Pictures of My Winter Vacation in China and Japan

• Family picture, a big reunion with my parents, my brother, my sister, their spouses, and my two nephews, Mayumi, and me, in front of my parents' apartment.
• Mayumi's birthday party in my parents' home on Dec 27. Before that, we never had a birthday party at home.
• Mayumi with flowers on the street, Christmas Day. How cute she is!
• On-site lottery in my hometown. For 2 Chinese Yuan($0.26), you can win a brand-new truck! Plus you know your results right after you buy your lottery. Of course, we have never won any lottery in our whole life.
• My two nephews. They started to fight with each other the moment they met!
• On the street of Jiajiang.
• Manned-tricycle, the local taxi in my hometown. One Yuan($0.12) can carry you 1 kilometer. Very cheap indeed.

• The big character in the middle means buddah in Chinese. If you make wish under it, it can your wish become true.
• The front view of the Big Buddah of Leshan. It is the tallest buddah statue in the world, with 71 meters in height. It was built more than 1300 years ago.
• Viewed from his side, the Big Buddah is smiling at us! Notice that if viewed from his front, the Big Buddah has a very grim face!
• How small I look! Beside one foot of the Big Buddah.
• Very steep steps to go from the head of the Big Buddah to his feet.
• In front of the gate of Dong1 Fang1 Fu2 Du1(the Oriental Buddah Center), where more than 1000 buddah statues are built by immitating other famous buddah statues around the world.
• On the head of the Big Lying Buddah, the longest one in the world, with a length of 197 meters.
• Beautiful mei2 hua1(flower name) are giving blossoms in winter. In Chinese, mei2 hua1 is usually associated with a merit of strong will power. It can resist cold weather, as well as many other difficult situations.
• Mayumi in a beautiful dress. This kind of dress is usually weared by young girls of a minority people in Sichuan Province in holidays. Don't blame me if I cannot remember the name of the minority people!
• A junior high school girl in a tourist shop totally surprised us by her fluent English. Her pronounciation is better than mine!
• Two buddahs. Which one is smiling more happily?

• A pair of coins accompanied our marriage on Dec 22, 1996 in Chengdu. There is a pheonix and a dragon on the front side and on the back side respectively. Pheonix and Dragon are the symbols for Empress and Emperor in China. There is a character of double-happiness on the front. There is also the date of our marriage, December 22 in Western calender and November 1 in Chinese calender.
• Du4 Fu3 Cao3 Tang2, where Du Fu, a famous Chinese poet, lived about 1300 years ago.
• A free market in Chengdu. Farmers come here everyday to sell agricutural products. Since most Chinese family still do not own refrigerators, Chinese have to buy fresh vegetables and meat everyday.
• The busiest intersection in Chengdu. There are much more bicycles than cars, which is very typical in Chinese cities.
• Can you imagine spending 20 yuan($2.50) to buy 25 kinds of different dishes from 25 famous restaurants in Chengdu? Can you count the number of dishes on the table? Chengdu is the most famous place in China(and in the world) to have such kind of food. Don't miss it next time you go to China!
• A tea house in Chengdu. Old people usually come here to drink tea, play Chinese Chess, listen to stories, or gossip.
• Wu3 Hou2 Ci2, the shrine of Marquis Wu. Marquis Wu is a famous politician, writer, and a great general in the period of Three Kingdoms(about 1600 years ago). Stories about him are very popular in China, mostly described in the novel, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. He has always been a symbol for Chinese intellectuals.
• An elementary school girl is playing Yang2 Qin2, a traditional Chinese instrument. You play it by hiting the strings with two sticks. The body and the sticks of this instrument are both made of bamboo.

• With my friend Bo and his sister who met us at the Beijing Capital Airport, Dec 17, 1995.
• The dress on Mayumi is usually weared by empress in Qing Dynasty, the last dynasty ruled China. In the Forbidden City.
• Same dress from a different view.
• Beautiful stone rails inside the Forbidden City.
• Tai4 He2 Dian4, the Heavenly Peace Palace, the main palace inside the Forbidden City. This palace is the office of Emperors. State affairs are usually handled here.
• Heaven Palace, wher Emperors held ceremonies for the heaven.
• The roof of the main building in the Heaven Palace. Those patterns are symbols for the Heaven?
• In front of the Monument of People's Hereos, Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
• An old people is singing Beijing Opera, with two people playing Er4 Hu2, a Chinese violin, to accampany him, Heaven Palace Park, Beijing.
• The Summer Palace, where emperors used to spend summer here. Of course, it was very cold when Mayumi was there, as you can see her shivering in the wind.
• In front of the Heavenly Peace Gate, Tiananmen Square. The Gate has become a symbol for China.
• The Yellow River as seen from airplane. It is the birth place of 5000 years Chinese history.

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• In the train from Narita Airport to downtown Tokyo. I was told that this is not a crowded train at all. I heard that in many train stations in Tokyo, there are people whose job is to push passengers into very crowded trains in case they will be late for work.
• The ticket machine in a train station.
• The yellow lines on the ground in train stations are used by blind people as guide. Very nice train system in Tokyo. I never saw a train late during the two days I spent in Tokyo.
• A street in downtwon Tokyo.
• Tokyo Tower, the highest self-supporting iron tower in the world. Its height is 333 meters, compared with 320 meters of Eiffel Tower. Here you can enjoy a 360-degree view of Tokyo.
• Downtown Tokyo viewed from the Tokyo Tower.
• A very crowded shopping street in the Sensoji Temple, a famous Temple in Tokyo.
• A shop that sells latterns in the shopping street.
• I was very excited to take a picture together with a Japanese girl dressed in a very gorgeous kimono in the Sensoji Temple. In Japan, this kind of kimono is weared only when a girl reaches her 20th birthday. The girl said "You are welcome" to me before I could say "Arigatoo"(thank you in Japanese) after the picture!
• Fortune-telling in the Sensoji Temple. You randomly choose a stick from a pot. The you get a piece of white paper in the small drawer that has the same number as on your stick. The piece of white paper will tell your future, by a 20-character long Chinese poem. If you get a good one, you can bring the piece of paper home. If you get a bad one, you need to tie that piece of paper somewhere in the Temple, in order not to bring back bad luck.
• Advertizement for a Japanese sake(rice wine) in the Temple.
• A typical freeway in Tokyo. The freeway is built on top of normal streets. Very space-efficient architecture.
• Pachinko, the Japanese casino, the most popular form of gambling in Japan. You can see it everywhere, just as you can see casinos everywhere in Las Vegas. This game is a very big business in Japan. It is mainly controled by Koreans in Japan.
• Ginza at dawn. Ginza is the business center and shopping center in Tokyo. Every street is full of very nice, and expensive, department stores.
• Ginza at dawn. From a different street.
• A sushi bar, with sushi being served on small plates floating along a water channel.
• Having dinner with Yukiko in a sushi bar in a department store near Rikyo University, where Mayumi and Yukiko were students.
• Can you imagine that you are looking at an elevator door? In a department store in Ginza, Tokyo.
• In a typical Japanese bedroom, in Mayumi's aunt's house in Tokyo suburb. Usually there is no bed in Japanese bedroom. Japanese people sleep on something called tatami, a thin matress made of bamboo, with 4 layers of conforters and blankets on top! There is no heat in the room, so it is very cold in winter.
• Tatami in a bedroom. The walls of the room are made of wooden frames covered by white paper.
• Typical Japanese living room. The walls are decorated with paintings or artifacts made by the housewife. The white electric heater on the floor is usually the only heating devide in the house.
• Very interesting Japanese toilet, with very sofisticated electronic control device. The toilet seat is heated to body temperature at all time. So it is very comfortable to use in winter.
• The control pannel of the toilet. Aren't you amazed by so many functionalities out there? After you relieve yourself, you can let the toilet wash your bottom! You can control the water temperature, direction, and volumn. There are also a drier and a deodering device. However, I did not dare to use it. It was just to complex for me to feel comfortable!
• Family picture with Mayumi's parents and her aunt's family in front of the dinner table.

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