婷婷乐游记

 婷婷乐游记 = Tingting's Travels

I came across another Chinese YouTube channel devoted to exploring the Chinese countryside. Again there is a young woman in front of the camera and a young man behind it. In the selected video, they are in the province of Guizhou where their aim is to visit an old  mountaintop temple complex. The walk up there is long but not scary.

The location is so peaceful with natural greenery burgeoning all around as cicadas sing from the undergrowth. This is a different China from the China of bullet trains, industry and big cities. Even the controlling power of state communism seems far distant.

My appreciation of the video was interrupted by occasional ad breaks and if the same happens with you, I apologise. Just click "Skip" whenever you can. 

In this troubled world, it is kind of nice to follow a winding dirt track up a green mountain and see the golden Buddhist statues at the top.

We often hear references to periods of Chinese history known as "dynasties". I don't know about you but for me those references have always been puzzling because my ignorance about Chinese history runs pretty deep.

For the purposes of this blogpost, I discovered that before the arrival of these modern times the last great  imperial Chinese dynasty was the Qing dynasty that lasted from 1644 to 1912. Before that came the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). It is sometimes said that there were in total thirteen great Chinese dynasties stretching back two thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ to the Xia dynasty (2070-1600 B.C.)

The name Qing is pronounced "Ching".

See an earlier blogpost which features Qingyunji Xiaoxue - another Chinese countryside explorer who has visited some incredible and occasionally scary places. Go here.