How to Get Cursed at a Buddhist Temple

I hope you all realize that Chinese tourists are just as touristy in their own country as they are anywhere else. Not that there is an issue with that; I mean, who wouldn’t be? This place is incredible! So incredible, in fact, that it’s made me lose all concept of time, and this post is going to be very scatterbrained.





Hank has been out of school this week so the parents suggested we go out traveling around the city for a couple days. Thursday we went to SongCheng, a Chinese history themed park with an array of shows, architecture, and activities to behold. It also had an assortment of food available, but Hank insisted we have the most popular, authentic item there: Instant Cup Noodles. They had a pretty cool ninja warrior themed obstacle course, with floating platforms to run across and all sorts of balancing beams and chains. I tried them out much to the amusement of everyone there, and took a few selfies with random teenage girls who were amazed at the sight of a living, breathing white kid. Hank was pretty adept at all of them, and loudly made it known to the people who were not quite getting it. I was getting pretty irritated with his rudeness, until karma struck back while he was attempting to show someone how much faster he could run across the balance beam. As he turned back to tell them how easy it was for him, he slipped and face planted straight into the water. Yeah, that’s what you get, punk.





We stayed in the obstacle course area for the majority of the morning and then attended a truly beautiful cultural show called The Romance of the Song Dynasty. The theatre and stage were massive, the effects were breathtaking, the dancing and costuming was phenomenal. The music was good at parts and at other parts was… cringy modern rehashes of traditional Chinese music. Overall, it was a spectacle worth seeing. After the show, we walked around some other picturesque areas of the park and headed home.





There were some family issues during the weekend that resulted in the Grandmother moving out, so I spent all of my time with the kids playing or helping them study. I found it harder and harder to maintain my energy, but somehow managed to keep up. I’m developing a list of rules and values for the kids during their summer break to help the kids learn better manners and habits. As I’ve been brainstorming things for the list, I’ve realized that I have a lot of the same issues they have, and that I would be better off making a list for myself first before moving on to theirs. It’s funny and terrifying how kids can do that to you; exposing you for who you truly are, with no escape but to step yourself up.





Sunday Hank and I went to the Lingyin Buddhist temple. There are some super ancient pagodas and statues in the area north of West Lake that have been preserved by a monastery established there in the 900 AD. I was fascinated by everything, but Hank was not so amused. He was amused, however, by the stream that ran through the temple grounds, and trudged through the water any chance he’d get. On one of these expeditions, he found a turtle and caught it. He handed it to me, and no sooner than I had held it up to admire it, a man approached me with his girlfriend, with a look of terror on their faces. The girl was yelling at me in Chinese, and the man was calmly explaining to me in broken English how I had messed up the Feng Shui of the place by interrupting the turtle on his path of enlightenment or something like that. So, that was comforting. I practically threw the turtle back to Hank and told him to put it back where he found it before we got zapped or hexed or something. I think we made up for it later when we visited the main temple site and joined hundreds of other people burning prayer sticks and bowing in respect to the altars around us. We cool now, Buddha? No bad karma, please?















I’ve been getting lunch with the Dad the past couple of days which has been nice. We talk about family, culture, business, and enjoy some really delicious Japanese food (his and my favorite). Last night we went to a Hot Pot restaurant and I bought some fried honey bee larvae which were super good.





I’m excited for school to let out in a couple of days so hopefully we can visit more places and I can finally get a little quality free time with friends.