More About the Great and Spacious Building Carving

The great and spacious building carving has an interesting story behind it.  No, as far as we know this story isn't part of Chinese culture.  The woodcarver had someone come in years ago and commission this piece and since then they've had so many people ask for it that they keep it mounted year-round right near the doorway.  You can hardly miss it.  And it is wayyyyyyy more expensive than any of the other pieces of its size, and no hard-nosed bargaining will budge them.  They know their market, apparently, being so close to the embassy housing, where there's a good fraction of LDS folks.  We plan to take the photograph to other woodcarvers in other parts of Beijing and see if we can find some less apoplectic price tag.  Hooray for free market economy and all, with laws of supply and demand reigning supreme in communist China, but that doesn't mean we have only one option.

The bright side, the very bright side in my mind, is that someday a woodcarver will hear the gospel preached in Beijing and it won't take very much reading in the Book of Mormon for it to seem right, familiar and exciting.  Heh, heh, heh...  We Thank Thee, O God, for a Profit!!!!!!  -- pooka