Dragon Gate

Last weekend Girlwing and I went to Gävle to visit my parents. After a late breakfast on saturday we went to Älvkarleby and Dragon Gate.

We pay 150 kr per person for the entrance and included in that is a guided tour in either Swedish, English or Chinese. We took the English tour. While we waited for the tour to start we waited in the shop and were offered some green jasmine tea in nice looking china cups. I guess they wanted us to get tempted to buy some souvenirs.

The tour started and we see that they have made some really amazing stuff at the place. The guide was a young Chinese boy who is studying at the university of Gävle. He had a lot to say about the different parts of the site and he did it fast.

They say that all of the material used in the construction of the site is imported from China. Oh... that is a lot of stuff! So much stone! Must cost a fortune for transportation... :P

The big temple house will be a hotel that opens later this year. The hotel will have 56 rooms. Each of every room have its unique style taken from one of the 56 minorities in China. It would be interesting to try some of the rooms. Hmm... we have to see what the price will be.

Dragon Gate opened first time this summer but they are not done building yet. I don't know about the plans but it will be interesting to see where it all ends and how popular it will be. To make it a hit I think they need some entertainment for kids or maybe have a Chinese market on the square, selling cheap and exclusive green tea.

Ok, while I was writing this I found some information in Wikipedia where you can read that there are some plans for a Shaolin temple with a kung-fu school and when Dragon Gate are done they want to build "Dragon City", a chinese town next to Dragon Gate. There they want to build the worlds biggest Buddha statue and have living panda.

To be continued... ;)