Voyaging through Shandong...and beyond!!!

We spent the whole last week traveling, mostly by bus, through Shandong province and then into Henan province.  We stayed in a different city every night, so we covered a lot of ground.  The places we went include Jinan, Qufu (Confucius's hometown), Kaifeng, Zhengzhou, Luoyang,and Heze, and we went to Confucius's tomb, the Iron Pagoda, and the Shaolin Temple, among others.  Most of these were in Henan Province, which is an adjacent province to Shandong, where Qingdao is.  'Twas a merry time indeed, although it was pretty tiring being on the move so much.  I also would have preferred to go to fewer places and stay in each of them longer, but I had a really good time nonetheless.

As far as highlights go, there were definitely a couple.  Qufu was really cool.  In the old part of the city, they kept the old style of architecture but put modern stores in the buildings.  It was a really neat contrast. Besides that, I really enjoyed the White Horse Temple, which was more of a functioning temple than a huge tourist attraction.  It looks like this. 

 

The Shaolin Temple wasn't like that at all.  Of course, it was worth going to once.  We watched a martial arts demonstration that was pretty awesome and included this guy throwing a dart through a big plastic square and popping a balloon on the other side of it.  The temple itself was extremely touristy, though, and that kind of ruined it.  However, near the temple there are a bunch of what are basically kung fu boarding schools, so we got to watch a bunch of kids doing really intense training.   

Also, the Longmen Caves near Luoyang were very cool, despite being quite touristy.  It was probably the greatest concentration of Western tourists I've seen since Beijing.  There were some pretty impressive Buddha statues there, including some earlier ones that look quite different from what you normally see.

Now we're back in Qingdao, and it's back to studying and exploring Qingdao for the time being.  But soon we're off again, this time going to a number of stops along the Silk Road.  I'll keep you peoples posted.  And don't forget, it's duty of us that obligation the cultural relic.