Bamboo

This is one of those beautiful China photos that everyone wants to see. Its a bamboo forest quite simply. I walked among them today. I actually had a really really hard time choosing today's photo because I have so many good ones.

My Chinese little sister invited me to join her family as they "knew" me before they met me and wanted to actually meet me in person. TOday is Dragon Boat festival, a day which my little sister told me is a holiday to celebrate a man who was willing to give everything for his town, and jumped into a river....... I know, I don't fully understand it either. However it was tons and tons of fun.

I ate so much it's kinda a little ridiculous. First we ate lunch, I was hungry walking into lunch, it was SOOO good. My chinese mother, aunts and grandmother prepared a feast fit for kings. I ate soybeans, I ate crabs(both cooked and uncooked, it was... interesting to say the least) I ate fish that was amazing, I ate vegetables I can't even pronounce and I ate a lot of bamboo. I decided I like fresh bamboo.

Today I was adopted by a big chinese family. My day consisted of a lot of eating, trying to figure out what the hell people were saying, a lot of laughing, a lot of playing with my three new nephews (Oh yes watching the chinese version of spongebob squarepants), shopping with my crazy new Ai yi (aunts) and and holding my own in drinking with the men folk ( I think I ended up smoking a cigarette or two today as well). That was all before dinner. Then I ended up eating dinner and just enjoying being with them. My younger sister drove me home and we talked about life and love and culture and honoring family and all the thing in-between. it was... refreshing.

Somewhere in the craziness of today we also went for a walk among a bamboo forest and saw some incredibly beautiful tombs. ONe of which captured my attention. it had chinese writing and above all of it in a communist buddhist/ atheistic state there was a cross. ON each side of it the chinese version of a lion was engraved in the stone with each of the characters. This was one wall, at the base of that wall a platform spread out and there was small table with two chairs. It enraptured me. My younger sister told me I could not take a picture as it would be disrespectful to the dead and I chose to adhere.

In my heart and my minds eye it reminded me not that the dead would want an audience, maybe thats what the person intended when creating this scene, but for me it captured sitting at the feet of my father. That anyone can come and commune with him, and sometimes that very much feels like it could be mourning those that we've lost.

I think it will be an image forever engraved in my head. This idea of communing with the Father in heaven and one person being the door for that.

Overall I ate to much, I had a shit ton of fun, and I enjoyed the culture and the people in a way I hadn't guessed i would be able to.. Here's to life. Live it well, for you only have it once.