could meet Jia (I also wanted to see her hometown after hearing so many stories from her).Jia's cousin drove us from Urumqi to Tianchi, Heavenly Lake, which was a little more than an hour away from the city. (Note: there are at least two Heavenly Lakes in China. The other is in the northeast.) This turned out to be my favorite day in Xinjiang--aside from my wedding, of course.
Rather than hiking up the mountains to the lake, which probably would've taken a few hours, we took a cable car up to save us a lot of time and provide us with some great views of the mountains. Once at the lake, we encountered the swarms of tourists that can be seen at any attraction in China--though this one had significantly fewer people than I was used to seeing. If we so wished, we could've dressed in some "traditional" Chinese costumes and had our pictures taken (we had our pictures taken plenty of times considering we were the only foreigners there).
We took a boat from shore to the other end of the lake where there were two Taoist temples set atop a great number of stairs. The second, smaller temple was set much higher up the mountain--the inside used the mountain as its back wall. Jia and I were the only ones in the smaller temple (my parents were slower climbing the steps). As we entered, the monk said that Jia must be Buddist because one of the three sticks of incense he just lit was burning at a different rate than the rest. (I'm not sure how that works, but it was true.) Though we were not Taoist, the monk was still very polite and spoke with us for a while (well, Jia had to translate for me). Away from the crowds, it was silent looking out at the lake and mountains from this temple.
On our way back to Urumqi, we stopped along the river to eat watermelon. Jia's cousin put it in the river for a few minutes to chill it. Nearby, another small group was doing the same and offered to lend us a knife to cut the watermelon.
Across the street from the river was a small Kazakh village--the road to Tianchi has quite a few of these villages scattered around, and tourists can stay in some of them for a night. We were given a short tour of one of the homes and entertained with some accordion music (I didn't realize accordion music could sound good).
6 Raving Lunatics:
Nice, thanks for sharing & love the photos. Stupid question maybe, but is Jia your wife?
Yeah, Jia is my wife--we were married in her hometown two hours from Urumqi the following summer (it'll be two years tomorrow).
Congratulations!
Beautiful photos! You are such a fortunate person to live where you do. Thanks for sharing.
In 2006, I also visited this temple, together with my daughter. We also met a monk, but could not talk with him, because we don't speak Chinese. My wife is from Urumqi. See here for a short report about our visit. Was there some music playing when you visited the little temple? I would be interested to know which music was being played.
Frans, I couldn't speak with the monk either because my Chinese was terrible at the time. I don't remember if there was any music, but if there was it was probably a continuous chant. I know they have small chant players that take batteries at Buddhist temples, but I'm not sure how the Taoist ones differ.
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