A very long day

As Wojciech always says; 'In China anything that is free, sells very well'. This can be demonstrated by the massive queues in supermarkets and on the streets for tiny free samples. It is also something I should have kept in mind when Vincent, a man from the school at which I work, invited Tom and me on a day trip to Luoyang this Saturday.
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Luoyang is about two hours west of Zhengzhou by train, and is one of the three ancient Chinese capitals in Henan, along with Zhengzhou and Kaifeng. Its main tourist attraction is the Longmen Grottos, about a 40min bus ride from the central train station. The Grottos consist of a number of, you guessed it, grottos filled with carvings of Royals and characters from Buddhist history and mythology. They were patronised by many Emperors, including Wu Zetian, China's only female Emperor, in about 500 AD. Unfortunately many of the statues were defaced, literally, during the cultural revolution, but what remains is very impressive. The area is very green and cool, being a large river valley, and was therefore a delightful contrast to the dry heat of Zhengzhou. It took a good three hours to walk round and see everything, but it was worth it.

However, Tom and I were constantly pestered by Vincent who had decided that he would use the twelve hours in which he would be in contact with native English speakers as a private English lesson. I expected a little of this, but nothing close to the intensity and annoyance that he managed to generate. Not only were his questions constant and repetetive, but also annoyingly irrelevant. He seemed to desire to master coloquial English before he had any grasp of conjugating present tense verbs. Fortunately his son was pretty cool, and Tom and I had a good laugh mucking about with him and carrying him on our shoulders when he was tired. We also witnessed one of the more bizarre incidents that I have seen so far on my trip. A father giving his son a hefty boot in the bum for mucking around in a photo, then stomping off in a sulk, leaving his son completely startled. Very odd.

Tom and I are beginning to fight back against the annoyingly curious (I would say nosy but I am compromising and Vincent was constantly telling us that the reason everyone was either staring or laughing was because Chinese people are very warm hearted) Chinese. Our first weapon is our developing language skills. Now if a small child grabs his friend and shouts 'look, look lao wai!' (which is a semi-offensive way of saying foreigner that means old outsider), we can copy his actions, crying out 'look, look Chinese children!' which has yet to fail in putting them off guard. Our most recent development in the fight against nosiness was born out of or trip to Luoyang. If a Chinese person unashamedly takes a photo of us, but with know attempt to ask for permission, simply because we are foreigners, Tom and I will take out our cameras and each take a photo of the offender. This is very enjoyable, and an excellent release.