After my tiring day yesterday hiking to the summit of Junji Peak (and my fruitless search for the Songyue Pagoda) I was all set to take a nice relaxing day off. However when doing a bit of googling in the AM I met up with a group of young Chinese tourists who invited me along for a "traditional Chinese breakfast" and a trip up to the famous Shaolin Temple. Well who is going to pass up an invitation like that, eh?
The traditional breakfast consisted of 豆浆 (dou jiang - soybean milk), 包子 (bao zi - buns with meat and veggie filling) and 油条 (you tiao - deep fried dough):
I actually recognized the names of these dishes from my online Chinese lessons! Valarie is going to be pleased to hear that when I have my next class.
My Chinese friends gave me their English names - Bonnie, Brian and Melody. I guess they felt it would be too difficult for me to remember their Chinese names (which is probably true). So I gave them my Chinese name.
We grabbed a cab to the Shaolin Temple, which is about 10 km outside of Dengfeng. The temple was full of young kung fu students and tourists, and for the first time since leaving Beijing I saw foreigners other than myself! In fact I was not even the main center of attention today, these fellows were:
Well I got into the spirit of things and had my picture taken with them as well. They were from different countries in Africa and when they found out I was from Canada started speaking to me in French. "Oh I speak a little," I said. "We're trying to just speak English, though, because we need to practice." "That's fine with me," I said.
We saw a kung fu show, which I thought was pretty lame. "What did you think of the show?" Bonnie asked me. "Oh I thought it was pretty interesting." "I thought it was awful!" So much for me trying to be the polite Canadian.
I thought the monestary itself was pretty uninteresting, after awhile all these Chinese temples start to look the same. "What do you think of the monestary?" Bonnie asked me. "It's pretty nice." "I think it's not that interesting. After awhile all these monestaries and temples start to look the same." So much for me trying to be the polite Canadian.
The obligatory pose ...
Young kung fu students, hundreds of them. Apparently all they do all day, every day, is practice kung fu ...
A short walk past the temple, the Pagoda Forest.
They may have thought the temple was "boring" but I've never seen anyone have so much fun taking pictures:
Overall I'd rate the Shaolin Temple as a "can miss" tourist destination. Other temples and monestaries are much cheaper and more convenient to visit, less crowded, and more interesting. However it's tough to visit this part of China and NOT visit the place where Shaolin Kung Fu was created over 1500 years ago ...
We stopped for lunch on the way home, at a small local eatery. (Fun fact - lunch for 4 cost about the same as my coffee the other day. I really need to kick this coffee habit!) Here is a pic, some veggies and noodles also showed upon the table a bit later on:
The stuff on the left looked like seaweed, but it tasted really good. I asked what it was. "We don't know." Some local thing. I forgot to ask what it was called so I won't even be able to order it again, I can't translate "glutinous seaweed looking thing" into Chinese.
I got back to the hotel at about 3:30 and promptly fell asleep for about 4 hours! Don't know if it was the 2 days of walking or missing my coffee this morning! Well I've hit all the premier tourist destinations around Dengfeng now, so I can afford to relax for a few days now before I head to Xi'An. Tomorrow I'm going to stroll around Dengfeng and look for some interesting restaurants ...
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