Last stop before Hangzhou: Luoyang

(Chris)

Well, the 4 of us are almost at the end of our tour of southern/central China before we settle down for 5 weeks in Hangzhou.  Our last stop: Luoyang.

We spent the day yesterday in the beautiful town of Pingyao.  With a well-preserved city wall and beautiful pagodas and temples, it was a delight to spend the day wandering through the streets.  We had some trouble understanding our tour guide, Wang, but he was a very pleasant man.  

We said adiós to Mr. Wang at 1:00 a.m. this morning to catch the overnight train to Luoyang.  The 4 of us had a great night’s sleep!  We had ‘soft sleepers’ - as they call them here - and we slept for almost the entire 10 hour train ride.  I think we’re all starting to run out of steam ...  

These past 2 weeks have been absolutely amazing, but I think we’re all looking forward to leaving our suitcases in one place for a while.

Our new tour guide, George, was waiting for us as we got off the train.  He’s a really nice man and his English is stellar.  We all hopped in the van that was waiting for us and drove through the streets of Luoyang.  It’s a small city - only 1.5 million people.  :)  It’s mind-boggling how many cities there are in China with a population of 1 million or more.  Look it up...I think there are close to 200.  There are less than 10 American cities that have a population of 1 million or more.  Think about that for a minute - it’s crazy!  (There are many U.S. cities that have a metropolitan areaof 1 million or more, but look at the numbers for the population within the city limits).  

Our first stop was for lunch at a nicely decorated restaurant that served a lot of local dishes.  The first plate that was brought out was a brown, gelatinous dish with white chunks that was served in a primitive looking chafing dish.  The woman that served this to us saw our faces and pointed to the menu to show us what it was.  It was item #204 on the menu and the description was entirely in Chinese.  We just nodded and said “xie xie”.  We were all hesitant to eat #204.  The first to try it was Colin.  He said it was OK, so we all then began to take small samples.  It was like eating red Jell-o with chunks of garlic.  It was...interesting.  We found out it was sweet potato noodles.  Other dishes started to be served and we really enjoyed the lunch.

After trying some #204, George took us a few miles outside of the city to see the Longmen Grottoes.  Here there are hundreds of caves (natural and man-made) filled with thousands of statues/figures that were sculpted out of the limestone hillsides.  The sculptures depict mostly Buddhist subjects and some are more than 1,500 years old.  The work on these started around 493 A.D. and continued for almost 400 years under different dynasties and emperors (and 1 empress - Empress Wu.)  Some of the sculptures are incredibly well preserved and others have been defaced, eroded and stolen throughout the years.  Some emperors saw this area as a valuable place for prayer and commissioned artists/sculptors to continue the work.  Others, who weren’t believers in Buddhism, had some sections destroyed.  

After our enjoyable visit to the Grottoes, we drove to our hotel.  Our hotel is on a hillside and is attached to a Martial Arts School.  The hotel isn’t too bad.  It has heat!!  Our last hotel did not.  The bathroom, much like the last 2 hotels, has a shower that rains over the toilet bowl.  It’s just one room with a toilet and a shower (that has no hot water).  

We had dinner tonight in the function hall of the hotel/dorm.  The dinner was actually pretty good.  It was very similar to other dinners we’ve had over the past 2 weeks.  My favorite is a dish that looks like scrambled eggs with large chunks of tomatoes in it.  It’s quite good.  The highlight of dinner, however, was the cartoon that we watched on the TV over our table.  There was a cartoon on that had seizure-inducing animation.  It was in Chinese, so we weren’t able to understand everything that was going on, but it appeared to be a cartoon about kids that had super powers that were trying to save their village from evil beings.  One of them - an obese feline that fought them with its flatulence.  It was quite charming.

After dinner, George drove us to the local ‘village’.  When I say ‘village’, it’s probably a city that has the same population of Metro West Boston from Worcester to Braintree.  There was a fireworks display to celebrate the Lantern Festival.  The streets were blocked with cars, so the driver dropped us off and we walked about 1/2 mile down the street to get close to the action.  It was very cool.  The street was blocked to traffic, so it was just pedestrians and scooters.  Some people built fires in the street to keep warm and just were enjoying the fireworks with their friends and families.  

It was a good day!  Tomorrow we’re having Kung Fu lessons here in the hotel.  I’m going to try and stay in the back of the room so nobody sees me.  Wish me luck.