Read other travel blogs I have written about China here.
After spending a few days in Beijing we headed to Luoyang. I am writing this almost a year after the trip, but I think I remember the train from Beijing to Luoyang being about 10 hours, I don't remember. We took a night train so I slept most of the way. The whole purpose of this stop was to see the Longmen Grottoes and Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of Kung Fu.
As we were waiting in the train station in Beijing a man approached us and asked where we were going. We told him we wanted to see the Longmen Grottoes and possibly Shaolin if we had time. He mentioned that he had seen us earlier in the day at Tianamen Square, how he could remember us out of the thousands of people there I have no clue, but whatever.
He informed us that he was
living in Louyang and if we wanted we could stay at a place near his house and
borrow his car to drive to Shaolin. Apparently the bus goes down back roads and
took a long time. I didn't know if this guy was being serious, a stalker, a
government spy watching tourists, or what. Either way, he was weird. He asked
where we were staying on the train and not wanting to seem rude I hesistated but
told him anyway. He said he'd find his seat and then come meet us.
About 20 minutes later or so after talking to this person we boarded the train. Hoping he'd have a bad memory and forget where we were staying we walked really fast to find our seat and leave him behind in the crowd of people rushing to get on the train. After about 10 minutes I figured we were clear and not have to worry about that guy anymore.
Sure enough though, he comes
strolling down the aisle and found us. When I saw him approaching I pretended
like I was alseep. That failed miserably. He said hello and "woke" me up. I told
him I was tired and wanted to get some sleep since it was kinda late. He bought
the story and said he wanted to sleep too but let us know he'd be back in the
morning when we arrived to tell us it was our stop.
Our chinese people just overly nice or what? I guess being American we don't act that way to strangers so I don't know the answer to that question. So once again, as the train came rolling into the station in Luoyang our little friend was there to greet us. He said he'd help us find a taxi and then take us to the place. Like most stations though there were a lot of people there to meet tourists and ask if they wanted a place to stay.
Some lady said we could stay
at her hotel, it was right across the street, so that was convenient and they
had tours to the Grottoes and could help us get tickets to Shaolin. Seemed good,
but again I didn't want to seem like we were being rude to our new friend. The
guy was insisting the area wasn't safe and we should go with him instead. After
being ripped off over and over in Beijing and Shanghai I didn't know if he had
some scheme to make money off of us also, take us somewhere where we'd be sold
as sex slaves, or if he was legitimately this nice.
After spending a few days in Beijing we headed to Luoyang. I am writing this almost a year after the trip, but I think I remember the train from Beijing to Luoyang being about 10 hours, I don't remember. We took a night train so I slept most of the way. The whole purpose of this stop was to see the Longmen Grottoes and Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of Kung Fu.
As we were waiting in the train station in Beijing a man approached us and asked where we were going. We told him we wanted to see the Longmen Grottoes and possibly Shaolin if we had time. He mentioned that he had seen us earlier in the day at Tianamen Square, how he could remember us out of the thousands of people there I have no clue, but whatever.
About 20 minutes later or so after talking to this person we boarded the train. Hoping he'd have a bad memory and forget where we were staying we walked really fast to find our seat and leave him behind in the crowd of people rushing to get on the train. After about 10 minutes I figured we were clear and not have to worry about that guy anymore.
Our chinese people just overly nice or what? I guess being American we don't act that way to strangers so I don't know the answer to that question. So once again, as the train came rolling into the station in Luoyang our little friend was there to greet us. He said he'd help us find a taxi and then take us to the place. Like most stations though there were a lot of people there to meet tourists and ask if they wanted a place to stay.
To get out of the mess we found ourselves in we told him to give us his number, directions to his house, and if we didn't like the hotel being offered we'd come find him. We had no intention of doing that of course.
We told the lady that we wanted to go see the Grottoes and she named a price, it sounded good so we told her we'd go take showers, get some food, then meet up with her in about an hour or so. A little bit late she came driving in in a mini van, a very small mini van. The kind you see all over China.
Unknown to us, this seemed to be a private tour, just me and my brother...at least to start. A few minutes into the trip someone called the driver. I don't know if they were yelling at each other or if they just talk this loud on a regular basis.
We made a little pitstop and picked up some lady. This lady became our official "tour guide". So it's our driver, a tour guide, me, and my brother on our way to the Grottoes. We drive about 10 minutes and stop, nowhere near anything that looks like pictures I've seen of the Grottoes. We tell the ladies, in english, which they don't speak any of, that we want to see the Grottoes.
Some young
girl showed us around, I don't know what we saw, or what we were looking at, I
just shook my head and smiled.
It was not that bad, and at
least I saw more of the city then I had planned.
During the tour the lady with us left. She went across the street and seemed to be shopping for clothes or something with her driver friend. After this stop we went somewhere else, I really don't remember what it was, but again I remember thinking I didn't care to see it. So after that stop we went to the Grottoes. Again the lady insisted on paying for the tickets herself and told us to stay back. Again I think trying to rip us off. Whatever, after a week in China I was used to it. She told us we had 2 hours to see the Grottoes and then meet her back at her van.
The Grottoes were very cool. There were some small little statues and carvings in the rocks and the hike around was pretty neat.
Part of the Grottoes are on one side of a river, and the rest are on another. We bought the ticket that allowed us to see both sides, although the second side wasn't nearly as crowded or as cool. As we crossed a bridge to see the other side two little old ladies decided they wanted us to have some small buddha statues.
There was a Chinese family in
front of us as we walked across the bridge, and they could speak English because
they were laughing at us about what we were saying.
They also said they were
sorry that we were being harrassed. I told the little old ladies to sell them to
the Chinese family, but they didn't seem to understand. At one point one of the
ladies stuck her buddha's in my bag, I guess trying to force me to buy them. I
took them out and put them on the ground and kept walking. They did the same to
my brother, he not being a jerk like me finally gave in. I don't know if it was
out of pity or just tired of being harrassed. He ended up buying 20 buddha's, so
4 packs for 10 RMB. Again, I don't think they wanted money, they just wanted to
dump their buddha's off on someone else.
Needless to say, this was not the last time little old ladies followed us around trying to sell us stuff we didn't want only to have us give in and buy the junk.
After seeing the Grottoes we made our way
back to the van. The lady seemed to be gone, so we did a little shopping. We
found some really cool paintings of Peony Flowers, supposedly they are the city
flower of Luoyang. It was a scroll painting that we ended up giving to our
parents. The price was very good, about 80 RMB and it was a rather large
painting at about 5 feet long and 3 feet wide. While we were doing our shopping
we saw a cute little girl playing outside. She was wearing a dress and running
around on the street and petting a dog. She then walked over to the middle of
the road, squatted, and peed all over the ground. Fantastic! Then she got up and
started playing again like this wasn't some unusual thing to do.
Needless to say, this was not the last time little old ladies followed us around trying to sell us stuff we didn't want only to have us give in and buy the junk.
The next day we went to Shaolin and again were tricked into going to a few stops along our route we didn't care to see.
That pretty much sums up our trip to Luoyang and the Longmen Grottoes! If you ever get the chance you should definately go!
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