Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Photos from the China 2010 Trip!

golden monkey - very rare!

Tourist bureau rating of Confucius' temple

Portrait of Confucius 

Confucius' tomb

December 5, 2010

Perhaps my two most memorable places in China were (1) Qufu, the home town of Confucius.
I got the feeling that we should all perhaps spend a little time exploring his philosophy.
His Temple was amazing, and his enormous cemetery was unique - with many tombstones,
but thousands of unmarked graves in an expansive woodland. (2) a most, on first sight, unphilosophical place, one of the colonies where the second-rarest mammal in China, the golden monkey, lives. I was fortunate enough to be taken into the heart of the colony and to spend time one on one with the monkeys, one of whom tried to take off my sock and shoe.

They were beautiful, and their little tussles never seemed to be vicious or to cause any damage.
Also the mothers watched over their babies tenderly as they swung from branch to branch.
Perhaps we could learn something about aggression and how to tame it from these animals.

The Bullet Train in China