The entrance was so grand that I decided to stay for a bit (with my new comfy seating) and pull out my sketchbook and do a sketch. Here is where I learned another new thing about China: I am already a spectacle / curiousity / attention-getter just walking around, if I sit down and start to draw the show REALLY begins! This was my first experience as a crowd gather-er. It was like a spectator sport! Every mark I made, they quickly looked back at the Buddhist gate to see it there, and then back to the paper smiling. Suddenly it wasn't just me making the marks, but all of us: people smiling, giving me thumbs up, patting me on the back, joking with each other. Old men wandering by with blue coats and caps, women, store clerks, young men with their bamboo shoulder carriers, the one-legged man, 2 Buddhist monks even. And they almost all stayed with me for the long hall."