This morning we visited the Temple of Eight Immortals. It is one of the most important Taoist temples around, on the Taoist pilgrimage route. It is thought to be built in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and was where one of the last emperors hid during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
One of the monks said 'bonjour' to us as we wandered through. Again, we were the only non-Chinese visitors there.
You can see where people run their hands over the brass text.
On the way to the metro we stopped for street food. We were learning how to better interpret menus - the symbol for rice was easy, rice noodles we got the hang of. And with JC being able to confirm in Chinese there was no meat involved we were off. £1.70 for two.
We popped to the Xi’an mosque. It’s pretty impressive squeezed inside the back alleys of the Muslim area. It was founded in 742 CE and extended over various Chinese dynasties. We didn’t have a lot of time but cruised around enjoying the architecture as much as we could - such as the wooden memorial archway and the stone memorial gateway.
I’ve seen quite a few mosques in my time (Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in particular) and this looked most unmosque-like. I couldn’t even see the crescent anywhere. It really did look like a Chinese temple with its minarets and pavilions, but what would I know?
In the past few days we frequently saw Chinese dressed up in period costume. It was usually women dressed in geisha-like dresses, black hair wigs and white painted faces. Everywhere we went we’d see them with various props - flowers, balloons and even plastic swords - and a photographer taking numerous poses of them. Around the bell tower there were 10s of photographer set ups with tripod, lights and props. Occasionally we saw guys dressed up as ancient warriors. Once they finished their photo shoot they’d pop into the 7-11 for shopping, or catch the metro. It was so normal to see them wandering around no one looked twice.
More random asides - I found a friend (my future self?) and was fascinated by the noodle section in a shop.
Our train to Luoyang was mid afternoon so we headed for Xi'an North station. It was HUGE! I’ve seen many international airports smaller than this. You arrive and have your luggage scanned to enter. Then you queue up at gates to depart. My brain was obviously confused as I kept talking about our plane to Luoyang.
When you buy train tickets, and some other tickets like tourist attractions, you have to enter your ID number. Therefore, when you travel, you only need your ID card (e-tickets are so yesterday). As every traveller but us, it seemed, was Chinese they could use their ID cards to get through the gates. The only ID we had was our passports (which we carried everywhere) so we had to queue in the ‘special assistance’ lane for every ticket barrier.
Chinese trains, including metros, are very well organised and everything ran on time. On the metros, as you near a station, a diagram of the escalators appeared on a screen so you could see which way to turn when you stepped onto the platform. Likewise for this train, there were digital displays on the platform showing exactly where each carriage door would line up.
On arriving in Luoyang we hopped on the metro (such beautiful tickets - they are plastic and get eaten by the machine for reuse once you've finished your trip) and it was door to door for our hotel.
Holiday Inn Expresses aren’t plush but they are reliable and, in this case, cheap. And they did breakfast. We had another hot pot this evening: this time we had a little hotpot each so JC's lost meat didn't end up swanning around in my pot.
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