Exchange program in China, 1986

In 1986, I was on an exhange program to Hangzhou China, with 14 other IU students and our faculty sponsors.  After all these years, I've finally found software, equipment, and time to begin to share some of the photos I took while we were there.  These are only a few of the photos, I will be renaming and adding to them this summer.

We went to school and our travels radiated from the city of Hangzhou Here are a few pictures of general interest also.
Early in the program I was allowed to visit the T'ien T'ai (Tendai) home temple in Fujian province, with the History department of HangZhou University, on a field trip.
When the weather warmed, we took a group trip to Beijing, of course seeing the Great Wall, Summer Palace, Forbidden City, etc.
A friend from HangDa accompanied me to Luoyang, where I took pictures of the carvings along the river.
My friend and helper also accompanied me to QingDao, where we stayed at the Taoist monastery and he got to work with the Taoists doing T'ai Ji (or Gong Li).
And we went to the ShaoLin temple, where we almost stayed at in the monastery but at the last moment were asked to stay across the street.
Next I travelled to QuFu, where Confucious lived, and where the Confucian temple and Kung family graveyard are.
from there I made a "pilgrimage" up the holy T'ai Shan -- I began walking up the path at about 3am, got lost on the way, but eventually made it to the top, where I spent a few days, and was lucky to witness a sunrise and sunset. This is where Mao said "The East is Red" .
Another friend from the university took me to visit her family in NingBo, a port city southeast of HangZhou. We also travelled to PutuoShan Island, where the goddess KuanYin is supposed to reside.
She also accompanied me to HuangShan (Yellow Mountain), which is, with Taishan, another of the "Five Holy Mountains". You can see why!
The whole group took a week long trip to Guilin, where the spectacular Karst formations are, but my camera malfunctioned, I only have a few pictures. Cheryl?
On the way out of the country, I took the train south to Guandong (Canton), and from there to HongKong.
From HongKong I flew to Japan, which was quite a culture shock, and very expensive.
Now that China is really coming online, there will probably be many many web pages like this one: a Tour of HangZhou.

last updated December 24, 2001
Actually, it turns out you can go home again.