Television Stars

So today was the start of the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival celebration week. The actual day this year is February 19th. We are going to go to a friends house to celebrate the night of February 18th. We will stay up late and eat and celebrate. Probably no fireworks for us, but others will light them so we can watch.

Well, today Gary was invited to go to a Chinese cultural celebration. I decided that I would not go, but go to Sacrament Meeting instead. Well after our meetings were over, Gary called me and asked me to come down to where he was. The people there really wanted me to come, so I found a cab and went. The first part was at a hotel. It was a very nice hotel. Gary had been doing many Chinese cultural activities. He will talk about them in another blog and show pictures. After the lunch, we were taken by a TV crew from Jinan to the home of a family in Qingdao. They filmed us going into the home, saying hello, eating and getting to know the traditions of Chinese New Year. Gary was interviewed, too. It will be interesting to see the final product. Hopefully they will send us a copy. 

 These are the camera men and Susan, she was the one who asked Gary to do this in the first place.

They were a lot of fun, too. I do not ever want to be an actor. Too much work. We had to do things again and again. They made if fun though.

Any way, this family was so very nice. They were wealthy and lived on the 30th floor of an apartment building that looks out on Wusi Square or May 5th Square. What an amazing view it was. The day was raining and cloudy, but it was still an amazing view. I don't think I would get much done if I lived in that apartment. I would sit out on the deck and look at the ocean every day.

We had a wonderful dinner with them. There was a grandfather, grandmother, the daughter and her husband and their two beautiful daughters. I got to help make dumplings. I am getting better at it each time I do it. 

These are the two beautiful granddaughters!

This is the grandmother. You can see all of the food we ate; oysters, clams, shrimp, pork, fish dumplings, vegetable dumplings, fish balls, cauliflower and broccoli and chicken. Everything was wonderful. This is the grandmother who kept filling my plates.

This is the grandfather, the daughter and the son-in-law. They were really fun!

I ate oysters and clams which I have never tried before. They were not bad. I will eat them again if someone else orders them, but I would probably not order them myself. The grandmother kept putting things on my plate that it was hard to not eat them. When you eat a Chinese dinner, there is always a lot of food and you never go away hungry. 

During part of the time when they were filming Gary calling one of our friends in Shanghai, the two girls, age 7 and 9, took me into the living room and we played with their fairy dolls.

This is what they look like. You turn it on and the skirt turns and the fairy flies. When the fairy gets near your hand, it goes back up. The closer the feet get to your hands, the higher the fairy will go up it the air. We had a lot of fun. The girl's mom thought it was great that I would play dolls with them. The girls liked it too.

All in all it was a really great day! 

Shenzhen Cultural Center

So we spent one day at the Chinese Cultural Village in Shenzhen. I actually got up and played the drums on the trunk of a tree and danced to.Here are the videos.

The first two are of me drumming.

This last one is of me dancing. As you can see I have no rhythm, but I had fun. Then they tried to give me a skull, but when I tried to keep it, they wanted it back. Too bad. I had to cut the original down because it was too big to fit. You did not miss much though.

It was a great place to visit. We will go back and visit it again because we did not see all of it. It reminded us of the PCC or Polynesian Cultural Center.

Peng Chau

Peng Chau is the last island we went to. We traveled to this island after we had been to the temple in the morning, so we were so in tune with the peaceful feeling of the Spirit that it made the trip to this island even more wonderful. 

Peng Chau is the smallest of the four islands. We hiked the entire island in about two hours. That is how small it is. At first this was not my favorite, but then we got into a portion of the island where all we could see was trees and all we could hear were tropical birds, critters and the ocean waves. The Spirit was amazing on this island. 

A video of the beach. Lovely!

 This is a salamander we saw. He was actually sitting on the sidewalk, but we scared him. You can only see his face and arm. He was pretty neat looking.

Ruins of an old house.

This is the other side of the island. We were on the part in the right of the picture about 15 minutes before. Like I said we traveled the whole island in 2 hours or so.

The above picture is a picture of Hong Kong Disneyland which we could see from Peng Chau Island. Space Mountain is the white thing just to the right of the clear area on the beach and just to the left of the big hotel at the far right of the picture. this is as close to Hong Kong Disneyland that we got. We were going to go visit it, but decided we would rather venture and explore the islands more than we wanted to be where all the tourists were.

Peng Chau city from Lookout Point which is the highest point on the island. There are the remains of a Lime Factory here, but we never did find those.

As you can see, these trips to the islands were our favorite parts of our trip except the temple, of course. We will probably be going back to Hong Kong next January and going back to these islands. We may even try to find some more to visit if we can hitch a ride on a different boat. I loved exploring, relaxing and just taking in the peace of the islands. I could live on Lamma, Cheung Chau or Peng Chau Island if there wasn't so much humidity there. It was not so bad when we were there, but I can imagine it is pretty high in the summer. I found traveling there in the winter was the best time for me to be there. 

If you ever get to Hong Kong, make sure to visit these islands. We definitely will go back to them!

Cheung Chau

Cheung Chau was our third island. It was another wonderful island. Once we got away from the main city, the island was again quiet and peaceful. We heard birds and other animals along the way and listened to the ocean.

These were paintings on some of the walls in the city. Beautiful!

Away from the city and in to the peace and quiet.

 This cave is a pirates cave. You can go down in it, but you need a flashlight which we forgot to bring with us. We will go into the cave the next time we are on Cheung Chau.

See the rock in on the left in the distance. I went over and climbed it. The next couple of pictures of from the angle high up on the rock.

At the other end of the this beach, we sat and played in the water. I love to sit on the beach and listen to the waves coming in. The sounds of the ocean are so soothing and relaxing.

This city cemetery was on the hill. As you can see there are so many people buried here. They are very close together (as Chinese are usually cremated to fit more people on a smaller amount of land). It was actually quiet and reverent as we walked through. I was thoroughly amazed at the size of the cemetery. It covered the whole side of the mountain and some of the other side.

This is the sign to different parts of the island.

Another great island! What a great way to spend another day. We did not want to leave this island.

Lantau Island

The second island we traveled to was Lantau Island. This is a bigger island. It is heavily populated. The Hong Kong airport is on this island as is Hong Kong Disneyland. We never did get to the part of the island where Disneyland is, but we were able to see it from the top of the mountain on this island and from Peng Chau.

This is Discovery Bay.

Ann and I at Discovery Bay just off of the ferry. We had to travel through part of the city in order to get to the path that led to the mountains.

This is a reconstruction of the Bounty they are working on. Gary had a great time seeing this ship.

Actual orange trees. I wish we could have an orange tree in Qingdao, but it is too cold.

The next couple of pictures are of Grandpa's garden. It is actually called Grandpa's Garden. There were many gardens on this island. They use cliffs and many other areas to grow their gardens. They were amazing.

Another tidepool. 

This was the monastery at the top of the mountain.

If you look at the square thing at the bottom that is white and above that is a path. Those are the stairs we took to come down to the bay. There were 1,000 stairs to take down. This was another beautiful island. Once we were on the top it was peaceful.