Sunday, January 10, 2010

Five goats and a Chinese princess

So we went to a park yesterday that has a famous statue of 5 goats.  They might actually be rams, but our guide said goats and a plaque at the park translated to rams.  Now in the US, we would tend to take the word of the plaque at the famous place we are visiting, but here in China you quickly notice that the english translation of things is often spelled incorrectly.  So you take it all with a few grains of salt.  So for our purposes we will call them goats.  Apparantly Guangzhou was named for these goats and the imortals that road in on them.  Back in the day, most likey before the US was found, there was a drought.  This drought killed millions and spread all accross the south of China.  Then came along 5 imortals riding 5 goats.  These goats had stalks of rice in their mouths and the imortals gave these stalks to the people whoplanted them.  The rice prospered and brought the area out of famine.  The imortals then took off but left the goats and then the goats became a symbol for the imortals and also for prosperous harvests.  Well thats the cliff note version and I'm sticking to it.  So we took some pictures of the goat staute and of course us in front of it.  It is a famous statue for China that when someone sees it it is recognized as the symbol for Guangzhou.  In other news, Ally passed her TB test so no chest X-raqy or anything like that so we are happy.  This is just a short post today as we are headed to another four markets very soon.  I'll leave you with some pics at the park, a pic of our princess in traditional garb, and me being attacked by a stone lion while Ally looks at me like I'm nuts.  BTW, Ally is doing much. much better with Jo.  Things are really good right now.
 
Later,
Jim

2 comments:

Sharing Life and Love said...

Maybe there are many rooms that look like ours---but your room is identical to the room we stayed in at the Victory! Any chance you are at the very end of the hall---in a corner? Great room! Ally of course looks adorable in her traditional Chinese outfit!

Glad the TB test turned out well.

Yoli said...

The baby is absolutely beautiful. Wishing you all the best.