Longmen Grottoes
It's here in Louyang that I've seen my first Chinese site to really blow my mind. The Longmen Grottoes are about fifteen km from the city of Louyang and easily accessible by local city bus. Some 100,000 statues and images were carved out of the limestone mountainside on both sides of the Yi River. The bulk of the carving took place from 500 to 700 AD and the site is impressive in terms of beauty, size and simple quantity of images. Unfortunately, many of the statues were partially or completely destroyed. Some in the Cultural Revolution, others well before then. It's a real pity since this is a site that is totally inspiring.
The most impressive carving is a 35 meter Buddha surrounded by seven or so of his most trusted henchmen. Even the evil be headers were so beholden by this statue that they couldn't bring themselves to completely destroy it. Standing face to face with this enormous, I was just enraptured. A traveller I met joked that the site is so impressive, it must have led to converts on the spot- of this, I'm sure. I enjoyed the site so much, I've resolved to visit one of the other two special grottoes in China either west in Dunhuang or north in Datong- stay tuned to see where I end up.
Kung Fu- Holywood Style
The previous day I visited the Shaolin Temple on Mount Song. The word temple should be used very loosely. While Song mountain was in fact the meditation center and final resting place of one of Shaolin's most famous monks, the complex is more of an academy than a monastery. It was fun to see the kung fu performance. But the whole thing stank of showmanship, seemed to lack the spiritualism that is associated with the acrobatics and all the kitsch was a bit over the top. It actually had the feeling of many tourist sites in China. Once special places that have been exploited for their touristic possibility and stripped of their wonder.
This is exasperated by the typically high admission charges, and newish construction. Most of the buildings in the Shaolin complex were built in the past twenty years, and it's hard to think spiritually when the first two things I noticed were a gigantic projector screen spewing advertisements and various stores selling kung fu crap, some of which included Japanese swords and pieces from Lord of the Rings....very authentic. It's a common complaint of travelers I've met, and one that I agree with, that the admission charges to various cultural sites, mountains and any general tourist location seems to be very high. For example, the Shaolin Temple complex cost about $18 admissions. This does not seem like a large sum of money, but relatively speaking for China it's expensive. Consider that my food, lodging and local buses for two days were about this amount and you can see that the tourist ministry is stretching the realm of reasonability. How can locals afford to experience their country if they can't afford it?
Who Knew Stalin Read?
Ever since I've arrived, I've been on a half-hearted search for a Chinese phrasebook. Since I'll be here for a bit, I figured it's essential for me to be able to hold a one minute conversation along the lines of .... hello, my name is avi. I am from the US. Where are you from? I like China, the people are very nice and the food is delicious. Have you been to X? No I am not married. No, I don't want to meet your daughter (cousin, aunt, girlfriend, wife), etc. But I have been unsuccessful in my search. Finally, after two weeks I have a book.
I went to the big Xinhua in Louyang (1.4 mil peeps). I believe that Xinhua is the national bookstore (is there a national ice cream shop as well?), and it is well stocked with books about English. I even found about thirty books in English, but I couldn't find a simple English-mandarin phrasebook. Thirty minutes into my search, it was time to finally ask someone. After taking guidance from the hanging posters of Mao and Stalin (really?), I jumped in. I had composed several very elegant sentences to get across my message. 'Hello, I do not speak Chinese. I want to speak Chinese. Kanji, no good.' This was met by bewilderment and excitement. Naturally, the booksellers quickly ran for one of their mandarin-English books. I tried to explain that Kanji doesn't work for me. They did not understand. After five minutes, they called in the big guns, someone from the first floor. The results were the same. Finally, a local girl understood what I was saying and together we found the one, (one!) English-mandarin book in the whole store. Like all language books I've seen, I immediately wanted to rip out the pages for half of it, do I really need to know the names for Olympic sports and their associated Beijing venues? I think not. I don't need a list of area codes in the country. Who decides what goes in here? While all the other English books seemed reasonably priced (less than $5), and printed at the minimal cost, I feel I picked up the most expensive book in the store- almost $10, and the one that probably is copy written. Grumble...At least I got to see posters of babies in cameo, and full military garb (think the scene in Bruno) at the checkout line. That seemed to distract me from being ripped off.
I'm off to try some traditional local cuisine and tomorrow I'm headed to Xian, which is famous for it's ancient cloud of soot- I'm very excited.
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