I made a lot of great teacher friends in China. Two of them, husband and wife, took me to this old Buddhist village near the city I was staying at. There's a lot of pollution in China, even in the smaller cities like the one I was staying at, but this was just far enough out that the air was really clean.

Fotan village is about 1500 years old. Apparently at a certain point in Chinese history, there was a migration of people from one of the major rivers due to conflict, and some settled here. Buddhism was very popular because of the wars going on, it was a religion of peace. There were only a little more than a hundred people living in the village, which had been the case for centuries. There was a monastery and a temple surrounding the village. One of my friends was a history teacher, and he taught me a lot about Chinese culture. Visiting a small place like this was one of my favorite experiences in China.