On Sunday January 3d I traveled by bus from Luoyang to the famed Shaolin Temple, one of the oldest sites in an ancient country. It's famed as one of the birthplaces of the martial arts. I won't go into the history here--there are plenty of other and better sources, but suffice it to say that it was a very interesting locale. It's been burned down and rebuilt a number of times, the most recent desecration being the 1966 Cultural Revolution. So I believe that what we saw was mostly reconstructed.
I went with Nancy, the mother of another expat teacher--she's here in Luoyang visiting Jamie for a couple of weeks. She was a perfect traveling companion.
This guy's doing a handstand on his FINGERS.
One of the few authentic areas is the "Buddhist Pagoda Forest."
Each monk is memorialized by a brick. They've been doing this for, oh, the last 1600 years or so...
The temple itself was lovely
The day was chilly, and I was bundled up.
But I had a really good time.
I used to train in martial arts and found myself envying the students here.
They put on a pretty good show
Most of the time they were moving so fast I couldn't get a great photo. They were marvelous.