LUOYANG: White Horse Temple, Longmen Grottos, Shaolin Temple and more. 

 

Leaves of a Bodhi tree, according to my guide.

My guide was Arron Liu, a young man who says he mostly taught himself to speak English, which was quite good, though at times I was quite mystified trying figure out what he was saying.  He says he is a Christian, so he is the second Christian that I have met in China.

The bodhi tree (above) is the in the garden of the White Horse Temple.  I have to note that its leave are dissimilar to the ones that are posted in Wikipedia and other internet sites.

The history of the temple is very interesting.  It begins with a dream the Emperor Ming of the Eastern Han dynasty had of a tall golden figure.  When he was told the dream was interpreted as being about a divine person who could be found in the west.  The emperor sent a delegation to the west, toward India, to search for this religion.   They encountered two monks in what is now Afghanistan, who agree to come with the delegation to China, where they stayed translating the scrolls they carried into Chinese.    When they arrived, the emperor built the temple and named it White Horse temple in honor of the white horses that carried these monks to Luoyang.  This temple is seen as the first Buddhist temple in China, and important in that it was from this beginning that Buddhism spread throughout China and to countries like Korea and Japan.

Sometime during the 20th and 21st century a Cambodian/Thai Buddhist temple was built next to the White Horse Temple, and then an Indian Buddhist temple was built.  There is also a temple from Myanmar.   These temples are stark contrasts to the White Horse Temple.

The Indian temple

Unfortunately, I was unable to keep the other two temples separate and have confused them in the photos.  

SHAOLIN TEMPLE

 

In the afternoon we arrived at the Shaolin Temple, where we had a vegetarian lunch and walked to the temple itself.   The highlights of the Shaolin Temple as might be expected, were the performances.   But surprisingly the Pagoda Forest was also an attraction as well.

Our Driver

One of the highlights of the performances is the audience competition.  Three members of the audience are invited onstage to repeat the moves made by one of the trainees.   The audience members were surprisingly good.  And if the videos work, here is a taste of one of the audience members.

GUILIN  DAY 2 

Day 2 consisted of a trip to the Longji (Dragon Backbone) Rice terraces.  These fields are cared for by the Zhuang people, one of China's 56 official ethnic minorities.  My memory of what he told me says that they were moved here at some time in the past and have been the people who care for these fields.    The terraces were begun in the Yuan Dynasty (1272-1368 ) and were developed over the centuries until the early  Qing (1644-1911).

As we walked in, we could see a few people working the soil, and beginning to plant rice.
I was most impressed by the fields, by the magnitude of the labor that had to be put in to create  and the terraces, the difficulty of working the terraces, of maintaining them and of moving the seedlings and getting ready for planting. 

The trip from Guilin was about an hour and a half drive.  There are several fields, the lower ones being the more frequently visited fields, one of which even has a cable car.   We went to the upper field, which, David said, was in its original state and necessitated our walking in, uphill to the top of the fields and the homes of the  Zhuang.  We ate at a restaurant there and visited one of the houses.

Community Center includes medical facilities

Seeing these terraces and the people working them impressed on me how difficult life can be for these farmers.   The whole idea of creating the terraces, maintaining them, growing the crops here over the centuries of their existence was an expression of the strength and will of the human spirit.  Seeing these first hand was most impressive.

That afternoon we headed back to Guilin and on the way we decided to stop at the Flying Tiger Memorial Museum, where I was to visit the next day before I returned to Shanghai.  When we got there, we discovered the museum had very limited hours and would be closed when I was scheduled to visit and in fact was closed at that time.  But David, my guide,  being resourceful, talked to the staff people who were there and convinced them to allow me in to view the artifacts and photos because "I had traveled a long way to see the museum."  

The story of the Flying Tigers is quite long and can be found in Wikipedia.  It seems the pilots had painted sharks on their planes, but when the Chinese saw the planes, they though of them as Tigers.
These volunteer airmen were among the most effective in fighting the invading Japanese prior to and during WW II.

This view looks back at the entrance to the Memorial Museum from the inside.   The stone cylinders were used to create landing strips for the Flying Tiger airpl

Chennault's second wife, Chen Xiangmei

Claire Lee Chennalt

Equally fascinating is the story of their commander, Claire Lee Chennault, who at one point resigned  from the US Air Corps because he was designated as unsuitable for promotion and signed on to help China as their air force advisor.   He eventually returned to the Air Force with the rank of  General and retired as Lieutenant General



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