Marks Travels: Meizhou Island

All week we have been really busy going to factories and working late. Monday through Saturday both Cody and I felt a little sick. Luckily, we both felt much better by Saturday night because Sunday we had the day off.

Our Chinese guys offered to take us to a nearby vacation "resort" location called Meizhou Island. It is actually famous in this area of China. There are a lot of legends about one of their gods being born on this island 1000 years ago. Chinese history is VERY interesting because it is sooo old. Much older than the USA. They have stories that go back 10,000 years. Anyways, if I understood the translation correctly, they think a boy came over to Meizhou island from Taiwan and grew up there to become a God, so the island is important to both the Taiwanese and the Chinese.

We took a 15 minute boatride across the water from mainland china to Meizhou and piled into a big 9 person golf cart. Then we were driven all over the island to see the different sights. Chinese people like to make everything into more of a spectacle. So instead of driving around in silence and seeing the beaches and nature, we drove around with music BLARING out of our golf cart.

The First stop on our tour was the set of a Chinese TV show that they filmed on the Island. The show seemingly was a portrayal of the legend of the god that grew up on this island. The sets were mostly silly and looked very much like something from 60's Star Trek combined with little mermaid!

After the Movie set we drove to another side of the island where we saw probably the biggest attraction of the island. A gigantic temple. This was the real deal... an enormous temple with many many pagodas. Said to be the biggest temple in the entire province (Fujian). There was thousands of people there. I think it must have been a peak time for visitors. There were tons of little stands with people selling incense and fireworks. Then a huge set of stairs to the main pagodas. It opened up to a little courtyard where there was a lot of commotion. Everyone was waving their incense around and setting off huge rolls of deafening firecrackers. There was so many firecrackers going off continuously, that the whole area was filled with smoke and "snowing" with the flakes of paper ash that flies off the fireworks.

People buying fireworks and incense

Looking down on the courtyard. Fireworks. Dancing, smoke, incense, music, praying, shouting. It was crazy.

After the firecracker extravaganza, we went higher to the highest point where we saw some pretty views and a huge statue of the god I mentioned earlier. By the way, the entire way up these stairs and various points of different pagodas and stuff there were dozens of strangers walking up to us and asking if they could take pictures with me and Cody. Apparently giant tall white dudes are very rare in this area. I found that surprising, because this island was not far from Putian city at all... where people don't really give a crap if you are white. I suppose a lot of people travel a long distance to see this island, and maybe they come from rural areas where they don't see foreigners often.


Inside one of the temples there were pillars with tens of thousands of these tiny little buddhas.

One of the larger shrines in the temple.

My favorite part of this picture is the little boy doing Kung Fu poses.

After this huge temple we took another drive to the farthest point on the island where there was really cool paths through a rocky area with beaches and bluffs and stunning views.