New Dress, Special Gift, and Buddhist Mountain Friends

I decided to have a traditional, formal qipao made for me before I left China. It's black with gold dragons, and ankle length. I picked out the fabric and the style and a local tailor made it:

And here it is from behind. See what I told you about my butt?? Oh well, I'll soon be leaving you behind, Chinese stairs:

The teacher at my school assigned to help me the last two years also became my friend. His father and grandfather survived the Cultural Revolution and have a collection of Chairman Mao pins from that era. It was important to show your allegiance to Chairman Mao, and one way to do that was to wear these pins. He gave me a pin from his family's collection as a going away gift; I was incredibly humbled by his generosity at giving me part of his family's history. I will treasure it always.

I went to a Unesco World Heritage Buddhist mountain site near my city. It was a very Chinese adventure! It took me 3 buses to get to the mountain top, and I was 'adopted' by an old man who was fascinated with talking to a foreigner; he even got on the mountain bus so he could keep talking to me, but the other people on the bus kicked him off so he'd leave me alone. It was such a Chinese thing, and something that would have freaked me out two years ago, but now was just what happens here. The old man turned me over to the care of the young guy in this picture, a random guy from Beijing who didn't speak English but spoke really good Mandarin (as they do in Beijing) and was backpacking across China. He was really cool! The two ladies are English teachers from a city southwest of me called Kunming and they approached me because I speak English. (Do you see how HUGE I am compared to Chinese ladies? No wonder I now have body dysmorphia from living in China.) They were so nice, and we all became mountain friends. Thus is the magic of the Buddhist mountain.

A few pictures of the mountain carvings: