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Guizhou Province Day 1 – visiting Flower Stream Park and Confucius Temple 

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When we arrived in Guiying, the capital of Guizhou, my friend and I had been travelling for five days through two other provinces so we were feeling a little tired.  We had arranged to meet another friend, Jo, at our hotel, as she was travelling from Beijing so we went straight out and firstly went to a local shop which Jo had already sourced, to buy a bottle of wine and then walked around trying to find a restaurant for dinner.

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At the wine shop, the wine we liked was incredibly over priced (both the Aussie and New Zealand bottles) so we bought a bottle of Chinese white wine and had to ask the staff to open the bottle because it had a cork and we did not have a corkscrew.  We paid for our opened wine, popped the cork back in and then found a nice little restaurant with no-body in it.  I used my best Chinese language skills and ordered us some lovely dishes.  And no surprises…the Chinese wine was disgusting!!

On our first day in Guiying we went to  Flower Stream Park.  The park covers an area of about 136 acres of which forty-nine are covered by water.  Jo and I really love looking at shadows on the water (of trees/pavilions/buildings and anything really), so for the both of us walking around this park was a real treat.

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I think it was also a treat for one young Chinese man and his dog who were relaxing at the waters edge, fishing.

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The park was built in the Qing Dynasty and then rebuilt in the 1930’s.  Then after the founding of The People’s Republic of China, it was equipped with tourist facilities and renamed Flower Stream Park, which means a park where flowers are in full bloom and streams flow – and that is exactly what we saw; beautiful blooms and lovely streams.

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We hopped in a little car and travelled around the outskirts of the park; but decided to walk back to the exit along a lovely tree covered path next to the water.

IMG_0675We were fortunate enough to see fields of rapeseed flowers in bloom; because at that time of year the crop is usually harvested for canola oil and the fields are bare.

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We then travelled to Anshun, by small bus, which is around 100 kilometres southwest of Guiyang and stopped at Confucius Temple before heading to our hotel.

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It is a very pretty temple complex, and even more lovely because it is slightly dilapidated.   There are beautiful trees and man made ponds within the complex and intricate Chinese stonework.

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The complex rests upon a sloping field and the buildings appear to rise as you walk up the slope. We also had the opportunity to see young Chinese girls being taught to serve tea in one of the halls.

We didn’t stop very long as it was pretty cold and getting dark and it had started raining so  after a good look around we hopped back into our bus and booked into our hotel for a nice relaxing evening.

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