Wednesday, June 20

Today was temple and travel day. Hangzhou is a Buddhist center to China. In the morning Jessica took me to the Lingyin Temple area which is a major tourist attraction and also – at the same time – a place for worship. People come here to pay their respect to Buddha. They also communicate their wishes to Buddha in front of one of the statues. Jessica teaches me, how to do this. Thinking of a Buddhist temple one might imagine a quiet place which (hopefully) provides some time you have for yourself and do some thinking or mediation. But people come her as well just to visit the site as tourists. So, the place is packed. Mostly with Asians. It is the first time that I am realizing I must be exotic to them. The site is extremely busy and it is one of the most important temples in China. We got to experience a service with chanting, which was lovely. More ‘musical’ entertainment was delivered some time later. We took a walk along the beautiful Western Lake, a romantic place in the middle of the city, a huge lake surrounded by forests, gardens and mountains, with little bridges all over the place and many love stories related to it. We sat down in one of the little hats on the lake and watched a little boy. He was probably 1 ½ or 2 years old and wearing these special shoes, which, as Jessica told me, are quite common in China. They help to let parents know, what they children are doing, whre they are. The boy was of that age where he seemed still fascinated by himself with the fact that he was able to walk around. With each tap he was doing, the shoes would make a funny noise: like if you pushed the belly of one of those plastic ducks. Walking and running in all kind of different styles created its own music in a John Cage like manner. For the ride home we used one of those high speed trains. China here is so perfect, like a clock work, which the German rail could use as a model.