Travel By Photos
Still Happy 12th Day Of Lunar New Year! China tour continues. We talked about WuZhen scenic village, a marvellous water town first inhabited some 2000 years ago. On the Day 4 of our South Yangtze region tour of China, we continued our journey to another city of heaven, SuZhou.
SuZhou is another heritage city of China which is famous for her beautiful scenes, beautiful silk and most interestingly, beautiful ladies. SuZhou ladies are so attractive to guys because they have silky skin, sharp outlook and most importantly, soft spoken, partly due to their local dialect. The first 2 words we have learnt from a local tour guide are “Ai Yo Yo” and “Ai Ya Ya” which mean “beautiful” and “ugly“…see?
Our first destination of SuZhou was the Lion Grove Garden (狮子林). It was actually a residence of a local famous monk originally and then bought by a rich man later. His heir later donated to the China government as a heritage private garden to open for public viewing, and why we were here. Lion Grove Garden got its name by having huge rock garden with lion look-a-like rock landscaping (spiritually I guess as I didn’t see how they look like lions… 
).
One of the special thing about this house is it dosesn’t seem to be a house; it’s more like a private garden with trees, rockeries, flowers and water all over the place. That’s why it’s called Lion Grove Garden!
The only building that looked like a house to me is this extended new administration building which is next to the exit.
As we entered the Lion Grove garden compound, we saw the great ancient architecture and structural design of old China.
Chinese believe strongly the influence of words and languages. The above floor patterns made of exotic coloured granite stone was a proof. 5 bats surrounding a coin – Bats read as ‘fu’ (福)which means ‘Blessing’…
Great piece of art work constructed with granite stones…
As we passed by a couple of ancient living halls, here came the highlight, the main garden.
It was so huge that you would not be able to figure out from outside of the house. Does it look like a house?
Compare the residence area and this rockeries garden and you could visualise how big is this rock garden, with fish pond!
The afternoon sun just made the scene so warm and attractive! We walked around the pond to the other side of the guest room in the photo.
‘Come here! Take photo!” “… yes mdm…”
Not only rockeries, the garden is full of trees and flowers as well. I bet you will get lost if no other people are around… Again, does it look like a house?
At one part of the garden, there was a small section of bamboo garden. I took this picture because of the lighting, not the bamboo, sorry. 
We spent the Day 4 afternoon in Lion Grove Garden in SuZhou and left at 4pm. Since it is a popular travel destination, you won’t miss these shops any how….
Anyway, some of our tour members have started their shopping mood eventually… SuZhou is famous of its silk, though travelers could still find some other local products like pearl or clay tea pot.
Where would be the next stop? Subscribe to Travel Feeder feeds for free updates. – Travel Feeder.
Subscribe to Travel Feeder's RSS Feed For FREE Updated Stories!
Once again Happy Lunar New Year of Ox 2009! Lunar New Year of Year of Ox 2009 started on 26th January and the celebration is going to last for 15 days, from the 1st day of lunar calender (Nian Chu Yi 年初一) to Yuan Xiao (元宵), the 15th day of Lunar New Year. I had a long 10-day-holidays in conjunction of this our biggest event of the year… LoL ! During this period, we had endless lunch and dinner celebrations with our families, parents and friends, all were of course appetized with our proprietary Yu Sang (鱼生). Our friend Eunice wrote some interesting introduction on Yu Shang.
As usual, all my 4 brothers and sister gathered together at my parents house in K.L. on the 1st day, had our vegetarian lunch together, giving away Ang Pow or red packet (红包) filled with little pocket money to each other’s children, joining our uncles and aunties on poker games (‘Bet more… win more!’), and off course drink, drink and drink! While dinner in the evening was eating out with my in-law family (used to have it in Genting casino when I was still bachelor ), we had our supper with my childhood friends at one of their homes!
On the 2nd day, we went to visit the ‘must-go’ travel destination during Lunar New Year, the Fo Guang Shan (FGS) Dong Zen Temple (东禅寺)in Jenjarom, near Banting, Selangor. Operated by the Fo Guang Shan (FGS) Malaysia Chapter, the Buddhist and charitable organisation from Taiwan, which is better known by its founder, Master Hsing Yun, the monastic order with millions of followers around the world.
The best time to visit Dong Zen Temple is during Chinese New Year. Additional lanterns are mounted and floral fests, floats, cultural exhibitions are staged.
Though the best hour to visit Dong Zen Temple is then to be in the evening when all lanterns are lit up, you would have to first be patient to follow other cars’ brake and flood lights in the massive traffic jam of the access road for hour!
We opted to visit DongZen temple at day time, for lesser traffic and different perspective. Without incandescent lighting, we had sun lighting instead…
At the side of the main entrance, there is a pedestrian access path way with a name called ‘The 33 Quan Yin street‘, which displaying 33 different perspective view of Guan Yin (观音) statues along the street.
Once entering the compound of Dong Zen Temple, you will see another Guan Yin statue in the middle of a lotus flower pond.
Next to the lotus pond, there is the Lumbini Garden, the main theme park of the temple with all sorts of magnificent scenes of flowers, statues, ponds, landscaping and lighting (at night)….
Here comes the main temple building. ‘Shhh! I need to send out a prayer….’
Wait a minute! I can’t believe it! It is the first air-conditioned temple that I’ve ever been to!
Opposite the temple is another square displaying a ‘paper’ feeled pagoda in the middle….
… and a ‘paper’ feeled buddha statue on top of a buddish showroom.
The second theme park of Dong Zen Temple, there are 2 rows of luo han (罗汉) statues stood as guardians at both sides of the side entrance.
The Meditating Luo Han…
You can’t have these kind of shots if you visit Dong Zen Temple at night…
These 2 devils really made Jean insane… at time.
Look at those sweat marks on my shirt, I was nearly soaking wet under the hot sun. You wouldn’t believe that I could still smile when posing for this shot!
The best part was, the sky turned dark and started to rain when we were about to leave Dong Zen… LoL !
Jenjarom is known locally as Ling Ka Long in Chinese (Hokkien). There are quite a number of seafood and Bak Kut Teh restaurants in town. Visitors could stay here for seafood dinner if they are too lazy to drive for another 20 minutes to Teluk Gong, a more well known seafood paradise of Klang. – Travel Feeder.
All photos above were captured with Nikon D60
Subscribe to Travel Feeder's RSS Feed For FREE Updated Stories!
Don’t ask me about the history of Petaling Street. What I know since I was a kid, Petaling Street was a paradise of imitation. regardless the source of those counterfeit products, you can get whatever ‘branded’ clothing and accessories, shoes, watches, sunglasses, CD’s and DVD’s and etc, but are all fake! Its reputation is welknown worldwide, [...]
Subscribe to Travel Feeder's RSS Feed For FREE Updated Stories!
We reached Shanghai on the first day, visited HangZhou on the second and third day. This was the fourth day of our travel to south of Yangtze River, China. We were going to leave HangZhou this morning for another city of heaven, SuZhou. Before that, we were going to drop by a 2000-year-old water town, WuZhen. In China, [...]
On the second day of HangZhou tour, we have first tasted the top quality LongJin green tea in hinderland of West Lake. After that, we continued to visit another one of the West Lake top 10 scenes, Fish Viewing at the Flower Pond (花港觀魚). It is a park with lots of flower species and a carp fish pond within. Again, [...]
