The heat of Zhengzhou followed me to the sacred mountain of Songshan (嵩山) and so did the crowds, since it was the ‘Golden Week’ public holiday of May 1. Wearing my new summer cycling outfit of shorts and trainers I weaved through the busy traffic leaving Zhengzhou and endured a few ‘near misses’ on the highway that rolled up and down the hills that rose to the west of the city. I passed coal mines and roadside stalls selling cherries on the way to Dengfeng (登封). Its hilly streets had the air of a mountain resort or health spa, which is kind of what it was because people came here either to hike up Songshan or to improve themselves through the powers of Qi Gong at the nearby Shaolin temple.
I found another nice guesthouse at the top of town next to the ancient Songyang Academy (嵩阳书院). The bewildered lady manager soon gave up on trying to fill in the online police registration form and invited me to do it myself. I stepped behind the counter and typed in the details that had become embedded in my daily routine after almost two weeks of checking into hotels.
The weather remained hot and the risk of heatstroke made me give up on my plans to hike up to the summit of Songshan. The crowds of tourists wielding walking poles at the entrance to the mountain trail at the Songyang Academy were another reason to avoid the hike during this busy holiday weekend.
The local sites were also congested, but I managed to get to the Songyang Academy early in the morning before the crowds, to see the 4500-year old cypress trees that marked the entrance gate. Having trees of such ancient lineage seemed quite appropriate for a centre of Confucian teaching where reverence for ancestors was surely on the curriculum.
Modern day Confucian scholars re-enacted rituals and musical recitals in the grounds of the Academy, while outside there were displays of martial arts by students from some of the town’s many sub-Shaolin training centres.
Across town there was also a holiday weekend carnival atmosphere at the Taoist Zhongyue Temple (中岳庙). A fairground had been set up in front of the temple, with more Qi Gong displays, food stalls, gift shops and even a Taoist version of a ghost train ride. The temple itself was relatively peaceful, presumably due to the admission fee (but free for me, being over 60). Some reviews said Zhongyue was a less crowded and more authentic experience than its brash and commercialised Buddhist counterpart at the nearby Shaolin temple.
Dengfeng was home to many ‘Shaolin’ Kung Fu schools. These commercial martial arts academies claimed to have links to the world famous temple up the road and offered residential training programs for kung fu, tai chia, qi gong and kickboxing. Some were open to international students, but the young males I saw practising their jumps, thrusts and cries in the courtyards of Dengfeng were all Chinese.
To finish the day I cycled over the hill to see the ancient observatory at Gaocheng (登封观星台). It had been founded by locally trained Buddhist monk, Yi Xing (一行), who in the eight century AD was an adviser to the Emperor Xuanzang. As an aside to his Buddhist teaching, Yi Xing came up with an epic programme to set up a series of 13 solar observation sites stretching from modern day Siberia down to Vietnam. Gaocheng is the only surviving site of this chain which enabled Yi Xing to better estimate the meridian arc and produce more accurate calendars. I found the current site to be a placid and well preserved example of a late Yuan dynasty stone observatory tower arranged on a north-south axis within a large circle. The only blemish was a large chunk of stone blown out of one side of the tower, which an inscription stated had been caused by Japanese shelling of the monument during their invasion of China in the 1930s.
While Gaocheng was mercifully free of crowds, the same could not be said of Shaolin Temple. I passed by the entrance of Shaolin when I pedalled over the hills towards Luoyang the following day. I was lucky to get through because the entire road had been sealed off for several kilometres on either side by local traffic police, in anticipation of the Golden Week crowds. Access was only allowed by shuttle bus and coach, which disgorged their passengers as a continuous stream of tourists lining up to gain entry. I continued on up the hill for another few kilometres, until I reached a ‘pass’ beyond which I could see the plain stretching to the Yellow River.
It should have been plain sailing all the way to Luoyang after that, but after freewheeling down the switchback road I heard the dreaded twanging sound from the rear wheel. A roadside inspection revealed two more broken spokes, and others were loose. I taped and tightened them up as much as I could and continued on cautiously towards the big city. Travelling slowly, I had plenty of time to think over my options for onward travel, and decided that a more robust bike would be needed for the next stage of my Yellow River trip northward towards Inner Mongolia.
Arriving in Luoyang, I had to cross two tributaries of the Yellow River to reach my hostel within the rebuilt walls of the old city. It might have been called ‘Hanfu City’ because so many people on the street were in costume role playing as mythical figures from China’s past. There was a holiday weekend atmosphere with mothers and daughters in Hanfu riding on motor scooters, students in costume posing for selfies, boys striding the streets as princes and some boys even made up as princesses. After checking in to the hostel located in the busy ‘entertainment precinct’ of bars and cafes I bought myself a crepe-like jianbing (煎饼) from a street stall and just sat to do a bit of people watching.
The next morning I located a Dahon dealership and took my bike down there to see if they could fix the broken spokes. After an eight kilometre ride to the south side of the city I was disappointed to find the shop was closed and undergoing renovation. There were people working inside, and a woman came out when she saw my bike. She explained that she was the owner and her shop would be closed for the long weekend while they gave it a makeover. But when I told her about my broken spokes - and my long term trip along the Yellow River - she told me to bring the bike back later in the morning when her husband - and bike mechanic - would be there and could take a look at it.
My spirits rose, and they were not diminished despite me then making the mistake of visiting a Chinese national monument on a public holiday. The Longmen Grottoes were just down the road, but their statues of Buddha might as well have been on Mars for all the chance I got to get up close to them. Even though it was just after opening time, a steady stream of visitors was already surging through the entrance gates like a crowd going to a football match.
I should have turned back there and then, but having already bought my Over 60s Discount ticket I pushed my way in to join a human gridlock on the riverside road that led past the Grottoes. I then endured a one kilometre shoulder-to-shoulder shuffle along the road, unable to see anything. I did not even try to join the greater crush of bodies in the fenced-off lines to go up the stairs to see the rock images up close. There was no alternative but to just ‘go with the flow’ until we reached a bridge across the river that gave access to the return leg on the opposite bank. An hour later I’d managed to extricate myself from the melee, retrieve my bike from a mass of parked electric scooters and returned to the Dahon shop.
As promised, not only had the bike mechanic shown up, but he’d brought a supply of Dahon-specific replacement spokes for the 20 inch wheels. He set to work on my bike on the pavement outside the shop, and within 40 minutes had returned it to me for a road test. Steady as a rock and a smooth silent ride with no twanging - wonderful! We chatted a bit about my Yellow River trip and our shared enthusiasm for Dahon bikes. They then charged me only a modest fee for the work and the cost of the spokes, and I couldn't thank them enough. Such is the Fellowship of the Dahon!
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