2nd class, "hard sleeper" seats, which I've heard are the best, as 1st
class is too expensive to justify the benefits and 3rd class is
uncomfortable. There are 6 bunks to a compartment, and each HBA
student had a low bunk. Fairly comfortable sleep.
Woke up on Saturday morning about 6:30 AM. Saw countryside coming
in; lots of flatness and greenery, lots of row crops. Mildly rainy.
Though from the train the buildings looked fairly plain, after
emerging from the train station we arrived in a very colorful square,
though the buildings were still cheaply constructed – lots of
brightly-colored signs and block lettering. Starbucks effect present
here – there were 2 KFCs across the street from each other very close
to the train station. Took a bus (about 1.5 hours) to Tagou Wushu
Academy, passing from the richer part of the city to the poorer part
to the countryside. Bus drivers here will honk under all
circumstances – when other cars are in danger of bumping, when they
want to pass other cars and use the opposite lane (with cars clearly
oncoming), when driving around curves with bad views to warn potential
cars coming the other way they can't see, and sometimes on straight
roads with no cars in sight for good measure.
Tagou Wushu Academy, which is withing walking distance of Shaolin
Temple, is clearly poor. Several buildings in disrepair, roads
uneven, etc., like most of the buildings in the area. By comparison,
the Shaolin Temple itself (and its related property – they obtained a
lot of the surrounding land, held by other wushu schools, in 2003) is
pretty well kept, and the road leading up to it is in very good
repair. After arriving around 9:30 AM, we got our wushu clothes and
went to our rooms. I ended up with a single room through some
confusing housing-draw practices. Ate lunch at the cafeteria (the
food was mostly the same every day, standard Chinese restaurant fare –
rice and/or porridge with dishes of various combinations of meat,
vegetable, and egg).
Went to the Shaolin Temple area afterward. This place is touristy,
geared towards entertaining visitors (like us) – I suppose it would
have to be, given the money they must attract to maintain the good
condition they wish to keep the temple area in. We started by viewing
a wushu demonstration at the exhibition center, which was very
interesting and fun to watch – there were various special
demonstrations, such as weaponry, contortionism, animal styles, feats
of strength (including breaking metal bars on the practitioner's head
and piercing a hole through a sheet of glass to pop a balloon), and a
segment where audience members were invited up to learn a few wushu
moves (HBA student Kong Rui, aka Brian Campos, learned a bit of
scorpion style). When I say touristy, I mean that Shaolin Temple
workers were walking in front and around the stage, trying to sell us
photographs, DVDs, and other things – while the demonstration itself
was in progress.
After looking around the exhibition/practice center, we went to
Shaolin Temple proper, where a guide showed us around. Afterward we
asked temple staff questions about our social study topics. This
wasn't easy, given that not only did I not have a large vocabulary
about Buddhism, Daoism, and Wushu, but also the staff didn't all speak
with the accent I've been listening to for the last 4 weeks, and thus
I often had to ask them to repeat. Afterward, we went to a pagoda
ground with a lot of stone towers whose purpose I am not entirely
clear on. We then returned to Tagou to eat dinner and sleep.
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