The days we spent in Wudang was a pretty tuff act to follow, but as it turned out our trip kept up the pace. Next stop were the city of Louyang. Our main purpose visiting this city was to see the Longmen grottoes. More than 100 000 statues (mostly Buddhas) are carved into the rock in a small area by the Yi River.
Longmen grottoes
Longmen grottoes
Longmen grottoes
After our visit to Longmen we went to a local Peony festival. The Peony is a flower and is one of the national symbols of China. The celebration was visible around the city – like in thisparking lot:
Peony festival in Louyang
Pink peony
White peony
Taiji teacher Pamela Hiley in the peony garden
After Louyang we went on to Anyang. At first the Chinese were a bit surprised that we wanted to go there. Not many foreign tourists do. Anyang is however a most interesting place if you’re interested in the origins of Chinese culture, philosoply, language and more. Back in 2008 we went to the museum dedicated to the origin of the Chinese writing. This time one of our most important goals was to visit the origin of the I Ching (The Book of Changes). It’s impossible to explain I Ching in a short blog post, but I’ll mention one pretty cool thing. The system of tri-grams I Ching shares with the Ba Gua is the first known use of binary code. There are 8 tri-grams that can be combined in to 64 hexagrams. Anyone with some knowledge of computers should recognize this as the same language used by our computers. One of the things we learned during this trip is that the oldest manifestations of the Ba Gua found in archeological surveys are more than 7000 years old!
I Ching memorial
Next stop on our journey was to reacquaint ourselves with old friends from our previous visit in 2008. We drove to the park at the center of Anyang and was welcomed by a large crowd of people. Leading them was our friends from a local Taiji school and the leader of the Anyang I Ching University.
Welcome to Anyang!
Anyang Taiji demonstration
Anyang Taiji sword demontration
Pushing hands with the Master
After practicing in the park we were taken to visit the local Taiji center. My photography skills are not quite good enough yet, because most of the pictures I took there are not good enough. We had a great time though and I’m pretty sure this is not the last time we see our friends in Anyang. There will be more trips to China and it’d be great to go back!
