I caught a Bullet train from Beijing to the city of Luoyang in Henan province which is a few hours from Beijing. The Bullet train was an experience in itself! Talk about fast! The train goes about 350km an hour but i clocked it doing 306km from the screen in each carriage. Apparently it's starting to go a bit slower due to a recent accident.....like 50km less is going to do anything! Another cool thing is that the seats all spin around so you get to sit with your fellow travellers.
Luoyang is famous for two ancient religious sites, the Longmen Caves and Grottoes, and the White Horse Temple.
First stop was the UNESCO listed Longmen Caves which houses thousands of ancient Chinese Buddhist statues carved into the cliffs off the Yi River from the 6th Century. These Buddha's range from 2cm tall (hard to see!) to several metres high. It's pretty impressive as you walk around and even more impressive when you are on the other side of the river walking back and looking across. There are about 1300 grottoes and over 100,000 statues that were carved in the Wei Dynasty. There is a garden and palace on the cliffs opposite the caves which you can also explore and it was nice walking around looking back across the river.
In the afternoon, I went to the White Horse temple in Luoyang which apparently is the first Buddhist temple in China in 68 AD and built in the Ming Dynasty. The main temple complex is pretty big and houses the Buddhist temples, halls and gardens. I watched others light some incense, bow three times, pray and put the incense in the iron burner so I did the same. I prayed for safe travels! I walked through an archway to another temple and you could hear the monks chanting loudly, both male and female. It reminded me of the call to prayer that you hear in the middle east, it was quite mesmerising to watch and listen. I learnt how they sacrifice their whole life to a strict practice each day. The rest of the temple complex is quite surreal as there is a temple similar to those found in Thailand and Burma, and a Muslim temple, so the White Horse temple is actually celebrating other religions too.
You can see more on my vlog here.
