Tom: Shaolin (June 13)

Shaolin (June 13) · Jun 17, 03:19 AM

I’m upset and brusk with the hotel staff this morning; after collecting my deposit I storm out — then have to go back to my room where I’d left my money wallet.

I check my backpack at the train station and take bus 81 — first to the Guanlin temple, then to the route’s end at the Dragon Gate Grottoes. General Guan Yu’s temple-tomb is nice. Not much to write about except a couple statues like “Guan Yu as emperor”, “Guan Yu in martial attire”, and “Guan Yu reading Confucius as night”. The Longmen Caves at the Dragon Gate Grottoes, on the other hand, are worth their UNESCO World Heritage status. I toured the cliffside in a light late-morning crowd. I loved clambering up and down the stairs and walkways running all over the cliff-side covered with niches and caves. Many of the statues have been — literally — defaced, and nature (weather and flooding) has worn away at everything. The Ancestor Worshiping Temple is at the top of a wide flight of stairs — when I took my eyes off my feet at the top I lost my breath at the sight.

Across the river I visited a temple on my way back to pick up the bus. After exiting the Grotto park proper, the bus stop is on the far side of a long and touristy shopping street. The buildings are Qing style, and not more than ten years old. The shops all sell water and ice-cream. There are a couple restaurants, but it’s mostly junk — art, statues, jewelry, and decorative weapons.

I returned to Luoyang around 14:00, picked up my backpack, and hoped on a bus to Shaolin. The streets around the train and bus station are littered with touts, but I walked through all them to ask a uniformed bus station attendant where the official ticket window was. My ride was air-conditioned and pleasant; I drifted in and out of a light sleep. The sun and the walking has tired me. We drove into light rain.

There is a large white gate at the center of the entrance plaza into Shaolin. Hotel touts followed me back and forth across the large space even though I wasn’t speaking to them, not until I had some options thought out. Eventually I started talking, and got across the idea that I wanted to stay at a school. This left one tout and a woman with some English. When I said “Tagou” (the largest Shaolin school), she started pointing one way and said, “let’s go”, but she changed her mind and told me to follow the other guy; he was upset because he was touting some other school. I stubbornly insisted, and stopped at a phone booth to call Tagou. The guy finally gives up, and the woman gladly takes me past the Shaolin entrance to the Shaolin Wushu Academy at Tagou.

About 7,000 students study here. When I arrived, groups were drilling in the open space between dorms. I checked in to the on-compus hotel after meeting a representative with good English. He gave me permission to wander. The room was a clean air-conditioned double with both toilet and 24-hour-hot-water shower, which I quickly used before walking out.

They were finishing up their drills as I came out. Others were running back from weapons practice in a nearby field, and others were washing themselves and scrubbing their clothes around the buildings. I got “hello!” a lot. It was still raining lightly, but no one studying kungfu has an umbrella, so I don’t need one either. Some students call me in from the rain, and then quickly invite me up to their room. It’s packed full of young students watching TV with their teacher. I stay to answer basic questions for the crowd, to and take a couple pictures, then everyone rushes out for chi fan (dinner). The happy enthusiasm is infectious.

They get noodles dished into small pots they carry to the cafeteria — I get “sliced” braised rabbit and fried green vegetable for Y40. In Chinese cooking, you often slice meat by first skinning the animal, then laying it out on a block, and then — I assume — hacking at it with a heavy knife until all the bits are bite-sized. I saw a couple of foreign students eating in the large, empty dining hall.

After I got the floor attendant to leave the A/C remote with me, I discovered that I could use the power cord from my old camera battery charger — the cord that came with my Canon will only work the three-pronged Chinese sockets, and there’s only one of those (for the A/C) in this room.

I fall asleep happy.

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http://tom.spacing-guild.net/2006/06/17/enroute-to-lanzhou-june-14

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