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Published: July 18th 2008
Longmen Grottoes
Either side of the Buddha stands two pretty transvestites - a possible origin of the Thai 'lady-boy'I took a seven hour train ride to Zhenzhou, arriving late, and then a three and a half hour bus-ride to the town of Luoyang.
The next day I was up early to get the public bus out to the Longmen grottoes. They obviously didn't get too many foreign tourists on the bus, as pretty much everyone stared at me for the 50 minute journey...
It was worth it though, as the Longmen carvings were brought to us by the same folks that gave us the Yungang caves, after they'd moved their capital from Datong to Luoyang.
The carvings were incredible and much more liufe-like than anything I'd seen in China thus far, but many of them had been damaged by either fire, water or the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution.
I spent most of the day at the site - when you spend two days getting somewhere, you want to make the most of it! Fortunately, over the speaker system they were playing the gentle sounds of Imagine by John Lennon, Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel, and I'm all Outta Love by Foreigner...
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