Spring Festival 2011-part 8--Zhengzhou

After a month of traveling, I finally arrive home in Zhengzhou.  Here's the February 7th Pagoda--the center of the city.

Unfortunately, the most guidebooks say about Zhengzhou is to leave and visit the surrounding area, which includes the world famous Shaolin Temple, situated in the Song mountains.  This is the home of Shaolin Kung fu around the world.  

My first time at the world renown site (after living here already for 6 months.  The sign in the background reads (read from Right to Left 少林寺 = Shao Lin Si = Shoa lin Temple)

The temple is both a Buddhist temple and an active Kung Fu training school.  As part of visiting the site, there are daily kung fu performances, like the one that was at my school earlier this year.  Here, a young monk demonstrates throwing a single pin through a sheet of glass only making a single small hole.

Annie and the famous Pagoda forests.  This is basically a monk cemetery.  The pagodas are the tomb markers and the number of levels represents the successes of the monk during his life.

While they may be young monks, they are still modern age teenagers.  Note the cell phones.  I actually have an ice skating friend who used to be a Shaolin monk.  He says it's exercise before breakfast, eat, study till noon, then kung fu until dinner, and then finish with kung fu before bed.

Now to the East of Zhengzhou lies Kaifeng, a former Chinese capital of several dynasties.  It's got all the tourist features without the tourists. Along with a school colleague--Jason (李强) and his friend Zheng Ting--we went to Kaifeng to see the Qing Ming on the River scenic area.  (清明上河图  Qing Ming Shang He Tu is one of the most famous Chinese paintings, and this area recreates that.  It also has playgrounds!  So we decided to be children again.

Zheng Ting on the final stage of the playground, the ripcord to the finish.

My turn! 

And Jason's try.

We actually did the thing backwards, so the zipline was going uphill, thus making it too hard for us to get to the other side.  We thought maybe a little push would help.

"I'll race you down the slides," Annie shouts!

Zheng Ting, the despicable prisoner.

The betrothal ceremony of the king's daughter.  The king comes out and puts on a show that he will throw a bow in to the audience; the man who catches it will marry his daughter. 

We were fighting to get away from the king's daughter after seeing her. And, you also note the other rarity for China--the lack of a crowd.  The "king" threw the bow into a crowd of 10 people.

Annie and I couldn't help but push more Western culture on these two.  Especially after Jason said that he doesn't like chocolate (greatly offending Annie), we had them try real donuts and coffee.  They had mixed reactions, but we were thrilled.

Again, the entire nation of China decorates to celebrate my year.  Someone must have told them I was coming to Kaifeng that day, so they put this up for me.  How nice.  Now the question, how can I fit it in my living room...

The Kaifeng tourist area also featured street performers, again, without much of an audience.  It means that there's loads of souvenirs and all at really good prices.

Arriving in China, I learned that my birthday is Children's Day.  I figure, I'll embrace this, thus why I decided to crawl through a rope tunnel.

Again pushing more Western culture on poor unsuspecting Jason and Zheng Ting, we went to Pizza Hut for the last night of the Spring Festival trip.  Annie returned to her town of Anqing where there is but a single McDonalds and one KFC.  We both agree that we don't usually crave Western food, but for that one food-like-home lust every few weeks, it's nice to have it available.

Well, after countless hours of flights, reading maps in Chinese, trying to understand broken dialect, and touring for a month, my first Spring Festival trip concludes.  (I realize I only recount this 2 months after it actually happened.)  Now to resume tales of daily adventures, including an old story that I was in the newspaper, my students painting eggs for Easter, and rules of daily life I've concluded from living in China.

Later Days,
Rick