[My brother Joe lives in Guam and travels all over that part of the world whenever he gets vacation. Right now he’s off to China, and he’s letting me post some of the travelogue notes he’s sending out. Pretty interesting stuff.]
Post 4, China:
“A few hundred years ago a master sculptor was commissioned to take a small army of monks and carve out a couple hundred statues of his contemporaries in a single relief along a large wall. The statues are life-sized and so real in their depiction of emotions they spooked authorities and were mothballed and forgotten.
They are now at the Bamboo temple outside Kunming, so there I went for a Wave Zone photo opportunity yesterday. The entire background was blue waves with whitecaps and in midground and front were 70 some life size Buddas surfing on top of giant crabs, clams, and other animals. Their faces were vivid with fear, excitement, caution, exhiliration, meditiation….etc…
I did however, see no evidence of compression molding technology on any of the devices used to skim and surf. I did clearly see though that surfing and skimming were considered of the highest spiritual importance.
There were no pictures allowed so I tried my best to get in that WZ photo on the low. My vision was to launch a masterful ad campaign and ride it all the way to Hainan Dao. The monks were onto me though, as if they could read my mind. They anticipated every step and there was no escape. So, with visons of Richard Geres “Red Corner” in my head, I slid out the front and headed to Dian Chi.
On the Chengdu… Laters
Joe”