Here I am in China
I've been in China for about a week and a half now. It's been a bit of a whirl wind tour, not spending more than 2 nights in any one place. Getting into China was the most difficult part of the whole thing. It took 5 hours to cross the border in a Russian jeep mad dash bumper car madness. The Mongolians don't seem to realize that if they just make a nice little line and don't try off roading and cutting in front, then everyone will make it to China much faster. But it ends up being mad craziness. But anyways...
After getting to China, I made my way to Datong, a dirty coal city, but it has some caves that are really old that have Buddhist carvings in them from around 400AD. Also there's a monastery that's hanging off the side of a cliff which was rather nifty..
After this I went to Wutai Shan which is a small village that has 108 Buddhist temples that managed to escape the cultural revolution, so a lot of old stuff there. After this it was a trip to the Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of Kung Fu. The temple site was really quite nice, and it was nifty seeing hundreds of kids and adults out studying Kung fu all over the place. I even studied with a former Shaolin Monk for a day, and managed to sprain my ankle in the process, but I got some good herbs to fix it up.
So then it was a trip to Xian to see the Terracotta warriers, what China claims as being the 8th wonder of the world. It's neat seeing an archaeological site that's still being unearthed, and these things are from more than 2000 years ago too.
Now I'm in Chengdu, I'm going to go see Pandas in the morning, then head to Kunming tomorrow afternoon. Should be trekking by this weekend. I will also try and update this more often, but sometimes it's difficult to find bearable internet. The internet cafes are a toxic shock of cigarette smoke, and in some towns there have been none to be seen.
Here are the photos
After getting to China, I made my way to Datong, a dirty coal city, but it has some caves that are really old that have Buddhist carvings in them from around 400AD. Also there's a monastery that's hanging off the side of a cliff which was rather nifty..
After this I went to Wutai Shan which is a small village that has 108 Buddhist temples that managed to escape the cultural revolution, so a lot of old stuff there. After this it was a trip to the Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of Kung Fu. The temple site was really quite nice, and it was nifty seeing hundreds of kids and adults out studying Kung fu all over the place. I even studied with a former Shaolin Monk for a day, and managed to sprain my ankle in the process, but I got some good herbs to fix it up.
So then it was a trip to Xian to see the Terracotta warriers, what China claims as being the 8th wonder of the world. It's neat seeing an archaeological site that's still being unearthed, and these things are from more than 2000 years ago too.
Now I'm in Chengdu, I'm going to go see Pandas in the morning, then head to Kunming tomorrow afternoon. Should be trekking by this weekend. I will also try and update this more often, but sometimes it's difficult to find bearable internet. The internet cafes are a toxic shock of cigarette smoke, and in some towns there have been none to be seen.
Here are the photos