The Shaolin Temple and Guoliangcun

Look at me, updating like crazy! 

So, last weekend I got Monday off for the May Day holiday. Quite conveniently my students had their mid-term exams the following Tuesday and Wednesday, resulting in an awesome 5-day weekend for me! On Saturday I went to the Shaolin Temple with Louise, who is a friend that volunteers teaching English at a school just a few minutes walk from my school. She is leaving back to Sweden in just a couple of weeks, so we decided it would be a good time to check out the birthplace of Kung Fu, especially considering it is only a few hours outside of Zhengzhou, and really on of the only major tourist attractions in the whole province. It was a pretty fun trip, but ended up being a little more of an adventure to get there than I’d anticipated. We showed up at the long distance bus station amid a swarm of other people trying to make it to the temple. Perhaps the holiday weekend was not the best time to choose to visit. It took a lot of gesturing and pointing at our tickets and following, oh, so helpful, bus station attendants back and forth and back and forth before we finally found the bus we needed to take. For some unknown reason, the bus ended up being a sleeper bus (naturally one needs a bed for the 1.5-2 hour trip). I actually was not a huge fan of the sleeper bus, mostly because I was not into the idea of walking around without my shoes on (they made us take them off before getting on the bus) and hanging out in narrow beds that looked as if the blankets hadn’t been washed in ages. I’m not a very big germaphobe, but I do draw the line somewhere. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the bus better had our seats not been in such close proximity to the bathroom, the stink of which penetrated the entire bus but was especially strong near our seats. It was here I made the most terrible decision of my life, and I actually went into the bathroom. It least I had the sense to refuse to use the lovely pair of teddy bear slippers placed outside the door. The slippers that were used by every person who felt the need to use the restroom but didn’t want to do so in their stocking feet. I wore my shoes, bus attendant be damned. Anyway, I will spare you any more details of the bathroom, but I am not exaggerating in saying that it was the worst bathroom I’ve been in so far in China. And that’s saying something, considering most of the public restrooms are nothing but stall-less troughs in the floor (yes I have used these, yes the bathroom on the bus was worse…so much worse).

The Shaolin Temple itself was okay, it looked like any other temple, but I did see a high number of monks (and I really dig monks for some reason). Plus, Kung Fu fighting monks are pretty bad ass. We ended up spending a long time there, and I’m not quite sure how, considering we even missed one of the Kung Fu shows (which I am a little sad about). When we finally left, we had a bit of a difficulty trying to figure out how to catch a bus back down to Zhengzhou. The bus we’d taken up there had just dropped us off at the gate and then disappeared hours earlier. So, being tired and ready to head home, we just ended up hailing a Tuk Tuk (motorbike taxi) to take us down. It was the first taxi we saw, and probably one of the worst ways possible to get down the mountain. For some reason the driver refused to drive on the shoulder, and instead drove in the lane with traffic, despite the fact we were going roughly half the speed of everyone else. People kept honking and veering around us, and I was halfway certain it would be the death of us all. But luckily, it was not. When we got into Dengfeng, the city nearest the temple, we were able to catch a bus back to Zhengzhou, and I made the horrible mistake of using the bathroom again. There were only a handful of people on the bus, so I figured- how bad can it be? Idiot, obviously they don’t clean that thing- ever. I can’t even talk any more about it, but let me just say, I’ve never been the God-fearing kind, but that bathroom truly made me fear for my soul. If I were ever to go to hell it most certainly would take the form of the bathroom on the long-distance bus between Zhengzhou and the Shaolin temple.

Then, on Monday, after I’d had a day off to burn my shoes and scour every article of clothing or inch of skin that went inside that bathroom, Fallon and I headed off on another adventure. I had read about a cool cliff-top village in northern Henan near the border of the Shanxi province, so Fallon and I decided to visit. Getting there was a bit of a trick, it required us to take a train to Xinxiang (a nasty city which we both decided is the true arm-pit of China, a designation that we had previously awarded Zhengzhou). For some reason the air in this city has a very noticeable chemical smell. In Zhengzhou the air pollution usually hovers at lung-cancer inducing levels, but Xinxiang somehow managed to be even worse. Kudos to you Xinxiang. Then from there we caught a bus to Huixian, and then we caught another bus to the base of the natural area, and finally had to catch another taxi up to the village of Guoliang. It was kind of a hassle, but at least it was cheap. I was amused by the fact that our hour-long train tickets from Zhengzhou to Xinxiang cost only about the equivalent of $0.70. Then I saw Xinxiang, and understood why they couldn’t possibly charge more to get to that place.

Guoliangcun, though, is a pretty amazing place. It is a tiny village of about 300 people located on the top of a cliff in a preserved natural area. They film a lot of Chinese movies up there, and it really is very beautiful. Before they built the rode the locals used to have to climb up to the top of the cliff on a ladder. Then, they built a ridiculously dangerous and narrow road up to the village, opening the place up to numerous Chinese tourists. I was a little disappointed by the number of tourists that were there when we arrived. I had expected an isolated little hamlet, and there were definitely more tourists than I’d envisioned. But part of that was because we’d gotten there on the holiday, and later in the day on Monday, and on Tuesday, a lot of the people left and it was a lot more peaceful. Fallon and I did a little hiking around on the paths, and managed to find an actual trail (not a stone path with zillions of stairs!). We wondered up the trail for quite some time, and decided that it must be some sort of footpath for locals and goatherds who live up in the mountains. We saw one woman while we were on the path carrying a huge load on her back as he headed down the mountain. We also saw signs of possible habitation and lots of evidence of goats. We never did see the goats, but they sold it as a dish in the kitchen at the hostel we stayed in, so they must be up there somewhere. The hike was a little eerie, but really fun, and we ended up hiking all the way to the top of the mountain, where there were some amazing views. Unfortunately, even way out there, the air was really thick and kind of gross, so the view of the amazing karst cliffs was a bit obscured. On Tuesday, we’d been hoping for some better views, but instead the day dawned very rainy. There was a bit of a reprieve in the rain and Fallon and I were able to walk around the village and take some pictures. But then a super thick fog rolled in, and it started to downpour, so we decided to cut our trip a bit short and head back to Zhengzhou a little earlier than planned. The trip back didn’t go quite as smoothly as the way there. We had some bad luck, and it seemed like every step of the way we had to wait for the next bus or train. It only took us about 4 hours to get there, but over 6 hours to get back home. But it was okay, because I think the trip was totally worth it, and I’m only sad we didn’t get a day of clearer air to really be able to see the amazing mountains. I haven’t even looked at the pictures I took yet, but I will try to post them soon.

So, that’s about all I’ve got to say. I’ve only got about 4 more weeks of teaching left, and after that I am hoping to do some traveling before returning stateside. It’s crazy how little time I have, and even more nuts that most of the other foreign teachers are done even before I am, and will be heading out in about three weeks!  Soon it’ll be over, so I’m just trying to enjoy the rest of my time here while I still have it. Then I’ll be heading back on home to ice cream and clean air and the next adventure!