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Published: September 23rd 2013
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Ky and I reinforce our madness and go for a run in the morning. We’d gotten a map of the downtown area, conveniently labelled in Chinese, and figured if we went down this road for 5 blocks we’d end up at the Luo River, which has a 13km long park along its northern side. Visibility is still ~1km. Heading down the side of the street, alternating between path and road, dodging dog poo, cyclists and parked cars, we end up in a completely different street, no where near the river. But we figure it out by matching symbols on the street signs with the map, and run up a block and back. On the return leg we run through a long park with loads of people doing tai chi. Tai chi to music, with swords, fans, bull whips, some people shaking a tree for nuts, some people playing foot shuffle, but no nuts like us doing a running shuffle. We certainly get a lot of looks!
Breakfast is also a well laid out buffet with an even wider range of dishes. I try a piece of the fascinating dragon fruit. This one is cut and served like we’d serve watermelon
with the skin on. The skin is a bright pink to offset the white fruit with black specs, very picturesque. It tastes like a bland banana, while the watermelon is strong and sweet.
A 90 minute drive takes us to the Shaolin Temple. One the way we pass many farms but its hard to see far as the air even out here is thick. Cherry collects our tickets and we enter behind the Shaolin gate. One of the first sights is an open ‘playground’. Only they aren’t playing: the students are in classes doing a range of physical activities and learning kung fu moves. This is just a few of the 30,000 students leaning kung fu in the area. It is definitely not a lost art!
We enter a theatre for a King Fu show. This is more realistic than the Beijing show, with the demonstrations of various styles like tiger and snake being given by actual students. They also do the wacking of a piece of metal on their head to break it, but this time around the student doesn’t prepare himself enough so he only does one piece and not two. With the authenticity and obvious
training of the students, I’d recommend this show over the Beijing one.
After the show, we walk through a number of temples, admiring the blue and green eaves, impressive gold painted Buddhas, and ceramics of the rooves. Liam is considered a “cutie” by the Chinese for reasons we can’t understand. He is asked to pose with a little girl for a photo. Maybe we should charge.
Lunch is at a female monk’s restaurant. They serve only vegetarian dishes, but decorated and flavoured to represent meats. So we had:
· Battered black fungus to imitate eel, that tasted like honeyed chicken
· A sausage that was really beans
· Imitation beef by using tofu strips served with bean sprouts, Ky and my favourite
· Sweet potato cut, coloured and flavoured to look like shrimp, served with cucumber
· And a delightful pear flavoured hot soup.
Check out www.yongtaisi.com
After gorging ourselves, we head back to town. Cherry and the driver help us track down a wholesale shoe shop, where Liam finds a couple of pair of real bargains. Then off to the large new train station to catch the train to Xian.
You have less than 2 minutes to get on the high speed train so you need to be organised when travelling with luggage! It travelled very quietly and smoothly, getting up to 303 km/hr.
At Xian, also a huge very shiny train station, we have to wait a little while as our new guide, Lilly, had been expecting us at another gate. She greets warmly us in very good English with a noticeable American accent. It seems her teacher had spent some time in America. We need to get more students to Australia so they learn to speak proper! All sorted and we are taken to the flashy Golden Flower Hotel.
We are hungry, having missed dinner, but with the hotel restaurant prices looking high we decide to try our luck along the street. A city of 8 million people, and the buildings downtown are colourful and lit up. But its late, after 9pm and although there are a few places serving food they don’t appeal to us. Instead we resort to a room service order of French fries (don’t ask for chips – they won’t understand).
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