There's a sadness I'd forgotten about traveling in China, perhaps because to remember it you need to pass through great frustration. In Handan and Anyang, even in Kaifeng, I had no expectation of really stepping into the hoary past - though each of these places is ancient. But in Luoyang, a capital city for
one thousand five hundred years!, I had high
hopes - now thoroughly dashed. A Chinese friend asked me on
WeChat
what my impressions of Luoyang were; I replied "thirteen
dynasties vanished without a trace." It might be because we decided to stay in a "boutique" hotel on the top floors of a new housing complex in a newish part of town - from our window you can see the Luo River in the distance, both sides of which are forests of high rises. In the middle distance, though, you see the
old neighborhoods being razed to make
way for the new - here's one of them from closer. It occurred to me that a history of thirteen dynasties means, at least, the razing of twelve others - and that was long before the birth of new China, reborn once again as an idyll of apartment towers, parks and malls. On the poster for the shiny new Luoyang the only things old looking are a recreated Sui Dynasty pagoda and a big Buddha from the 龙门石窟 Longmen grottoes,
cropped from its cave. The caves, which you get to driving past an endless series of identical vast intersections between apartment and office complexes, are the main attraction here, and justifiably so. Carved mostly in the 6th-7th centuries, they've survived the rise and fall of dynasties - you can't raze and rebuild a cave, though the Cultural Revolution decapitated small figures. Some big Buddhas are still smiling.
cropped from its cave. The caves, which you get to driving past an endless series of identical vast intersections between apartment and office complexes, are the main attraction here, and justifiably so. Carved mostly in the 6th-7th centuries, they've survived the rise and fall of dynasties - you can't raze and rebuild a cave, though the Cultural Revolution decapitated small figures. Some big Buddhas are still smiling.
