My Month Long Travels Part 6

  The next day I went to the Longmen Grottoes. A grotto, for those who have not come into contact with one, is just a small cave that usually has something inside, like carvings, drawings, etc. The school I attended in the United States has the Lourdes Grotto in a wooded area that is for those in the Catholic Faith for inside it has a statues of someone important to the church (Mary the Mother of Christ I think, I do not really know because I have not actually looked). Grottoes are not reserved for one religion and can have nothing to do with religions. The Grottoes in Luoyang are Buddhist grottoes so they do serve a religious purpose. Buddhist monk started to carve caves into the side of a hill and put carvings of those important to the buddhist belief inside. Others would be able to come to the grottoes and show their respect and faith. The Longmen Grottoes are special for their age and the amount of them carved into the side of the hill.
  I arrived early that morning and headed into the Grottoes. Unfortunately since it was the off season the entrance that I was planning on entering was closed. I got off the bus and started looking at the map on my phone for another entrance. A lady came up to me pointing and speaking in Mandarin. I did not know what she was saying but was pretty sure she was trying to get me to pay something to take me to another entrance. I do not like when people try to get money from me so I completely ignoring her. She left me alone and another man that spoke English approached me. I was ready to ignore him as well however he proceed to tell me that the Grottos provided a free service via electric bus to another ticket location and entrance.
  The Grottoes are located in a large hill beside a river, which you can see below.

  The gate.

  Here is a picture of the actual grottoes. Each dark hole that you see is a grotto, inside you will find a statue (if time has not destroyed it) and decorated walls. The can be carved a few inches or several yards into the stone, most were several inches. In the following pictures you can see the detail that was put into the carvings. Paints were also added but have washed away with time. 

  The many little sitting men in the picture above impressed me. Someone sat, or stood, there to carve exactly the same image again and again over the wall. That takes patience.

  This was inside a grottoes that was about the side of a small bedroom (enough for a bed, nightstand and wardrobe). You can see the painting on the walls. If you look closely on either wall you can see what looks like horizontal lines. Those are the tiny sitting men from the previous picture. Below you can see the decoration of the ceiling.

  More small sitting men.

  Below is a huge Buddha. His head is about as tall as my entire body, maybe taller.

  Me in comparison.

  The river from the grottoes side.

  This is what the grottoes look like from across the river, they are high up into the hill so stairs were added for climbing which you can see below. 

  On the other side were a few more grottoes, not nearly as impressive as the first but still interesting.

  There was a Palace on this side of the river that I checked out. It belonged to an important man who was against the Communist Party back in the day. Below are small wooden red blocks that people have hung around the temple in the Palace. While I was there I had an interesting experience. During my entire grotto experience I went through it at about the same pace as a group of older men. We happened to go to the palace at the same time. Throughout I noticed that they glanced at me, but no more then the normal 'oh look there is a white person' stares that I normally get. When I was exiting a building in the palace one of the older men approached me and held up his phone, he could not speak English but I understood that he wanted a picture with me. I am use to people wanting to take a picture with me but not usually old men, which can be viewed with some strangeness. However, I understood it was harmless and agreed to let him take a picture with me. He handed his phone to his buddy and I got a picture with an old man (actually he got a picture with a young lady since I did not ask for the picture). His buddy then wanted a picture so they traded placed and I got another picture taken of myself. They then wanted to ask me a few questions which they did with the assistance of a younger man who know passable English. I do not know if that young man and his friend were with them or not. It was a bit of a weird experience. If that would have happened in America I would have been a little freaked out.

 After the grottoes I had enough time to go check out a temple so I hopped on a bus.

  The person you see in the picture above is a little girl. She got on the bus with her mother holding a giant stuffed animal and proceed to sing the alphabet. It was super cute and put me in a happy mood. After a few minute she fell asleep and had trouble waking up when it was their stop. 

  Below is a rather large tourist shopping area. A benefit of traveling during the off season is that many are closed so you are not bombarded with people wanting to sell you things. What people mostly bought were incense sticks which they would light in the temple as a sign of respect.

This is the entrance to White Horse Temple compound area.

  Here is the actual entrance to the White HorseTemple.

  

  Inside this door is a buddha statues but it is disrespectful to take pictures. In many temples the have people standing there telling you not to take pictures. In the metal pot you can see an incense stick still burning.

 Outside of the actual temple they have built temples modeled off other countries versions of Buddhist Temples as a show of peace and good well between themselves and the nation. They had a Thai Temple, Indian Temple, and a few others.

  In this picture I am waiting in line at the train station and I only took this picture because I almost missed my train and wanted to celebrate the fact that I did not. I was heading to Qingdao located along the coast.

My Month Long Travels Part 5

  Wow, it is so much more difficult keeping a blog updated when traveling. I am currently in South Korea but I am going to update you on what happened between Xi'an and now, which is quite a bit.

  I left my friends (they headed back to Changzhou) and got on another slow train for Luoyang, which is a smallish city but is famous for several locations that I wanted to see. The train was rather full but I had made sure that I reserved a sitting seat. If I had to I could do the standing ticket again but I decided from previous experiences that it should be avoided if possible.

  This is a picture below is of the landscape. It was quite difficult to get a good picture on the train, the windows were rather dirty however the entire land kinda all looked like this, brown and dead looking, but had really neat mountains. 

  On every slow train the tables have a tray for putting trash and during the journey an employee comes around and empties them. This works for making sure the train is kept clean, especially when people eat items such a sunflower seeds which have the possibility to make large a mess. 

  This is the hostel that I stayed at. When I arrived it was round 8:00pm and dark so I ended up taking a taxi to a rather abandoned looking area. It looked nice, however the bathroom had a little bit to be desired. In a random note, Asian hostels you usually get plastic house slippers to wear around and into the bathroom, I do not know if this is the same in western hostels.

  This is what is looks from the outside, it is the entrance surrounded by brick.

  The next morning I got up 'early' and headed to the long-distances bus station to take it to the Shaolin Temple that is quite a few miles outside of Luoyang. I was very impressed with myself for acquiring my ticket for several reasons. I had never bought a long distance bus ticket or even gone into a station, plus I could still not really speak Chinese. I am able to speak and recognize a few essential but other then that I rely on situations and body language. I bought the ticket and then had people point to the bus I was to get on. The driver looked at my ticket and pointed to his bus. I got on and hoped that I would arrived at the correct destination. The bus actually stopped off at the site on its way to another city.

 This is the inside of the bus. I had the farthest back seat that was actually a bench that went across the back so I was squished back in a corner with a family on the other side of me. 

  Some pictures I took on the way to the site. 

  I took this picture during the crazy, annoying wait. To get to the site a rather steep curvy hill was to be driven up, however some cars decided to get stuck or went to fast and slide. This caused a two hour wait for others to get around. I am not really sure exactly what happened since we were further back but right before we continued our journey I saw a car in the middle of the road being pushed out of the way. It did not look like something that would cause a two hour back up. I was ready to leave the bus and was rather annoyed (also glad that I decided to bring my book along that day). Nothing seems worse then being in a confined spaced with many people then being in a vehicle that should be moving but is not in a confining space with many people. 

  The Shaolin Temple is considered the cradle of Chinese Zen Buddhism and specific type of martial arts such as Shaolin Cudgel. The martial arts was one of the reasons I wanted to see it. After the bus went through the really long wait it was only about 15 minute and we were there. The bus stopped and someone said something to everyone in Chinese. I figured out that this was were I was to get off, so I took my bag and exited the bus, the family and myself were the only ones leave the bus. I then went exploring the site. 

  This was an actual training ground where individuals learned about the art so they had training areas and buildings for studying the art. They had performance of the martial art and my timing was perfect to see such a performance. They did many flips as well as stances and breaking strips of metal on their heads. It was really neat to see. Near the end of the show they picked three young guys out of the crowd and had them come to the stage and copy what the students/performers were doing. They say you can tell someone who is really good at their job or sport because they make it look so easy. Well these performers did this really well, the young men struggled quite a bit at copying the moves. There was quite a bit of laughing that occurred from the audience. You can enjoy people doing silly things in any language.

  This was the Shaolin Temple. 

  I had to take a picture of this guy.

  This was one thing I really wanted to see and is called the Pagoda Forest. As I mentioned in an earlier post a Pagoda is erected as a tombstone for a Buddhist monk. That technically makes this forest a Buddhist monk graveyard. The larger the tombstone the more important the monk. 

  After seeing the beauty of the snow and the martial arts I was ready to head home, however I had not prepared enough and did not really know how to get back to the hostel. I had thought that the bus going back to Luoyang just stopped by and you could get on but I was apparently wrong. I was kinda stuck and unsure what to do. It was near freezing outside and going to get dark in the next few hours. It was too far to walk back and would truly have been a stupid idea. However, as in all touristy spots, there is always a taxi driver to the rescue but for a substantial price. So, all in all I paid 19 yuan for a trip to the Temple and 200 yuan for a trip back. I was a little annoyed with myself for not having prepared, but life happens. Below are pictures I took out of a not as dirty taxi window on the way back.