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From Magic City Morning Star Guest Column
Luoyang, Henan
I do not usually recur to the pick-up service from the station to the hostel and Luoyang was no exception. As I was getting closer and closer to the station, however, I realised I did something completely stupid in giving up the service. It was getting late, I did not have a map of the city, not even the address in characters. I also realised the mental map I had of where the hostel should have been located was nothing more than a sketch. I was getting desperate when a text message informed me that the hostel manager, Tian Ge, had sent his son to the train station anyway. And for this time too, I was safe.
As soon as he discovered we could communicate in Chinese, the little helpers disappeared. With his help I bought the train ticket to Beijing for the next day and we then took the bus to the hostel. An hour trip. Towards darker and less busy streets. Once off the bus we walked down the dark riverside. The kind of street you see on the evening news, the kind with dismembered bodies scattered around. After a never ending walk with a freezing wind blowing and the conciousness that I would have never found the hostel by myself, we reached the long craved goal.
The hostel was nothing more than Tian Ge and his son's apartment (on the seventh floor with no lift). One room is occupied by father and son while the other two have been converted into bedrooms for holidaymakers. Kitchen and bathroom are shared. If I did not live in an apartment exactly the same as this one, it would have been an extremely interesting experience. My apartment, though, has a small and insignificant particular that distinguishes it from Tian Ge's. Heating. Yes. December. Yes. Temperatures well below zero. Yes. No heating. When I saw a white little cloud coming out of my mouth I felt like a character in one of those cheap ghost movies. But no, I was just in a cold, really cold room.
There was an electric blanket on the bed, which helped me survive the night but did not help in getting up the next morning. What was waiting for me outside the bed was not in the least appealing. I have no idea how, but I did get out of bed, reached the bathroom and washed quickly. Too quickly actually, as I beat him to the punch and did not give him the chance to turn the hot water cistern on. I do not know how many times he said that he was sorry, he was seriously upset that I had washed with cold (read: freezing) water. Not even by assuring him I was the most upset of the two could I calm him down.
Open brackets. I lived in Canada; I experienced cold weather. Never, and I repeat, never did I wear two sweatshirts one on top of the other. In Luoyang this unthinkable event happened. Close brackets.
After giving me a scrap of paper with the bus lines I had to take to go from one sightseeing to the other, Tian Ge walked me to the bus stop. We chatted a bit and I discovered some really interesting things about Chinese girls. They are becoming hard to please, independent. Chinese girls don't know their place anymore, they are not kind and obliging, their families and the society are teaching them to be independent, they convinced them that they can get wherever they want, they can do whatever job they want. Chinese girls want a foreign husband because foreigners have money and money is all they care about. Western girls, instead, are different. Ah yeh? I said goodbye to Tian Ge and got on the bus holding the paper with the directions.
Always following the directions on the small piece of paper, I changed bus. Along the road, some panels alarmed me: Longmen Caves: 11km. Longmen Caves:13km. Longmen Caves: 15km. Gettong closer to the destination, the distance should diminish and not increase. When I finally realised I was travelling towards the opposite direction, I had been sitting on the bus for over an hour 45 minutes and I was over 15 kilometers away from the Grottoes. I hired a taxi. Before getting off, at the main entrance of the Caves, the taxi driver, a really neat guy, strongly recommended me not to take a taxi on the same spot on my way back, taxi drivers are such cheaters! I trust you, my friend, of it being so.
The small shops were empty and the sellers were playing cards. They were too busy warming themselves and eating sunflowers' seeds to care about those three tourists coming their way. The Caves were as I expected and hoped them to be.
Seen from the distance, the slope they were carved in looked like a dovecote. On the opposite bank, a few minor caves and a temple with a beautiful park. And a luxurious hotel, which never hurts.
The building with the "Male do not" sign is a women's public washroom. So males should not, Never, For no reason whatsoever, go there.] I wanted to avoid a couple of hours of public transport. I also wanted to run away from bad taxi drivers. I therefore took a bus for as far as a couple of stops and then hired a good taxi driver to take me to the White Horse Temple. It is the second ranked sightseeing place in Luouyang, and it is located on the outskirts of the city in the opposite quarter of the city.
The welcome was worthy of the temple's reputation: the incense sellers even came to open the door of my taxi, the kids with their tin cans for begging followed me as far as they could go and already at the ticket office I was being asked from which country I was from.
The temple, first and greatest Buddhist temple in China, was populated by a large number of monks busy with the usual closing time tasks: some were closing the pavillions' doors, some were sweeping, some were coming back from the fields with hoe on their shoulders, some were relaxing playing or reading. None of them wanted his picture taken, tired maybe of the tourists' excessive attention.
The new temple. If you think it looks ugly form the outside, just know the inside is even worse.
To kill time - but mostly to get warm, as the station lounges are not equipped with heating - I entered in a Lao Li, a noodle restaurant. Imagine a KFC. The red of the tables and of the waiters uniform, the reassuring face of the General on the sign, the fried chicken wings. Now translate that into Chinese: the red of the tables and of the waiters uniform, the reassuring face of Mister Li on the sign, the steaming bowls of noodle soup. And the young Chinese couple forcing their poor kid, not able to walk yet but capable of the V sign, to say Hallo to the foreigner.
It was so cold that the streets were deserted. The wide streets of five, six lanes, empty. Such a silence reigned that it looked like even buses were trying to cover their noise not to disturb. Uno scenario irreale per una citta irreale. A surreal scenario for a surreal city. Chiara Braccagni
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