The weather in Hunan was cloudy and rainy this morning and yesterday.
Walked to Hunan Provincial Museum.

The museum is famous for its exhibition about MaWangdui, a Western Han tomb 2100 years ago. The body of Marquess of Dai is in the museum. This is one of the best preserved body from ancient times in the world, the skin was still moist when the body was found. She was buried in 4 layers of tombs with air tight seal and 80 liters of preserving fluid deep underground.
The outer tomb

Inner layer

Changsha is the capital of Hunan province and some of the high rank members of the communist party such as Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi and Hu Yaobang grew up around here. It’s a place famous for revolutionary events. There are many people who were involved in Chinese-Japanese war and Chinese civil war come from this province.

Xiang river divides Changsha into the east part and the west part. The city has a population of around 6 million.

LieShiGongYuan??????

Those who were martyred.

Hunan style noodle with beef (5 Yuan~USD$0.70). Ate 2 bowls of noodles.

Changsha city museum

Mao’s statue

Street peddlers beside the museum

Those street peddlers were selling all kinds of stuffs. On the left is a book called Human and Mother Nature and on the right is a book about the quotations of Mao. This is the Chinese way of doing business, anything goes as long as it makes money.

Former site of Hunan Communist party which was founded by MaoZeDong. Mao rent a house and lived here as well.

Took bus 1 across the Xiang river to the western part of Changsha.
Hunan University

Not far away is YueLu hill.

YueLuShuYuan. It’s one of the four famous ancient academies in China and was established during Northern Song dynasty. Academies were extablished in China during Tang dynasty 1300 years ago for scholars to study Chinese classics.

Took bus 1 back to the eastern part of Xiang river to WuYi square. I saw a guy was trying to steal something from a lady’s bag and I shouted at him and approached him. Another guy which is also the thief’s buddy came along and we had a fight. Those 2 guys are Uygur minority from Xinjiang province. I heard a lot of bad stories about Uygur people stealing things around in China but this is the first time I saw it with my own eyes.

Night view of Changsha city center

Went back to the hostel and some of the hostel employees also had some bad experiences with Uygur people.

Went to Changsha train station

and took a 9.50pm K9017 train to Changsha (147Yuan~USD$22, hard seat, 11 hours ride). The hard sleeping berth cost almost 300 Yuan which is quite pricey for a 11 hours ride so I just got a hard seat ticket from yesterday.

With LingChao at the train station, a local Changsha friend.

Took bus 606 to Wuhan University. A big proportion of bus drivers in China are female and this lady was wearing a high heel shoe navigating the bus.

Wuhan University

Took bus 413 to DongHu (East Lake)

and MoShan.

Took bus 401 all the way from the eastern part of Wuchang to the last stop at HanYang district.

Visited Wuhan uprising museum.

During Oct 10th 1911, Wuchang Uprising broke out and that led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and the establishment of the Republic of China.

The left is the military flag during that time and the right is the 5 color flag of Republic of China then. The five colors are representing the five major nationalities of China, the Han (red), the Manchu (yellow), the Mongol (blue), the Hui (white), and the Tibetan (black).

Decided to take the high speed train (GaoTie) to Changsha instead of the normal one. From Wuhan to Changsha it’s around 350 km. Normal fast train takes around 3.5 hours (58 Yuan) and the high speed train (175 Yuan) will take only 80 minutes. Actually it will take almost the same amount of time to get to Changsha from Wuhan because the high speed train runs from the new Wuhan station located at the northeastern part of Wuchang which is a far from Wuchang city center to the new Changsha south station located at the south eastern part of Changsha which is also far from Changsha city center. To get to the new Wuhan train station, it will take almost an hour by public bus. Took bus 315 and switched to bus 311 to get to the new Wuhan station.

There is bullet train every 20 minutes from Wuhan to Guangzhou.

Infrastructure project in China are amazing. The country is modernizing its infrastructures in a rapid pace and the train station look first class. However, behavior of human is hard to change and still needs time. The floor in the station is super clean but people still throw guazipi (skin of sunflower seeds) on the floor.

Got on the G1059 5.40pm train (175 Yuan~USD$26). For high speed train, it cost roughly around USD$9 for every half an hour ride.

The top speed is over 350km/h.

The train arrived at Changsha sharp at 7.08pm. The bullet train is similar to a metro system, the train stopped at in between stations on the way for less than a minute.

Automated exit procedure.

Automated ticket machine.

Changsha south station.

It’s weird that the south station only sells high speed train ticket. The new south station is quite far from the city center. Took a bus to the main train station in the city and switched to bus 132 to XiaDaLong stop in order to get to Changsha Hostel (35 Yuan~USD$5).

I was surprise to meet LingChao again at the hostel. We just met few weeks ago at a hostel in Beijing. He is from Changsha so he was my guide and brought me to try out Hunan cuisine which is called XiangCai.

On the left is LuShuiShiHeYi (4 combination) and right is a kind of spicy shrimp. Hunan cuisine is spicy and actually Sichuan cuisine originated from the combination of GuangDong cuisine and Hunan cuisine.

HuoGongDian is one of Mao’s favorite restaurant.

Mao loves stinky tofu and he mentioned that HuoGongDian’s Tofu smells bad but it tastes good.

Changsha is famous for its bar culture. There are many bars around the city and this is one of the bar street, HuaLongChi.

Wuhan is one of the biggest city in China with a population of around 10 millions and is actually the combination of three smaller cities, Hankou, Hanyang and Wuchang, each separated from the other by a river. Hankou is located at the northern party and is the business center. Wuchang is the education center separated by the Yangtze river (ChangJiang). Hanyang is the industrial center. The 3 cities were combined in 1927 to become Wuhan. The city is famous for its hot summer weather and flood.

There are 4 train stations in Wuhan. One each in Hankou, Hanyang, Wuchang and a brand new train station at the Northeastern part of Wuchang..Arrived at WuChang station around 9.40am in the morning.

Took bus 511 to Hostel Pathfinder which is located at the Wuchang district. Got a dorm room for 35 Yuan~USD$5.

There is a street in Wuhan called HuBuXiang which is famous for street food.

Wuhan is famous for ReGanMian (2.5 Yuan~USD$0.4).

Yellow Crane Tower (HuangHeLou) was built around 2000 years ago. Just took a picture from the outside.

The first Yangtze river bridge was built 1957, during the first 5 Year Plan of China and is 1.6km long. There is also a railway track within the bridge.

The river bank is always flooded.

Walked across the bridge

Took bus 401 to Hubei Provincial Museum.

The museum is divided into 10 different exhibits. There is an exhibit about ChuGuo which is a country around Hubei province more than 2000 years ago during the Autumn Spring period in China before QinShiHuang unites China.
Sword used in ChuGuo

There is also an exhibit about the tomb of Marquis Yi which was buried 2400 years ago.

Big bells used as musical instruments discovered in the tomb.

Even during more than 2000 years ago, Chinese are paying a lot of attention to offering sacrifices to God. I am not sure what kind of God do they believe in then but it’s interesting and has some similarities to the Old Testament.

Replica of the skull of Peking man (500,000 years ago), Nanjing man (350,000 years ago) and Java man (more than 500,000 years ago).

Jiang Han road, a famous pedestrian mall

and just perpendicular to it is JiQing street, another street selling clothings and stuffs.

View Wuhan in a larger map

Took bus 26 to the Shaanxi provincial museum.

The museum is one of the top museum in China. It has 300,000 objects with 8 floors. But only 3 floors are open to the public.

Introduction of Shaanxi province…

It’s separated into a few sections. One section is about the Neolithic period because the 6500 years old Banpo Neolithic village was discovered close to the city.
This vase is around 5000-8000 years old.

PreZhou area, where Xia and Shang dynasty was in power. (2100-1050BC).
Old Chinese characters inside the Ding, 3000-4000 years old.

Zhou Dynasty, the longest dynasty in China with 1000 years in power. (1000BC-250BC). During the Zhou Dynasty, Chinese philosophy developed and people like Confucius, Laozi and Mencius made a big impact to later generations.

Warring states period 475BC-221BC where there are a lot of wars going on before being united by Emperor QinShiHuang.

During Qin dynasty 221BC-206BC, QinShiHuang standardized currency

and measurement.

Every terracotta warrior has a different look.

During Han 200BC-220AD, China developed pretty well.
ZhangQian,

he was sent to explore the west and is the founder of silk road.

Short story about ZhanQian, he is credited as the person that opened up the silk road.

There were many wars and life was tough around 300 AD. I guess that’s why Buddhism started to become more popular then because people turned to Buddhism for consolation and peace.

During Tang dynasty (618AD-907AD), chubby woman is favored.

Tang beauties.

Took bus 521 to Xiaoyanta. Didn’t go in since it’s just another pagoda.

Lamb noodles for lunch (8 Yuan~USD$1.2).

Took bus 600 to Xian Economic and technology development district north of the city center.

Got on the train K242 at 7.31pm towards Wuhan (242 Yuan~USD$35, hard sleeping berth).

Took bus 306 from the train station to some of the tourist attraction in LinTong which is an hour away from Xian. First stop is to HuaQingChi (6 Yuan).

The place was once a favored place of holiday for emperors in Tang dynasty. Since it’s just another old residence, I decided not to go in.

Again took bus 306 to the site of Terracotta Warriors, BinMaYong.
Kneeling archer

The site was accidently discovered in 1974 by peasants digging well. QinShiHuang became emperor when he was just 13 and under his rule of just 36 years, he achieved much more than anyone else. He conquered 6 kingdoms in just 13 years, standardized measurements, currency and writings.

There are 3 pits storing the old artifacts and statue.
Pit 3

Pit 2

The first pit is the biggest one and has 6000 statues in it.

With Oscar and Ilenia, my dorm mates.

Bus 306 broke down on the way back,

Took bus 602 to Xian Jiao Tong university. Xian Jiao Tong university is pretty good for its engineering faculty.

Went to the train station to get a ticket to Wuhan for tomorrow. Today is the first day where passengers can buy the Zhengzhou-Xian bullet train. The train will start running on Feb 6th. Just few weeks ago the bullet train from Wuhan to Guangzhou was put into operation.
China has an amazing plan to build 13,000 km of high speed rail road. The country is going to spend one trillion USD to expand its railway network from 78,000 km to 110,000 km in 2012.

Article about High Speed rail in China.

China High Speed Railway Map

High speed railway Plan

The four north-south main lines:
1. Beijing – Shanghai 350 km/h
2. Beijing – Guangzhou – Hong Kong 350 km/h
3. Shanghai – Hangzhou – Shenzhen
4. Beijing – Shengyang – Harbin (branch Shengyang – Dalian) 350 km/h
The four east-west main lines:
5. Qingdao – Jinan – Shijiazhuang – Taiyuan 250 km/h
6. Xuzhou – Zhengzhou – Xian – Lanzhou 350 km/h
7. Shanghai – Nanjing -Wuhan – Chongqing – Chengdu 200 – 350 km/h
8. Shanghai – Hangzhou – Changsha – Kunming 350 km/h

Train ticket (around 55 Yuan) is much cheaper than the bus ticket (90 Yuan) to Xian. Was trying to take the 7.12am train to Xian but got an 8am train (K59 from XuZhou) instead and the train was delayed for another 1.30 hours.

Arrived at Xian train station at almost 3pm.

Xian train station was pretty crowded. Met a young man, Du on the train and dragged him along to the hostel since he has never heard about youth hostel. Took bus 603 to NanMen and found a youth hostel called XiangZiMen. Originally I was planning to stay at ShuYuan hostel but I lost the address and found XiangZiMen hostel instead.

XiangZiMen hostel (30 Yuan~USD$4.5 for a 6 beds dorm room)

Shaanxi has a very long and interesting history. It’s considered the heart of Chinese civilization, Xian is the capital for Shaanxi province and is one of the oldest Chinese city, more than 3000 years old. The city has been the capital of some of the very old dynasties. Xi’an became a cultural and political center of China in 1100 BC with the founding of the Zhou Dynasty. During the Sui dynasty, Xian was the largest city in the world with a wall enclosing the city of 84 km^2. But during the end of Tang dynasty, Xian was destroyed.
A wall around the city was constructed during the Ming dynasty in 1370 with 12km long, 12meters high and 15-18 meters thick, the wall still remain intact today.

Today, Xian has a population of around 8 millions.

NanMen (South Gate)

GuLou (Drum Tower)

It’s a crowded day in Xian.

Walked back to the train station. Passed by GeMinGongYuan.

Older generation dancing hip hop

Arranged marriages are still popular in China and many old people gather here to exchange information about the availability of their sons and daughters.

Advertisement about looking for a partner

Took bus 5 to DaYanTa. The pagoda was constructed in 652 AD to store the Buddhist sutras obtained by Xuan Zang from India. The pagoda has a height of 64 meters.

South of DaYanTa is BuYeCheng.
Mr. Du was pretty photogenic and loved posing for photos.

Restroom in the art museum.

Walked to TangFuRongYuan, a recent built park with buildings similar to Tang structures in ancient times.

Took bus 26 to GuLou and went to HuiMinJie for food.

Kite flying

Dinner, fried rice with meat on sticks and a drink. (10 Yuan~USD$1.4)

Finally got back to the hostel around 11pm after walking around for 8 hours today.

Luoyang is bigger than I thought. The city has a population of around 3 millions. Luoyang is one of ancient Chinese capital just like Xian. It was the capital for 13 dynasties, 96 emperors over a period of 1,529 years until the Northern Song dynasty moved its capital to Kaifeng in the 10th century.

Took bus 81 to LongMenShiKu, LongMen Grottoes which is listed under the UNESCO heritage site. The bus ride took around 40 minutes to the southern part of the city, 16 km away from the city center.

LongMen Grottoes (60 Yuan~USD$9, student price)
Entrance

There are around 100,000 statues of Buddhas in caves along the banks of Yi river.

Met a Chinese family and a Canadian lady in the Grottoes and I sort of became the translator for the Canadian lady.

Buddha statue

Small buddha carving on the wall

The main statues to see

Caves

Across the banks

The family then drove me to BaiMaSi, white horse temple.

BaiMasi has a history of 1900 years old and is the first Buddhist temple built with the sanction of the government then during the Han Dynasty. There are also myths saying that the temple was built for XuanZeng, the famous monk from the story journey to the east during 600AD but it’s not true.

There are around 100 monks living in the temple and to be a monk nowadays, a university degree is required.

If I remembered correctly, these 3 statues are 2 meters high and weight only 15kg. There is a unique way of making these statues by emptying the inside of the statues after it’s made, the statue is only 2cm thick on the outside.

The family whom I spent the afternoon with.

Took bus 56 back to the city.

A busy street vertical to ZhongZhou street with many street food.

Took bus 58 and 25 just to tour around the city new district, south of the river. Sometimes I just like taking public bus to places far outside the city for no reason and just to look around.

Xian is around 5 hours train ride away from Luoyang. Was deciding if I should take the overnight train to XiAn or wait until tomorrow morning, picked the later option because I was a little tired and decided to take a rest. There is a LiangZiZuLiao branch in Luoyang. LiangZi is a popular franchise brand for massage and there are almost 600 stores all around China. For 68 Yuan~USD$10, you can get a 100 minutes massage, drinks and fruits. With another 10 Yuan to stay overnight.
Overnight for 78 Yuan~USD$12.

The bath house where I stayed

Took the 9am bus (27 Yuan~USD$4, 2 hours) to Dengfeng.

Arrived at Dengfeng at 11am after 2 hours

Dengfeng is not far away from where the famous Shaolin Temple is located.

Shaolin Temple which is located on SongShan mountain is around 15km from Dengfeng. Got to Dengfeng bus station at 11am and took bus 1 and then switched to bus 8 to get to Shaolin Temple.
Shaolin temple was founded around the 5th century by an Indian monk. Shaolin boxing style incorporated some of the natural motions of birds and animals. The temple was burned a few times and because Shaolin monks had also intervened in some of China’s fightings, most recently in 1928 the temple was burned by the local warlord.

There are many KungFu schools around Shaolin Temple. Someone mentioned there are around 90-100 schools with an average of 1000 thousands or more students in each school.
One of the KungFu school.

Foreigners can train there for 3000 Yuan a month including food and lodging. However, locals only pay 300 Yuan.

Ticket to get in into Shaolin Temple cost 100 Yuan~USD14.

Shaolin students taking a break

Student dorm

Shaolin kids

Lunch at Shaolin canteen (5 Yuan).

I was kind of disappointed visiting the place because everything is so touristy and commercialized. I was hoping to see some older, experienced monks living in the temple but instead everything in the temple was made very businesslike.

Student dorm, the tuition is 7000 Yuan~USD$1100 a year including food and lodging.

Shaolin sports shoe which is not cheap.

Shaolin cookies

Shaolin Temple

10 Yuan to snap a picture with the monks and abbot.

There are monks selling all kinds of products around the temple, cookies, medicine, writings….

The Shaolin abbot, Shi YongXin even tried to make Shaolin temple a public company and had a plan to raise capital in US capital market. The current abbott has a mba and had a lot of criticism from the past for being too money minded.

Shaolin Temple going public

Pagoda forest. Cemetry of 248 Pagodas.

Shaolin Kungfu performance

Shaolin soccer, just like the movie

Kids acrobat training

Went back to the bus station and took another bus (17 Yuan~USD$2.5, 2 hours ride) to Luoyang at 5pm. Luoyang is one of China’s ancient city. The city was the capital of 13 dynasties until the Northern Song dynasty moved its capital to Kaifeng.

Got to the bus station at 7pm. There is a hostel recommended in the city, it’s actually a hotel but with a Hosteling International sign. I was kind of lazy to look for the place and stayed at a hotel close to the train station (60 Yuan~USD$9).

Since it’s Friday night, walked around and visited a JiuBa in the city.

Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan province and is one of the transport hub in China because it’s quite center to the country. The city is just situated south of the Yellow River and agriculture plays a big role in the economy of Henan province. Zhengzhou commodity exchange is one of the 3 futures exchange in China.

Took a public bus to Henan provincial museum.

Henan provincial museum is one of the more famous one in China because many old Chinese cities was in Henan province and many old artifacts were found at the surrounding area.

Writings on the shell of a turtle, JiaGuWen. Used to historical and divine records before the invention of paper.

Ding, used to store food and for sacrificial ceremony during ancient times. This ding is used during the Shang dynasty, around 3500 years old.

There are exhibits from different dynasties in the museum starting from the Neolithic period, then Xia (around 2010-1600BC, is even older than Egyption history and civilization.)

Then came Shang, Zhou, Warring Period, Qin, Han, Tang, Song and was pretty educational to me.

Bronze mirror (TongJing), before the invention of mirror.

Han style architecture, more than 2000 years ago.

There is also a section about the 4 great invention of ancient China,
Compass, Gunpowder, Papermaking and Printing.

Walked to Zhengzhou new district which is at the east part of the city.

View Zhengzhou in a larger map
The new district was designed by a Japanese architect and the planning for the new city had won some awards for the city planning design.

A paper about Zhengzhou new district by KPMG.

An old chinese game, a guy whipping the top.

Don’t do your laundry in the river.

The CBD (Central business district) is built in a circular shape

with a lake in the middle

Stayed at a bath house (30 Yuan~USD4.5) since it’s cheaper than the hotel I was staying at.

Arrived at Kaifeng train station at 6.45am in the morning.

Breakfast (1.5 Yuan~USD$0.20)

Kaifeng is in Henan province. Henan is the most populous province in China with a population of almost 100 million people. Stored my bag for 8 Yuan, walked around the city and went to the museum. Since the museum only opens at 9am, I visited KaiFengFu first (25 Yuan with student discount ~USD$4). KaiFengFu is something like a municipal government center during the Northern Song dynasty. Everything is rebuilt since the city was buried deep underground.

There are some traditional performances in front of the entrance of KaiFengFu at 9am.

Inside KaiFengFu

The prefecture of Kaifeng was first built in AD 907. Kaifeng is the capital of Northern Song dynasty for 168 years and was one of the biggest metropolis in the world then with a population of around 1.5 million. Some famous individuals in Chinese history such as BaoQingTian and Su DongPo held their post in the city.

Taoism was the national religion then.

One of the few lakes within the city

Kaifeng Museum

Kaifeng lies just 10km south of the yellow river and was flooded hundreds of times during history. The city of Northern Song was actually buried 9m deep under the earth. There aren’t many high rise buildings because buildings that require strong foundation weren’t allowed by the government to protect the old artifacts buried underground.

There are 6 layers of cities in Kaifeng.

Kaifeng is enclosed by a city wall around the city.
City northern gate

Tieta Park (15 Yuan with student discount ~USD2).

Tieta is one of the oldest and tallest pagoda in China. It’s around 55 meters tall and is around 1000 years old. This is only one of the 2 historical structures still remain above the surface in Kaifeng.

LongTing palace, a rebuilt version of the emperor’s residence

Walked to GuLou, an area with many kinds of food.
Fried LiangPi (3.5 Yuan ~USD$0.50)

I noticed that people love eating outside in Kaifeng. I ate all 3 meals today outdoor.

Took train K31 at 2.48pm towards Zhengzhou (13 Yuan~USD$2, 45 minutes ride). Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan with a population of almost 8 million.

Zhengzhou train station

There isn’t any youth hostel in Zhengzhou so stayed at a hotel around the train station (80 Yuan~USD$12).

View across the train station

The weather here wasn’t too cold. Some homeless people sleeping on the street.

Workers from a bakery singing on the street, one of Chinese team building activities

Sticks from fried stuffs

The February 7 Tower was built to mark the great strike by the workers on the Beijing-Hankou (Wuhan) railway in 1923.
February Seven square, ErQi GuangChang.

HuiMian is famous in Zhengzhou, fat noodles with mutton (8 Yuan~USD$1.2)

Walked around and visited a bar/club at WenHua street.