Sightseeing in Jinan
July 22, 2007

We spent the Saturday seeing in Jinan with our hosts and helpers from the Shandong Institute.

Our first stop was the Yellow River, which flows right by Jinan. The Yellow and Yangtze, which we saw in Nanjing, are the two largest and most important rivers in China. The river is about 5400 km long; at this point we are about 300 km from the sea.
 

The color was brown due to sediments in the water. We had a violent rainstorm earlier in the week, so a lot of soil had been washed into the river. The river reminded me a lot of the lower Mississippi. If you look carefully, you can see a fisherman between the sandbar and right bank. The left bank is actually an island; there is another river channel on the other side of it.
 

One of the more quaint means of transporting goods on the bridge over the river was this donkey pulling a farm wagon.
 

Our next stop was Daming (pronounced "dime-ing") Lake in the Jinan. There was a beautiful park surrounding the lake; it also provided good views of the Jinan skyline.
 

In one of the buildings in the park we saw a karate class for young children. In the same building we also saw them teaching the game go to young children. Go has very simple rules, but is intellectually very challenging, and on the same level as chess.
 

We also came across this 800 year old gong. For a small price you could make it gong; to do so you pulled the log back and let it swing into the bell. Of course, I had to try it. It is not every day that you get to make a loud gong sound with an 800 year old instrument.
 

This was a neat fountain we saw in the park. Between the two stone fish is a medal disk with a bell in the center of it. For a small price you can through slugs at the bell. If you hit it, then the fountain behind it turns on for a few moments. I managed to catch a photo just as someone hit the bell and turned on the fountain.

At this point my camera malfunctioned and I lost the rest of the photos I took that day. From Daming Lake we went to some springs in the middle of Jinan. Jinan is known as the City of Springs. We also went to a hotel for a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. It was very interesting; I'm sorry that I can't show you pictures of it.