20250911 Thursday, September 11, 2025. Zhoushan, China

20250911 Thursday, September 11, 2025. Zhoushan, China

Zhoushan has built a very modern and convenient international cruise ship terminal complete with escalators to accommodate the tides and variable ship embarkation deck configurations.  I suspect this has all been developed on reclaimed land as it is serviced by 4 lane boulevards, but it seems that every scrap of land that is usable for agricultural purposes is being utilized in its highest and best use.  There are aquaculture ponds and rice paddies, as well as acres of green houses covering most of the land which is not covered with buildings and roads.  Even small strips of land between apartment buildings have vegetable gardens planted.

Scarecrow in a drained aquaculture pond

Fish ponds

Local fishing hole

We did get to sleep in this morning since we did not believe we had an organized off ship excursion.  We had our first breakfast in the Restaurant, which is table service dining.  The main reason to eat here is they have the most delicious lamb chops available for breakfast.  There’s nothing better than lamb chops and eggs over easy to start your day.  

Walnut Dim Sum Bun- EAT ME!

The ship has a shuttle bus that took us from the cruise ship dock into the main business district of Zhoushan, which was on an adjacent island.  

The infrastructure in these coastal islands and cities is astounding.  There are new streets with sidewalks, scooter lanes, lighting and railings all over.  There doesn’t seem to be as much overbuilding of gigantic apartment towers here as was evident in Xiamen and Dongtou.   

Zhoushan’s Downtown

Zhoushan’s fishing fleet heading out.

The island the cruise ship terminal is located on is covered with some sort of aquaculture ponds that can be flooded.  On the way to the main island, we passed a large industrial park. Surprisingly, it was a Boeing plant.

Crossing over a bridge took us to the main island of Zhoushan, which is noticeably more densely populated.  There are apartments that are obviously fully occupied, as evidenced by laundry on every balcony, and the heat pumps are showing some age with rust stains.  Still, the streets are not crowded. Most of the traffic were our tourist buses and scooters, although there are a few Tesla, BYD, Audi and Mercedes Benz sedans driving around. 

The bus took us to the center of the main business district, which is marked by an intersection with a huge high end shopping mall on one corner, and an almost equally large KR Supermarket on the opposite corner, bearing a large KFC sign out front. 

The bus managed to squeeze into an incredibly tight parking lot next to the high end mall, marked by a Starbucks.

We walked through the Starbucks into the air conditioned high end mall, which was just like the high end malls in Shenyang, Shenzhen, Beijing and Xiamen- all NYC pricing and labels.  What was more interesting was to walk straight through the high end mall and cross the street into the Supermarket.  The downstairs had many smaller and lower rent shops and restaurants with actual locals walking about.  There was a hole in the wall barber shop with two barbers working, and it was only ¥15 for a hair cut.  So Ben got a souvenir Zhoushan haircut.

Upstairs was where the real business was.  It was an enormous store like a Walmart Superstore, with everything you could imagine.  It had appliances and electronics, Clothing, gifts, shoes, pets, vegetables and a full fish market with every imaginable type of live seafood swimming in the tanks.  

We did find some ultra compact UV solar and rain umbrellas which came with matching leather shoulder holsters which we bought so that we could be equipped like the locals in the know.

After returning to the ship for lunch, we realized that we had tickets for an optional morning excursion to the Guanyin Altar, which we missed. Fortunately, there was a 1:30pm session that we got rebooked on. 

The Guanyin Altar is a recent construct. Built at a cost of $1.5 billion US dollar equivalents, it is a grand piece of religious architecture. It’s unclear who exactly funded this project but our guide for the day Michael said that during Mao’s reign, all religions were banned as the only allowed dogma was Maoism. After Mao’s death, there was a backlash as people missed their religious beliefs and gradually, the CCP became more tolerant to the resurgence of Buddhism, Taoism and other religious beliefs. 

Guanyin is the Chinese Buddhist manifestation of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, revered as the goddess of mercy, compassion and salvation. While usually depicted as a male in Indian Buddhism, Guanyin is predominantly depicted as female in Chin. She crosses over into Chinese Taoism and folk religions.

The grounds of the Altar are meticulously groomed and it is laid out with ideal symmetry and Feng Shui. The exterior is shaped like a giant lotus bloom and is gleaming white marble with gold trim. 

Unlike in most Buddhist temples, photography and even videography is allowed throughout the complex. This is supposedly because this is not so much of a temple as it is a tribute to the religion and serves as an exhibition to promote and spread Buddhism.

It is grand like the Mormon Tabernacle or Taj Mahal. At the center or the marble building is a grand Altar with a massive monolithic carving of Guanyin, produced from a single old growth trunk imported from British Columbia. It took over 2 years to carve that main image. 

On the dome overhead are 216 Buddha’s leading to a tunnel of light extending through the core of the building like a tokamak of spiritual power.

Multimedia show on the interior dome

There are many additional galleries and prayer rooms on several levels, and other galleries that are more typical museum exhibits, many with English explanatory panels.  As in many other religions there are dioramas depicting worlds of pleasure for the good and worlds of pain and suffering for those who are evil.  One gallery was devoted to explaining the multidimensionality of Buddha’s existence with ten dimensions including dimensions in time.

The afternoon program ended with a multimedia display on the inner lotus blossom dome covering the central Altar.  It was inspiring and wonderous display of movement, sounds and colors, but it was hard to get a sense of what it was about. Perhaps it was just about getting the viewer into a state of mind disconnected from the harsh realities of day to day living.

It’s nice that the Altar was air conditioned and equipped with nice bathrooms, so it was a comfortable place to spend an otherwise very hot and humid day.  

We got back to the ship with time to get showered and grab a bite to eat before the evening’s included excursion.  Just about everyone on the ship loaded up onto buses and were taken to a huge outdoor venue for something called Impression Putuo.  It’s an unusual venue in that the audience sits in the center of a giant lazy Susan with a movable screen around the circumference that allows scene changes to occur by rotating the audience platform, taking advantage of the geography of the site to provide different and dramatic backdrops to the action of all the cast.

The movable screen can be segmented and parts can be moved independently to achieve different effects.  The cast, meanwhile, are maneuvering their way through the terrain in darkness and revealing themselves with lights either from the stage, or carried as lanterns or even searchlights for dramatic effect.

There are many scenes where actors interact closely with the audience in the foreground of the stage, and others where the stage rotates against the background while the actors walk in front of the stage.  It is all done very imaginatively.  

Something like this would be right at home at a Disney theme park, but the dialog was entirely in Mandarin.  A program was handed out with a plot synopsis in English, but it was much too dark to be able to read it in the theater.  For the most part, we just watched it unfold and enjoyed the effect, and could guess for the most part what was going on through the emotions expressed by the actors.  The plot loosely follows the journey of discovery of a young man who decides to become a monk.

The last scene invited audience members to cast their own lotus blossom lanterns on the water as a way to present their wishes to Guanyin.  It made for a powerful scene as hundreds of audience members carried their lanterns behind a procession of monks as the stage rotated against the back drop in the night.  

When we got back to the ship, we got a surprise reception by the ship’s crew, who had formed a gauntlet dancing to Beatles songs, and handed out Gin and tropical fruit juice cocktails.  To be honest, it felt a little strange after the journey of Buddhist enlightenment we had just experienced through the show.

  
The ship did open the World Cafe for a late night snack including wine and beer service.  That just happened to coincide with Ben’s usual cruise ship soup run.  

Tomorrow will be our first sea day on this cruise.  We missed the first sea day because we were on our overland Treasures of Fujian excursion.  We look forward to it.