The route to the Garden from the VC is through Gastown, the original commercial part of Vancouver. In 1862, Gassy Deighton landed a canoe on the shore of what is now the West End. He rolled a keg of whiskey onto the sand, and immediately began serving the working men. The lumber industry was hauling many millions of board feet from the magnificent old growth forests, and somebody had to supply those men with alcohol. He apparently left his mark on the commercial development of the area, the whole town was orginally named for him. Today, it's a restoration showplace, with old buildings housing shops and restaurants and art galleries. We walked through, towards Chinatown, with a short focus because the sky was getting more and more angry looking.
The entrance to the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden is small and beautifully proportioned, like the garden. The rain began just as we walked in, but no matter. We joined a guided tour in progress, and learned a little about how a formal garden would have been laid out in the 1400's in south China. The man of the house, the Scholar, would have had several wives living there, along with their children. He probably would have had his parents, and his siblings and their families, too. The original commune! The photo above shows the beautiful balance of the yin and the yang in the entry paving.
The entire garden was created, dismantled and shipped to Vancouver. It took 50 craftsmen several years to re-assemble the entire garden and structures. There are no nails or screws in any of the buildings, just perfect joinery techniques that Stuart was slack-jawed over. The gardens and buildings were divided between the women's (yin) section and the men's (yang) section. This gate is in the yin section, at the Water House, overlooking part of the pond. It's called the Heaven Gate, and opposite it is the Earth Gate. The pond showed only a reflection of the plants and surrounding building, even though it is in the center of the city, with many high-rise buildings. Good design made it happen, and good design made it serene and beautiful. After the tour, Stuart and I had a cup of tea, and went back through everything again, to look more closely at the details.
We walked about three blocks, to the center of Chinatown, and had lunch at Phnom Penh,Vietnamese/Cambodian restaurant. We shared a table with Katie, from Vancouver and John, from Perth, Australia. An Asian man from Chinatown soon joined the table, and two women who spoke no English. We laughed and shared our meals, and we picked up tips about places to go and things to see while on our travels. We had the famous chicken wings, with a delicious coating and sauce of lemon juice and black pepper. We also had pea tips and garlic, which looked and tasted like a tender leafy green. And, rice. Our Asian friend said you could buy the vegetable in big bags at the produce markets, but it was labor intensive because you could only eat the tip-ends of the vegetable, which had to be picked off. I never did figure out just what we ate, but it was surely good! After lunch, the rain stoped, and we toured Chinatown for a while, going through several markets selling things that I have no clue to their identity! I was told, "no photo" at the first market, and nothing was written in English. I did see dried seahorses and dried snakes, dried mushrooms of wild description, and all sorts of dried things. The picture above is bamboo shoots. You know, the kind we buy in little cans at the grocery store at home. These bamboo shoots were as large as big papaya, horn-shaped, and fresh. In a box next to them, we saw lotus root sections...Yes, the lotus that grows in the pond! A man who was shopping spoke enough English to tell us these things.
Now, it's about 2:30, and we hopped a city bus out to the University of BC, thinking we'd see the Museum of Anthropology. It is on our list, and it's a good day to spend inside, the rain had started again. Well, the bus ride was much longer than we anticipated, and by the time we got off the bus at the campus, and eventually found the museum, there was only one hour before closing time. This is a very good museum (according to the Visitor Center lady, and ouf lunch mates), deserving more than a rushed tour. There is a really fine exhibit of First Nation architecture here. We'll come back. So, in the pouring rain, we found our way back through the campus to the bus stop, and managed to get on with 3 minutes before our transfer expired. Hey, we saved $5! It was the end of the class day, too, and the bus was almost full, but we managed to find two empty seats. Everyone was wet! About half-way back to the downtown, we were thwarted in our progress by another bus. The buses here run on over-head electrical lines. At one street, someone had parked their car too close the corner, and the bus hit the parked car making a right-hand turn. Well, here we sit, tethered to the over-head power source, can't go forward, and as luck would have it, there is yet another bus behind us. The poor transit supervisor arrived pretty quickly, and the unfortunate driver and our driver stood in the rain, trying to figure out what to do. They even tried to LIFT the little car sideways, to allow bus #1 to move. No good. Our driver was guided to drive around the unfortunate bus, in an attempt to squeeze between it and the parked cars of the other side of the street. I swear, there wasn't an inch of extra space between our bus, the unfortunate bus on our right and the parked Subaru on our left! No good, there was just not enough room to make it. Reminded Stuart and me of a couple of bus experiences in Mexico! So, we backed up, stopping traffic, and finally went a different route. Well, we had no idea where we'd end up, the predictability factor totally voided by the need for over-head power. But, a woman on the bus helped us get off at a good place (rain coming down even harder now), about three blocks from our hotel. No one on the bus was impatient, and everyone was cheering the driver's skills at getting through a veerrry tight situation. We were glad to get 'home' and get out wet clothes off, have a drink and relax a little before having dinner at a Thai restaurant down the street. And, yes, the rain had stopped by the time we went back out for dinner!
The fence around the community garden down the street from our hotel has been YARN BOMBED! Fantastic knitted and crocheted pieces attached to the fence...tomorrow, I'll try to get a photo.
No comments:
Post a Comment