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.