Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Yesterday we made the two hour journey outside Xian to see the temple
that houses one of Buddhas fingers. We had originally planned to go on
a tour while in Xian to visit a nearby panda research base not
realizing that it was closed until after we had arrived and checked in
we had an extra day on our hands.

Famen Temple is one of the earliest Buddhist temples in China so when
king Asoka of India was trying to atone for his warlike life he
distributed pieces of Buddhas skeleton to prominent temples. Famen got
the finger.

Until recently it was quite a small complex of traditional looking
buildings with a tower at the centre and an onsite museum. Now, though
it is a massive, over the top, Buddhist playground. There are huge
golden statues of the Buddha in different poses lining a wide and long
street leading up to a golden building in the shape of two hands
praying.

The whole complex was interesting to see. I can only imagine how much
money the whole park would have cost. Just imagine if they had gotten
the whole hand.

Since there wasn’t much to see in downtown Xian we ended up spending a
lot of time on buses going out of the city. Transportation of all
flavours is extreme in China compared to what we
are used to at home. Obviously in a country with so many people
traffic takes on a new meaning from 4 o’clock on North River Road.
Xian seemed to be particularly bad for traffic. It’s a city of about 5
million people and I’m pretty sure there was only one traffic light
per million. It was chaos. People went in any direction they chose and
at any speed they desired. Horns are used at the passing of every car
with an average of about 3 beeps per car. It’s not uncommon to see
pedestrians in the middle of the traffic mixup nor are bicycles laden
with parcels three times their size. I don’t particular like they way
they drive. A crash seems more like an inevitability than an accident
bit it does make for some excitement