One Girl, Two Coasts: Day Four: Discovering Asian Wonderlands

Day Four

The next day, we spent the day in an Asian-style wonderland. It's known as 宝墨园 (Bao Mo Yuan) and its a huge tourist attraction in Guangzhou. We had gone there four years ago and remembered that there was a huge kiddie pool full of tiny fish that you could catch with nets and bring home. Last time we went, Jason and I had a ball running through the water, in full pursuit of little fish. We were excited to go back because other than the fish, we didn't really remember the beautiful scenery and views the park also offered.

With my grandma, aunt, uncle, and cousin with us, we left the house and walked to the nearest bus station. We took a bus to the end of the line, and transferred buses at the station. The park was also the last stop on our new bus. All in all, it took us about an hour and a half to get there. There was a little kid on our bus that was wearing red superman pants, a blue superman shirt, and red cape! Clearly, we had been graced with the presence of the one and only Superman.

Once at the park, we took in the gorgeous sights that it offered. There were huge pieces of art, carved out of stone, marble, and much more. Many of the other people in the park with us were young; they were there practicing to become tour guides. I was rather annoyed because they ended up photobombing a ton of our pictures. Oh well.

There truly was a lot to see inside! They had dozens of pools of fat, hungry fish that viciously fought over the food you threw in, as well as numerous turtles that napped, basked in the sun, and excited viewers to no end with their lethargy.

Besides the great, historical and cultural pieces that we saw, Bao Mo Yuan had an extensive collection of excruciatingly awful English translations on their signs. It was this day that I re-devoted myself to the hobby of taking photos of the worst translations that I stumbled upon.

The architecture was my favorite part. I've always been very fond of different types of architecture and styling, and I've found Asian buildings, gardens, and statues to be truly stunning and timeless. I took tons of photos of spiritual figures, rock gardens, lotus flowers, and colorful buildings during our adventure inside.

Lunch was also inside the park, in a large restaurant where other park-goers were also dining. It consisted of many traditional Chinese dishes, like duck, greens, tofu, and of course, more tea. We've been having hot tea with all of our meals and it's so strange to me...sure, this doesn't differ from the customs of our previous trips, but I just don't understand why you would drink so much hot liquid when it's ridiculously hot and humid already. You're sweating buckets just by standing there...add the boiling hot soups and teas, and you'd just suffer more! I've pestered my relatives here about it to no end, and they always say the same thing: they aren't used to drinking cold things and their bodies would feel uncomfortable if they eat our way. Hmmm.

After lunch, we ventured deeper into the garden and wandered through so many rooms of calligraphy, paintings, wax figures, and statues. There was this particular museum inside with thousands of ceramic, jade, stone, and porcelain artifacts: bowls, jewelry, figurines, toys, plates, etc. We were all mind blown to learn that a single family had donated the entire collection to the park. These were all thousands of years old, from China's earliest dynasties! Pretty cool family, huh?? Not only that, but the heir to all of these artifacts (one of the family members) was IN the museum at the same time that we were!! There were tons of monks taking pictures with him on the museum steps, and we learned from him that one of the bowls on display was worth over 30 million yuan. That meant that this entire collection (and it's owner) were worth....billions. So cool.

Around 4 pm, we finished our visit to Bao Mo Yuan and took the same buses back. It was interesting of course, but after an entire day of it, we were all pretty fried from looking at painting after painting. It had been like history, art, and cultural museums all packed into one...on steroids.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant that was known for one of our absolute favorite foods that we remembered from our last visit: Shuang Pi Nai （双皮奶）. It's a sweet dessert that's made with eggs, milk, sugar, and other good stuff. You can eat it hot or cold, and we had seriously been obsessed with it last time we came....our aunt would order it and they'd deliver it to her house. Dangerous, dangerous thing, that delivery service.

We went directly to the restaurant this time, ordered it first for all of us, and we enjoyed it happily. I can't really describe the taste; it's dairy-based obviously, and isn't too sweet, while the texture is solid but squishy. You'll just have to try it to understand what I mean, I suppose! Other than that, we had greens, fried rice, chow he fun, a type of taro root, and more.

It was a good day and we were thoroughly spent once we got back to the house afterwards. It was nighty night before waking up to another exciting day!