Pingyao Old Town

Yamen Government Complex

Pingyao City Wall

Group of senior citizens relaxing outside the city wall

Street seller on south street

Main tower on Pingyao’s south tourist street

I blame a previous issue of Silverkris. I tend not to take any more airline magazines as they all turn out to be paper weight after it leaves the plane, but now with a camera phone with enough resolution, I can take a picture of the page and read it later. And so it was, one edition had an article on Pingyao. That’s in Shanxi, Shanxi with single “a” and not the one where the terracotta warriors are located. It was not a long article, just one page, and something about not being affected by the cultural revolution and the fact that this small town was the first financial hub in China about a hundred years before Shanghai. And so during the long weekend in May, when I was out of ideas of where to go, Pingyao came to mind. Wouldn’t be that bad to decamp over there for a few days just to chill out.

The only issue is getting there. One idea was to go to Beijing and then taking a train, but that seems to take a whole day. Another way is to go through the capital of Shanxi Province, Taiyuan, just about 2 hours by bus. I like the chinese bus. Dirt cheap (though train would be cheaper) and full of locals. So… mind made up, and ready to go.

5 May 2011:

Taiyuan airport. Can’t get a better shot than this. Blurry picture a combination of bad chinese air and dirty aircraft windows.

Maybe its a new airport, maybe it is just underused. TYN.

Bus ticketing booth and a waiting airport bus to take passengers to the city.

The flight lands in a nice new airport that is being extended at least at this moment. Couldn’t see too well anyway, the usual chinese smog/fog or manchurian dust storm clouds it all. Whatever it is, I could see the airport terminal in Taiyuan, and it reminds me immediately of a flattened Sydney Opera House. It did look big, at least for a regional airport. Then again Taiyuan is not a small city, a few million people live here. They must fly a lot too. However the luggage reclaim area looks smaller (just a few conveyor belts) than I thought and when you get out of it, a bus ticketing booth sits in front of the exit. To make it quick, since I want to dedicate more of this page to Pingyao: board bus bound for the train station, pay 15 RMB, and 9km later I’m dropped off at a junction, about 500m walk away to Jiannan Bus Station. It was easy for me with a GPS, but ask the driver and he will tell you where to get off. Paid 26RMB for the bus and walked to the parking lot to look for the usual conveyor bus system that they have in the provinces. There’s a queue of buses sorted by destination. When a bus is full it leaves. Simple. Next one comes up and fills up again till the closing time, which I was told is about 6:30pm.

Jiannan Bus Station in Taiyuan

Bus ticket to Pingyao

Just walk to the back of the terminal and all the buses are waiting there

Its late in the evening when I got on the bus, so there was not much of a scenery. You go through the large outskirts of Taiyuan city, then some smaller towns and before long the bus drops everyone off outside Pingyao city walls. I knew which direction it is, but it is a fair bit of walk away. Jump into one of those motorcycle taxies and 2RMB later you’re dropped off at the Northern Gate. I asked for the price to the hotel close to the Southern gate and they quoted 20RMB. Well, 2RMB to Northern Gate, and 2x the distance I have to pay 10x? I didn’t like the math. So told the guy to sod off, I’ll take a walk thank you.

Dropped off outside the northern wall, trying not to be run over by cyclists

My first glimpse of Pingyao’s city wall

Had a quick glace at the imposing city wall, about 4 storeys tall and punctuated with watch towers every 150m or so. After passing through the small Northern Gate, I’m greeted by a well preserved old town but all the shops at this entrance and all the way to the hotel is converted into the typical chinese souvenir store and restaurants. I took the North Street, then West Street and then South Street before hitting Yamen Jie towards Zhengjia Hostel.

Now there are two units next to each other. One is a Hostel and the other is a Hotel. I booked a small single room so I’m supposed to stay at the hotel wing a few shop entrances down the road. The hotel, like many buildings within the Pingyao city walls, is a refurbished former ancient residence complete with the old courtyard. Decorative lanterns hang on the roof to make it look nostalgic. Rooms all surround the courtyard. I’m glad I chose a place to stay that’s far away from the main North and South street where traffic would make things less than comfortable given the Chinese’ penchant for sounding the horn at every step, and not forgetting the 2 stroke vehicles that crowd rural cities like this one.

6 May 2011:
I think the trip to Pingyao was proving a little more epic than I hoped for. For once I am really not trying to wake up early. After having chinese breakfast made up of 2 buns, and egg, some vegetables stirfried in chilli flakes and a bowl of corn soup, I’m staring at 11am start. I will have two full days in Pingyao and in that two days I plan to walk the whole town, even the small streets to see what life is like here. From Yamen Street, the most logical place to start is at the Yamen complex, an old government building built in the same architecture as usual chinese complexes, with all the courtyards, halls and to the side, rooms for more usual purpose like living quarters.

Yamen Government Complex:
At the ticket booth, a 150RMB ticket gets me around for up to 3 days. This is sufficient for most of the sights, but not all. I take that to mean that I get to go into official sights and the other places that require additional payment should be private venture. 150RMB is not that expensive given most UNESCO sanctioned place in China start at least around 300RMB per entry. Who cares about the multi-day ticket, statistically I’m sure they know that most tourists are here for a day trip and do the usual express in and express out itinerary.

The Yamen is a bigger complex than I expected. I sometimes follow a tour group, and sometimes I just wander around the place in reverse order. Architecture is a little different from other places I’ve been to, some rooms have this arched ceilling, and I dont think I’ve seen it in this part of the world before. Part of the facade reminded me of Anhui province, then again it was some years ago so I might have mistaken it a little bit. I spent almost 2 hours at the Yamen complex. Going through all the rooms and gardens and courtyards. For details check other websites, at least I’ve seen many describing this place.

Upon exiting the place, a big wall with inscription awaits and it looks popular, so much that they named the road leading southwards something like the mural road. Its also a place where people wait for others, and the usual tourist photo enterprises congregate. You can take your photo dressed as a traditional Pingyao-ian, or sit on a decorated rickshaw pulled by an old man. Its not my cup of tea, and I’m wondering who in their right mind would want to use it. Then again, as I always said, if its there, it means someone is paying for it. Anyway on to the next destination…

Small gate marking the entrance to Yamen Complex

Main Entrance to Yamen Complex

All entrances come with these turnstiles

Yamen Complex: Main courtyard

These half buckets are ingenious and are everwhere in Pingyao. I think they’re fllled with a bit of sand.

And they make good photographic object!

This old guy was going around inside the complex, I believe asking if tourists wants to take pictures of him. For a price I’m sure.

Now this is an interesting architecture. Don’t think I’ve seen it like this with arched roofing in China.

This is a big courtyard inside the complex, with the foundations of a previous building still visible.

Guard’s Room close to the entrance to the complex.

A small altar I’ve found inside the Yamen Complex. The head of the small statue has been lobed off.

There are many gardens inside the complex. This is one of them, and is close to the exit.

New tourists coming in, while I’m leaving.

This is one of those signs in english that I just don’t understand fully.

Lei Yutai Residence:
This house belongs to the guy that started Rishengchang financial house. Its located to the south of Yamen Governmental Complex, and pretty close to the southern wall. On the map, there are quite a number of notable residences close to the Southern Wall, which makes me derive that most of Pingyao’s rich prefer to live in that part of town. The residence is in a part of town that is a little quieter than the bustle of the main streets. Other than the presence of a large performance centre, Lei Yutai’s residence is unique in that it doesn’t come with its own souvenir stand outside of the entrance. In fact, the guy taking care of the place is quite laid back as well. When I got there he was in a small booth and just signalled me to just wave the ticket’s barcode where the reader is. All venues that are covered by the main ticket will have an electronic turnstile that works through scanning a barcode on the larger than necessary ticket.

So once I get in, most of the residence is on the left. Got greeted by a golden bust of the man himself. Otherwise the rest of the residence is just that. To me it all looks the same here in China. You’ve seen one? Then you’ve seen them all. Alleyways, chambers with chairs facing in the same direction for receiving guests, and symmetrical architecture. I have yet to spot an ancient toilet though. I dont think I’ve even seen one at the Forbidden City in Beijing, much less this one. There is a part of the house where one could get up to the second floor but there’s not much of a view here. The private chambers with the cave like arched ceilings are quite unique to this place too. I don’t think I have ever seen one of those in China. At the entrance of this place, I’m reminded that the owner of this place based it on Chinese architecture AND his own personal taste. So that explains why.

These barriers are all over, forming a parameter around the core of Pingyao, preventing vehicles from going in, but with a cutout for cyclists to go through.

There are all these signs for public toilet. Its basically someone’s home and it doesn’t look too clean.

Lei Yutai’s residence and a bust of the man

This is one of the meting rooms where guests could either sit on a chair or on a platform (left)

Exit of the complex. No idea what the word in chinese meant.

Temple of Guanyu:
This one is a little bit off the map. I was hoping to find it smack next to Lei Yutai’s Residence but looks like the place is closed off and the roofing looks in disrepair. Roof wise, it looks like the old way to construct a roof is to first have some wooden beams, then place thin mats or thin planks after which the workers would put a layer of mud combined with straw and use the same thing to stick the final tiles together. Some of the worn down roofs show all these contents. I have had the chance to see some workers build a new roof and workers were shoveling chunks of combined mud and straws from ground level up scaffolding to the top of the building to be used as roofing agent.

Local Household

Back streets Pingyao

With the walls to the left of the car, some of the corridors are really narrow for cars.

Roofing in Pingyao is sometimes still made the traditional with straw reinforced earth used to stick the tiles together on the roof.

Cheng Huang Temple:
I don’t know why I bother having this one in this blog. I looked for it next to a fashionable hotel after the Confucian temple but this place eludes me. Perhaps it has some secret entrance which I didn’t manage to find. Needless to say I didn’t find it. Anyway, after a while, every temple looks the same and I can’t really recall what I saw in there other than the usual celestial inspired layout and a folklore and legend or two told by tour guides, sometimes very specific instructions and reward, as though its a veiled method to keep tourists occupied: if your coin lands there, then you will get good luck for 1 year, etc. I’ve heard so many of it I think they’re all made up. Come on! Ancient Chinese can’t be that petty and gullible!

Yingxun Gate:
This is the south gate to the city. Its renovated, and the main valid ticket is require and after you do the obligatory swipe of the barcode on the turnstile, you get to walk up a ramp to the top of the wall. This gate also comes with a tower and a complex set of gates below it to let carts and vehicles to get outside the town. There is a temple somewhere here but again I never managed to find it. Then again I was not trying too hard to find it. There is a respectable view of the South Street from here, but unfortunately pretty obscured by some trees some inconsiderate soul planted. Definitely require a 100mm or longer lens to do it since there’s a clearing between the gate and the start of the South Street. From here it is possible to take a walk along the wall, but I’m not sure how far. Considering most of the people coming here are tourists, I don’t think it will be possible to wander off too far. By the way, I found out that the ticket is only valid for one watch tower even though there are a few of them in the town. Once you visit one, it will not work any more for the other towers.

Entrance to gate

Stairs going up to Yingxun Gate

View of the main South Street in Pingyao, obscured by a strategically placed tree.

But it is still possible to take some compressed shops of the old town.

All these statues are on the gate’s platform.

And this is the view looking outside the walled old city of Pingyao

Yingxun Gate is supposed to have a temple. This has to be the entrance.

Confucian Temple:
After a long bit of wandering around from Lei Yutai’s Residence, mostly around the southern city wall, I got to the Confucian Temple. This is one of the major attraction here, seemingly the place where imperial examinations too place or where they celebrated, I guess modern sense, that’s where graduation happened. The main entrance is the usual you’d start to expect here. Turnstiles, and scanning the ticket barcode gets you in. This temple also comes with a big stone facade facing the entrance, and you can tell you’re in the right place by the number of electric carts loitering outside fishing for tourists. I’d go in here and get out in the northern exit.

This is easily the most spacious temple in Pingyao, at least the one I’ve seen so far. Just about everywhere, there are little wooden red blocks that tourists and I guess devotees could buy, write something and hang it on every crook and cranny and railing one could find. Good I guess for that bokeh laden picture. There are places to pray, places to walk around and exhibition on imperial examinations. Right before the northern exit, there is a big rectangular metal cauldron that seems to serve a decorative purpose back in its days and now just a place for tourists to throw money into. Oh yeah, I was more attracted by the naked wooden spacers that is used crisscrossed to support the heavy roof. Those must be hundreds of years old.

In one of the inner square, local tourists would hop over a little arch with a raised platform, probably for good luck. They would do this, then circle back to the starting point and do it again a couple of times. I find it amusing, though I forgot to count the number of times they would do it. I would guess something like 7 or 8 times since that’s the usual good luck number.

Somewhere deep in the complex is a photographic exhibition including local and 2 halls displaying Ansel Adams and Robert Capa. Not sure the theme of the exhibition.

Close to the Confucian temple at its Southern entrance

Which looks like this…

Right after the gate is this bridge, and when there’s a pool of water, tourists will throw coins at it, so the caretakers build these small platforms for them to miss, perhaps to throw more money at it!

Just about everything here has these red amulet thingy stringed to it. Has to be for good luck.

English signs are everywhere, although it doesn’t usually make sense.

I’m still wondering what the small platform is. If I had to guess, I think its for little people to go over the steps.

I like these old style roofs where they stack spacers to support a heavy roof

This is obviously an important piece of writing. However the plaque it was reproduced by the student of the guy that originally made it, whatever.

This is a temple. Not a temple without idols and a kneel pad.

Take your photos, and they will print it out to you onsite on this magic concealed inkjet printer.

Obviously they still know how to make the stuff the old way.

Jumping through the gate

Imperial examination mock up.

Yet another altar and idol.

Photographic exhibition area inside the temple

I like this facade somewhere close to the north exit.

Temple renovation in progress

I did spend some time standing here looking at how they did the roofing. The guy on the ground mixes earth with straw, then haul it up to the mid platform, and the second guy scoops it up to the roof. Just put it in between the roofing tiles and the lower layer of the roof.

North exit. That tour cart driver is having a siesta.

Qing Xu Guan Taoist Temple:
I don’t know if its because it’s starting to be late, whether its Friday today, or whether this place is out of the way. But at least there are no Chinese tour group and their loudspeakers and strange antics to bother me here. That makes this place one of my favourite location today. I think you know the drill now, swipe entrance ticket, go through the turnstile, admire the poster of the ticketing agents at work today all decked out in formalwear, walk through a big entrance and remembering not to step on the platform built to keep low level bad spirits from getting into the building and then being greeted by a big courtyard with some insignificant buildings to the right and left and the main hall directly in front.

The condition of this temple is a little more raw. Not much renovation has happened and what you see looks like the temple in its natural state. Wooden beams are no longer straight (if they were straight when new) and doors are starting to crack and requiring repair very soon. I prefer it this way rather than a building that’s listed as a few hundred years old but looking like it was just constructed yesterday and just happen to share the same location as the original building.

Taoist temples happen to have a little less figures to pray to. Buddhist temples are tops for statues. Anyway this is a nice place to go to get out of the tour groups and just to relax. At least the entrance fee is already included in your 150RMB ticket.

Main entrance to the Taoist Temple after passing through the turnstiles.

Main courtyard

When I was processing my photos, I noticed this guy is quite a number of photos, always in the same pose…

And here he is again.

There is this small area where old doors and statues are stored, perhaps due to renovation. Makes for good texture shots.

Temple. Idols.

Exit, not too flashy. In fact, this could be one of the least flashy exits in Pingyao.

Armed Escort Agency:
This place on the main East Street is a museum located in the place where the first Armed Escort Agency is located. To be precise, my map said that its the first in North China. Its a little to precise to have any meaning anymore. But I think its the first time I’ve seen an ancient armed escort. Armed escort agency, not the ones with pretty women for rent for social events. The whole complex means business. You walk in, discuss deals and then wait for mercenaries to pick up their stuff from the armory and join the gang. The whole place is pretty compact, not too much room to move around, but at the back there is a space where I guess practicing would have taken place. At this modern era, the square has been turned into a archery range where for 10RMB one will get to shoot 5 arrows from a toy gun at some straw target.

Which brings me to my next rant. I think I might have mentioned this before. It looks as though in China, whenever you work in a tourist attraction, the central government tells you to collect this much money and you send that much over to the central coffers for maintenance but you get a free will at everything else revenue generating. Depending on how creative the owners are, sometimes you get the usual drinks stall, sometimes a little more specific souvenirs and disneylandesque shop exit. This place has an archery range! Oh, and just about every main attraction in Pingyao has a lacquer shop closeby, usually at the exit once you get out of the complex. I guess a Chinese home that has just visited Pingyao would have quite a number of these sitting on their shelves.

I realised I don’t have that many pictures of the Armed Escort Agency. Perhaps I was getting tired at this point.

Archery section of the museum.

West Street – South Street Intersection:
By the time I finished with the agency, it is starting to get dark. Wandering back to the hotel, I passed by the poshest place I’ve seen in Pingyao so far, called Jing’s residence not too far away. The restaurants look posh to the max, with italian designed lamps and furnishing only a westerner would think is chinese-chic. A couple of locals outside complained that it was furnished to the taste of foreigners, which I cannot disagree, but I guess there would be quite a lot of rich local coal magnate that would love to flaunt their wealth just to shot it off a little bit.

This intersection, however is where everything touristic is located. Just about every shop sells some kind of souvenir. Don’ t ask me as I have no spent too much time in them, no space in my place for souvenirs except for photographs. There are street sellers here too to join in the capitalism. And bars with blaring western pop music and the ubiquitous rows of hard liquor and dark ambience. Looks out of place with farmers roaming outside in their two strokes.

Restaurants in this place also have the same menu outside, advertising local fare. It all has iPhone-style photos of dishes and some Chinglish explanation of what to expect in the dish. The buckwheat noodle dishes are quite good but the pictures make the honeycomb looking dish quite strange. Go local when you’re in Pingyao, when it comes to food. The beef here is quite nice, but they do make quite a lot of use of local vinegar in the local cooking. Most hostels and hotel has western breakfast in the morning, but why come all the way to Pingyao to have your butter and toast? You can have it when you get back home. Go chinese for breakfast.

Buns with no fillings being made for sale.

Jing’s Residence

Night markets spring up on the main tourist streets at night.

7 May 2011:
Rishengchang:
I can’t believe I missed this place on the first day. On the map that was provided to me by the hotel, there was a list of 4 or 5 former financial house, but this one is probably the most popular. I made a mistake starting the day late. At 10am, it was a disneyland. Packed to the brim with middle aged and old local tourists and their tour guide with the wavy flags and belt pack loud speakers.

Front trading hall. Plus plenty of tourists.

Tourists are herded around to “attractions”, leaving some areas in the complex empty.

The Rishengchang starts off with two chambers just after the main entrance, that looks like a pawnshop complete with counters, grills but its the clerks that get the view of the outside while the clients get the inside looking out the window to the main street. There are one on each side. I had my 20mm lens with me and was hoping to capture a shot of the whole counter uncluttered but there are just too many tourist groups there at the same time and they’re all business, herding tourists from one attraction to another as fast as possible. And it’s a conveyor belt of tourists in most attractions, which is why some complain that the historical sights could withstand centuries of wear and tear but no way could it stand up to this tourism mass production line. After the pawnshops are the accountant’s offices and a bunch of rooms for negotiating. In fact, they look like meeting rooms. There are big and small ones, obviously depending on the importance of the clients. There are some rooms for the guests to stay overnight as well, nicely decorated. I saw the kitchen, but as usual, ancient people don’t have need for toilets.

I didn’t stay long here. Couldn’t do so with all the people coming in all the time. I think I was already moving at half the speed of the production line, which is not a good thing with all the tight alleyways and people fighting for position. Just about every shot I make, there’s a tourist in the picture, except perhaps for shots of the ceilling.

Renting a bicycle:
Now, every morning I do my gmail checking and catching up on chat on my iPhone outside my hotel and a shop owner would come out to chat to me about renting a bike. What I know is that it cost a dirt cheap 10RMB for the whole day, and the bike looks heavy enough no one in their right mind would want to cart it away once you lock the rear wheel. So right after Rishengchang, I took the back alley back to the shop to pick up a bicycle for the rest of the day, while dodging electric carts. They’re all over the place in the small back streets in Pingyao.

I’m theorizing without much knowledge that when the government officials came to Pingyao for the first time and floated the idea of turning the whole of the old town into a big monument and charge tourists money, they probably gave the idea that the locals would be rich either opening up hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops or driving one of these electric buggies ferrying tourists around. In fact, I think they have schools to teach them how to drive it. I’ve seen many of them driving the cart in reverse (which is a necessity due to the tight alleys where no three point turn is possible). And if you’ve tried to do a reverse drive, its not that easy.

Getting around in a bicycle. Cheap and safe enough.

City Wall:
Cycling is easy enough, but avoiding dumb tourists is not. They sometimes get jolted by my bell, sometimes no. I start off shooting towards the eastern wall, and cycled along the small alleys where there are less tourists and then along the northern wall all the way to the other corner, and then down on the western wall. In some sections of the north wall, the inside of the wall is made of compacted earth that starts to be eroded a little bit. However all the watch towers are still intact. In fact the best place to take pictures of the wall is along the north and west side and on the outside since there is a nice buffer space between the wall and the new city.

Local at the less renovated part of the city wall.

Construction site

I exit the Western Wall at the Fengyi gate and the whole world just changed, from the tradition of the ancient city to the modern neon and signboards of modern Pingyao.

Shuanglin Temple:
What to do next? I have a bicycle, I don’t mind cycling a few kilometers, and thus, it would make some sense to go to Shuanglin Temple. According to my GPS its 5km or so on the main road and then turning left for another km. Was it a good idea? In a way yes, the way to the temple was downwind but I was fighting a strong headwind on the way back to Pingyao. The main road is travelled by a few tourist on tandem bicycles, electric bicycles, motorcycles, crazy Chinese car drivers that park in the middle of the road if they wish to make a stop, and big lorries carrying heavy load. On the right side of the road is a railway track. The way there is probably pretty dangerous, but my main concern was the heavy pollution on the road. Just about everything I had with me had a cake of dust by the time I got to Shuanglin Temple.

On the highway, cycling towards Shuanglin Temple

Shuanglin Temple main entrance.

There are many halls with many statues in it. Some of them are so dark, it was not that easy to shoot in there, not to mention it is supposed to be prohibited.

Main hall at Shuanglin, shot from the temple wall. This temple is fortified.

Entrance cost perhaps around 25RMB. I forgot the actual amount. There was not too many people there when I got to the temple so the ticket booth is also the security booth. Bicycle parking cost me 1RMB. This temple is surrounded by a fort-like wall. The buildings are not that new, which is a welcome sight. The first hall consists of 4 giant buddhist statues, more like demons. Inside the main hall is a big statue with elaborate ornaments that make the whole thing quite 3D-like, but fenced off by grills. The whole temple has a lot more of these smaller or similar sized halls, all of them with plenty of faded painted statues and carvings. All of them are quite elaborate and not every much restored. There are signs prohibiting photography and fire inside the building. Photography I guess flash photography, but the sign seems to prohibit every kind of picture taking, even with my D3s. Anyway, there are no one enforcing it when I was there. Fire???

As I mentioned earlier, the cycle back was a long hard work fighting the wind and wondering when I will get back to the town. Just for the fun of it, I went back through the new town and it was much more messy, busy, and noisy then the old town within the walls. Shops were all having some kind of promotion playing loud Chinese techno music, what I call the ass-shaker music, particularly useful for people on acid. There is a Dicos local fast food chain but I don’t recall seeing any western chain, hell, not even a KFC which is quite strange. Maybe I was on the wrong street. But in China you get KFCs on every corner!

I stopped for lunch once I got through the west gate, at one of the first restaurants. Ordered up some local stuff, and realised that the price of food outside of the tourist perimeter is almost half the price. Right after I also found the cheapest haircut I’ve seen so far in China, 5RMB, and I thought that the shop owner did a good job at it, pretty confident. I guess for 5RMB she should not be faulted for making any mistake. It was a hot day and I needed a trim and I got it for half the price of a bowl of noodle. A new benchmark has been set in the price of haircut.

Time now to return the bicycle and have a final walk around the small alleys before sunset for a final photoshoot at the City tower in the middle of the town.

City wall exterior

City tower:
I don’t know if there is another name for this thingy. Its in the middle of Nan Da Jie and is the local landmark, the tallest structure in the old town and where one could get the iconic picture of the old houses lining Nan Da Jie. Entrance is to one side of the street, where a lady is only glad to receive 5RMB from me to climb up two sets of narrow, steep and dark staircase to the second floor. There is no way for ordinary people to go up to the third floor. There are some stairs going to the third floor but the ceilling doesn’t look like it is strong enough. In the second floor are some buddhist statues but the reason to come up here is the view. All rooftops of the town is visible here, though only some of the entrance towers are visible, and I can’t recall seeing the city walls from here. I spent at least half an hour up there waiting for the sunset. There is a heavy cloud cover so sun disappears behind it 2-3 degrees before it dips below the horizon, which means that I will not get the amber sky that I wanted. The current light would be all I would get, cameras out, grab a few shots and time to go down before it gets dark.

Sunset on my last day in Pingyao

8 May 2011:
On my final day here, I’d wake up earlier than normal, before 7am and took a walk along the old streets, before the weekend tourists come in. Friday was much better than the weekends and it is possible to see the dramatic increase in number of tourists during weekends. What a shock it was, even at 7am, before the attractions are opened to public the tour groups starting shuttling into the centre of the town via electric carts packed with noisy local tourists. There are some pockets of calm, but it is not possible to take any pictures without tourists at this time. Maybe 5am would be a better time.

After a quick breakfast, and a free shuttle to the bus station provided by the hotel, I’m on the 26RMB bus to Taiyuan. It is packed by the time I got there, and there’s no space at the back of the bus to put my bag so I just dumped my backpack next to the driver and proceeded to squeeze into a window seat next to a guy too engrossed watching a local supertyphoon disaster movie.

Along the way there were periods where the road is just jammed, and no way for me to determine if it was accident or some official inspection, just that there were truck drivers chatting on the road side and some munching on melon seeds. Obviously I could see this only because my bus driver doesn’t queue up, and we took the oncoming lane to bypass the traffic. Before long the traffic was smooth again and I go back into my nap. The bus took a reverse route similar to the one that I took to Pingyao a few days back and stopped at Jiannan bus station. As usual in China, you could request for any stop along the way and it does drop off passengers that way.

Zhengjia Hotel central courtyard

*End*

A peek through a broken window at one of the movie set inside the park

Full scale replica of Shanghai's Nanjing Road

It is difficult to write about something 5 months after. For one, I can hardly remember how I got to the Film Park. But I still remember how it happened, I’ve read about this place in Shanghai where many movies were shot, especially the ones that depict Shanghai pre World War II, and for completeness sake, let’s just place that in the 1930s. I can recall Kung Fu Hustle. So, there was no real direction available on the internet, and I had the GPS coordinates only. I remembered taking the Shanghai metro to the southwest, changed into a bus, a wrong bus, and then having to walk a bit and one more bus before I got to within 1km of the park by GPS.

Shanghai Movie Park

As of writing, maps of China on Google Maps has to be viewed in map view and no satellite. There is a little 500m offset on it. I did a little internet sleuthing and came up with this address, copied and pasted (shall I say plagiarized?) without much though:

Shanghai Film Park, Chedun Town, 4915 Beisong Gong Lu, near Cheting Gong Lu
车墩镇北松公路4915号，近车停公路
Coordinates: 31.01228, 121.31037

Now that I have, hopefully, given enough instructions to get there, let me first start by saying that this is one of the hidden gems in Shanghai. Sure, the internet has plenty of day tours, but do you REALLY need a tour guide in a movie studio? I was there late in the afternoon, and there was a movie that was being shot at that time. I can’t imagine another studio where you could just walk up to the set, and watch the film crew doing their stuff.

There is an entry fee, but it is a pittance, a little less than lunch for a tourist. Since a local can eat for less than 10RMB I’d make that clear first. I can’t recall the entrance fee, lets just say its between 10-15RMB at the most. Could even be less.

Came across this working Buick Eight on the Shanghai 1930s set...

... And it deserves a little more scrutiny by my camera.

Immediately to the left of the entrance is a building that seems to suggest they have performances there. I can’t imagine dances and so on happening. I was out of time and I have absolutely no interest in something offtopic when I’m visiting this place for the set. I came with 2 Leica Rangefinders, a M2 loaded with Tri-X which unfortunately, was fogged so the frames looked strange (which would be all the black and white pictures you see here). The second was a Leica M6 loaded with Kodachrome 200. This partly explains why it took 5 months to write this post. With Kodachrome, I had to mail it to Kansas (that would be KS) and wait for it to come back before I could scan.

Replica signboard. This is from the fogged roll of Tri-X. I must have loaded the film into the canister in a less than light tight environment.

More of the set

Tram tracks line the set. I believe these are working tracks.

Entrance to a building that seems like a real working shop near the entrance to the park

This store is definitely empty inside, but put a bunch of extras outside, and you'd never guess

It even has details like these ticket counters from the 30s. Again, pardon the fogged roll of film.

I think I might have seen this building somewhere in Shanghai before. This one is off the fake Nanjing Road. And yes, that's a guy with a rickshaw, probably got lost on the set, either that or it is for hire.

Continuing on, the first would be the giant reconstruction of Nanjing Road in the 1930s. These are actual buildings, but quite obviously close up they look like they’ve been built recently, and the workmanship looks crude closeup. That would be my expectation of a movie set anyway. There is even the Nanjing Rd road sign. I’ve been in Shanghai in years, and I would consider myself quite familiar with anatomy of downtown Shanghai, and I can conclude that this scale reproduction does not follow the actual city center. I mean, Suzhou Creek does not run perpendicular to Nanjing Rd. There is a smaller scale version of the metal framed Waibaidu bridge on Daming Rd spanning Suzhou creek. I noticed that there is even a tram track around. I did see some pictures of a working tram in this set, but I did not see it during the trip.

Village set. Missing horsemen rushing through and villagers scampering back into their huts.

Can't help taking this detail from the village set. I noticed I always like to place the object offset to the right in my pictures. I shall start to place them to left in the future. But this one absolutely looks better on the right.

Here's a lighter set, just a facade with supporting frames behind it.

Wandering around, I explored the other set. I saw sets of old villages, and sets that are purely facades with supporting columns behind. By far the largest set would be the Nanjing Rd 1930s set, and perhaps the most permanent one as well. Wandering to the east of the sets, you’d find a full sized church there. I have no idea if this is a fully blessed and working church or just a oversized store room. Seems wedding couples love to take photos for their mega album here. That afternoon there were at least 5 groups there, group made up of bride with sneakers and wedding gown, groom with fancy tuxedo, and the makeup artist and photographer, and the quintessential guy holding up the gold reflector and remote flash.

THE Church. Architecture does not look very Gothic Catholicish. Even has statues of Saints on the front facade. I will need to do an investigation next time. That van parked in front is, yes you've guessed it, a wedding photo crew.

This wardrobe is just left outside hanging. I have no idea who it belonged to.

Isn't 1930s without period posters

It would seem that before the war, Shanghai was plastered with naughty French posters of can-can girls

I think this kind of paste then let it rot style posters is deliberate. Makes the place look a little more "abandoned" which was probably the mood before 1940s.

What’s for sure, this place is a heaven for photographers. Whether you shoot architecture of you have your own model to shoot for the day. There are no shops in there, but there are fancy toilets camouflaged as the rest of the buildings in the set. So bring water, but no worries on where to expel liquid. Avoid the church if you can, that’s where the wedding photographers gather. And also the metal bridge. Somehow I prefer the real one on Daping Road. The further away you go from the fake Nanjing Rd, the less people you will encounter. You could have the whole set to yourself, but I did not see if you could shoot a movie in there illegally. When it is all done, you could look for a movie being shot and see how focused it really is. As in, you only get people where the action is (obviously) and the rest of the surrounding is like a ghost town, except for the occasional tourist. I bet they have a problem with foreign sound (like someone spitting in the background) during post-production.

Highly recommended destination. Too bad I did not record how I made my way there. But doubt anyone would want to try my long way there. Ask around, check the bus routing feature on Google Maps, do your homework. I think it’s worth it.

And finally:

Getting ready for a take...

Props. I checked it and they're real props.

Extra late for the shoot. The extra's wardrobe are in the van. There were a bunch of them suiting up in Japanese soldier costume, and while the rest are quicker, this guy was the last. Strangely this shot reminded me one of Cartier-Bresson's, except mine will never win awards.

Action! A war period drama being shot.

*end*

This farming island is not too far away from Shanghai. A fast ferry from Wusong Port in Baoshan will get you there in 1 hour and a bit. A full circumnavigation of the whole island will take more than a day along the coast, but highlights of it can be done in a day. I’ve about had it with long blog posts, so this time for once, only pictures, no words. Enjoy…

Please do not reproduce these pictures without permission. Thanks.

*end*

Gambling on the streets of Puyang

Guan Yu Shrine (aka Mr Black Face) just outside Luoyang

Luoyang People's Square

Song Shan: Shaolin Temple tourist demo captured in glorious Fujichrome Velvia

On the second part of this Henan trip, I will go up north to Anyang from Kaifeng and then swing to the east towards Puyang, a city that seems to be historically important. Right after that, it’s a long bus ride southwest to Luoyang where I plan to spend the longest stay of my Henan trip this time, a mere two nights. And on the way back to Zhengzhou, Song Shan lies on the way and this is where Shaolin Temple is.

2 October 2009:
The bus from Kaifeng took close to 4 hours to make the 200km to Anyang. Having a GPS at the bus window showed why it took that long. We took the small road, went through small towns where the main activity is to dry corn kernels on the road and just about any bitumen or concrete surface that is available. People should be poor. And the toilet is everywhere, and it seems to be quite obvious even from the bus. All transports here has 3 wheels, motorcycles, cars and tractors. Every active shop has in front of it, again corn drying. Petrol station, the same story. Everywhere corn, and more corn. If you’re not sick of corn, you will be after coming to Henan.

The bus arrived in Anyang at the long distance bus station next to the train station. Anyang looks much more modern and prosperous than Kaifeng by far. Less farm vehicles on the street, and things look a little more orderly. Not too much so, still a little messy as usual. Everything is so modern I don’t expect to see too many ancient relics here.

1908hrs: Walked the back streets of old Anyang after visiting People’s Square earlier on. Its a relatively long walk from the Train Station where I stay. Started off with a 2km walk to People’s Square on Jiefang Dadao passing modern shops on both sides. Switched the film on my Leica M2 to Neopan1600 in anticipation of night shooting. There is just this sliver of sunset light remaining, so the Leica M6 loaded with Kodak Ektar 100 comes along as well. There are not too much on the street that is particularly specific to Anyang. Rather similar to other large cities in China. People’s Square may also be called a park, perhaps it is called so. There are lakes, half moon bridges, etc.

Anyang People's Park: Kid's Colouring section, opened all night long it seems.

Anyang People's Park: Public performances

Anyang People's Park: Street Seller at night

Anyang: Transporting goods

Anyang: Night Food Market

On the way back, I spotted a parallel but smaller road back to the train station to Jiefang Dadao, so time to check out the hutong road while it starts to get dark. Time to check out the night life here. Dinner is by the roadside like the locals, having spotted a place that sells claypot stuffed with noodles, vegetables, tofu, oxtail, parsley, mushrooms. Its on the salty side but quite filling for 6RMB. My table neighbours are a bunch of loud labourers. They speak in a strange dialect and it sounds as though they’re complaining about something. Took out my Sony PCM-D50 and recorded the conversation before my dish arrived piping hot. I’m thinking this would be a perfect dish for winter.

Dinner!

3 October 2009:

0817hrs: Early day today. Will be covering plenty of distance. Don’t think there is a lot more to see in Anyang. There is a pagoda or two which I’ve seen from a distance, not willing to pay entrance fee to go everywhere. So the plan I decided in the morning is to catch a morning bus to Puyang and then in the evening to end my day in Luoyang.

While in the taxi to the East Bus Station to Puyang, negotiated 160RMB for a trip to Puyang in his taxi, but only if he drives fast. Road buses here stop along the way, plying the route like a public bus. So a 120km route, like my estimate from Anyang to Puyang may take up to 3 hours. Had some time to gain some information from the taxi driver along the way, including the wisdom: Anyang is small but densely populated, Puyang is big but sparsely populated. Sets the stage for my next town!

This taxi is grilled up to protect the passenger from the crazy driver. Not really unique to Anyang, but is the guy that brought me to Puyang.

The road to Puyang goes straight to the east before doing a right angle right towards the south. The road is relatively modern and wide, enough for 4 total lanes, but the drivers here are crazy. Middle two lanes are for cars but not strictly so. Outer lanes are for electric bicycles, tractors and other farm vehicles and again, not strictly so. Thats because cars do swing to the far left, that would be pedestrian lane, at full speed when overtaking say a motorcycle, a lorry and a car at the same time. Among the strange wheeled contraption I saw along the way were 3 wheeled carts loaded to the brim with hay (I must say, I’ve seen them loaded to the brink of mechanical breakdown between Kaifeng and Anyang, so this is no longer surprising) and one special for geeks, its a tractor modified with a large rotating fan made with oversized twig-broom; yes for sweeping the road! Genius!

Holy yellow corn kernel!! WTF? Is that a....

... Street Sweeper!! Rural Henan stylee!

Among other vehicles spotted on the road... 3 wheeled tractor overloaded to the brim.

And of course... more corn drying...

0915hrs: Arrived in Puyang. First order of business is to go pick up a bus ticket out of here. Strangely, the girl at the counter told me there are no time set on the ticket, and I can get on any bus and they leave roughly every 50 mins. Later I found out that also means they leave when the bus is full enough. Above the buses, as with other bus stops in Henan, there are signboards displaying the destination of the bus, including a pinyin translation.

Puyang is bigger than I thought. There are highrise buildings, proper hotels, multilane city roads and lanes for motorcycles and cars. There is even a People’s Square which tells me that there has to be at least half a million people living here. I chart a path to take, around 6 km in total with my gps and get on going. I bet the photos taken here would look like it’s taken in any other place in China. Nothing super special about it. I don’t even know if I will remember much about this place a year from now. But somehow I had to pass by this place or else my trip wouldn’t be complete.

Puyang: Communist Party insignias adorn the city parks during the 60th Anniversary celebration across China.

Puyang: An overhead bridge in the middle of the city with plenty of makeshift stores selling... PDA styluses...

Puyang city taxi

After an uneventful lunch, its time to load up on the drinks and start moving towards the bus station. The ticket seller did mention it leaves at 1230hrs, and I got there around noon. By the time the bus left it was at least 1330hrs and I had dozed off a couple of times listening to podcasts on Anthropology.

Buses lined up at Puyang Long Distance Bus Station

Destination: Luoyang

Bus central console, I wonder what the screwdriver is there for...

1831hrs: Now this is a long bus ride. 5 hours into it and GPS says 9 more km into Luoyang. Just crossed the Yellow river at a narrow point where it doesn’t look as scary as I expected. No massive dikes or barriers here. The bridge does span a log longer distance than the width of the river itself, perhaps to accomodate future change in river path. Only annoyance is that we are using a small van today, a 20 seater with higher window than a full sized bus so I had to place my Garmin eTrex a little higher than usual. Had to reconfigure my Kinesis travel pack to increase the height which is necessary especially when I doze off once in a while.

This is how they they mechanically extract the corn kernel from the core. There's a machine for that!

Crossing the Yellow River

Arrived in Luoyang after dark. The GPS coordinates of the hotel I booked in advanced was out by a km. But I’m starting to trust google maps more and more. Even in Luoyang, you can look up the hotel and get it to compute walking path from where you are to the hotel. The other two options are driving and public transit, which I tested in Kaifeng and is working as advertised. Makes life easier at the expense of paying for data.

And soon it is time to plan my next day. Had two possibilities. Could either do Longmen caves tomorrow and some Luoyang sights and Shaolin temple on Monday, or vice versa. Eventually I will decide tomorrow, but for now I feel that going to Longmen caves first may be a good idea as I don’t expect to spend too much time at the commercialised Shaolin temple.

0700hrs: So it is decided. Longmen caves and Luoyang city first today. Packed 7 rolls of different film, not knowing what to expect along the way. Maybe colour film, maybe slide film, maybe black and white only: lucky film canisters are small so it is easy to pack them all.

Taking the public bus to Longmen Caves

On the way to the train station, started doing a little survey of the facilities available. 16RMB for a quick bus to Shaolin temple, which is for tomorrow and I got to be here at 730hrs. There are plenty of transport options at the train station for sure. Just have to ask and agree on the price. And never join the tours, unless you don’t mind spending hours at a tourist shop at the end of the trip.

0847hrs: Arrived at the Longmen caves. This place has the aura of a tourist trap extraordinaire. Infrastructures are excellent, big carparks, its own bus station, new shops lined the avenue you are forced to walk towards the entrance to the grottoes. And yes, the word I’m looking for is a tourist enterprise. And I forgot today is a Sunday, which explains the hoard of local Chinese tourists descending on Longmen Caves. Entrance ticket cost 120 RMB, perhaps 90% of it is a UNESCO heritage site permium, or to put it more crudely, freaking tax.

Longmen Caves: Queuing up for tickets

Longmen Caves: The bridge that spans both banks where the caves are found

0938hrs: At the first carving in the mountain side. Looks like the base is limestone. The Three Binyang cave is a domed cutting 30m into the rock, with 5 statues in a semi circle fashion. 10 deep in local tourists here. Still possible to find a deadspot with no tourist where I could blog. My ERA100 M2 managed to capture the statue at f2.8 and 1/8s with an Abrahamsson softie. Before long I would run out of film, next up Kodak Tri-X. I think the jagged rocks require a little grittiness in the film. Loaded the film while avoiding knocks from a flood of tourists.

Longmen Caves: Grottoes and small compartments chiseled into the rock used to house statues, but most are missing by now.

Longmen Caves: If you forgot your camera, there's a photo taking service here...

1048hrs: At Wanfo Cave, loosely translated by on site to be ten thousand buddha cave. Heres a spoiler, there ten thousand because they are all size of peanuts. It is also ten thousand because there are so many it is almost impossible to count. In effect, perhaps ancient chinese numerals end at ten thousand so it means too many to count. What is for sure is that there are definitely ten thousand local tourists here jostling for position. Even them small girls trying to push me aside. Gave them a lesson in Newton’s third law of motion.

Longmen Caves: This is China. There are no queues here.

Longmen Caves: Some prefer to take pictures away from the crowd

1112hrs: Fengxiansi Cave which is not really a cave, just a notch cut out of the cliff with 9 (Which I was able to count) 20m high statues arranged in a semi circle. Sure is noisy here, there is no way any devout buddhists could meditate here unless they put on a pair of noise cancelling headphones.

Longmen Caves: Path up to Fengxian Cave

Longmen Caves: Fengxian Cave

Longmen Caves: Fengxian Cave (Fogged up Tri-X Film)

1129hrs: Guyang cave, according to the signboards, the oldest cave in the valley. It sure looks older. More noticeable, the crowds are thinning out here. Two hypotheses. Either its close to lunch and the morning group is finishing their trip, or they start to realize that once you have seen a buddha carving, the other ten thousand will look the same.

Take a picture - like a chinese...

1217hrs: Done with the east hill complex after crossing Li River earlier. The number of caves are significantly less here, so are the tourists. Most of the sights are on the far side from the car park and this is where the commercialism kicks in. If you are too lazy to walk the half kilometer back to the main entrance, the authorities can recommend the 2RMB electric car ride. It is not expensive enough to be called a con but for measure, the public bus cost less than that for the 13km trip here from central Luoyang.

Longmen Caves: Signboard on the Eastern bank of the Li River

Longmen Caves: Here is a statue I fine a little more unique out of all the others I have seen in this complex for the whole trip... Most statues and carvings here are defaced, except for the larger statues, and one can only conclude the culprits are too lazy to bring stairs, which is a good thing.

After a long walk to the carpark and bus stop, time to hop onto bus 60. I believe all buses here go on Longmen highway back to Luoyang. Buses here don’t stop for too long even though it is the terminus. Next stop is Guangyin Miao, a temple a few km away. The bus will not stop in front of the temple, so a little hiking and GPS positioning will be required to make sure I stop at the right place.

Tickets to get in is 40 RMB, which is a bit steep me thinks. It doesn’t have a UNESCO seal of approval, else it would have been more than 100RMB for sure. Perhaps the popularity of Guan Yu will get people in no matter the price.  Inside the ticket booth is a large square before entering the the temple itself. Inside it is a series of prayer halls, most with giant sized statues of the man/deity himself. At the end is a large burial mound like the ones emperors get. Along the way there will be attendants trying to get visitors to pray, and of course pay for the honour of doing so or to buy red ribbons with your name on it to tie onto some trees or stone carving.

Main Entrance to the shrine

Shrine inner entrance

Inside of the shrine, lined with ornaments covered in red strips of cloth from devotees

Along with a large spread of food offerings...

And of course, an image of the General himself

Front of the burial mound in the shrine, yes you can get your photo taken if you forgot your camera, and better still, there is a small slit in the tombstone to slip in a little bit of money for good luck (hidden from view)!

As is common with burial mounds of important people in ancient times, Guan Yu's mound is also a large hill.

Nothing much to report about, just another plot on my GPS as far as I’m concerned. And the ability to say I’ve been here. There are other burial temple complexs I’ve been to so this is not new.

After a little misadventure with the wrong bus, finally got onto bus number 58, which incidentally also passes by Guanlin temple but I seemed to have taken 15 instead when I left the place. Thats punishment for not checking Googlemaps before the trip. Next destination: Old Luoyang town.

Bus passes by a reconstructed west entrance. I saw Xi Men somewhere and Lijing Gate in other places. But it is new for sure. One of the pavillion just outside the gate played host to a group of at least 10 musicians with classical instruments and a lady was singing. For the next piece a whole gang of women and men came in to provide backup while one of the musician, clearly the ring leader of the lot comes up to conduct the mish-mash orchestra.

Luoyang Old City western entrance

Entering the city gates

The old street is something I’ve seen before. On the main street shops with old style banner with signs in chinese and english tells what they are peddling. But this is not the interesting bit, turn right and you quickly get to the real old Luoyang, and with old people hanging out, some in solitude, others playing card games or mahjong. A little more than a kilometer eastwards, the old Drum tower stands in the middle of the road. A few meters after, in a small lane to the right, a map with a little English shows the map of the quarter. Not too far down is General Cao Cao’s calvary command something. Then a few other significant something. And best of all, after a few right and left turns, Weng Feng pagoda. Now this is a strange one. I normally expect pagodas here to have elaborate sublevel roofs and coloured primarily in red and green and octogonal in shapem but this one is black, square and 9 sublevels tall with a pyramid at the top. Looks like a tower from the western world rather than Chinese.

Life in the old city

Old men gambling on the streets

Along the main streets, shops are pretty well maintained. The ones in the side lanes look like they were left in their natural state.

This is a first for me, Self-service garbage collection in China! I really hope the lady on the left is not trying to dispose of her baby!

Luoyang Drum Tower, hidden in the eastern end of the old city

Weng Feng Pagoda

Old City map, and as it looks, this is incredibly difficult to navigate with. Like the cartographer deliberately oversimplified the layouts to make it difficult to find the treasure cache.

Balloon seller on the streets of Luoyang

Construction sites are messy in most cities in China

These headless guys were also hanging around waiting for the rain to stop

Luoyang also has a bustling night market located in the heart of the old city

On the way back, I encountered my first major rain. Thunder signalled the impending downpour and in less than a few minutes it did. Sought shelter in a shopping complex. I think it should be time for dinner once the rain dies down. Now it is 1656hrs.

While waiting for my dinner, can't help wonder who would be eating so much chilli...

5 October 2009:
0754hrs: Now this is confusing. The trip to Shaolin Temple is not as easy as I thought. There is a group of buses across the road from the train station but it includes a tour which I don’t want. And they visit more than just the popular big temple, which I don’t want. And they take a whole day to stop by many different places. And I guess the trip ends with a few hours at a shopping center for tourists. I was then told to take the straight bus from the bus station. Bought the tickets and was ushered across the road away from the bus station to take the bus. And it looks like the type of bus that will only move when full. And realising I’m back to square 1 with the tour buses. Plenty of these type of buses to tourist destinations in many cities. Now I just hope they go fast. Must be impossible for someone who don’t speak chinese to get around.

Good Morning Henan countryside!

1026hrs: Ok, nothing to be proud of. Got suckered into going for a chinese tour, but at least managed to break away and negotiate for ticket fee only. No pesky tour guide for me, I never follow them anyway. Most of the chinese tours come in regular waves. If you miss your tour group you can always tag along the next to come.

At Songyang Temple now. Not on my itinerary, so will do my own research later. This temple, not knowing the history of its raison d’etre, is swarmed with tourists. Other than the main halls of worship, there are shops and handicraft workshops whose aim seems to be to lure local tourists to buy items that will collect dust at home. I call this the dust collector. I’m sure the money goes somewhat into maintaining the temple, but there is no way one could medidate with the loud camera toting tourists in all nook and cranies. The only plus point is that this temple is situated on the foot of Song Shan. So in the old days, must be rather peaceful. Something that is lost in this modern age. Especially when it becomes a tourist attraction. Loaded with my first roll of Kodachrome ever, I look out for bright colours to shoot.

Song Yang Temple

1150hrs: Fa Wang Temple. Another temple on Song Shan, further up the foot of the mountain. This time the temple is more or less a monastery as there are little monks walking about for their lunch. I think I saw a western monk as well. Other than the usual temple layout and architecture, right at the top, or the back of the temple is a pagoda made of bricks with a figure in a lotus position below it. I didn’t pay attention to the prayer halls along the way but they all seem to be a different form of buddha. Just before the pagoda is a small housing complex with bunk beds and a small school. This has to be where the little monks stay, and most look less than 10 years old.

Fa Wang Temple Pagoda

Ok so I’m still alive. Lets see what other temples they have in mind for me to tackle… I ran out of Kodachrome as it was a 24 roll here, so decided to switch to an old roll of Fuji Velvia. Looks like a fine velvia day and temples are rich in red and greens, two colours I think looks good in RVP50.

Rural Henan at the foot of Song Shan

1356hrs: After a quick lunch stop at a restaurant packed with tourists, we are at Shaolin Temple. Another sentence on the restaurant please; it looks like one of those place where the bus guy makes money dropping bus loads of people there. Seems to be full of these type of activitity in China when joining a local tour group.

The temple entrance looks familiar. A large ticketing square doubling as the temple entrance. Looks less of a temple and more of a big tourist venue.

This marks the entrance for Shaolin Temple, only tickets holders after this point. It is, of course, not yet the temple. Oh no. You will have to walk a kilometer or two to get to it!

Shaolin: Main Ticket Entrance. When you get this in China, it only means two things - UNESCO and tourists!!!

Shaolin: Kids here are especially hyperactive. I'd like to see them enroll for the punishing torture that's a proper Shaolin training!

On the way to see a Kungfu dance, as the guide says it. It has to be a performance at 2pm. It seems that chinese tourists cannot be trusted to be back on the bus on time. Whatever it is, this is where I wave a virtual goodbye to the bunch of sightseeing drones. Will take the bus to Zhengzhou tonight.

Two hundred meters walk downhill and we get to a 1 storey high platform. Just a little after two a bunch of brightly clothed monks (more like martial art students) comes out and do their thing with flimsy weapons. It wobbles so much I guess it must be for safety so that no one gets pierced by it. There are quite a number of pseudo fights and skill showoffs while everyone sits in the sun on wooden benches. I let go a barrage of Velvia slide shots, knowing I will probably get crappy shots from quite far away and a 50mm lens.

Shaolin: Martial Arts performance in progress

Then it is a long kilometer walk to Shaolin Temple proper. I think I know the trick now, built the entrance far away and charge 10 RMB per person to transport them 1km. I’ll walk thanks.

Shaolin temple is just that. Relatively indistinguishable from other temple monasteries except it is way richer, and because it is more, nay, a lot more famous, it gets plenty of stone stelaes with dedications from all over the world including a few in English. Next to the temple is a medicine building, where there are many drawers of medicines, but wondering if they are empty as the monks here are selling souvenirs instead. At the square, maybe my timing is good, there are a bunch of students learning their martial arts.

Shaolin Temple Entrance

Shaolin Temple: Architectural details

Shaolin Temple: Medical Dispensary medicine drawers

Shaolin Temple: Training in Progress in a quiet corner of the temple

1607hrs: Branched off to the right on the way to the stone pagoda forest towards Wuru peak and Dharma cave. I’m sure I will never get there as the sign boards says 4000m away and I’m close to 5pm already. After a km or two, got to a temple at the midway point. According to the sign board, Chuzu Temple was one of the two reasons for the founding of Shaolin Temple on the foot of the mountain. Of course the first reason is Bodhi Dharma meditating in a cave close to Wuru peak. Right past the temple, I saw the way up the mountain. It is steep and will take an hour at least into the shadow of the mountain. No strength, no photo opportunity, no motivation. Time to go back.

View of Wuru Peak from Chuzu Temple. The cave is not visible in this small picture, but it is somewhere on the peak of that mountain.

On the way down from Chuzu Temple to Shaolin Temple and the Pagoda Forest

Shaolin Temple Pagoda

The Pagoda Forest is a few hundred meters more from the branch off to Wuru peak. This is an interesting sight. Apparently this is where they interr the ashes of prominent abbots etc. So in a way it is a graveyard of sorts. Or whatever you call ash depositories. But no peace here with touts, souvenir sellers, tourists and beggars mingling among the pagodas. Towards the middle the pagodas are rather dense and they are all in Chinese, obviously. So it is not possible to make out what it says.

Pagoda Forest

Pagoda Forest

Pagoda Forest

Just after the Pagoda Forest is the aforementioned 10 RMB bus ride back to the entrance. I’d rather get an exercise like any textbook scrooge would.

1731hrs: Onboard bus to Zhengzhou. Ticker price is 30RMB, I guess includes all sort of commission for everyone down the chain, including the local greeter’ looking for passengers at the main exit of the temple, down to the ticket lady who scribbles some bean sprouts on the back of a book of receipts and gives you a stub. Just walk to the entrance and if anyone asks if you wanted to go to Luoyang, ask them about Zhengzhou.

Leaving Song Shan

The bus stops at the train station, taking close to 2 hours for the whole trip, and I estimate we spent more than 30 minutes for the last 8 km into the city due to traffic. Just after the drop, I noticed at the Zhengzhou Hotel a booth selling tickets to the airport. I checked, first bus at 0630hrs, which is what I need.

There are many hotels around the train station and most of the 3 Starred ones wanted 400RMB a night. Not willing to spend so much for a short sleep. I will need to get up early tomorrow morning. I downgrade to a binguan, loosely translated by me to be an inn. Now this is strange, they asked if I wanted a room with a bed or sleeping on a wooden platform? First time I had the reception ask if I wanted a room with a bed or without. Wanted to try out the bedless room, but logic got the best of me finally. Settled on the bedded room for double the price, but still cheaper than the other proper hotels. But of course in an inn, your phone will ring all night long asking if you wanted massage or girls.

Zhengzhou Train Station at night

Buses congregate outside my hotel, close to the Train Station

6 October 2009:
0545hrs: Taking the 0630hrs bus to the airport from the train station, so naturally I stayed around the station. Even at 5am the square in front of the station is full of people walking around, the underpasses full of people sleeping in the streets. The hotels are relatively fully booked, but this is not a matter of hotels being available, but that hotels are normally a few hundred reminbi and above. Some brave souls sleep on the street where temperature hovers around 15C this morning. Touts and scalpers are hardy creatures. They are already out at work now. The chain restaurants around the central square are opened 24 hours, so an early morning noodles and soup is a perfect way to start the morning before getting on the flight back to Shanghai. Ticket cost around 16RMB. Not too sure as the change includes big notes, small notes and some cents in paper form, which you don’t get to see too often in bigger cities.

As the sun rises, I start to think about my 5 day express through the 4 remaining ancient Chinese capitals. Thus on top of Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xian… Adding Kaifeng, Anyang, Luoyang and finally Zhengzhou, completing one of my check lists. There is not too much left of the old history of these cities, unlike Beijing and perhaps Xian as well. I blame it on the shifting path of the Yellow river as it is known to switch its course through the centuries. Of course human destruction is surely partly to be blamed. Progress sometimes take centerstage compared to preserving history. Unfortunately, apart from being in the same physical location as the ancient capital itself, the cities as they exist today, it is very difficult to feel the aura that it should have. Is there a solution? Kaifeng comes close, with its remaining Drum Tower and backlanes with caches. The other cities are hewn out of the same chinese city planning template as 500 other cities. I will see later but I am sure I will not be able to tell the picture apart from one taken from a city in Zhejiang province.

Zhengzhou - Shanghai

The other two satellite cities I made the effort to stop by, Puyang and Zhoukou falls victim to the same urban sameness as their bigger and more important cities. But the purpose of visiting those cities are a little different for me. They are GPS waypoints required as I look for the birthplace of chinese surnames. One could argue, based on what was seen, that these two towns are farming towns. Roads are choked with a corn drying industry. Lets hope I still remember all these places in the years to come.

Henan Province 2009...

Some interesting numbers on this trip…
GPS Moving time: 32hrs 30 mins
GPS Odometer: 1241.38km
GPS Moving Average: 38.2kmph
GPS Maximum Speed: 119kmph
B&W film used: 4 rolls Tri-X, 4 rolls ERA100, 2 rolls Neopan 1600
Colour film used: 1 roll Portra 160NC, 1 roll Kodak Ektar 100, 1 roll Kodachrome, 1 roll Fuji Velvia RVP50.
96kHz/24bit Audio Recording: 1hr 29mins

*the end*

Read the previous Part 1 post on Henan…

Street Performer in Kaifeng

Night Market in Kaifeng

Hanging around in Kaifeng

No phone while driving? Nice one...

National day in China is special. For the party member, this is the 60th such celebration and from what I’ve heard, there will be more fireworks burnt tonight than during the Beijing Olympics and the giant footsteps will make its way to Shanghai, if what I heard is correct. To me it’s quite obvious they will use more fireworks for the 1 Oct celebrations, especially when you consider it will be celebrated country-wide.

Debate aside, along with the midautumn festival, I get to have 6 days off. All of it public holidays.

Now I’ve been fixated on Henan province since early this year when I read about it. Early golden dynastic years of the Chinese empire happened here. Out of the 8 ancient capitals of China, 4 are located here. That would be Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Luoyang and Anyang. After the first emperor set up camp in Xian, the capital quickly moved to Henan (I believe it was Luoyang, but wikipedia will tell you what it was). Of course Longmen grottoes/caves are here. So is the very commercialised Shaolin temple at Song Shan. Better still, my chinese surname, Chen, the top 5 most common chinese surname, originated here in Henan. The article I read indicated it was in Puyang. My search on the web says another town to the east of Henan which I doubt I will visit due to time constraints. More googling says that it began when Chen state was established, and so on, and the town inside Chen State is today Zhoukou, not too far from Zhengzhou and Kaifeng.

Retro province requires retro equipment. Leica M6 and M2 doing the duties for Henan Province along with 15 rolls of film.

So, the masterplan is to fly into Zhengzhou and cover all 4 ancient capitals and their most important sights and cover two thirds of the cities which are the possible origin of my surname. All these in 6 days.

Henan's Zhengzhou Airport

Will go light. Everything hand carried. Will bring the Ricoh GR Digital for grab shots. Main cameras will be a Leica M2 with Abrahamsson’s Rapidwinder IXMOO for black and white film. This will be mated to a 35mm f2.8 Summaron. A second Leica M6 with 50mm Summicron will be used for colour film. For film, will bring 17 rolls, all from ERA100, Tri-X in IXMOO cassettes, Neopan 1600 for night time, Velvia 50 in case there are landscapes to shoot, Kodachrome slides, Kodak 160NC and finally Ektar 100. That’s a lot, but got to be safe. GPS navigation will be provided with my old workhorse the Garminn eTrex Vista, and backed up by Nokia E71. All these blogging will be done with the E71. The audio recorder PCM-D50 will come along to record ambient sounds.

30 September 2009:
2231hrs: Arrival in Zhengzhou after an hour delay caused by outbound traffic back at Shanghai Hongqiao. Tomorrow is the start of a long holiday, and happened to be the 60th aniversary of Modern China. Zhengzhou airport is quite impressive. I counted 10 aerobridges in a glass building not unlike Pudong airport in design, except the facade is vertical instead of obtusely angled. I had no luggage checked in so it was straight out the door, a ticket booth to buy your 16 RMB bus ticket and crossing a few lanes to board the CITS bound bus. They don’t seem to stop on the way, so telling the counter lady Zhengzhou would do. Had a dejavu, like the airport in Xian I remembered. Same layout, same way to take the bus.

Trip takes 45 minutes on a modern highway. It drops you off in an area full of night clubs, including one that is called Hot Dancing Club… Curious, curious.

Indeed.

One thing I really hate when in a foreign place are those taxis with faulty meters. They are the ones waiting patiently when you arrive and explains the difficulty in getting to your destination due to the traffic. It is close to midnight. I got quoted 40 RMB. My GPSs both told me that the place I wanted to stay in is 5 km away. Even in Shanghai, 5km will cost me less than 15 RMB in a traffic jam. Told the guy to go prey on a REAL foreigner and I started walking. Experience tells me the number of dodgy taxis is inversely proportional to the distance of the center of action. Picked up one about 1 km away and rightly, cost me 10 RMB including 1 RMB tip. And no traffic jam naturally.

View out the hotel, smack in the middle of Zhengzhou. The bright thing is Erqi Square.

Zhengzhou: Hotel room so big it seems they have problems wondering what to do with the space...

Local Chinese hotels in tier 2 towns are hard to explain...

Its close to midnight once I got to the hotel, thanks to the hour or so delay causing us to take off at close to 9pm instead of the scheduled 8pm. Will get some needed sleep now. Tomorrow will head off to ancient capital of Kaifeng.

1 October 2009:
Breakfast at a chinese business hotel. There’s the fried rice, and vegetables stir fried in many ways, but mainly vegetables. There are spicy cold dishes and hot orange juice. Makes me miss turkish breakfast somewhat. No tea, which is strange for China.

Erqi Square in the Morning

Shopping centers surround Erqi Square. Being the important October holiday, this place is heavily decorated.

Its an early start today at 8am. Wandered central Zhengzhou around Er Qi Square with my meterless Leica M2, sure the tricky lighting means a number of wrong exposures. Zhengzhou is just like any other big chinese cities. But noticeably, there are more beggars on the street. They are all mothers with kids, didn’t notice if they were spaced evenly apart, so half-half chance of a syndicated begging scam. So i conclude either the city council does not clean up beggars as well as other chinese cities or perhaps this is a sign that behind the modern facade of this place, it is really just a poor province putting on its best mask.

Tramp on the street of Zhengzhou - Pardon the graininess of some of the Tri-X film here. I had 4 rolls of fogged up Tri-X for this trip. Unfortunate, but can't rescue it.

Waiting for the bus at Zhengzhou long distance bus station

All buses from here are filled to the brim. No passengers on the roof though.

Long distance bus station is nearby. However the queue today is horribly long. Guessing up to 50m long for the ticketing booth. Not surprised as it is Oct 1 today. The start of a long holiday. The space is not too big but there are hundreds of buses here ready to leave in batches. Signboards indicate where the bus is off to, and there are tens of rows of these, mostly within Henan province.

0938hrs: Kaifeng bus does not leave at this bus station as it is not long distance enough or some bullshit like that. So after 30 minutes of waiting in line, I’m not about to go off and re-queue another time. So detour is pending. Reckoning. And so I checked the bus to Zhoukou and there’s one at 10am for 59 RMB. Thats rather expensive, which either denotes this place is freaking far away, or it is just due to the festive prices.

So I am off to Zhoukou. A last minute search on wikipedia before leaving for Henan last night gives conflicting account for the origins of the surname Chen. Chinese National Geographic says it’s Puyang. Wikipedia says Chen State is now where Zhoukou is. I have no way to verify but one way to be sure, this crowded bus station gives me a good way to be sure, I can go to Zhoukou and Puyang to be sure I have been to the original Chen city!

1249hrs: Long time running, because the bus stopped at another station to pick up more passengers. As if it was not loaded enough, they loaded the aisle too, hey, why not fill up the overhead compartment too, Mr driver? But you know when you are in rural China when they do this. We are 10km out of Linying just befor hitting Luohe. It’s a toilet break, at a rather overkill highway stop. There is a proper restaurant here, and stalls for tidbits, corn on cob, and fat sausages.

Zhengzhou even has a tall television tower. This is on the way south towards Zhoukou

1350hrs: Finally got to Zhoukou. Along the way, actually all the way here there are farms on the side of the 2 lane double carriageway highway. Closer to Zhoukou I noticed farmers drying corn on top of flat roofs, like they do in the tibetan villages of Sichuan. The soil here looks dry, bet it has not rained for some time.

Zhoukou itself looks just like any other medium sized agriculturally dependent city in China. I’m ready to believe there are at least a million inhabitants here. Roads are wide and straight, suggesting it was modern, and there are many motorcycles and tractors on the road. Motorcycles are modified into 3 wheeled motor trailers and most of the time there are girls or old women sitting behind it. Air is foggy, polluted and dusty. You’d be happy to be able to see the sun. And unmistakably you’re in rural china. People here speak strange putonghua. She said 40 RMB for the ticket to Kaifeng, and it took me a few tries to understand. For sure they modify the tones. Its like putting the standard pronounciation into a random tone modifier. Just have to ignore the tones and work by context. And yes, people speak loud here. And I’ll say it again, I’m definitely in rural China!

Just outside Zhoukou, the bus stops at this workshop to fill up the fuel tanks.

Zhoukou bus station: This has to be the crappiest bus I've ever seen in China... No offense.

Zhoukou public transport - I hate these. You'd assume they're dirt cheap, but they like to haggle.

... Bringing the goods to the bus station

Not too much time to spend here. There are a few tourist signboards coming into Zhoukou pointing to areas of interest linked to the Three Kingdom legends including, if I remember correctly a memorial to Lord Guan, then again there has to be millions of these around. One dot on my GPS, and I will now have to leave you, provincial capital of the area used to be known as the Chen state. Being a Chen, at least in my pinyin name, I cannot even imagine skipping this town. Even if it means 8 hour detour for an hour visit.

On the way out of Zhoukou, the bus goes straight north on a small road. Here the farming communities are obvious. They dry out corns again, some stalky twigs and the occasional black stuff, which smells like dung. There are so much of it, they really dry them all on roads. Two laned ways become one as half of it is covered with yellow corn kernels.

Outside Zhoukou I got my first glimpse of corn land

Corn everywhere...

And more...

And when you think you've seen enough...

.... you get more corn.

1826hrs: That was a long long way to Kaifeng. Arrived at the long distance bus station, located next to the railway station. Busy area as usual, as for all railway stations in this country. To be safe, I bought the ticket to my next destination, Anyang for noon tomorrow. Will wake up early and visit downtown Kaifeng tomorrow morning.

2011hrs: At Kaifeng’s night market on Gulou Rd. Its noisy, and there are plenty of stalls. Closer to Gulou is where all the food stalls are, and they all seem to be serving stuff on skewers to dip into some kind of shop. Away from the bustling center, stalls start to sell household necessities, and some with those games you’d find in cheap arcades, mainly tossing small rings onto some statistically close to impossible bottles. This is where I will have my dinner tonight. And while shooting the night market, the tape on my Leica M2 IXMOO cassette broke at the end of the reel, meaning not am I running out of film, but I will need to take it out of the camera in a dark room tonight! There goes my planned Neopan 1600 shots of the night market! The backup M6 is sitting in the hotel room, unfortunately.

Dinner. Dumplings.

Not really first class restaurant, but it will do.

and then it's time for dessert at the night market

I don't take hairy crabs, but they have it too...

Are those whiskies?

This I'd take one... the cups were flimsy as hell though.

These two guys were mashing together peanut candy with massive high leveraged hammers. Surefire crowd pleaser.

Locals...

Kaifeng’s night market is easily the size of the one in Xian. And coincidently also filled with chinese muslims. With their skull caps, not ladies in burkha of course. If I were allowed a wild speculation per hour I’d even say that the night market is identical to Xian. Chinese muslims pounding peanut cake, pear tea, brochettes with lamb and plenty of spices. I am starting to love night markets. Dirty but good food, and cheap. Had dumplings, then an apple (supposed to remove the skin I know, but lazy tonight) and topped off with a cup of pear tea. Dont think the total bill ever hit 15 RMB. There is a valid reason for tonight’s frugality on my part. Most chinese hotels take 2x room rate, one part pre-paid room and another part deposit. They can’t do deposit with my Unionpay card, so most of my cash is tied up there. Not that I have a lot of cash in the first place. The ATMs in this town are all out of cash.

Well, this is funny. Walking down the road a few km to my hotel and passed a roadside stall, same old dirty joints you’d find in third tier cities and there’re these well dresses chinese girls munching down their spicy noodles. Across the road is a KTV. So that completes the picture. 2110hrs, and I’m passing the eastern city wall and across the river. I’d better stop blogging before I get run over by a Kaifeng driver.

Kaifeng at night: Notice the night markets

2 October 2009:
0757hrs: I hate people who press the lift before the whole family arrives. And the whole load of people has to wait for them. Families are very much guilty of this social atrocity. And this was my first annoyance for the morning.

Morning in Kaifeng

Morning in the streets of Kaifeng, Inflated decorative lions??? No!!!!

Planned to spend the morning going around whatever is around the center of Kaifeng city. On the map not much is more than a few hundred years, possibly because this place gets flooded periodically by the Yellow river.

0831hrs: At the Grand Xianggou Monastery in the middle of town. There is a 30RMB ticket charge, normal for a monastery. Reading the notice board for tourists outside the place, it says, 555AD during Northern Qi Dynasty… Ok, ten most famous monasteries, and this is funny – please maintain silence in the monastery ground. As I was reading this, a man shouts into his mobile phone as though his microphone was placed on the battery side away from his mouth.

Xianggou Monastery: Ticket Booth

Xianggou Monastery: Entrance

Xianggou Monastery: Local tourists, I love them all...

Xianggou Monastery: Prayer Flags

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery: Reading monk

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery: No idea what they're building a wireframe elephant for...

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery: Music notes & instruments

Xianggou Monastery

Xianggou Monastery: dishing out prayers?

There are a lot of local tourists here. Blogging away while waiting for a trough in the wave of tourists. Photos look better when it is simple with clutter of groups with the same red caps. Its 9am and the sun is up but the pollution gives light close to the evening sunset colours. Warm colours. The way photos looks best.

1238hrs: Leaving Kaifeng bound for Anyang, yet another ancient capital. This one might be the oldest of the 4 I will come across this trip to Henan. I don’t expect to see anything remaining though. The longer it is, the deeper underground they are.

Kaifeng is a little bit of a revelation so far. Walked the streets last night and more this morning. It doesn’t have a big impact tourist location, but spend some time here and its charm starts to show. There are cars, but reminds me of Shanghai a decade ago, where most cars are taxis and buses. Now most get around by electric cycles, and I estimate they out number petrol guzzlers by 5:1 at least.

Here in Kaifeng, shops still promote their wares the old way. I’ve seen many processions of young sales men/women with company vests or sash holding placards with the promotion they are trying to push across. There is always a leader and some noise, be it drums or an audio recording of some sort. Obviously, the bigger the troupe the more glamourous your shop is. I’ve seen that most are 4-5 people large, but one hawking kitchen wares was about 20 long including 8 maidens holding a large drum on their collective shoulders. The men had the honour of holding the boards. Older shops would sometimes do it the old way, an old man with deep and loud voice standing on a chair on the sidewalk attracting customers into a small leather shop. I have heard that this was they way they do it during the dynastic days and there is a skill involved, no doubt.

Shops try to outdo each other. It is not difficult to find shops putting their wares on the sidewalk. The biggest proponent of this are the alcohol shops. Their goods comes in boxes, so it is easy to put as many boxes outside your shop to show you have plenty of stock, and in effect, I guess, that you have plenty of business as well. And the next shop always has more stock to offer. I don’t see this competition between shops elsewhere.

Kaifeng main shopping street early in the morning.

Public Bus

On the streets of Kaifeng

Construction

Kaifeng even has a church

Holy pants

Downtown Kaifeng

Taking the bus

Old street just around the corner from the church

On the streets, there are more trishaws than taxis. No, these are mostly not human powered. They look like the same shitty rickety mechanical mess meant to transport people, and not to look good, but we are in the 21st century now and electric powered motors have found its way into them all. These 3 wheeled carts are everywhere. I did not take them, preferring the ultra cheap 1RMB buses. Bonus is that Google maps on my E71 now does public transit routing with the buses and it worked even in Kaifeng. Travel just got cheaper! As long as you don’t get to pay roaming data charges or course. Just point to where you want to go and the bus numbers appear in the routing.

Kaifeng Train Station

Little personal transporter can be seen loitering around public transportation hubs here

Long distance Bus Station. On my way to Anyang now...

As the bus inches its way up north, horns used all the time although the traffic in front looked clear to me. My garmin states 65kmph. We’re back to the countryside, evident by the drying of corn kernels on the emergency lanes on both side. The standard form of transport here are the 3 wheeled tractor, a cross between tricycle and muscle 4 stroke motor and motorcycle tires. I guess these are goods transporter but they seem to be ferrying people more than goods. Even trucks here, full sized trucks have 3 wheels. Either 4 wheels are unlucky, thus 3 (5 wheeled transports might be a little difficult to manouvre) or it is cheaper to maintain 3 wheels. Guess i will never know the reason and this will remain one of those mysteries of rural China.

Leaving Kaifeng

On the way to Anyang

... through rural China

Go to Henan Province Part 2…