Luoyang

Just got back from Luoyang. It's a city in Henan Province, and is home of several notable Buddhist locations, such as the Longmen Grottoes, the Shaolin Temple, and the White Horse Temple, all of which we saw, in that order. The weather was gorgeous, which basically made the whole trip incredibly enjoyable. The first day started at 6 am Thursday morning, when I woke up and got my things in order and headed downstairs to wait for everybody to convene and pack up the van. Chongyang insisted on being present during this period, quietly standing while I sat in the lobby, and waved us off as we departed.
We drove to the outskirts of town and there, in the middle of nothing but farmland and construction, was allegedly the largest bullet train station in Asia. It was pretty impressive, if only for its lonesome solitude in the twilight morning. Bullet trains are pretty fast. And they have plenty of leg room, and they would play a Charlie Chaplin clip on the TV between informational videos about trains and weird New Years happy family songtime with Jackie Chan and a bunch of kids. There was no audio for the TVs, which only worked to the favor of Mr. Chaplin and co.
We got to Luoyang in about an hour and a half, and met with our tour guide, Zhou something or other (I called him by his American name, Joe, for reasons I'm sure you can surmise), and our nameless driver. We drove out to the Longmen Grottoes immediately, and arrived there at about noon. The Grottoes are a conglomeration of caves, carvings, and statues carved into the side of a mountain (called Longmen). It's Buddhist, it's gorgeous, and it's been standing strong since Northern Wei Dynasty. I'll let you look up the rest. We got out of there around 3 pm, and were getting fairly hungry, seeing as we had only eaten pre-packaged jelly sandwiches before the bullet train. We stopped at McDonald's because apparently all the cooks take a break at this time and real restaurants are closed. But after getting situated in our hotel rooms, we went out for a nice dinner at a Muslim restaurant where everything, from the fried eggplant to the roast beef over an indiscernible vegetable, was delicious. There was a disagreement over being overcharged, and we got to see Darren's unrestrained Chinese as he argued with the waitress. It was extremely impressive, and very successful. I gained another nugget of respect for him after that. I'm going to go grab something to eat right now, but will forthwith continue with the Shaolin Temple when I return. If it's not too late.