Longmen Caves

May 6, 2011

Our hostel in Luoyang was not very interesting but it was quiet! That combined with the exhaustion of the previous day provided us a great night’s sleep. Feeling refreshed, we set off for the transit station to buy tickets for an evening bus to Xi’an. Once again, we encountered some language difficulties, but we managed to get our point across and secured tickets for the 6pm bus. That was the bus we wanted anyway, but we were glad we went early in the day since a couple of the other daily buses were already sold out. After breakfast, we packed our leftover beers into our shoulder bags and caught a taxi to the Longmen Caves.

The Longmen Caves are a collection of Buddhist carvings and statues along the banks of the Yi River, about 14km from Luoyang. There are over 2000 caves and niches and over 100,000 statues. Most of the carvings date to c. 500-600 AD. This is one of the many amazing places that I had never heard of before going to China, but after reading about it in the guide books I could not wait to go. I was particularly excited to see the largest Buddha statue, which is over 56 feet tall!

For the most part, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. The Longmen Caves were truly awe-inspiring. I don’t understand why no one was hawking tours here when we got off the train! So much better than the Shaolin Temple, and closer to Luoyang, too!

Over 2000 niches

I got a new hat today!

Wow!

Buddha's friends

Now that's a big buddha!

We're going to remember to buy a bottle opener one of these days

Lots of little buddhas

At the Medical Prescriptions Cave

On the banks of the Yi River

Bringing beer to the park: in the running for best idea ever

We had a great day; this would remain one of my favorite places of our Chinese trip. I also got to learn a valuable lesson here: be very careful going to the squat toilets with your sunglasses loosely placed on top of your head. (And yes, I did rescue them.) We left with what we thought was plenty of time to take a cab back to the hostel to pick up our bags and then head over to the bus station. Except we ended up with the world’s slowest cab driver! It was also the only female cab driver I’ve ever had. It felt like it took forever to get back to the city! On the bright side, the slow ride gave us plenty of time to look out the window and appreciate the flowers and landscaping. Luoyang is known for its poppies, and although most of the poppies we saw were artificial, there were lots of other pretty real flowers to be seen. And ultimately, we did make it to the bus with plenty of time.

There was a little bit of confusion about which bus to board. We spent some time studying the Chinese characters on signs in the windshields and comparing them to the characters for Xi’an. This wasn’t getting us very far and eventually someone asked where we were going and herded us onto a bus. We still didn’t feel 100% confident we were on the right bus though, so asked other passengers where they were going. We ended up pointing at Xi’an on a map, and after several passengers nodded enthusiastically, we decided we were probably in the right place.

No... this isn't confusing at all!

 

Propped up with pillows on our sleeper bus

As it turned out, our bus was a sleeper bus, which was entirely unnecessary for the 4.5 hour drive. It also felt ironic after our recent train ride experience, where sleepers would have been awesome. The berths were too short for either Ashley or me to lay down flat on our backs – yet another experience where Megan was the right size for China. They were also a little uncomfortable to just sit up in. We settled into lower level bunks (there were also bunks above us) and prepared to relax for the road trip. Except there was an incredibly annoying guy who would not leave Megan alone! He was seated behind me and next to Megan. His initial communication attempts were a little loud and close, but the really bad part is that he would not give up! His first foray into conversation with Megan was begun with a really long sentence, way past our conversational Mandarin abilities. Fortunately, we had mastered “I don’t understand”; so far, this phrase either stopped people’s communication attempts entirely, switched them to very simple words and gestures, or switched them to crude English and gestures. This guy responded with a different, but equally long and complicated statement in Mandarin. Again, “I don’t understand.” So he tried something else. Over and over and over. Megan tried to just ignore him, so he started to poke her to get her attention. I flipped through the phrase book trying to find something to get him to understand. Perhaps a stern “leave me alone!”? (This was from the often mocked dating section, filled with useful sentences like, “I don’t sing and dance.”) Ultimately, the solution was for Megan to change seats. When she moved, I was nervous his attention would fall on me. I felt him peering over my shoulder several times, but I didn’t move at all, afraid any acknowledgment of him would start him up again. Our friend remained interesting throughout the trip. We had already been introduced to “I don’t need no stinkin’ headphones” from our train ride, but this guy took the cake with playing his radio loudly! Ear plugs were insufficient to block out his noise. I ended up listening to some old school Wu-tang Clan – only rap, played louder than I have ever turned up my iPod before, would drown out his music.

The rest of the bus ride was relatively non-eventful, except for witnessing some weird police activity. Not too far from Xi’an we went through a toll both and then pulled over out of the traffic lanes. A police car zoomed up with its lights flashing and circled the bus before stopping next to us. Then a large bag was removed from the bus cargo hold and transferred to the police car. Then we left. Hmmm……

When we arrived in Xi’an, our bus driver motioned for us to get off at a small bus stop on the outskirts of town. We were expecting to be dropped off at a large transit station, so this seemed a little weird. It was almost 11pm, we didn’t know where we were, and there was very little traffic. Fortunately, our bus driver was not abandoning us. He negotiated with a passing taxi to take us to our hostel.

After check-in, we were looking forward to taking advantage of some of the famous fun at the Shuyuan International Youth Hostel. Dumpling parties. Bar downstairs. Free welcome coffee at check-in. And a free beer each night! The place was definitely hopping, with lots of foreigners of all ages and nationalities hanging out. As we settled into our room, I finally admitted to myself that the hotness I’d been feeling all afternoon just might be a sign of sickness. I took my temperature, and with my fever confirmed, I opted to stay in and rest while Megan and Ashley went to the bar. I wanted to be in good shape to see the Terracotta Warriors the next day!