中国古代的国都洛阳热烈的欢迎您！

So, what real world use does a week or so of studying basic Confucianism and ancient Chinese culture have (besides passing our very very real tests)? A historical trip to the Ancient Chinese capital of Luoyang of course! So, around 8PM one Thursday night (Nov 11?) we piled onto a bus and headed to the Train Station. This meant two things. One, no tests on Friday (Yes, no tests! No tests! Yes, CET paid for us to stay in a 4 star hotel and to NOT have tests...can you tell how much of a treat this was?) and Two, we took an overnight, hard sleeper to Luoyang. For those of you who have never ridden a sleeper train in another country, they roughly look like this:

That's actually not my picture, but it's the exact kind of train we rode in, so that's the exact kind of environment we spent roughly...9 hours in? 3 bunks on one side, 3 bunks on the other (oh, and that top bunk is MUCH, MUCH higher up than it looks, even when you're standing there), a small space in the middle separating them, and then an aisle down one side of the car so you can navigate. I had the middle bunk, which actually wasn't so bad when we finally went to sleep. Naturally, we spent a good few hours doing what college students do for the first time on an overnight train, staying up way too late than what what was good for a 6:30 AM arrival and wake up call. I'm actually kind of glad I stayed up instead of immediately going to sleep. The train ride was interesting. We stopped a bunch of times to let other people on and off the train. China is a whole lot like Texas. You have a few big cities, and in between there's a whole lot of nothing. And a couple of the cities are nothing but manufacturing cities that reminded me a little of Houston (big, not too aesthetically pleasing, surrounded by farmland). Someone once told me "No matter where you go, everywhere you go, it's all the same". That holds true even on the other side of the world.

So when we arrived in Luoyang, we were luckily able to check into our respective hotel rooms(they had told us beforehand that since were checking in so early, we may not have all of our rooms, and that all 100 of us would be stuffed into 8 or so rooms to freshen up...that wouldn't have been so pleasant). So get this. There were an odd number of girls on the trip, and due to complications with losing her Chinese ID card, my roommate at CET couldn't go on the trip. So guess who the ONLY person on the entire trip who didn't have a roommate in the hotel was? Yep. This one. And this was NOT some dinky hotel. 4 stars in China is something else. There was a marble lobby. The service people spoke English. The other guests were all wearing suits. You could flush the toilet paper. You could drink the tap water. THERE WERE BATHTUBS! I TOOK A BATH! I actually took THREE Baths. Yes, I spent this educational, historical trip taking baths. And I am not ashamed to admit it. All I needed was some bubble bath and some champagne and I would not have left that damn bathroom.

So, indulgences aside, we actually had a packed schedule. Our first trip was to the Luoyang Grottoes, which was indeed a sight to see. There are thousands of grottoes carved into the mountain side from thousands of years ago, and of course the one of the world's largest stone carved Buddhas is there as well. The smaller the niches and carvings, the lower the person's ranking is. Only Emperors and people of important ranking could afford private niches and bigger carvings. During the Tang (?) Dynasty people started to remove the heads and destroying much of the stuff there out of rebellion against the Buddhists. Interestingly enough, during the Cultural Revolution, Mao declared the Grottoes a heritage sight (it is in his home province of Henan after all) and it was protected (at least so the guide told us, none of the damage was done 大文命 [cultural revolution]。。。)

So after the grottoes, it was off to lunch at a fancy hotel restaurant, none of which I could eat, because of course I'm me, and of course my body doesn't get used to rapid environment changes with any sort of ease, so while we were at the grottoes I developed a crippling migraine (hence the pained look on my face in most of the pictures, most of you will have picked that out already). Luckily one of the guys had Excedrin migraine on him (he's actually in the Army, not in college, go figure, I didn't know that before then, always prepared! lol), but it didn't start to work until a few hours later.

After an hour or so bus ride, we arrived at Bai Ma Si, the first and foremost Buddhist temple in China. As our tour guide said, "Is number one Buddhist temple in China!" Speaking of our tour guide, he was really cute. He was very enthusiastic, and gave our tour mostly in Chinese, which he found very weird. He told us he was used to giving his tours in English (because his customers are mostly laowai). So I guess to prove to us that he could in fact speak above average English, he would throw in enthusiastic sentences in English here and there when he thought we didn't understand something. But it was always the really simple stuff we without a doubt did understand...it was interesting to say the least.

Back to the temple, it was gorgeous, one of those places where once you enter, you get this feeling that you've stepped back a few hundred years. Buddhist temples are by far my favorite places to visit in china. The environment is so peaceful, and the incense hanging in the air is calming and sort of envelops you as you walk through the complex. I've offered incense both at Yonghegong and now at Bai Ma Si. It's actually kind of weird, my migraine was only getting worse, but I still really wanted to offer incense at the temple, so I went and bought some from a monk. He asked me what I wanted, and I said peace and tranquility, since it felt like World War III was going on in my head, (I won't say who I think the main players were, but I'm sure you guys can guess, lol). I went to the back of the complex to offer and meditate since I didn't exactly want all my classmates looking on, and did my thing. By all means, being that close to cloying incense should have made my migraine ten times worse, but almost immediately my head cleared and my body eased up. It was more likely than not a placebo effect of some sort, I wanted my migraine to be gone so badly that finally it went away, but at the same time it is kind of cool. I told Lauren about it when we got back on the bus because she was curious about how I was doing (I was crying after lunch because I was in so much pain), and she told me it was definitely a sign. The jury remains out, but it was interesting, to say the least.

After a fun filled day seeing sights around Luoyang, we went back to the hotel to rest up a bit, and then went to the old city for a true 有洛阳特色的晚饭 (you luoyang tese de wanfan: Luoyang style dinner!)。We asked our Taxi driver (who thanks to Hao Yuan was under the impression that Me, Kenny, and DJ were all French...DJ kindly played up this impression by only talking to the Driver in French) where the best place to sample the famous Luoyang Water Banquet would be. Yes, Luoyang Water Banquet. He kindly dropped us off right in front of the Old City's best such restaurant, and we spent the next hour eating a 16 course banquet of different kinds of soups. Yep. Soups. Doesn't sound particularly filling, however they were absolutely delicious, and between 17 or so people, we couldn't even finish all of them. By the time there were 3 courses left, we were all groaning, saying "No more! No more! 吃不下！吃不下！ （chi bu xia! literally: unable to eat any more, like, there's no more room to eat anything else, it won't go down! lol) Of course, the 特点 （tedian: characteristic) of the evening was poor, lone vegetarian DJ...with every dish that came to the table, she would ask the waitress before the dish even hit the table “有肉吗？” "you rou ma ?" (does it have meat?). Before long, the waitress was pointedly ignoring her, would give her spiel (she explained the history behind each dish when she delivered it to the table), and quickly run off, pretending she hadn't heard DJ's plaintive cries. Soon, we were all chiming in with DJ, 17 or so of us calling off a clearly flustered fuwuyuan, “有肉吗？ 有肉吗？ YOU ROU MA??" Of course it really didn't help that one of the appetizers that came with our feast was spicy chicken throat. It was absolutely delicious, but seriously traumatized poor DJ once she found out what it was. She started gagging and forced us to put a napkin over the plate. Those of us who continued to eat it were forced to endure her scathing looks that screamed "puppy killer". There was also a discussion about the fact that pandas are not in fact vegetarians (come on, bamboo is not the most nutrient dense food on the planet, and look at those canines...), which may really have shattered her innocence. I think we ruined this poor child's life that night, though all in good fun.

What did we do after returning to the Hotel? Well there was this swanky swanky club right next to our hotel. Western style club with Chinese prices, not much more needs to be said really. The people there were nice too, up to a point. I got asked to play drinking games and to talk with countless people. Of course, and this was after I left, a situation arose, which I can't really talk about because CET has asked us not to, but it wasn't that good of a night for everyone (I'll just say someone ended up in the emergency room without a few of his teeth. Alcohol and foreigners are almost never a good mix).

(I'm squished in the back!)

View from my hotel room, unfortunately I can't find the rest of the pictures of my hotel room...it was niiiice. The best hotel room I have ever stayed in ever...and it was in China of all places!

The last stop on our whirlwind tour of Luoyang was the Shaolin temple. Tucked away in a mountain about an hour outside of Luoyang, this is again another place both stuck between the past and the present. While it preserves the art of Shaolin, their way of life is so commercialized. Temples are not taxed by the government, all their revenue is theirs to keep, so they capitalize this very heavily, trying to attract as many tourists as possible each year. I won't go as far as to call this place a tourist trap, but it doesn't have as many quiet, genuine places to see as I would have liked it to. Everything is very planned out and on display for the thousands of mostly Chinese tourists. While I understand this is the best way for them to preserve their art form, it still seems somewhat of a perversion, and kind of sad. Though the same can be said of any sort of traditional sight or art form all over the world, it's not particular to China or Shaolin in the least.

One of the coolest things we saw was a group of kids practicing out in a field. It wasn't a presentation or anything. We were waiting to see the official presentation and were feeding a bunch of tame doves, and saw a laoshi head out with about 15 boys all probably 8 years old or younger (the youngest had to have been no more than 5 years old or so). They stretched, lined up, and started doing their exercises. That's what I had wanted to see. I'll probably never get to see something like that again, it was really cool, and their dedication really shows. They're often (still) youngest sons from rural families with no money. With no chance for education, their families send them to the temples for a chance at an actual life. [I have videos that I would like to upload...however Travellerspoint, or Chinanet, I'm not quite sure which it is, is currently giving me some problems. As soon as I can solve them, I'll get them up.]

After the Shaolin temple, we piled back up on the bus, took a two hour bus ride to the Capital of Henan province (Zhengzhou) so we could take the bullet train back to Beijing. I was exhausted and slept on both the bus ride the Zhengzhou and on the bullet train back to Beijing. Sleeping on the bullet train was no easy feat. Yes it's fast, and cut our commute back to Beijing down considerably, however, it was really uncomfortable. It's basically airplane seating. But I'm me and can sleep in pretty much any setting. We arrived in Beijing at around midnight, and got back to the dorm around 12:30. I had not coughed at ALL during our stay in Luoyang. The instant we stepped off the train in Beijing, the Beijing 污染 (wuran: pollution) welcomed me back into its embrace like a jealous lover and I immediately began to cough again...Anyway, thus ended my first adventure outside of Beijing. It had its ups and downs, and I was filled with mixed emotions to be back "home", especially with only one day to recover before going back to class.