龙门石窟 (The Longmen Grottos)

Yesterday I took the city bus up to the Longmen Grottos, a collection of caves with Buddhist sculptures, about 8 km south of Luoyang.  (Yes I was the only foreigner on the bus.)  When I got there I hired a guide to take me around, since I hadn't done any reading on the history of the place and figured it would be worth learning about.  (I hired an English guide, but I practiced some of my Chinese on her!)  She was just  little slip of a Chinese woman, but it was amazing how she could slip through crowds!  The place was jam packed, of course, and she was continually having to stop to wait for me to catch up.

I lost track of the number of times I had my picture taken.  Maybe 15 or 20 times, and that was just the people who actually came up to me and asked (I caught more than a few sneaking pictures).  A young girl from Inner Mongolia followed me around for about 20 minutes practicing her English, and another young group of girls told me I was "Really cool" when I answered them back in Chinese.  I'm going to be really depressed when I get back to Canada and I'm not "special" any more :-(

Even though the place was packed I didn't see too many other foreigners, maybe a dozen.  Although I know there was at least one other Canadian there.  Before I went into the park a little kid ran up to me babbling in English, and then handed me a paper to sign.  His teacher was with him and explained he was in an English program and this was his homework.  When I signed "Ian Costanzo, Canada" I noticed that another Canadian had already signed his sheet.  However this other Canadian had a Chinese name.  At any rate as usual on this trip I was one of the main attractions at the Grottos.

I took a million pictures (of course) so once I have  chance to weed through them I'll post pics and some more information on the caves.

I met my new friend 陈克强 (Chen Keqiang) for dinner and we went for Hot Pot.  He brought along a friend (Xiao something, I asked him to write it down but I think he was shy).  Between my poor Chinese and his poor English the conversation was pretty limited, but we had lots of Luoyang beer and therefore  good time!  Keqiang has invited me over over to his place for a meal next time I'm in Luoyang.

There, that should take care of everyone's addiction to food photos.