Hong Kong

                                 

I feel so blessed to have the opportunity to take my kids to my favorite city in the world, Hong Kong. Our trip started off a little rocky, the flight was delayed seven hours due to bad weather in Hong Kong. I was impressed with our air carrier service, Dragonair, they provided tuna fish sandwiches and drinks for all of the passengers waiting.
Once we got to Hong Kong we went to bed and the next morning we went to OceanPark, a theme park with some animals. Due to rain in the morning it was not crowded so we could walk onto most rides and got to see jellyfish, pandas and other animals.
We went to the Night Market and Jade Market, which was fun and stopped by to visit the outside of the LDS Hong Kong temple.  We went to an hour of church and ran into some old friends. It is always good catching up with friends.The kids really liked visiting Monkey Hill, a natural reservoir that is overrun with monkeys.
Hong Kong has changed a lot in the ten years since we lived there. A lot of the small, mom and pop restaurants we loved have closed and it seemed like it was not as affluent as before.

Panda exhibit at OceanPark

LDS Hong Kong Temple

Jinkang Tea Cultural Street

Tea in China is as old as the country itself. The Chinese pride themselves in their blends of tea for medicinal use as well as for consumption. According to legend, tea was discovered by Emperor Shennong who lived in 2737 BC. He liked to drink boiled water because it was clean, so one day while on a trip a leaf fell into his cup of boiled water. He liked the taste so much that tea came into being.
Historical records such as the Eyra which was written in the third century BC dates tea being used int the  Zhou Dynasty which was about 1046-256 BC.
The tea market in Xi'an had various types of teas, flowers and herbs in baskets that you can choose and have bagged. Some tea was wrapped in gold foil, I think it's use was for a gift.
My favorite part of this market were the umbrellas strung up between the buildings on either side of the street.

Shengtang Peony Gadens

The Shentang Peony Gardens are 10 km south of Xi'an at the foot of the Qingling Mountains. The garden boasts of 400 different types of peonies, although by the time I made it out there, many had already wilted.  In the gardens is a temple built by a Taiwanese movie star named Li Jialin, in honor of a famous character from Chinese folklore Zhong Kui. The temple was dilapidated, but it had some carvings of deer in the windows. I had never seen deer in temple decor before.
I really liked this garden because there were only two groundskeepers and my youngest daughter and I there. It was a quiet piece of heaven.

The Peopny Fairy

Temple