What a beautiful city! So clean and green, and no beggars anywhere. I wonder where they go? Anyhow, I was amazed that with all the skyscrapers and buildings there were so many trees and flowers. Everything is immaculate – people even scrub the tile sidewalks with soap and water! We went to Chinatown and found some great stuff – little gifts for the folks back home. :o) There was one booth that had names written in traditional Chinese characters. I got all of the kids’ names. It was especially neat because each character has a meaning, and on the back of the picture they wrote what each meaning is. They didn’t have a “Mason”, so the artist drew it for us. It was fascinating watching him do the calligraphy – so beautiful! Elise found some really pretty scarves, and we got a dragon puppet for Mason. I guess in China frogs and turtles are good luck, so we bought a good luck frog for my dad.
We walked around some other places – I felt so safe there. But, the next highlight of the day was going to a little hole-in-the-wall shop to buy a Joss stick nativity set. The man who makes these figurines continues an 80-year-old family tradition of using ground up wild cinnamon trees and water and molding it into beautiful shapes. Traditionally these shapes are put on Joss Sticks, or giant incense sticks used in religious ceremonies. We bought two nativity sets – a small one for my mom and a bigger one for us. I’ll probably give my mom the bigger one, tho, because we don’t have anywhere to put it at the moment. :o) We also bought some of the powder – the dough (I don’t know what to call it exactly) is so neat! The man there was so nice, also, and let Elise play with some and make shapes – he brought out beads and strings and she made shapes for her and the boys. He gave us drinks and was so great. We’re going to take Ann there when we go back next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment