China - Day 7

Monday, July 20
Fengdu

Still traveling up the Yangtze River, we took an excursion to a ghost city, Fengdu. It isn't a ghost town in the western sense. Rather, it's a place souls go after the body dies (evidently, the only one in China). There a person is judged for what s/he did in life and then given the appropriate punishment.

The first pic is an embodiment of excessive drunkenness -- one of several statues showing positive and negative traits.

The next pic is of a pagoda.

According to our guide, this area was one of the few religious places untouched by the Cultural Revolution. It has both Taoist and Buddhist influences.

The last pic is of masks sold near the entrance to Fengdu. They are masks of some of the "demons" who punish evil doers.

After we returned to the ship, we went to a talk on pearls. It was surprising how many pearls one can get from a single oyster. There were talks the previous days, as well. We attended a talk on Chinese embroidery (which consists mainly of satin stitches but with different thicknesses of silk yarn to produce amazing pictures) and another on bottle painting (in which lead crystal is shaped into a bottle - or other shape - and then painted on the inside). There was also a talk organized by our tour group on the upcoming eclipse and previous eclipses.