Visit to West Mountain and the Hauting Buddhist Temple (Kunming, May 2004)

On June 23, 1945 my Dad, Dr. Clinton Millett wrote: "I'm sending a lot of pictures. The statues are in the temple up on the mountain behind here. It will give you some idea of the beauty of this place." So here we are sixty years later, my granddaughter Krystal Garrison and me, walking in his footsteps, and taking photograhs of many of the same images that he took. In case you wonder about the TV cameras -- I can only say that the Chinese made our visit, and the return of my Dad's photographs, a media sensation!

Krystal working with Jin Fei Bao to take the 2004 photographs (interpreter Frank Gao in the background). Fei Bao has the 1945 photographs on his computer. Below are a few of the 1945 photographs (on the left) and Krystal's 2004 photographs on the right.

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Click Here for a Video Tour of the Hauting Temple -- (10 minutes)

After the visit we joined the monks in their inner sanctum, toured their kitchen and joined them for a vegetarian lunch that appeared to be beef, duck, chicken and a dozen other dishes.

To Join Us for Lunch Click Here -- (4 minutes)

Then we said goodbye and they bid us farewell.

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And back at the Yunnan Provincial Museum, the chief Buddhist monk of Yunnan, thanks us for the photographs of their Hauting Temple.