Lanzhou, Xi'an, Luoyang) for almost two weeks. Ann got in gear and
wrote up a pair of blog entries to finish the trip off, and here I am
editing and adding in my commentary. This will bring us almost up to
speed, and maybe tomorrow we'll finally catch up to where we are now.
So:
After a high speed train ride from Xi'an (90 minutes, 350 kilometers!)
we arrived in Luoyang tired, but feeling adventurous enough to take a
city bus to our hotel. After questioning some ladies at the train
station we found the right bus and got on. Feeling victorious we
chuckled to ourselves as the bus pulled out of the station,
congratulating each other on a job well done: taxi avoided. Luoyang
was off to a great start! But the bus made a turn we couldn't account
for, looking at the map, and didn't get back on track. It seemed to
be going the wrong direction, but we talked it over and felt sure the
ladies had steered us in the right direction. They had, after all,
understood what we were asking, discussed a little, and told us in
easy to understand Chinese which number bus to get on. Though we were
now also having doubts about the bus number, which was wrong if we
went by the yellow number spray painted onto the windshield, but right
if we went by the plastic reader board on the front of the bus. Maybe
we had arrived at the East Train Station instead of the one in the
center of town. But it began to dawn on us that we were in the
Luoyang suburbs. Panic. Mike talked to the driver. We had told him
our street initially, and he seemed confident enough that we were on
the right bus, but now the bus was packed with people and there was
clearly some confusion about what was what. We dejectedly got off the
bus and hailed a cab. Luckily, the cab ride was fairly short and we
managed to find the hotel easily enough (there were three Aviation
Hotels on the same street, but ours was the second we tried). We got
checked in and found ourselves with a room on the top floor! Spacious
room, no funny smells, beautiful views of the city - and it was the
cheapest place we stayed on the whole trip! (actually, Mike was upset
by the tower occupying a big chunk of our view with a huge glowing
television orb atop it playing advertisements and blooming flowers(?!)
through the night). Apparently requesting non-smoking had some perks,
and we were in the best room in the hotel!
All this adventuring had gotten us pretty hungry, so we set out to
find some dinner before going to bed. We managed to find a short run
of restaurants by the hotel and chose one based on the fact that it
appeared busy and looked nice. We were seated, given a pair of
picture-less menus, and quickly realized that we had no hope of
deciphering them. No familiar dishes. Not even categories we knew.
Desperate, we turned to our server for help, but (predictably) the
server spoke no English. We resorted to randomly picked dishes and
crossed our fingers that we wouldn't end up with anything too strange.
Unfortunately, that was not to be. Well, actually it wasn't so bad.
The first course was a bland soup (akin to flour water) with noodles.
Boring! Second was a kind of Da Pan Ji (chicken, peppers, red sauce,
noodles) with a lot of particularly spicy sauce. This was tasty, and
we could see the feet easily enough to steer clear of them. Sometimes
this kind of thing was all gizzards and hearts, but there was plenty
of meat in this one. Mike was mixing his boring-soup noodles in with
the sauce. But then we came to the head. Not even the head. Two
halves of a chicken head. Unsettling. Then there were pickled
veggies served alongside the food. And lastly we were served a giant
bowl of a sweet congee with some kind of delicious berry (Ann says
hawthorn) in it. It was sweet and tart and didn't really fit in with
the rest of the meal, but we liked it.
The next day we took the bus to the Longmen Caves (pictured!). It was
a piece of cake catching the city bus from our hotel all the way
there. We got there in the late afternoon, sunny, warm, a nice breeze
blowing. It was perfect. The walk to the caves was peaceful,
following a path along the river, under a long row of willow trees
(there was a second path from the bus stop, through an equally long
line of souvenir stalls, that we turned down in favor of the river
route). We passed through the North entrance and into the large
valley that makes up the site and started to explore. The caves
varied greatly in size, as did the carved Buddhas within. Some caves
had thousands of tiny carved figures. Some were massive. Stairs were
carved into the hillside, and we climbed about oohing and aahing among
the Chinese tourists (who were particularly friendly here). The day
was wonderfully warm and sunny so we took our time and eventually
caught an evening bus back into town.
Mike and Ann
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