To quote the lovely pamphlet I got: "Initiated by the local Chinese community to celebrate Australia's 1988 Bicentenary, the Chinese Garden is the result of a close friendship and cooperation between the sister cities of Sydney and Guangzhou in Guangdon Province, China."
So there you have it! It was actually a really awesome place to go if you just wanted somewhere to meditate or read (alas, you have to pay for this pleasure). They had various little stops along this path that signified something. I liked this Moongate the best... there's nothing too extraordinary about it except I just liked the shape.
Next I tried to take a picture of myself using my automatic timer... Fun fact, it's kind of embarrassing to be caught taking pictures of yourself! I guess I felt a little self-conscious, because as I was taking the picture someone came strolling up and I felt a little odd just sitting there taking a photo of myself and reacted. I have no idea why. The result was this photo, haha.
There was also a part of the garden called the Rock Forest, which is based on an ancient Chinese poem called The Dancing Maiden Ashima and the Landlord. The actual story wasn't written down anywhere, but I'm sure you can google as well as I can. At any rate, the story is told by these rocks... I guess the end result of the story was the spirit of Ashima was turned into a dancing rock.
After that, I left and explored the Chinatown part of Sydney. It was very intimidating because suddenly everything was written in Chinese and I had no idea what some of the stuff was. I might go back later on and give it a closer look. I went into the local mall there and bought some sort of scarf. The styles here are definitely interesting (sometimes really bad), I must say. Some of the things the kids here (particularly the Asian ones) put together are things I would never have considered. I want to buy a dress or something and bring it back to wear because some of them were pretty cool looking. I also tried my first hot cross bun! It was basically a cinnamon-raisin roll. Not sure what the big deal with them is, haha.
Ghost Tour
I then went to the ghost tour! It was in the Rocks again, and it wasn't so much about ghosts as it was about murders and weird events about living people. Actually, I don't think I heard much of anything about hauntings. Sad! But I did learn a few creepy stories about people getting murdered and a little about the history of the area. The best part was that each person on the tour got a little necklace with some sort of knick-knack that symbolized a character you were going to be. I was some sort of strict boarding house keeper who found her tenant with his penis chopped off (he did it himself because he felt guilty about having an affair while his wife/child were back in Greece!). The other cool part was that we got to go into this really creepy dig-site underneath a building. The city was going to excavate the area and turn it into a carpark (parking lot for us Americans) but they found the remains of an old cottage or something. When we went into it, it was dark and all we had was our flashlights! I took a picture of it.
And that's it, folks! We shall see what the rest of the weekend holds... I'm thinking of going to the Blue Mountains but am not quite sure.
2 comments:
i would have definitely felt embarrassed taking a timed picture of myself too lol.
are you gonna go snorkeling while youre in australia?
Not sure, since the snorkeling is more up north and it's pretty expensive to fly between cities (and I'm already poor). I want to, though! I'm getting kind of tired of Sydney so maybe if it gets to a certain point I'll take the financial plunge and do it.
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