Luoyang and Beijing — The road liss traveled

So it was off to Beijing. I thought I might continue traveling in China, but a full month was really enough of China for me. Although I figured I’d visit one popular stopover before Beijing, called Louyang, which of course is easily connected by HSR. It’s also one of the four great ancient capitals of China (Xian, Louyang, Beijing, Nanjing), with Louyang being the earliest of the four, as it became a capital of Zhou dynasty all the way back in 770 BC. You wouldn’t know it was an ancient capital from the city itself, most things from ancient China do not hold up well to the tests of time, but there is a place outside of town dug into the limestone cliffs that has been preserved very well.

The most famous attraction in Luoyang is the Longmen Grottoes, an accumulation of caves and tombs built into the rocks along the Yi River. It’s hard to actually imagine how huge this place is, but there’s over 2,300 caves with over 100,000 Buddha statue, among other things. Originally built up by the Northern Wei Dynasty around 500 AD, it reached it’s peak in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It’s way too hot in the middle of the day, so I waited until closer to sunset to go check it out.

Fengxian Temple, built in the 600’s during the Tang Dynasty

What it looks like around the area, this is a weekday!

As always, with seemingly everywhere in China, the place is packed. With the value of the Yuan going down, the cost of international trips increasing, so much of China being connected by HSR, plus a government push to explore your own country, and disenchanted young people valuing experiences over acquiring capital, domestic tourism in China is more popular now than ever. Even though there’s a million people it’s still a cool place to hang for a few hours. Some of these sights are better enjoyed from afar, with the lights turned on…

Next up, Beijing. I had completely forgot that I only had a 30 day SIM card and just now it had run out! So when I got into Beijing I was in the nightmare situation in China, in transit, no cell phone data! And I didn’t screenshot my hotel booking! There is no wifi anywhere, and even if there is, it requires a Chinese number to type in. Even many popular coffee shops have no wifi, argghhh. I could take the metro with cash, but I had no maps to tell me where I was going. So after running around for a while I was finally able to find an international hotel and use their wifi for a bit and repurchase another esim, thank god I had a VPN on my phone to access my Gmail! It is kind of insane how functionally useless you are in China without cellphone data.

So finally I was able to hop in a DiDi to my hotel, although this was a bad idea (as opposed to taking the metro) as I ran into the dreaded Beijing Traffic. Nine miles took well over an hour, my god. One left hand turn took us about 7 light changes! I got to take a good look at the distinctive Beijing architecture while crawling along, gray brick walls with dark gray roofs, the ubiquitous red doors and window frames and other accents.

You can’t see much of Beijing homes from the street

A new ‘old’ neighborhood. They tore down almost all of the old neighborhoods in the late 90’s/early 2000’s (the hutongs) which were one ofnthe most unique aspects of Beijing, and then of course rebuilt some years later in different parts of town.

Why am I taking a taxi when their metro looks like this??

I checked into my hotel, which was a bit of price shock, as most of China outside of Beijing and Shanghai is overwhelmingly cheap. It was late afternoon so I had some time to walk towards the Imperial City walls. The whole area is just crawling with police. It had just rained earlier so the sky was cloudy, but the sun came out right before sunset leaving a gorgeous rainbow over the city. On this trip I’d had almost zero good sunsets, so this was by the far the best of the trip!

This is the first time all trip that we had much color in the sky

Of course I have to show what anywhere picturesque actually looks like

The next day it was up early to get to the Great Wall. I’d heard the section closest to Beijing was very touristy, so I chose a tourist bus that takes you 2.5 hours outside the city to the Jinshangling section of wall, which is more wild and less touristy. Even though the bus time : hiking time ratio was not great, I was still glad to have visited this section of the wall. Often when things are “less touristy” in China, it just means kinda crowded, but not wall to wall tourists.

This section of the wall was more mountainous and more lush than I was expecting (and fewer people!). In my mind I always think of Mongolia as the desert, so I always picture more of the western section of the wall, that is part of the Gobi desert. It’s very cool to see something that was over 2,000 years continuously being built, rising and falling over the mountaintops. The sheer manpower required is crazy to think about. This section of wall, and most of the more ‘modern’ parts of the wall were built by the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) during a flurry of building. In just 10km there are 67 watchtowers!

You can see the wall even way off in the distance

You can see the broken sections continue on over the mountains

On the tour they gave us 5 hours to roam the wall, but it really only takes 2 or 2.5 hours to do it all, so you’ve gotta move at a slow pace. Fortunately there were some clouds out, as normally the Great Wall can be absolutely baking in mid summer. I ended up meeting some of the people on the tour (It feels very weird to have a tour bus full of white people in China!), one was from the Netherlands, another from Australia, and they were both doing the 10 day visa free travel, which has brought in a lot of foreign tourism in the last two years.

We had a solid two hours to kill before the bus left, so it was nice to meet some people. And then later that evening the Dutch, Aussie, and I met up again for Beijing Roast Duck, one of the must-try dishes in when you’re in town. There’s a couple of famous restaurants for it, we had a to wait maybe 30 minutes to get, although we decided on a less famous option because the wait times get too crazy. But it was good to go as a group because you usually order a whole duck, and that isn’t really possible for one person. So that was a really good meal for winding down the China trip.

Last day was the Forbidden City. Possibly the most the largest and most well preserved imperial palaces in the world. Originally buiIt in 1420 in the Ming Dynasty, it was the seat of power for over 500 years, throughout the Ming and Qing Dynasties, finally ending in 1924.

I didn’t buy my ticket far enough in advance so I had to join a tour group. I hate these things. Every time I’ve been on one the earpiece and the audio always suck, the English is subpar at best, and you move so excruciatingly slow. I made it about one hour into the three hour town before surrendering my earpiece and doing my own thing. I mean the place is really nice, but it’s just insanely crowded and hot, I was ready to get out of there ASAP. When the sun is out, you just roast in Beijing in the summer.

We descend upon the temple at the slowest pace imaginable, but learning many obscure facts in broken english and with poor audio.

After a rest in the middle of the day I was off to Tiananmen Square to check it out. You have to have a time slot, which I received at my hotel. When I got there the line was literally down the block and moving slowly because the security checks are very intensive. I decided I didn’t want to wait an hour to see a concrete square, and instead went over to the Temple of Heaven, which google said was open. I get there and the park area is open, but the actual temple gates are closed. Aghh. So all in all, pretty big fail on the last day. A few shots from the park near my hotel.

Whatever. I was so over China at this point, the lines, the crowds, reserving things in advance, just not my thing. I was thinking Mongolia might be a good change of pace…