Fast train to Wuyuan and a 1318 step limestone trail

Friday 18 October 2024 

We shopped for supplies in the morning and found a Chinese supermarket which was fun (for me).  It did mean, though, that we had to walk down pretty much every aisle to work out where everything was.  And, of course, use the translation app to decipher exactly what we were buying.  They put meat into the most innocuous looking things.  

Loaded with bread rolls, bananas, satsumas, nuts, dried fruit and savoury biscuits we caught the train to Wuyuan.  At 6.5 hours this was our longest rail journey of the trip and it was nice to put our feet up and catch up on some reading.  The countryside was mainly flat and we saw some typical Chinese views - a concrete flyover (high speed trains or cars), high rise flats and a construction zone in one, and sunset and metropolis residences in another.

Just so you get an idea of where we went here are a couple of maps.  One has our route, and the other names and a scale bar (it is important that I include one). Sorry I haven't done anything better.  To help, the distance from Xi'an to Luoyang is 375 km, and it's 1000 km from Luoyang to Wuyuan, which we did today.

We stayed in Skywells in the village of Yancun, a scenic village.  Skywells is a beautifully restored wealthy family’s house from the Qing dynasty (about 300 years ago).  These rich home owners made their money in trade and were away for months at a time.  To keep their families safe they built large houses with very small, high-up windows.  To provide water they left gaps in the roof through which rain fell and is collected in jars below - these are the 'sky wells'. 

Saturday 19 October 2024

We explored some local villages today following a limestone trial.  We started at Xinyuan, again finding large properties, such as this temple.

We walked by old paddy fields (yay I’m in rice zone) which reminded me of our walks in Vietnam.  We spotted quite a few spider’s webs - not so great for the entrapped dragon flies.

We climbed 1318 limestone steps through the woods, passing limestone refuges as we went.  A few days later, up our first mountain, we realise how much this was our warm-up!

Down the other side we wandered past Hucun village and its water buffalo.

And encountered a praying mantis.

We walked past an ancient bridge which was being refurbished with few tools except manpower and ingenuity.

We finished our walk at Hongchun.  This is a designated scenic village so we had to pay 30 yuan to stroll around.  The first payment we tried, via WePay, failed. As we’d already left the ticket office (also the local police station) the lady came running after us, animatedly talking to us in Chinese.  We were easy to spot as were the only tourists.

Hongchun had beautiful old buildings but certainly looked as if the younger generation had left for greater things.  We only saw elderly collecting water and staggering up steps with stupidly heavy buckets.

They washed everything in the stream - vegetables and clothes alike.

Later that day we decided to explore the neighbouring village, Sixi.  Like many villages in the area it is a designated scenic village which means you have to pay to enter.  I presume it helps preserve the heritage of the village.  Sixi had a beautiful old bridge.

We also wandered around inside. There were numerous buildings 300/400+ years old with huge entrance meeting areas, two storeys high and intricate wooden carvings.   All with sky wells to collect rainwater.

.

The carving inside the (ex) treasury was wonderful.

The village has only one well. This is for feng shui reasons - the village is the shape of a ship and the well was positioned where the main mast would be. Of course, no village needs two main masts.

On the way back to Skywells we spotted how the much the locals re-use everything.  This is vegetable growing in polystyrene packaging. 

Longmen Grottos

Thursday 17 October 2024

Today was the Longmen, "Dragon's Gate," grottos which were built around 500/600 AD.  They actually got the idea of carved grottos from the Indians, notably the Ajunta and Ellora caves which were carved around 300 BC.  After my cave binge in India earlier this year, 2024 is certainly my 'year of the cave'.

It rained most of the day which was our first wet episode.  Chinese tourists don single-use plastics when it's wet.  Each tourist attraction has a host of sellers plying tourists with umbrellas, plastic rain coats and shoe covers for rainy days.  The western-looking tourists were easily spottable with their gortex jackets ;-).

The west side of the River Yi has the best caves, hewn all over the rock face.  There are over 2000.  

Many of the caves are empty.  They were probably adorned at one stage but the passage of time - erosion, theft and vandalism - emptied them.  It’s particularly noticeable that many of the sculptures are missing their heads/faces. The entrance sign said excessive erosion caused this, but I think not.

There were certainly some really impressive caves.  This is the cave of 1000 Buddhas - the left and right sides walls were adorned with tiny Buddhas. 

The piece de resistance is the Fengxiansi Cave, also known as Grand Losana Buddha Niche.  The Buddha is 17.1 m high, and the sign informed us that the ear was 1.9 m long which is a fun fact.  It is surrounded by four statues on each side and gives the impression of "elegance, solemnity, quietness etc" - quietness was certainly off the menu today due to the crowds, but it was still impressive. 

JC has far more interest in these than I - I am happy to view, take photos and inspect for 10/15 minutes.  JC needs a good half an hour and then a repeat visit with a different camera lens on.  We were one of the few of the 100s of tourists taking photos of the carvings alone.  Most were taking photos of their friends posing this way and that in front of the carved backdrop, plus the women in traditional Chinese garb having photoshoots.  People watching is a hobby in its own right.  Anyway, back to the carvings...

No dabbling allowed.

I was pleased to spot some survey kit.  On the left it looks like a radar to measure the water level, and the instruments on the harness are current meters.

We crossed the river and walked up to the east caves.  They were certainly less impressive than their westerly neighbour but pretty empty which was a bonus.

This is the grotto of the 1000 hands and 1000 eyes.  Not sure I can see the eyes, but hands there are aplenty.

We strolled by the River Yi.  I fancied a coffee and espied a kiosk advertising americanos.  We ordered two.  “Do you want sugar?” the vendor typed into his phone which translated it into English for us.  We shook our heads.  He typed back into his phone “the coffee tastes a bit odd. Sugar is best” so we followed his advice and had sugar.  We watched as he put a dollop of syrup into a mug, a sachet of coffee syrup and cold water.  Doh - we’d forgotten to specify hot!  Fortunately he did us another two so we walked away with hot, syrupy coffee-esque liquid.  It tasted pretty foul (the vendor was right!) but at least it was warm fluid and I managed most of it. 

Next up was Xiangshansi temple.  It was apparently 16th century but it’s been so touched up it was hard to tell where the original bits are.

Most temples have a bell and a drum tower - bell tower shown above on the left.  This was no exception but also had beautiful views across the river despite the haze/smog.

The last section of our ticket price was a visit of White Park which houses the tomb of the 9th Century poet Bai Juyi.  This sign, on a flight of steps, didn't make sense until I checked it in my app and it also translated as 'no sliding' which seemed more like it.

In the evening we headed downtown Luoyang.  We again managed street food although my ‘gluten free veggie’ offering was just rice noodles in broth with some sliced spring onions on top.  Not my most filling meal.  JC fared better with beef noodles.

Taoist temple, the Xi'an mosque and a super speedy train

Wednesday 16 October 2024 

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.