Luoyang had been China’s capital during many dynasties. At times it acted as a dual capital with Xi’an as the western capital and Luoyang the eastern. Sadly, over many, many centuries, most of the grand, historic buildings of the capital were destroyed.

I had chosen my hotel because of its favorable location, and it’s view. It was a short walk from a historic older part of town. From a small rooftop terrace is a view of two reconstructed Tang Dynasty structures: Ming Tang Palace, and Tian Tang Pagoda.

In the evening it took little time to reach a bustling night market area with lots of food vendors, as well as stalks selling knickknacks. There were even tables where vendors would sit creating packs of cigarettes using compact rolling machines.

I had previously been to Luoyang in 2016, without knowing anything about the city. Blindly accompanying three other teachers from a program in Xi’an, we skipped the Luoyang itself, and visited the Shaolin temple and Longmen grottoes.
Having already seen them, I had no desire to re-visit either of those spots. But I did want to go up Songshan (Song Mountain) and visit White Horse Temple. I was mislead into thinking a package tour offered through my hotel would include both of those- on a tour that also involved seeing Shaolin Temple (again!)

Well, it turned out that Songshan was NOT on this excursion’s itinerary. This meant lots of wasted travel time and visit time for the Shaolin Temple. Actually, the tour company was pretty worthless in most respects. To effect the itinerary they shuffled subsets of confused tourists from one bus to another, rather than keeping them on a single bus.

Although the tour company was weak at best, my fellow tourists we’re generally friendly: whether they spoke English or not!
(hey! old men bond easily no matter what language challenges exist!)

I have already posted photos of the Shaolin Temple in “Pere’s Ramblings” for 2016, so I’ll skip that here, and move on to the White Horse Temple.

This temple is close to 2,000 years old and is said to be the oldest Buddhist temple in China.

The following day (on my own), I visited “Guanlinsi” (Guanlin Temple), famous for being the burial site of Guan Yu, a heroic figure during the “Three Kingdoms” period of Chinese history. (He is mentioned in my page on Sanmenxia)

I said that Guan Yu was buried here, but actually it was only his head which was attached to a wooden body. The details of these circumstances are a bit complex. Read the book! 🙂

I previously mentioned the Ming Tang Palace and Tian Tang Pagoda- shown below.

Although these are quite attractive, and said to be built over the foundations of the original structures, these are quite modern buildings. Theses have structural steel cores and I believe they were constructed within the last ten years.