Edit 7/28: I have added the photos and videos to this entry

Edit: 7/26: Since I can’t access Picasa right now, I’m going to just use the default image uploader that comes with my Wordpress package.  I will provide a link to all the photos at the end of the entry so that you can see what we were up to

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

So, as I said before, we were all preparing for our trip to other parts of China.  We gathered in the lobby of Shi Cha Hai’s International Plaza Hotel and loaded up in to the tour bus that would take us to the West Rail Station in Beijing.  For each leg of our trip, Kent would be following us and helping keep us organized.  We would also have a local guide for each location, that was more familiar with the area we were visiting.  And of course a bus and driver would be with us the whole time too.

This was my first time doing a tour of any sort, so it was a very interesting experience for me.  While you might not get a great indepth look at the culture or society where you are visiting, it is a great way to get a general overview and feel for what that area has to offer, so that the next time you visit you can explore just those area that interest you the most.  I might sign up for tours more often in the future, if the opportunity presents itself.

Anyway, we all go dropped off at the train station.  It was my 2nd time taking a train from this station, so I was familiar with it, but for the others it was quite an opportunity to witness the famous Chinese train system first-hand.  It is quite a hustle and bustle of humanity.

We hung out in the Soft Seat lounge for a while before boarding our train.  For those of you who don’t know, Chinese trains are divided in to 4 classes.  From worst to best, they are Hard Seat, Soft Seat, Hard Sleeper and Soft Sleeper.  The Soft Sleeper car was where we would be staying.  It was a closed-door compartment with 4 bunks.  I would be rooming with Pierre, James and Noah on both of our train legs.

After getting on the train and acclimating to the environment most of us hit the hay in anticipation of an early arrival in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

I managed to grab a quick video as we were arriving in Zhengzhou, so you can see what it looks like from a train in China:

After we arrived and groggily shuffled off the train, the first thing I noticed was how muggy it was.  As it turned out, that was because it was going to be raining for most of our time in Henan.

But first it was time for breakfast.  Meals are included as part of our tour package so we were escorted to the first and only time we would experience fast-food; a quick bite at KFC.  Of course, at this point most of us didn’t mind the taste of home.

After breakfast we piled in to our tour bus and met our local tour guide, Jackie Chen.  He was very familiar with the Shaolin Temple and surrounding area and would be showing us around.

After the 1 hour drive to the mountainous area where the Shaolin Temple was located, we were first taken to a Daoist Temple, where we explored and took lots of photos.  The temple, originally burned down, was rebuilt in the style of the Forbidden City.  So if it looks like that sort of place, that is the reason.  They call it Xiao Gu Gong (at least that was the local name), “Little Forbidden City”.

After that we went to check in to our hotel.  It was a very opulent school located just down the road from the Shaolin Temple.  In this area there are several dozen martial arts schools, each with anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand students who live and train there.  The best of these students are chosen to become “Warrior Monks” at the Shaolin Temple.

Warrior Monks are different than other types of monks, in that they are not subject to the same rules as Buddhist Monks.  A the Shaolin Temple there are around 300 monks, with only about 80 of them being “Buddhist Monks”.  The requirements for Buddhis Monks are what you would imagine; no meat, no drinking, no sex, no spouce, etc. and they are never leave the temple until they die.   The other requirement for the Shaolin Buddhist Monks is that they be over 80 and have graduated and studied at an official Buddhist University.

The Warrior Monks on the other hand are allowed to leave the temple at a certain point in their lives where they can go on and live a “normal” life, with meat, alcohol, and the rest of life’s various sins.  Most of them go off to teach at the same schools they came from.  Some others become bodyguards or security officials.

Anyway, enough of the lecture.  The hotel was actually owened by one of the larger martial arts schools in the area and had its own practice carpet right off of the lobby.  You could sit and watch people training, which a few of us did while waiting to check in to the hotel.

I was rooming with James this time, and after a quick shower we went down to meet up for lunch at a Buddhist Temple only for women monks.  It was a delicious vegetarian meal and we were soon full and satisfied.  But it was time for us to walk off all that food with a trip to the Shaolin Temple.

The temple hadn’t changed since my last trip there in 2007, so at least I felt a familiarity with the surroundings.  Fortunately this time there were considerably less people there.

We walked through the entry yard with all the shops, got our tickets (while waching “Nan Bei Shaolin” on the big screen TV) and then walked down to watch a demonstration at the on-site school.  It was your typical Shaolin demonstration with some hard qi gong and various essoteric forms.  You can probably youtube something similar.  I did take the opportunity to take several pictures though, thanks to the good lighting.

After the demonstration we took a shuttle bus to the temple itself.  Having a tour guide was a nice change for me, as I hadn’t really gotten much of the history of the temple the last time I was there.  Jackie did a great job of sharing some of the history of the temple with us.

After the temple we walked up the street to the Pagoda Forest and then caught an electric shuttle back to the entrance.  All in all we spent about 2 hours walking around the temple.  Our feet were certainly due for a rest.

Back at the hotel we rested up before going out for a nice dinner.  It was a local restaurant not too far away.  They really have the meals down pat with these tours.  They have pre-set menus at pre-arranged restaurants and the food is basically ready as soon as you sit down.  You are pretty much in and out of the restaurant in under 45 minutes.  Very efficient.

I used to live next to this restaurant in Shanghai that I would see tons of foreigners go in to with tour groups on a daily basis.  “It must be pretty good” I thought to myself so I went to check it out. The food turned out to be so-so and super over-priced, but now I realize that those restaurants aren’t really set up for individual diners.  They cater to the tour groups and have set menus that they specialize in.  As a result, the tour groups get pretty good meals, but if you walked in off the street you would get an overpriced, so-so meal.

However, for us, the restaurants were located in a smaller town and not Shanghai, so they could accomodate both tours and smaller parties.  In any case, the food was pretty good.

After dinner it was back to the hotel to rest and sleep.  We needed it!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

In the morning I saw a very large contingent of students from the Shaolin School next to the hotel practicing outside. It was pretty neat.  I hadn’t seen anything like that since the 2006 trip to the Temple.  (I really need to post up a blog about that sometime.  It was pretty amazing.)

Before leaving for Xi’an, we had arranged a practice session with some Shaolin Monk students (not warrior monks quite yet) in the hotel wushu practice area.  There were five of them, and their skill level was actually pretty good. There was one in particular from Anhui who had some really strong basics and very good jumps.  The level is certainly going up at the Shaolin Temple schools.  Hopefully it continues to do so over time.

At the beginning of our practice they were a little shy and didn’t say much, but by the end we had broken the ice and managed to have some good conversations with them.  I told one of them (the one from Anhui) that if he could give me his email address I would send him the photos.  “I don’t have an e-mail address,” he replied “but I have a blog”.

I can only imagine what he writes about.  But we exchanged contact information and hopefully he will get the photos once I am back in the U.S.

After the practice we showered and everyone got ready.  We checked out of the hotel and headed for a nearby restaurant for lunch.

This was also goodbye to Jackie, as he was done with our Shaolin leg of the tour.  After lunch we rode the bus the 6 hours through the mountains to Xi’an, Shaanxi, home of the Terracotta Warriors!