Sex Museums and Buddhist Temples: Guangdong has it All

Spring is the season of tutoring here in China as students get ready for oodles of competitions, tests, and exams of various sorts, and foreign English teachers are in high demand. This demand has been both a blessing and a curse—a blessing because I almost double my salary with private tutoring and a curse because I have less free time (hence the blogging hiatus).

So, it was with great joy that I cancelled my tutoring, packed up my bags, and headed out of town for a three day weekend. The occasion: Qing Ming Jie or Tomb Sweeping Festival where families head to grave sites across the country and honor their ancestors by tending their graves. The weather predicted clouds and rain all weekend—the perfect graveyard setting—but I couldn’t let that stop me from exploring China. Where could I possibly go for three days? Living in Guangdong Province in southern China means that most of the famous cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming—are a day’s train ride away. The obvious answer was to travel somewhere within Guangdong province. There is little hype about Guangdong as a tourist destination. Maybe some foreigners have heard of Shenzhen or Guangzhou, but that is usually the extent of their knowledge. Having little knowledge ourselves, my friends and I scoured our China guidebooks and the internet for places of interest in Guangdong.

We finally settled upon Shaoguan—a small town about a 5 hour train ride from Shenzhen. Shaoguan is home to Danxia Landform, also named China Red Stone Park, for its red sandstone mountains. Humorously or poetically, however you would like to see it, the park is especially famous for two key mountain formations—the male “yang” rock and the female “yin” rock, which are in the shape of, you guessed it, the male and female genitalia. There is also an adjacent sex museum that offers paintings, carvings, and sculptures of various sex positions, dildos, etc. I’m sure it explained the history behind some of these pieces, but it was all in Chinese, which I cannot read. It was somewhat interesting, but I don’t think it was worth the 35 kuai.

The park, however, was worth the 100 kuai entrance fee, which included transportation within the extensive

grounds (minus the cable car and boat ride). Our first stop was, of course, the “male “yang” rock.” The female and male rocks are both dubbed respectively “yin” and “yang” after the two opposing Taoist elements. I saw a sign for a Taoist Temple, while walking along one of the plank walkways, but I didn’t have time to check it out. The park offers various ways to view the park to accommodate different physical abilities. There were nice wooden planked paths and relatively easy stone walking paths. There are also boat rides, and the cable car. However, I opted to hike the stairs

carved into the mountain aided by the much needed hand rail and a few helping hands by some fellow Chinese tourists.

Since it was a holiday, the park was packed with people, and the narrow stair case up the side of the mountain was no exception. Some pretty incredible maneuvering was required by those going up and coming down. I feel like only in China would you wait in line on the side of a mountain. So, my friend and I did just that. I didn’t mind though. The scenery was spectacular, even if it was a cloudy day, and I actually enjoyed watching all of the people working together to get up and down the mountain. It was nice to have a hand on some of the wet, steep parts, and I learned a new Chinese word—xiao xin—careful.

After exploring the mountain and safely making it back down we took a boat to see the female rock. Sadly, it was not as impressive as the male rock—typical. I had imagined a huge cave from the picture, but instead it was just a small fissure in the mountainside. However, it was funny, yet slightly disturbing, watching men take pictures in front of it. Most of them just smiled, but I couldn’t help but think about some of the chauvinistic things I have heard about Chinese men. So after about 5 minutes, we had had enough of the female rock.

We only spent half a day in the park. I’m sure we could have stayed longer especially if we had stayed in a hotel within the parks grounds. Instead we chose to stay in a hotel near the train station, which was convenient for leaving later that day for Guangzhou where we spent the second night of our vacation. It was also convenient when we arrived the previous day and headed to the other main attraction in Shaoguan--the NanHua Temple.

According to China Travel Guide, NanHua Temple “is a famous Buddhist site, where the sixth founder of the Buddhism generation in Tang Dynasty (618-907), Hui Neng, established the southern sect of Zen. With a history of 1,500 years, the temple keeps many national treasures, including the Da Zang Sutra, decree and cassock.” It was truly enchanting, and despite the other tourists walking around, it was the most peaceful place I’ve been in China. What would have normally been a nasty day of drizzling rain and clouds was transformed inside this temple into the mysterious mists of fairytale China. It was the storybook China I have been waiting to find amidst the dirty tile high rises and modern neon lights.

After 24 hours in Shaoguan we had managed to see an enchanting Buddhist temple, a phallic mountain, and a sex museum. What more could we have asked for in one small Chinese town? So, we headed back south to Guangzhou via train in order to be near another small town (if you can call a town of 960,000 people small) named Foshan. Apparently Foshan is one of China’s oldest pottery towns, but we did not dapple in this tradition while there. Instead we happened upon another temple complex that had been turned into a sort of martial arts museum. The temple was beautiful, and, while the martial arts exhibit was unexpected, it was interesting. Apparently many famous martial art masters are from the area including Bruce Lee’s teacher. The temple also housed a small theatre and an area where the lion dance is performed on occasion. Adjacent to the temple was a small garden and pond complete with wishing tree and coy pond.

While this temple was interesting and beautiful, I was most interested in seeing Donghua Lane—a historical street of homes dating from the Qing dynasty. I had lived in China for 6 months, and I had yet to see a traditional Chinese home. The only living space I had seen for a Chinese person was a high-rise apartment. So a few polluted and crumbling blocks later we found it. It was essentially an alleyway lined on either side with great double doors, which is how most traditional Chinese houses in the city were constructed. The street was in a state of decay, but the remnants were more eye-catching than the newest high-rise apartment. Instead of the tile used everywhere on modern Chinese housing, these houses were brick with great wooden doors. While walking down the alleyway, we felt as if we were in someone’s house. It seemed so personal since many of the doors and windows were ajar, even if they only showed a pile of rubble inside. There were two older women chatting in the alleyway, and at one point a man drove by on his motorbike. It appeared that a few people still lived in these houses, but for the most part it seemed that it was abandoned and left for decay. I was a little disheartened to see how little the town seemed to care for this historical street, yet at the same time I was thrilled at the notion that I got to see a little bit of China’s history that was still hanging on despite the Cultural Revolution and the current modernization.

Living in Shenzhen, a city that is only 30 years old, it is hard to imagine that there is any visible history left to this 3,000 year old culture, but only a few hours away I discovered temples and houses hundreds and thousands of years old. And like many historical sites, they were just plopped down in the middle of bustling modernity like another shopping mall or cell phone store. My friends and I found ourselves constantly noting the contrast between the modern and the old—taking pictures of pagodas with skyscrapers looming in the background. For me the contrast is overwhelming at times trying to grasp the enormity of time that people have been living, struggling, and surviving in this world. It is easy to forget in the U.S., where most manmade structures are only a few hundred years old, but it is apparent that China will not let me forget.