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.

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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.