National Day Holiday: Day 2 - The Shaolin Temple

Aaaaand I'm back.

Mainly because a good friend of mine - my longest and oldest friend (since we were 5ish or something... aka the person my preschool teachers assigned to me thinking that she could teach me English because I only spoke Cantonese at that age and they figured that hey, since she's half-Chinese, she might be able to help me... despite the fact that she really didn't know any Chinese at all except for how to say "Happy New Year" and "Monkey Brain" and I'll stop rambling in these parentheses now) posted comments on the blog. And that motivated me to post and update and... keep up with my promise to post pictures.

So yeah!

Thanks, Bozo.

And I'll try going a little faster to see if maybe (JUST MAYBE) I can get this thing fully updated and post in real time.

Where were we?

Ah, yes.

October 4th, 2011.

We are in Dengfeng. After a long day of traveling, we were ready to do some real sight-seeing. Early that morning, we set out on a bus for the Shaolin Temple (少林寺). What is this? Think...

Think Shaolin Soccer. And if you've never seen Shaolin Soccer... go out and get it. It's a Hong Kong movie. It's funny, in a.. kinda stupid way. I liked it as a kid. I'm not sure if I would like it now... but... still. Go and get it.

...Or not.

It's up to you.

But if you're still not sure what the Shaolin Temple is, think of it as a center of Chinese martial arts and Zen Buddhism. It is, some say, the birthplace of Zen Buddhism.

Then, once you have that image in mind, commercialize it by filling it with... many many many tourists. Yep.

Anyway, we left for the Temple that morning. The hostel that we were at hired a monk to greet us at the entrance to the Temple. Altogether, our group consisted of this monk guide, two other travelers (a Chinese New Zealander and his cousin from Hong Kong), and the three of us from Baoding. The monk brought us through the these arches...

Inside, we saw young students studying at the temple.

Here's our first view of the temple proper.

Then we sat down to watch some monks demonstrate some Shaolin martial arts. Here's the platform where they performed:

Some weapons in the background...

Some awesomely adventurous kids running up to play with the weapons before a parent pulled them back...

And some pictures from the show:

The kid was super flexible.

There was a monk with a really strong head - someone broke a glass pane on his head.

Another monk broke glass from afar by throwing a needle.

And one broke planks of wood with his legs.

I don't have a video of it, but one of my traveling companions do, I think. If I can get my hands on it, I'll put it up here.

After that, we said farewell to our monk guide and the other two travelers (who could speak Cantonese, by the way! Which was awesome) and wandered into the beautiful Pagoda Forest (少林塔林). The Pagoda Forest is a "cemetery of 246 small brick pagodas" where prominent monks have been laid to rest (Lonely Planet p407) (and don't ask me why I'm citing things here).

Then to the foot of a great mountain!

If you ever watched Journey to the West (the Hong Kong TVB version) - which I watched growing up as kid on my Chinese tv channel at home - then you'll know a little something about the Monkey King. You might know a little about the Monkey King anyway.

Well, in this TV series adaptation of the Monkey King's story, the Monkey King tries to prove to a god that he is greater than any of the gods - and that he can reach the five sacred mountains in.. the blink of an eye. When he reaches them, though, it turns out that he never left this god because this god's reach is so far that... his fingers are actually those mountains.

What's the purpose of this tangent?

This great mountain near the Shaolin Temple is actually one of those five mountains.

Song Shan (嵩山)... to put it simply, is tall.

There is a cable car that brings you from the bottom of the mountain to the a point 1512m above sea level that you can take... near the top of its tallest peak. Next to it - and it took us a good thirty minutes to find this track - there are a bunch of stone steps that would take an average in-shape person about three hours to climb.

So.. cable car? Or hike up a bajillion stairs?

Which is more sensible?

...Guess what we decided to do?

Yep. A bajillion stairs... here we go.

My two companions were (and are) charged on ahead. I puffed and I huffed and I tried not to keel over and give up... but, somehow, threeish hours later, I managed to reach the spot where the cable car brought us to - 1512m above sea level.

And then...

WAIT. WHAT?! We still have to go another 2 to 3 hours... uphill?

No. We didn't have to. Unless we really really really stupidly wanted to see this awesome 782-step rope bridge. And since I had already made it up to that point... why not keep on going?

So we kept on going.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped for lunch.

AND.. AND AND AND AND! A long time ago, I said that I saved a spork from the airplane that would come in handy later. In my backpack, I had brought with me a loaf of bread, some peanut butter, and some jam. And a spork. And that spork became a much-needed PB&J application tool.

...I got relaxed there, yeah. Because someone said that I probably would never mention that spork again... and here I do.

...Yeah.

Much more hiking.

We decided at one point to just trudge on and go all the way through - no point heading back. Fortunately, there was an end to the trail. We walked along a road for really really long until we found a taxi that didn't overcharge us.

I mean, it wasn't like we were desperate.

Three foreigners walking on a lonely road... not at all thirsty or tired from a 6 hour hike...

Cars passing every once in a while (but not often enough)... each one asking for waaaay too much money for a simple ride back to the hostel.

So we said no.

And no.

And tried to bargain.

And then, at one point, we just gave up.

Fifty yuan?! FINE! Fine. Ok. We give up. Just take us home.

And back to the hostel we went.

Here are pictures from the hike.

Look! There I am!

Where are the other pictures of me? It's on other people's cameras... and they are very very very slow *kicks them* at giving me their pictures. So you'll have to look at pictures of them instead.

...No. I wouldn't do that. Not without their permission first, right?

Right.

*grins*

Back at the hostel, the staff gave us a simple calligraphy lesson and a basic Shaolin martial arts class... before we all showered and crashed.

Traveling is tiring.