Elizabeth's Visit, Part 3 - Luoyang

On Sunday afternoon, April 20, we left Xi'an and took a train to Luoyang for an additional part of the SEA tour.  At this point, it was just the 3 of us and one other SEA tourist, Marion.  

The train was only about 1.5 hours, so it was a quick trip.  We were met in Luoyang by our new tour guide, Charles, a tall, funny, young Chinese man.  He was funnier, in a sarcastic way, than most of the Chinese we meet or, at least, his English was good enough that we were able to understand his sarcasm and dry humor.

Charles and the new van driver picked us up at the train station and took us to the Longman Grottoes, which are one of the four most famous Buddhist grottoes in China.  Over 100,000 Buddha figures are carved into the stone in more than 23,000 niches on the hill.  The Longman Grottoes are listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

While making our way to the grottoes, we passed through a large crowd of Chinese.  We saw nearly no other Caucasians and were approached by a large number of young Chinese school children who wanted to practice their English on us, asking us to write our names and take photos with them.  While it significantly slowed down our progress, the children were polite and sweet.

 
The grottoes were very crowded - one of those instances where the people in line behind me literally pushed me forward.  But, fortunately, it wasn't raining for a change and the temperature was nice.  We walked to the end of the main viewing area and then caught a boat ride back to the parking area and headed off to our hotel.

Once our driver got to the hotel, Charles informed us that he was not going to be our tour guide for the following day.  Even though the Country Tours itinerary listed him as our only guide in Luoyang, Charles said that our guide for Monday would be Winston because we were going to the Shaolin Temple and, given that Winston had worked there for 10 years, he knew much more about the Temple.  Also, Charles said that Winston had much better English, although Charles English was so good, it was hard for us to imagine.  

We asked Charles for dinner recommendations and walked around the food court and restaurants in the mall across the street, but ended up eating in the restaurant in the hotel that night before turning in. 

On Monday morning, we met Winston after breakfast and headed out to the Shenzhou Peony Gardens to see the famous Chinese peonies.  Apparently, the peony is the symbolic flower of China and Luoyang is the center of peony gardens because the soil there is perfect for peonies.  They are beautiful and fragrant flowers, but it was disappointing to see that the peonies were somewhat past their prime when we got there to see them.

Winston, who didn't say much for a guide who was supposed to be so good with English, did manage to say that there had been a hard rain for three days before we got to the garden, so most of the peonies were somewhat worse for the wear.  He also got lost in the garden and was impatient with the amount of time it took Marion and I to take pictures, although that is one of the main reasons we wanted to go to the peony gardens.   
 

After the peony gardens, we piled back in the van with Winston and headed off to the Shaolin Temple.  Shaolin Temple s a Chán Buddhist temple on Mount Song, near Dengfeng, which was apparently Winston's hometown. The temple was founded in the fifth century and is famous for its association  with Shaolin Kung Fu,

Winston said he had worked at Shaolin Temple for 10 years and helped translate many of the signs into English, although we found the translations quite amusing.  We especially liked this sign on a trash can that was supposed to indicate you could through biodegradable waste in it, but instead said it was for "organisms."  The other choices were "retrievable" or "unretrievable."  I got a lot of pictures for my file of Asian signs.

The first thing we did at the temple was to take a bus ride to the vegetarian restaurant in the Temple for lunch.  The only protein was peanuts, which I try not to eat (due to kidney stones and a positive allergy test) and Elizabeth is allergic to, but the vegetable dishes were very good.  

Shaolin Temple is the home of Zen Buddhism in China - according to Winston - it is where it began.  It's a lovely temple with, also according to Winston, the best ladies bathroom in the entire Henan province.  I don't know

about that, but my standards have changed, so this ladies room ranked very high because there were actual toilets, with toilet seats, there was toilet paper, and the sinks worked and had soap.  There were no paper towels nor a hand dryer, but this is China, after all.  
 
After lunch and the restaurant, we toured the temple, which is peaceful and just lovely.  We saw a plaque in honor of a famous Chinese kungfu master and his students, which included Robert Downey, Jr. and several other celebrities.  We got to see the monks working in the "pharmacy" where Elizabeth bought some reflexology sandals - hopefully they will help her clear her spleen, or whatever.  

Winston spent much our our day talking to the driver and checking his phone but not talking to us about the sites we saw as we drove to Shaolin Temple.  We thought he was saving his commentary for the temple, but he never did tell us much.

We walked down through the Forest of Pagodas, 228 stone or brick pagodas dating from 791 AD during the Tang Dynasty.  The pagoda forest in Shaolin stands at the foot of Shaoshi Mountain and is one of the largest pagoda forests in China, named a National Scenic Spot in 1996.  The Pagodas rangefrom one to seven stories, less than 15 meters (42 feet) high – much smaller than pagodas for Buddhist relics – all carry the exact year of their

construction and many carvings and inscriptions.

We were supposed to have a Kungfu lesson, but instead opted for the show put on by the students of the Kungfu school.  Apparently, there are about 30,000 students, from all over the world, who attend this school.  We got to see large numbers of them out practicing, in the rain.  We would have enjoyed having even more time to watch the practice, but Winston kept moving us along.

The show was interesting in that it was not filled with crazy circus-like acrobatics but was truly the students showing what they've learned.  I'm not sure how the one student put a hole in a plane of glass with a pin, but overall, the stunts were real and believable.  We truly enjoyed the show and were very glad to have paid 20 RMB (about $3.50) for seats, rather than piling in with the masses and standing in the aisles.  We were also glad there was no fire, as we never would have made it out of that theatre.  

The worst part of our day, and our trip overall, was after leaving Shaolin.  Winston was going to take us somewhere for dinner but couldn't find the restaurant he was talking about.  So, given that we had lots of time before our 9:55 p.m. flight, we said we'd get food at the airport.  The drawback was that, although promised by the tour company, there was no water available to us in the bus and we finished the drinks we had with us.

We took a long (about 1.5 hours) drive to the airport only to realize that Winston brought us to the Zhengzhou airport, instead of the Luoyang airport, where we were supposed to be.  When we realized this, we asked him and he said it was a 2 hour drive to the Luoyang airport.  He made some calls, although unfortunately, not to Country Tours, and told us that we had to drive to the Luoyang airport, although we assured him we didn't have time for security, baggage check, etc.  He insisted, so we piled in the car for what he now said was a 1.5 hour trip.  We had no food, no water, it was dark and the driver who had been with us since 8:30 in the morning was barreling through the Chinese countryside.  

None of us were happy about this and Chris made a call to Annie, our emergency contact at Country Tours.  She talked to Winston, but he didn't tell us much of what she said.  The next day, she said she wanted to change our tickets to go out on the earlier flight at Zhengzhou airport, but Winston never communicated that to us.  We kept checking on the trip via Google Maps, and it told us it was a 2 hour 10 minute drive, although Winston now said it would only take 1 hour.

Of course, it took 2 hours.  Winston's boss quickly checked us in but we could not check any luggage, so Chris's large suitcase and Elizabeth's large bottle of face cleanser had to go through security - which they were holding for us.  They were also holding the plane for us, so we literally had to run through the small (thank goodness) airport to catch it.  Again, no food, no water, no toilet break.   We got on the plane and then had to sit on the runway, so we didn't get back to Shanghai until after 1 a.m., still hungry and thirsty and quite unhappy.

It's a shame that a bad tour guide with outdated flight information could put such a damper on our trip, which was otherwise interesting, fun, and beautiful.