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SEPTEMBER
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JANUARY
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TITLE: 白塔 (THE WHITE PAGODA)
LOCATION: LIAOYANG CITY
MISSION: SIGHTSEEING!
DATE: 2011-11-27
Time for another visit to Liaoyang! Grisha (Gregory Borisovych Koshelenko) is really into history and wanted to show me Liaoyang's White Pagoda. Wu Yang (吴洋) and Jin Xin (金鑫) did not exactly share Grisha's enthusiasm (吴：“去那边儿干哈呀，只是个破塔”), but came anyway. Jiang Zhuyang (姜竹阳) was going home to Liaoyang this morning, so me and Wu decided to go with her in her cute little BYD. It was extremely foggy today (and it got worse in the evening), which made it somewhat difficult to enjoy the full splendor of the pagoda and the surrounding park, but it was nice. Unfortunately I can't say how old the thing is, as none of the texts, introductions or signs mentioned this small and insignificant fact. At least I can tell you that it was partially restored in 1313AD, so it is likely much older than that. We walked around in the gardens for a while, looking at sculptures and temples; we even got to see "The Thousand-Handed Bodhisattva" (千手观音). It was pretty cold, so when we had taken the grand tour of the premises we decided to go and have late lunch at one of Liaoyang's better Muslim restaurants (Jin Xin is Hui-minority and does not eat pork). We actually managed to not get completely stuffed, which is a definite improvment. Afterwards we went shopping for some DVDs (but didn't find any of the TV-shows that we wanted) and went singing at a karaoke bar instead. It wasn't that late when we got home, but it gets dark really quickly this time of year. A long but interesting day.