Louyang - Budda Caves and Train Riding

THERE ARE TWO FOREIGNERS ON THE TRAIN
The trip to Louyang was via a "hard seat" on a train. A "hard seat" means that we have an assigned section of a bench seat. There are sets of benches facing each other on either side of a center isle. They are something like a booth at McDonald's but the table between the seats was much smaller. We are pretty sure we were the only foreigners on the whole train, which had around 15 cars of 50 to 150 people per car depending on the type of car. The whole train was full, which meant we were sitting in pretty close quarters with our fellow passengers, something like a full subway car. It was a great experience and I am finding it hard to fully describe the experience here. The other travellers were from a different world. Most seemed to be local farmers or entire families and many did not ride as far as we did. The train stopped every 30 minutes or so to pick up and drop off passengers.

At first it did not appear that anyone could speak any English outside of "Hello". The people in the seat facing us had been communicating with us for a while by pointing, gesturing, and writing in our common language, aribic numerals. We had gathered how old we all were and where we were going and where we had been, but not much more. A couple of hours into the trip fellow around our age showed up with a little note, in good english, asking us our names and where we were from. We wrote our answer and passed the note back. This got everyone around interested. After a few volleys with our mystery english speaker we convinced him to come up and talk with us. He was a PhD student in aerospace engineering on his way to have a meeting with an oil company about some thing the university was helping them with. I did not cease to be amazed at how light the Chinese travel. For this two day and one night trip, four hours from home, he was carrying..... a laptop briefcase. It was big enough for a little bit more than his laptop and power supply, but I doubt it was big enough for even one extra shirt.

Our whole section of the train had a grand time the last hour of the trip. Our new interpreter asked us questions that our traveling companions had been mulling over for the last couple of hours. Did we have any kids? What were our jobs? Did we like China? Did we like President Bush? What did we think about the war with Iraq? (they did not seem to like either of these things, but in general they did seem to like the US). Do you know who Yao Ming is? (we got this question on a number of occations) We saw that even though we were from very different worlds we had plenty of humaness in common. We also had fancy cell phones in common, although many of our traveling buddies outdid us in that regard. Everyone in China seems to have a cell phone that doubles as a music player and mini-PDA, something like a Blackberry but smaller.

The train got into town pretty late, 11PM?, and it was raining. We were convinced to follow on foot a man and a lady who offered to take us to the hotel we had choosen from our guidebook. We weren't sure that it would at first, but this worked out fine, more or less. We were now very clearly off of the international backpacker trail. So far in China we had stayed at backpacker hostels which cateered, more or less, to our English speaking foreinger needs. Our hotel this night spoke enough English to get by, but there was diffently not the same communial feel of our past hostels.

While checking out the next morning we met Brian, a backpacker from Hong Kong who spoke perfect English. He agreed to accompany us to the train station to help us buy our tickets for the next day. This was a godsend. Then he joined us for lunch, where he helped us order from an all Chinese menu. This was one of our best and cheapest meals from anywhere in China. We were all getting along well together and decided to travel together to the big tourist draw of the area, ancient buddist caves outside of town.

We rode bus number 81 to the end of the line and found the other dozen forienrs in town at the budda caves (along with hundreds of Chinese tourists). We were enjoying ourselves, but not overly impressed at first. Then, not expecting much more, we came to the top of a huge steep band of stairs and our jaws dropped. There were the biggest statues I had every seen. Well, I am sure Mount Rushmore is much bigger, but you are not this close to it. I am glad I did not have high expectations so that I could truely be wonderfully surprised by the size and beauty of this mammoths. In total there were tens of thousands of buddas. We wondered around of a few hours and got some good pictures, which almost took themselves.

From Louyang

That night we took a late night train over night to Ychang, around 11 hours away. Our train did not leave until after 1AM which gave us some time to sit around the train station. Because night trains are popular for long routes the train station was rather full of people even at this hour. We were approached by a couple of poeple wanted to say hello and practice their English. We talked to the student below for quite a while. He told us that he was studying English at a local university and that his professors told him to practice his English whenever had got a chance to talk to foreingers. He said we were the first he had ever talked with! He also told us that the way we westerners say "Yao Ming" means "kill you" because we say the words flat and not with the correct tones. We even say Beijing to mean "hurt you". This guy was waiting for a 5 AM bus to go a few hours home for the weekend. He was in great spirits, perhaps because he was traveling so light! At one point he wanted to show us how he had just been listening to some American music on his Ipod, so he pulled it from his over the sholder 'briefcase' type bag. It appeared to be the only thing in the bag! Now that is traveling light.