| From Xi'an we took the train to Luoyang. Luoyang is, how can
I put this delicately, a toilet. There is nothing to redeem the place. It
is, however, a base camp for the Longmen Grottos. There are more than 100,000
images of Bhudda carved into the hills. |
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| How can there be 100,000? Well, some, like these two, are
only a couple of inches high. When you have row upon row of these surrounding
the bigger statues it takes a small bit of mental arithmetic to see how
easy it would be to get to 100,000. |
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| Every nook and cranny is stuffed with these statues. Some
were painted, and some of the paint has lasted. |
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| Some of the statues are two inches high. Some are bigger.
|
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| Much bigger. |
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| Awesome. The little holes are either filled with more Buddha
inages or have been pillaged over the centuries. |
|
| It's one thing to see these from a distance, it's entirely
another to stand underneat them and look up. |
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| The White Horse Temple. After a few weeks in India and now
in china I was beginning to suffer from temple overload. |
|
| With the restrictions on the number of children a Chinses
family can have (one, unless they are out in rural areas, with fines if
they have more children) children get taken everywhere. Most are well-behaved
but you can't help feeling there is an army or little princes and princesses
out there. I think it's sad that they grow up without brothers and sisters.
What is worse is that a married couple will have parents and grandparents
to support. It also hasn't had the desired effect in reducing the rate of
population growth. |
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| The typical temple is guarded by lots of fierce creatures
with unfeasibly wide mouths. |
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| Typical temple scene. |
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| If you could float a coin on the water it brought good luck.
Dus tries, and fails. Modesty prevents me from naming the person who managed
to float their coin. |
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| Pensioners dancing in front of a shopping mall in Luoyang.
Luoyang was the scene of the great dinner fiasco. We walked miles and miles
trying to find a restaurant (KFC was all that we saw) when we came across
a restaurant on a corner. Great! In we went. We were welcomed like the only
customers they had this year. We probably were. They brought us tea in cups
in a state of dubious cleanliness. The menu was all in Mandarin. Then Gemma
saw the curtain hanging in front of the window. It may have been blowing
in the wind, but it looked like it was alive, possibly teeming with little
beasties. Gemma then gave a not-quite Oscar-winning performance of girl
about to heave and we ran out before we had ordered. Where did we eat? Not
in the hotel restaurant we were in the night before which didn't have half
of what we ordered (what kind of restaurant has only one can of coke?) and
where the seasts were suspended from the ceiling by a mixture of cotton
thread and post-it notes. No, we went to the other restaurant in the hotel
and had that great Chinese meal, fish and chips. |
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| Market scene on the road from Luoyang to Kaifeng. |
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| More statues carved into the caves at Gongxhian. We couldn't
take pictures of most of the impressive bits which was a shame, as some
of the stuff inside the caves was amazing. |
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| Statues at Gongyi, from the Northern Song dynasty. Northern
Songs was also the name of the Beatles' publishing company. But this was
out in the open rather than in a Cavern. |
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| Rows of these statues, out in a field in the middle of nowehere.
Brilliant. |
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| Lots of them. |
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| Big chaps, they were. |
|
| Shaolin Temple. We were all miffed that we couldn't stay to
watch the kung-fu exhibition, especially as we had a tortuous journey to
get their. The road was poor, uphill and narrow. I won't say we were nervous,
but you could sense the change in air pressure inside the jeep as buttocks
were clenched and unclenched in the more "woargh" moments. |
|
| We got stopped for lots of photos with locals, but Dus and
Gemma bore the brunt of it. About five minutes after this Gemma was sufficiently
hacked off to cover her head with a scarf. I can't remember if this was
before or after she declined to pose for a photo for a chap who pulled something
out of his pocket and said "I am policeman, we take photo now!".
Charming. Naturally, as the runt of the litter, I attracted least attention
other than the curiosity of how someone like me was walking around with
such lovely ladies. Simple, I told one chap, they are all my wives. |
|
| Of course there was loads of stuff to buy inside and outside,
but you had to be careful when haggling in case they beat the cr@p out of
you. |
|
| Shaolin was packed. Even as a veteran of Cup Finals at Wembley
and internationals at Twickenham, and a long-time commuter on the Northern
Line, I found it a little busy |
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| Kaifeng, a small city with a big population. |
|
| This was the night market during the day, when it was a normal
Chinese city street - poeple and bikes everywhere. |
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| We took our first big gamble in Kaifeng, eating somewhere
where the menu had no English and nobody had their phrasebooks with them.
Whatever it was that we ate it was nice. |
|
| Opinion was divided as to whether this was a normal morning
for this restaurant (staff always dancing about banging cymbals and drums)
or something special. Given the crowd they attracted, probably the latter. |
|
| Longting Park. Big and impressive. Didn't catch too much of
it on tape as first I had to change tapes and then had to change batteries.
Swore a lot, though. |
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| Many Chinese people avoid getting tanned, apparently tanned
skin means you come fromthe south or work on the land. Our local guide at
Longting Park took almost every precaution against possible on a cloudy
day. Maybe I should have brought her a burka from Dubai! |
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