With passion to admire the ancient capital of nine dynasties of thousands of years, I came to Luoyang in the warm spring breeze last year.
Walking towards south along Shangchang Road, there were many pseudo-classic buildings with flying eagle paintings standing on both sides of the road. When I arrived at Zhongzhou Road, some high buildings gave us an impression of modern city. I thought that Luoyang was harmonious unity of ancient civilization and modern civilization. This trip must be interesting and worthy.
We came to King City Park first because it was said that there were a lot of peonies here. When we arrived there, I was a little disappointed because there were not as many peonies as I thought. In this park, there was a statue of Peony Fair with dignified grace and holy image. We took a rest in a hotel. Waitresses were zealous speaking mandarin with Henan accent. Looking down Luoyang from Floor 12, we found there were many green trees in Luoyang.
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| peonies |
In the afternoon, we went to White Horse Temple. It was the first official temple since Buddhism was introduced into China in the Han Dynasty. There was a story about the establishment of White Horse Temple. It was said that Liu Zhuang, one of emperors of Han Dynasty, ever dreamed of golden people. Then he sent emissaries to the Western Regions to seek Buddha dharma. The emissaries and some Indian monks returned to Luoyang and brought lots of sutras by some white horses three years later. Next year, Liu Zhuang ordered to build a temple to store these sutras and named the temple White Horse Temple in honor of those white horses. In the temple, there were some old building for storing sutras such as Hall of Heavenly King and Great Buddha Hall. I had not too much interest on them as I was not a fan of Buddhism.
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| disciple in white horse temple |
Next day, we came to the world-famous Longmen Grottoes which I had been longing to admire. Despite the expensive ticket, 80 yuan, I got one ticket to visit it. Longmen was a beautiful place with green mountains standing at both sides and green water flowing towards north. Through the Longmen Bridge, it was the true Longmen Grottoes. There were more than 100,000 Buddha statues inside, which is the top among the grottoes in China. The biggest one was Lushena Buddha with 17.14 meters, looking like a middle-aged woman. It was said the Buddha was caved in accordance with the looking of Wu Zetian who was the emperor of Tang Dynasty at that time. When we finished the admiration of these Buddha, our Luoyang trip was over as well.
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| Longmen Grottoes, Luoyang |
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