In Kunming

[Syn7]

DUDE. Jealous!!!

Nice to see that it's all working out rather well for you. Good luck as you move forward.

[ShaolinDan]

If you are still in Luoyang, feeling extremely hungry, and have a friend who lives there, I recommend taking that friend out to lunch or dinner for Luoyang "Shui Xi" (water banquet). Luoyang's cuisine is very different from the typical Henan fare and is worth checking out.

And if you visit Henan without eating any "hui mian", you will make Li Shimin cry.

Well, unfortunately I'm here on my own. I'd love to try the water banquet, but 24 courses of soup sounds like a bit much for me...maybe another time.

As far as Hui mian goes, well, Kunming has tons of Hui and I'm just coming from Xi'an, where, of course I had to check out the special Xi'an noodles, but don't worry, I'm on a budget, so there's no way I won't be eating my fair share of noodles in Henan.

[ShaolinDan]

DUDE. Jealous!!!

Nice to see that it's all working out rather well for you. Good luck as you move forward.

Thanks Syn. So far so good... Anyway, I've met a few people who had been traveling around SE Asia who said Vietnam was their favorite country, so you should be in for a nice trip too.

[ShaolinDan]

Luoyang was a pretty miserable and unappealing city--dirty, nothing going on, and terrible air quality, and almost no foreigners (which means way too much attention for me), but it was worth the trip all the same.

The Longmen Caves were not what I expected, I thought I'd be going inside caves covered with carvings, actually it was just thousands of little hollows carved into the cliff face--still cool though. There was also one VERY impressive set of enormous buddhist staues--not anywhere near the size of Leshan, but I still got to see a pretty big buddha after all, so that was cool.
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Guanlin Temple was a very cool trip for me. A different kind of temple than I've seen so far.
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Supposedly Cao Cao buried General Guan's head behind these doors.
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White Horse temple was good to go to since it's so old and important for Buddhism in China, but after all the time I've spent in Buddhist temples here, it just wasn't that exciting for me. The one thing that would have been awesome to see was the "Depository of Magical Weapons." But unfortunately that was closed.

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Funny thing about the White Horse Temple, is they're building an addition there of "International Buddhist Temples," so you can see (currently under construction) replicas of temples in India and Thailand (and maybe more later). Very funny to me. Might have appreciated it more if I hadn't already been to dozens of temples in Thailand this year.

Dengfeng in many ways is just as miserable as Luoyang, but the air pollution is not as bad and of course, it's got gong fu--and lots of it. Also, I've managed to meet up with Rendahai, so at least I have someone to talk to and to give me some insider info on the place. Mostly I've just been walking around, and checking out some of the local schools, and pondering whether or not it's worth the money to train at one of them for only a few days (probably not), but I did have a fantastic visit to Shaolin Temple a couple of days ago, but I'll post about that on the "Shaolin Journey's" thread. http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/foru...t=49520&page=6

So, I'm having a great time here, but Henan is a far cry from Yunnan. No blue sky, no beautiful perpetual spring weather, and the food here is relatively boring (noodles, dumplings, noodles, bread, and more noodles)--but it's cheap. Can't wait to have some real western food--one month to go! (and two days, but who's counting? )

[ShaolinDan]

And if you visit Henan without eating any "hui mian", you will make Li Shimin cry.

Ooops, sorry Paz, I just assumed hui mian meant noodles made by hui muslims...didn't realize that in Henan, it's just one kind of noodles. Anyway, I ate them a few times, so Li Shimin can rest in peace.

Hung out in Dengfeng for a while. Some neat old things to see there even if it's not a very nice place and it was fun to see kung fu everywhere I went. It was cool hanging out with RDH and getting to see some of what he's learned out there. He's managed to tap into some pretty cool stuff.
My overall impression of the kung fu students in Dengfeng is that they're all over-training. Personally, I think they're academics, quality of life, and even their kung fu would all improve if they just trained half as much. Saw a few people with really amazing skill (especially young kids), but so many others who just don't seem to be getting as much back as they put into it.

Also spent a few days training at Shaolin Temple. Glad I did it. Wasn't sure I wanted to, but I'm sure I'd regret it if I hadn't...a bit more on that on the Shaolin Journeys thread...hopefully a lot more to come when I finish my next article for the ezine.

Anyway, not going to post pics of Dengfeng or Shaolin. If you follow the magazine then you've seen it all before.

[ShaolinDan]

From Dengfeng I headed to Pingyao in Shanxi. A really long and expensive trip with no direct routes, but I did get to ride in a high-speed train which was cool-- 300km/hr is definitely the fastest I've ever traveled on land before.

Got to see a lot of the Shanxi countryside. Pretty beautiful, lots of terraced mountains and little farm villages.

Pingyao was very nice. Another old city. A really beautiful one, though, with city wall still intact and lots of "old" buildings that really are old. Also, like Dali, once getting off the main drag, there were lots of quiet streets free of tourists with just real people living real lives in real old homes. And unlike Lijiang, it's possible to find cheap places to eat and sleep.

I liked Dali a bit better because of the nearby mountains for hiking and because of its really nice expat scene, but I still enjoyed a week in Pingyao (most people only spend three days). It's too much traveling for me to keep hopping around, I'd rather just stay somewhere nice for a while.

One thing that made Pingyao unique is that it's the home of the first bank in China. This also made it the home of some of the first escort services in China. These old courtyard buildings have all been turned into little mini-museums. So I was able to go into not just the home of China's first bank, but also several former escort services (as well as a wushu museum). It was nice to be in an old town with a little kung fu touch. Unfortunately most of the captions were Chinese only, so I couldn't read about the lives and feats of the various kung fu heroes recounted there.

Anyway, great place to spend a few days, highly recommend it to anyone traveling in China, just make sure to wander the side streets when you get sick of the tourist nonsense.

[ShaolinDan]

From Pingyao I went to Datong in the far north of Shanxi. But more about Datong in the next post.
The real reason I went to Datong was to see the Yungang Caves.
On the morning that I intended heading to the caves, I got talked into doing my first tour in China. It actually worked out OK. I managed to see the Hanging Monastery (which I'd planned on skipping) in the morning and the caves in the afternoon.
The Hanging Monastery was really beautiful, but seriously overpriced. In the long term I'm glad I did it, but right now it would be nice to have that extra money. 124 RMB for a 30 minute walk through of a little temple just isn't a good deal. Still, it was unique and pretty...wish I was a student and could pay half price on all this stuff.
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Yungang Caves were absolutely fantastic though. I posted earlier about visiting the Longmen Caves outside of Luoyang. The Yungang Caves are the same deal only 30 years earlier--when the capital moved from Datong to Luoyang, Yungang was abandoned and Longmen begun.

However, Yungang was MUCH better than Longmen. Although Longmen is bigger (more ground and more caves and a bigger biggest Buddha), Yungang is far more impressive. Perhaps because Yungang is in soft sandstone, whereas Luoyang was carved in limestone, some of the caves in Yungang actually go in pretty deep, they're not just hollows like in Longmen. Also, in Yungang you are actually allowed to go inside a number of the caves and walk around (which is really refreshing on a hot summer day). Also, the statues at Yungang are far better preserved, some of them even still have the original pigments on them. There's even a huge gilt covered seated buddha (however no pictures allowed in that cave to protect the color). And finally, a band of Cultural Revolutionists did not decide it would be a good idea to smash the heads off hundreds of the buddhas there as they did at Longmen. So, this was fantastic. To anyone traveling in China I'd say skip Longmen entirely and just go to Yungang.
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Oh, yeah, also, you can see a little corner of a ruined section of the Great Wall on the hill above Yungang. But it's not very photogenic, so I'll hold off on the Great Wall pics until Beijing

[ShaolinDan]

So based on everything I read and everyone I talked to, I really wasn't expecting much from Datong. It's just somewhere people stop to see Yungang.
However, I don't like to sleep somewhere without getting to know the place, so I devoted today to walking around Datong. Actually I found it amazing.

Datong would make a very interesting case-study on China. It is a sh*thole that is trying to become a paradise. Originally a coal city, just five years ago Datong had gray skies and was covered in black coal dust. But now the coal mines are running low and the local government is spending huge amounts of money trying to make tourism Datong's new economy. Though much of the city is still rundown and dirty, parts of it are extremely nice--and it now has blue skies. Nowhere that I've been in China has so dramatically captured the contrasts of "real" China.

Although there are still some beautiful old buildings in Datong (and some rundown old homes), much of the old city is being rebuilt from scratch. The government has even undertaken the massively expensive project of rebuilding the old city walls (based on old photographs).
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It's really an incredible (if somewhat cheesy) undertaking. It's possible that in a few years from now, Datong will be a thoroughly beautiful (if somewhat fake) city, but right now it's an incredible mish-mash of everything. Really an incredible place. One day walking around Datong puts you right in touch with the pulse of China.

On one side of the road you have this:
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And on the other side (literally) you have this:
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Some of the new stuff is tacky, but a lot of it is quite beautiful:
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[ShaolinDan]

What can I say, I was inspired. This is all from just a half a day walking around the city, mind you.

[ShaolinDan]

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One of the real standouts of Datong is this 9 Dragon Spirit Wall. It's more than 600 years old and is China's largest glazed ceramic tile wall.
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There's also a lovely 5 Dragon Spirit wall:
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There were also some beautiful and very old statues in some of the temples, but no pics allowed in there.

Okay. Well, that's more than enough of Datong. It really did capture more of the essence of China in less space than anywhere else I've been. Sadly it will probably be much less interesting in just a couple of years from now. I'll be curious to find out if their bid at becoming a top tourist destination works out for them.

Tomorrow it's on to my last stop, Beijing. And two weeks from today I fly home. Yay!

[TaichiMantis]

I really enjoy this thread! Thanks for all the pics!

[ShaolinDan]

I really enjoy this thread! Thanks for all the pics!

Thanks, I'm glad to hear it. I'm enjoying it, too. It's nice having something unique to share. In a couple weeks I'll be stuck with just sharing my tired opinion on the same tired MA subjects.

[Dragonzbane76]

great pics!

[ShaolinDan]

Thanks man!

[Gowgee]

Thanks for sharing, Shaolin Dan!