First visitor - first visit to Gu Shan

Last week, my sister Karin visited us in Fuzhou. She was our first visitor, so we were able to check whether the house is indeed as guest friendly as we thought it would be. I think it passed the test: Karin was very enthousiastic about the house. How lucky she was, that the furniture had just arrived a few days before her arrival.

We took the opportunity to go and check out one of the sites to see around Fuzhou and went to mount Gu Shan. For us, it was also the first time to visit one of the touristic sites of Fuzhou, since we arrived here.
The weather was excellent, with a comfortable temperature of around 18C and a blue sky. An splendid day for climbing the mountain .... which we did by car. Our excuse was that Mylène was with us so we couldn't possibly do it on foot.

On Gu Shan, we visited a beautiful monastry. The entrance fee was an outrageous 40 RMB per person (last year it was still 3 RMB), but as Fuzhou is not littered with sites to see, and since we were already there, we decided to go in anyway. Luckily, it was definitely worthwhile. The monastry is beautifully located on the slopes of the mountain, near the top, amidst lots of green. The complex is spacious, and houses a surprisingly nice temple (and I have seen quite a lot of them in Asia). The vegetarian restaurant supposedly serves excellent food, but that we left for another visit. Afterwards I browsed around online for a bit, but did not find all that much information about this monastry. The only information I found was that it is a Taoist monastry, famous for its many scrolls written in monks' blood. A rather creepy story for such a beautiful place.

As always, the weekend was far too short, and Karin had to leave us again far too quickly. Mylène also liked it and is looking forward to seeing her auntie again, soon, to visit some other attractions that Fuzhou has to offer.