Thats A Big Twinkie

After hiking up and (most of the way) down Hua Shan, the leggies cried out for a day of rest. Not that that was going to happen! While we might have covered the most distance on this, our final full day in ShanXi Province, we didn't do too much walking.

The plan was to head out to the border of GanSu, the province that opens up the wild west of China. I mentioned before that Xi'An is China's westernmost 'civilized' city, well, I say that because Chinese people themselves don't understand why anyone would anyone would want to go any further west from there. "Its too poor!" "The people are too stupid!" "There is China west of Xi'An?" I guess we could associate Xi'An to China the way we associate East St. Louis to the United States of America.

But being a Buddha-holic, a strong calling attracted me to a 3-hour bus ride out into this wide-open wilderness. We spent the morning driving across flat, low-growth orchards of some sort of barby fruit tree (never got a good guess as to what it was) eventually to snake up and through mountains. These werent as epic as Hua Shan, but seemed more like mud pies left behind by a world-shaping toddler. In fact, I wouldn't give much emphasis to the views of the rising mountains so much as the incredible gorges that sheared through them. These drops would open up out of no where and amaze the crap out of me. I'm no geologist, but after seeing an uncountable number of small caves dug into these mountainsides (for storage, religious meditation, and habitation) it was easy to conclude that the rock was not a hardy one and prone to such manipulation.

Eventually we did make it out to a post town of sorts: not so much a real town as just the central point for the entire county to come for market, bus pickup, and postal services. Jumped a motor-trike and headed to "DaFoSi," or "Big buddha Temple."

As we keep bringing up Indian Jones towards this vacation, I'll do it again: this temple, carved into the side of a mountain, was reminiscent of the Grail Temple in "Last Crusade," but of course Asianed-out Surrounding it was a small village and more small caves. The temple itself was rather straight forward, or so it seemed, but as we explored we found many grottoes that required one to climb up via rusty chain or sneak behind altars. Some of the more interesting bits were locked off; namely a grotto containing hundreds of "arhats," which might be like apostles of the Buddha (NOT boddhivastras/boddhisatvas [SP?]). Fun to clamor about and poke around, especially since once again we were the only ones there.

The big draw, and I do mean big, awaited within the center chamber of the temple. Standing 30 meters tall (approx 100 feet) and sitting in the center of the room facing out away from the mountain: one big Buddha. Big. I've never seen one so big. Obviously touched up to maintain its appearance over the years, the skin sparkeled gold, the hair blue, big-ol'-kissable-Buddha-lips red. To the sides: an 18 meter statue of GuanYin (China's favorite Buddha) and some other Buddha. Seeing the two flanking statues leaning in towards the center of the chamber sent an immediate desire to jump upon one of their heads only to push it over, crashing through the wall, thus bringing myself and Marion to safety.

I've got a real Indiana Jones problem. I admit it. But damned if I'm ashamed of it.

We took in the temple for about an hour, then headed back to the bus stop for the 3 hour ride back to Xi'An. An easy day, finished with a delectable multi-course meal at a moderately fancy restaurant. One dish, some sort of stringy bread dealie-do, tasted so good I shivered. Lots of cashews too, and thats never a bad thing. I think we could all benefit from using cashews more often in our cooking. But I've always know this, ever since I was young and my father would scold any young Bill caught simply picking out the cashews alone from his tins of mixed nuts.

One more day left in Xi'An, then a 45 hour train ride. Thankee the Lord for iPods and books.