2nd February 2008 // Day 19 // Luoyang (Henan)
The above itinerary says Luoyang, but actually we spent nearly the entire day at, or travelling to and from, the Shaolin Temple. Our trusty guidebook informed us that buses to the Shaolin Temple left regularly from the long-distance bus station, so we walked down the road to get a taxi there. The driver very honestly informed us that the long-distance bus station was right next to the train station, which we knew was just down the road, so we thanked her (like all the taxi drivers in Luoyang seem to be, she was female) and walked there instead. At the station we were instantly approached by people saying "Shaolin? Shaolin?" like a broken record. We ignored them and instead went directly to the ticket office. The very helpful (ie. sullen and bored) attendant merely gestured into the distance and said "you get them over there." At which point the 'Shaolin?' people showed us their coach, which, surprise surprise, was in the exact direction the attendant had gestured. Thinking we had no choice, we got on their minibus. A man came up and said in English that it was 100 kuai each to go to the temple and back. Obviously we weren't impressed at the inflated price and let him know so in Chinese. Immediately on hearing us speak Chinese he explained, now using Chinese, that because it was off-peak season, he had no choice but to charge that price, but with the same breath halved the price to 50 each. We decided 25 each way was not such a bad deal, and we still thought we had no choice, so we grudgingly handed over our not-so-hard-earned cash. But then he took us off the bus and walked us up the road to a different bus station, installed us on a public bus and told us that there was a return bus at 4, a kung fu exhibition at 2 and that if we wanted, we could come back tomorrow instead. We naively assumed that as we'd paid 25 each way we'd have a pre-arranged return, or that our receipt would cover any return transport. Fools. I did actually begin to wonder at this point how we'd get back, but I thought I'd just go with the flow (I hate that phrase, grr).
The journey to the temple was not long, but started with a bit through some country fields which only had mud tracks to go along. This would be fair enough (I'm not a road snob haha - you can't be really in China) as the bus was the exact size to fit along the track, but there were two obvious problems. The first was that some of the tracks were raised pretty high. I looked out the window and occasionally there was a good 3-4 metre drop directly to my right. The second was that if something came the other way, we were up the proverbial without a paddle. And things came the other way fairly regularly. Cue frantic reversing, manoeuvering etc etc. I thought we were going to fall down the cliff face several times. All in all highly amusing, in a sort of hysterical 'we-might-actually-meet-our-end-on-this-death-trap-of-a-bus' way. We also passed through several more of the bustling rural villages we were getting so accustomed to seeing. The places were probably a lot nicer-looking and less dismal than normal as they were all decked out in red for New Year, and all the stalls were full of door-hangings and firecrackers for the run-up to the day. As per usual, people were getting on and off the buses where they liked, so it was clearly a public bus that we were on as opposed to a ferry bus to the Shaolin Temple. Just to temper my enjoyment at quite a pleasant journey, the woman in front of me spent the entire bus ride vomiting out the window at regular intervals, so that the wind splashed it all back onto my (very firmly closed) window. I was waiting on tenterhooks for it to splash back through her open window into my face throughout the ride.
I know I've explained the attraction of the Shaolin Temple before but allow me to refresh your memory. We had seen the stage show of the story of kung fu in Beijing back in August, and later discussed the Shaolin Temple in class. Since then, we had made it our pretty firm plan to get to Shaolin Temple if nowhere else in China! The monks are incredible, I have never seen people do such gobsmacking things with just their bodies before, and the weapon use is spectacular. Jackie Chan trained at the Shaolin Temple when he was younger, for a short while. It is well-known that he does his own stunts, so picture Jackie Chan in the middle of some cheesy but amusing slapstick martial arts film for a moment. Now consider that he only trained there for a while, and these monks have been there their entire lives. What they can do make Jackie Chan look like a stumbling unco-ordinated toddler. Incidentally, just in case any of you care, Jackie Chan, who is everywhere on advertising in China, is half Mongolian. Or perhaps a quarter. I always forget. Every time me and my Mongolian mates see him advertising, I am proudly informed of this fact. The Mongolians are very proud people when it comes to honouring their own people. : ) You should see how they revere Genghis Khan. Oh and wolves. They are really into their wolves.
Anyway I hugely digress. So we were very excited to see the place. The monks channel their extreme devout Buddhism into martial arts, most specifically wushu, a refined type of kung fu. Wushu started as a series of stretching exercises to help the monks after they had been in the same position meditating fr hours on end. It soon grew into a defensive practice. They also practise the art of qigong, which is controlled breathing to channel the spirit.
The Shaolin Temple itself is a typical Buddhist Temple in most respects, with a few differences. Firstly the path up to the temple was lined with little green boards staked into the ground with sweet messages like "green, source of the life" and so on. Quaint. Also there were allusions to kung fu everywhere, as one might expect from the place which is the origin of kung fu! There were statues and wall murals and so on of men in various kung fu stances and fighting poses. The temple seemed to have more monks wondering around than the average temple, and they all seemed a lot younger and a bit more in touch with the world as we know it. They probably see a lot more tourists than some of the other places - the Shaolin Temple is a major Chinese tourist destination because of the prevelance of kung fu. We saw the temple and then noticed a little side door which we are glad we went through as it went into a little courtyard, around the entire edge of which were statues of monks in a variety of fighting positions. It was here that a little old man started talking to me. He asked me what country I was from and seemed absolutely bowled over with joy when I said England. He proceeded to tell me for the next few minutes how wonderful England was (I can live with that) though he'd never been there. Then he insisted on having his photograph taken with me and Liam. I think we made his day. No, his week.
After that we went to the Forest of Pagodas. This too was a bit different from the norm. It's basically a big park with hundreds of pagodas in it. All monks of note had a pagoda built in their honour when they died, and monks for generations after have paid their respects to them at the respective pagodas. There is also the common pagoda, to honour every monk that has ever passed through Shaolin. We saw this pagoda, plus the very first one ever made, and a few others of note as well, but we had nowhere near enough time to look at them all.
We wanted to see the performance which we'd been told was at 2pm but was in fact at 2.30, and walked up towards the performance hall. We stopped on the way to get a poem made out of our name (narcissists, the pair of us. You should see the amount of utter rubbish we've acquired because we can put our name on it). It's in traditional characters though, so we can't read it. We'll get Zona (Liam's Taiwanese (therefore uses traditional characters rather than the mainland standard of simplified) tandem partner) on the job : ) I really liked the man's pen, I think if I had a pen like that my characters might look a little fancier! I asked him where he got it, thinking it might be special, and he said "a shop in Luoyang" so I'm guessing it's not that special after all. I'll be on the look-out. I was amused that at this stall, they began as per usual by asking where we were from and then had a conversation amongst themselves about how they didn't know where the UK is. Bless 'em. We told them it was in Europe but this didn't seem to clear the matter up as far as they were concerned; they wanted distances and flight times as well.
It was still a bit early for the performance and we hadn't yet eaten, so we went up to the main entrance section where we'd seen a dining hall. This dining hall, we were sure, was the one where everything was vegetarian and you were served by monks, but we weren't allowed to pass back through the entrance/exit until we wanted to completely leave the temple; to get back for the performance we'd have to buy a new ticket! The guard told us there was a place to eat next to the performance hall. Back we went. We were still half an hour early but we didn't think this would be enough time to eat, so instead we wasted some time buying more tack (T-shirts, postcards and scented prayer beads. Yes, I know I'm likely to never use prayer beads, but you don't know. I may have a spiritual epiphany. And when that time comes, I will be glad my beads are scented.).
I also really needed batteries for my digital camera, which eats power like Pacman. Further down the path, they'd quoted me 40 kuai for 4 batteries, which quite frankly is a shocking rip-off. I am fed up of being over-charged because I'm a white foreigner. Idiots. Don't they know that if they ask for prices like that, they're not going to make ANY money off of me? I laughed in their face at that and walked off. They were calling lower prices out at me and finally dropped to 20, but I was not going to be making any purchases of people that were that dishonest. I bought some off the lady in the T-shirt/prayer bead/postcard shop for 20. The normal price is 8, but I was getting desperate! I'd already asked around all the shops by the performance hall and nobody even had any!
The centre is a wushu training school next to the performance hall. We could see little boys practising their wushu there, which was pretty impressive. These were just day students though, not the real deal. We went into the hall to see one of the shows, which were on almost every hour, not just around 2 as the bus man had led us to believe. The show involved demonstrations of the various weapons used by Shaolin monks, including whips, sticks, daggers, swords, and numchaks. There were also even more spectacular things: the breaking of iron bars with the forehead, and the breaking of wooden spears using the throat alone to push on the sharp spear tips until the pressure snaps them, for example. Also a younger monk contorted himself into the weirdest positions - since watching the DVD I bought, I have learnt that this is called kid's kung fu. I'm not sure why, because it is done by the adults and kids alike. The most incredible was the monk who, using qigong meditation, chanelled his power into his arm. Meanwhile a different monk carried around a plate of glass and tapped it in front of us so we knew it was real. I thought at first he was just going to put his fist through the glass, which I thought was not a good idea even for a monk because they'd be blood, but then they gave him a needle. An ordinary sewing needle. They held a balloon behind the glass. I got the point. Just as I was leaning over to say to Liam "erm... they are aware that this is physically impossible, aren't they?" while fortunately still, captivated by the show, keeping my eye on the proceedings, when the monk threw the needle. It pierced the glass and popped the balloon. Now I know that I find it hard enough to pop a balloon with just a needle by itself, so I laugh to think how pitiful my attempt at the same thing would be. If you throw a needle at a balloon it just glances off, unless it is thrown with huge strength, accuracy and technique. But he threw it through GLASS. They brought the glass back round again to show us the hole which was really small; he hadn't splintered the glass but had just gone right through it with deadly accuracy. Absolutely astounding. I have DVDs if anyone at home fancies borrowing. Okay, I tell a lie, I have a VCD. They are much more popular over here than DVDs... but it should work in your DVD player.
After the performance we left the hall walked around the centre to the exit when I happened to glance back into the hall and saw that there was a gaggle of women excitedly posing with the monks. So we went in to have one taken as well. My camera was on the wrong setting (I curse myself for this) so the picture is quite bad, but Liam's was good. Liam's, though, disappeared when his camera was stolen. We weren't sure how best to approach the monks to ask for a photo as they were still on stage thrashing around with weapons. I heard a woman next to me say that she found on of the monks really attractive (bear in mind that he was about 17 and she was approaching her mid-thirties) but she marched right up to him and gave him her namecard. The Chinese are really big on namecards. What a monk is going to do with her namecard I don't know, but whatever. She got her photo. So I followed suit. Feeling delighted after having got a photo, we went off to get food.
The restaurant didn't seem open but when we asked them they said they were so we ordered shredded potato (nummy) and something called one heart facing Buddha which turned out to be a ring of tofu strips surrounding broccoli (not half as nummy). After eating we knew it was time to get back as apparently our return bus was at 4. First we popped to the toilet. To get the toilet door to shut, I had just that morning slightly had to lift it so it didn't catch on the floor. No problem. This time round I went in the same cubicle and had to do the same thing. But this time when I opened it, it fell right off its hinges and smashed onto the ground with a resounding crash. Oh dear. There was nobody around and I didn't know what to do, so I just scarpered. So if you are the toilet attendant from the Shaolin Temple, I am truly sorry; it was me that left a door lying on your freshly mopped floor. : (
We'd kind of gathered by this point that there was no specific return bus, so when we reached the road, after avoiding a child beggar (child beggars tug my heartstrings, but I have a policy of not giving money to beggars unless I'm in a particularly generous mood, because I never know how honest they are, and I also feel that once I start, I'll never stop! I can't help every beggar in China! Plus the child's mother was hanging around and I hate that; they use the cuteness and pitifulness of the child to get more money for themselves) we followed the example of a group of people who we overheard saying they were going to Luoyang and hailed any minibus that drove past. The first one, though it said it was going to Luoyang, was not actually going that far. But the second one was, so soon we were back in Luoyang. We had to pay 15 to get back as well.
After putting our souvernirs on our beds in the hostel we went out to find a much-needed wang ba (internet cafe). We found one just next to Carrefour. After a while on the computers catching up with the rest of the world, we left and stopped off in Carrefour to buy snacks for the next day's journey to Wuhan. Liam was hungry but I was not especially so he decided he'd eat instant noodles for his dinner. This was until we found French bread baguettes. Which tasted like the real thing. Well, like Tesco's version of the real thing. That became my dinner and then my breakfast too. We were both exhausted so after nibbling on our baguettes for a while, we went to bed. Early again. Partaay animals.
One of the little green signposts: "The flowers is loveable,asks you not to injury" I wish the Chinese would work out that they need gaps after commas!
The gorgeous settings of the Shaolin Temple Scenic Area.
Me at the entrance to the temple. The characters on the gate read, right to left: shao lin si (si is temple).
The temple.
Kung fu poses.
Just a few of the hundreds of pagodas in the Forest of Pagodas.
Us with a young Shaolin Monk.
The sun beginning to set over the mountains in the Shaolin Temple Scenic Area.
The sleeping Buddha - you can see the head in the top left-hand corner, and the legs just about fit in the photo on the right.
A very Thai Buddha at the Oriental Buddha Museum.
Mmm fruit kebab - food of the Gods!
Just a bit of firecracker debris then?
The South Gate. Look how tastefully it is decorated; so understated. It is the Chinese way.
