Two Days in Luoyang

We went to Luoyang for our rest time of our China trip, on Saturday night. We got on an overnight train from Beijing. The train was clean and tidy. We talked to some very nice people, which seems like a common occurrence on trains in China. I slept well and was ready to start my trip when we arrived in Luoyang early the next morning. Our guide was waiting for us at the railway station as appointed beforehand. First we went to the Shaolin Temple, which is the home of a very famous martial arts school. Kids are brought to the school to intensely study martial arts. We saw a show and they were very impressive, just like those crazy kungfu movies. One kid even broke two metal bars over his head. There was also some interesting scenery. They had a thing called the forest of towers, it is trees and stone towers mingled together to make a really cool hillside. They also had a pretty cool temple, but we came at the busiest time of the year so it was crazy. Now is the time the Peony flower blooms, and Luoyang is very famous for their Peony flowers so they have a Peony flower festival, it is really a big attraction for China tours. For that reason it is a very popular tourist destination during April and many visitors flock in.
After Shaolin Temple we went to the White Horse Temple. For the most part, just another temple, but there were a lot of flowers and it has a pretty cool story. The guide explained to us the history of this temple in good detail. It was really cool to hear some things about the temple. To travel China, you always get a lot to learn.
That night we ate one of the delicious meals. This meal was particularly spicy so I really enjoyed it. After the meal, David, Cherry and I went to a night snack street, with the guide’s help. There we met an old man who came up to us. We were expecting him to speak Chinese, but he spoke English to us. It wasn’t very good pronunciation, but we were all speechless. He is the first gray-haired Chinese man that has spoken a word of English to me, and he could actually speak decent sentences. We didn’t eat anything too out of the ordinary because we were stuffed, but it was a lot of fun. The next morning after breakfast, our guide picked us up and we headed out for the Longmen Grottoes. All the people we had talked to the night before said Longmen was the prettiest place in Luoyang, and they were right. I have pictures, but it was kind of foggy so the pictures don’t do it justice, it was really beautiful. Especially as a Minnesota boy, it’s great to be out of the big city for a couple weeks. Longmen Grottoes is on a river and it is a whole mountainside with Buddha shrines carved into it. For dinner Rose (our China tour guide) led us to a not very clearly marked local restaurant to have a taste of some real good Luoyang food.The noodles we got were something I’ve never tried before, they had a more creamy sauce which I’ve never had in China but it was great. They also had soda pop in glass bottles that was made right in Luoyang. They had both lime and orange flavored soda, very good to drink while eating hot noodles.
These two days are very interesting, historical and unique tourist sites, plain and friendly local people, all impressed us much.