Dr. Mark Nan Tu

Shaolin temple is perhaps the most famous temple in China. It was made famous by a 1980s Chinese movie with the identical name. The temple is famous for its Shaolin Gongfu. I came to visit the Shaolin temple in the late 80s. The Shaolin temple was very small at the time. Most of the historical sites were in the original u restored stages. The two sites that I remembered most were:
1: The pagoda forest
2: The temple with the monks’ foot prints on the brick ground, supposedly from the Gongfu practice.
The roads leading to the temple from the bus stops were not tarred. There were many stalls selling anything related to the Gongfu. There were many Gongfu schools which housed tens of thousands if not millions of Gongfu students.
I came to Zhengzhou and signed up for a day tour to the Longmen Grotto and the Shaolin Temple. We visited the Longmen Grotto in the morning and on the road back to Zhengzhou, we visited the Shaolin temple.
To my pleasant surprise, the stalls were all gone. The roads were well paved. There were a few well established Gongfu schools whose students were practicing in the field. We saw a Gongfu Show. Which runs every hour and it is indoor. The show was short, only 30minutes and the performance was ok but there were many Gongfu shows which were much better in other part of the country
The Shaolin temple was also repaired and expanded significantly. The temples looked new. However, the temple which housed the famous monks’ Gongfu foot prints were now the office of the Shaolin monks and off the limits to the ordinary visitors, a truly disappointment to me.
The pagoda forest was still there. There were couple of new additions. These pagodas were building to house the remains of the deceased prominent monks.
There was a night show. The guide told me that the show was performed out in the nature setting with the Songshan Mountain as the back drop. I was planning to see a night show but the heavy rain that day stopped me. It gave a reason to come back to Shaolin temple again.
On the way back to Zhengzhou, there were more heavy rains. When I reached Zhengzhou at night, I could see the side walk was mostly filled with over flown water. Many vehicles were stopped in the water.

Gongfu school students

Shaolin Gongfu Show

Shaolin temple under heavy rain

Pagoda Forest

Heavy downpour caused flooding on the Zhengzhou Street

Our tour bus left Longmen Grotto and headed for the White Horse Temple. In Luoyang, there were two famous temples. The first is the Shaoling Temple which made famous in the 1980s by the Shaoling Gongfu movie. The other is the White Horse Temple which is less known to the public but with more historical significance in the Chinese history.
The white horse temple was built in the late Hang dynasty, 68AD. It was said that the temple is the “cadre of the Chinese Buddhism”. The two monks from Indian and the white horse that carried the Buddhist scripts were housed in this temple. From here, the Buddhism spread around China and influenced the Chinese history for thousands of years.
Despite the historical significance, the White Horse Temple is a rather small temple located just 12km outside Luoyang city. The temple was repaired many times through out the history. The white horse carving outside the gate was actually built in the Song Dynasty (some 900 years after the temple was first built).
Similar to the other temples, the White Horse Temple has buildings such as the Tianwang Hall, The Great Buddha Hall, etc.
Comparing with the temples in other part of China, such as Beijing, the White Horse Temple is less impressive and much smaller. However, it has prominent spot among all the temples as it is considered “the origin place for Buddhism in China”

I took a train from Beijing to Zhengzhou. After spending nearly 8 hours on the train, I arrived in Zhengzhou late in the afternoon. I have booked a hotel room from ctrip.com. The Fengleyuan hotel is located in the center of the Zhengzhou city. At the check in counter, I booked a day tour to the longmen grotto for the second day.
I had a light breakfast at the hotel early in the morning and was picked up by the tour bus at 730am. The driver picked up the other 8 tourists along the way. We started off from Zhengzhou at around 8am. Longmen grotto is in Luoyang city and some 80km from Zhengzhou. The longmen grotto is connected by the newly build expressway. It was a smooth ride and we arrived at the Longmen Grotto entrance at about 10am.
The packing lot was 2km from the entrance. I decided to walk to the entrance. The stoned path was clean the well maintained. There was a huge lawn and the grass was trimmed and green. The stoned path was along the river bank of Yi River.
The weather was hot and the temperature was nearly 35C. Our guide was a local Zhengzhou resident and was very familiar with the longmen history. She led us to the scenic spots and told us the historical significance off the grotto.
Longmen grotto is one of the top three grottos in China. The other two are the Yungang Grotto in the Datong, Shanxi province and the Dunghuang Grotto in Dunghuang, Gansu province. The Longmen grotto was first build in the Wei Dynasty and most of the caves were build in Tang dynasty with the next 400 years after the first cave was build.
Among the many caves and the thousands of Buddha images, I was mostly impressed by the three caves. The first was an early cave build in the Wei Dynasty. The Wei carving was quite different than the Tang dynasty. The Buddha figure was very slim.
The second cave as the ten-thousand Buddha cave. This cave was built in the Tang dynasty. Besides the main Buddha figure, there were thousands of small Buddha figures carved on the cave wall. These Buddha figures were small and some of them were as small as 2 cm.
The three caves was the most significant cave with the main Buddha Shakyamuni figure was 17 meters tall. The main Buddha was surrounded by many protective deities. This cave was significantly bigger than the other carvings which showed that these carvings were build by emperor. The guide later told us that the carving was built in the Wuzhetian, the first woman empress in Chinese history. The cave was purposely carved on the upper level of the mountain. The visitors will climb many steps to reach the platform. The main Buddha image is very peaceful with rounded face which reflected the beauty image at the time.
We walked across a bridge to the other side of the Yi River. From the other side, we could see immerse size of the Longmen grotto. The caves were scatted along the mountain along the Yi river bank and stretched several miles. It was surely an impressive sight.
There was a small temple and the tomb of Baijuyi, a famous poet in the Tang dynasty. He spent the later years of his life with the site of great Longmen Grotto across the river. I wonder what Mr. Baijuyi thought when he viewed the magnificent Grotto.

Entrance to the Longmen Grotto

The 17 meter Buddha from the other side of the Yi River

Baijuyi Tomb

1: It has over 1000 years of history and was the capital for China for nearly 800 years. (thus many historical sites)
2: It is easily accessable with direct flights to and from every part of the world.
3: It is the host city for the 29th Summer Olympic Game which means significant infrustructure improvements such as roads, signs in English, cleaness, English speaking ability among the locals,  etc.
4: The cost for food, hotels and transportations are reasonable if you know where to look. Beijing is a place where you can spend 10,000RMB or 10 RMB for a meal and 20,000RMB or 100 RMB for a room. Some of the best bang for the bucks are found in the 50RMB meals or 200RMB rooms. Cheap for an international city in my book. Beijing in 10 years will be comparable as Paris, New York or London so as the cost of visit. So get in before it is too expensive.
5: It is very safe with no visible discriminations to any ethnic groups around world.
6: Not ony Beijing offers hundreds of historical sites, but also it offers stunning natural beauties. The mountain ridges, endless grassland, seashore beaches are all within a day’s drive away.

I went to a 798 for a bike ride. It was very pleasant at night. It rained very hard this afternoon and the roads were still wet. There were not much visitors and the whole area was very quite. The cafes and bars were still open.

There was a huge construction project a few months ago. The main roads were digged up to lay the fiber optics. Now, the constructions were almost finished. Flowers and glass were planted. It will look very nice during the Olympics.

The Dpark area had neon lights on the remaining machineries. It sure looked like a scene from the movie.

Gaobeidian has an area of 2.7 square kilometers. It is located in the Chaoyang district and less than 10km from the Guomao CBD area. Gaobeidian as a village has been around for 1000 years. It was built in the Liao Dynasty (AD916-1125).

Gaobeidian is now promoted as a tourist destination for local culture, antique Chinese furniture and home decorations. Supported by the local governments of Gaobeidian Village and Chaoyang District, the Gaobeidian Classical Furniture Street was build couple of years ago. It is now the show room and warehouse for hundreds of sellers of Chinese Classical Furniture. Some of the old items were collected by the sellers from provinces that include Hebei, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. Most of the items are on sale are reproductions using high-quality traditional Chinese timber. Some of these timbers were from the old Chinese furniture.

Beiquanshan means hundred waterfall mountain. It got its name from the many water falls hidden in the mountain. It is located at 20km north of Huairou County on the side of the national road 111. It is very close to the Yougushentan which I went to a few weeks before. 

Our hiking club went for a walk in the Baiquanshan today. Baiquanshan is actually a valley, very similar to Yougushentan. It is a sunny day and the temperature climbed to 35 degree. The dense forest on the mountain and hundreds of waterfalls made the valley very cool. After about an hour walk in the valley, we reached the Feiyun waterfall. The water drops from top of the cliff to the pond 35 meters down in the valley.

We stopped there for 30 minutes to cool down and came back from the same road. We came back to the Huairou County from the National Road 111. We then took the Jingcheng expressway back to Beijing. The distance from Huairou to Beijing is 45km on the Jingcheng expressway and the toll is 20RMB.

The distance between Baiquanshan and the toll gate on the Jingcheng expressway is about 70km and the driving time is about 1.5 hours.

By Bus: Take #916 to Huairou and then take a Hairou bus.
By Car?Take Jingcheng expressway to Huairou and then follow National Road 111. The park entrance is 20km north of Huairou, just on the left side of the road. 
 

Feiyun Water Fall (a 35 meter drop to the pond in the vally below)

I just found out that one of my former Microsoft Research China college brought a house back in the US not long ago. She has been in Beijing and working for Microsoft Research China for the past 4 years.

My initial response is: What? Why would you do that?
“I brought it as a vacation home so that when I travel back to the US, I have a place to stay.
“ Hemm, but how often do you go back to the US and stay?
“ 1 week in every quarter.”
“Wow, that is a very expensive house and your money can get better returns else where”

Her actions were wrong for the following two reasons:
1: A vacation home in the US is a huge liability for her as it costs her money every month for property taxes, maintenance, repairs, mortgage, etc. She only uses it 1 week out of 3 month. That costs can easily go over a few thousand dollars. If she really needs a vacation home, she can rent a very luxury serviced apartment in a very desirable location at a fraction of what she would pay for her vacation house in the US.
2: Her hometown for the past few years and a few years down the road is Beijing and not the US. She should really buy a home in Beijing and take out at USD mortgage.

What she should have done for the past few years is:
1: Transfer the USD into China and buy Chinese RMB based asserts such as stocks and apartments.
2: Wait for the Chinese asserts appreciate in value (the housing price skyrocketed nearly 100% in the past 3 years in Beijing and the Chinese stock price shoot through the roof with over 100% gain even with the current 50% drop, the Shanghai composite index went from 1300 in 2005 to 6000 in 2007 and now back to 3000 as of June, 2008)
3: Wait for the appreciation of RMB (it appreciated from 1 USD = 8.28 RMB in 2006 to 1USD=6.97 as of June, 2008)

Assume that she had invested 100,000USD (or 800,000RMB) as the 30% down payment for an apartment in Beijing in 2006; she would have brought a very nice 2.4 million RMB apartment (she has a mortgage of 1,600,000RMB). Today, the apartment should worth about 4 million RMB. If she sells that apartment, she would have 2,400,000RMB which is 340,000USD in cash. That is 240% return in two years. Spectacular performance!

In stead, she rented an apartment in Beijing and brought a house in the US. Now, she is deep in mortgage debt and the return for her down payment is very very small.

With the current PE ratio in Chinese stocks and the real estate prices in Beijing, many speculators argue that return on investment will be rather small for the next few years. The return maybe small, but it is still better than the USD assert given the anticipation that RMB will appreciate 5-7% each year against the USD.

Driving in Beijing is tough (some say it is dangerous). There are about 3 million vehicles in this city and another 1000 new vehicles are entering the streets every day. Traffic congestion is a daily life. It was so crowded that sooner or later, one will get into a traffice accident.

I have been driving in Beijing for the past 4 years and had my shares of accidents, nothing very serious yet. My previous vehicle is a made in China Jeep Cherokee. I sold the vehicle before I left for Guangzhou last year. Back in Beijing, I am now driving a Passat.

I went out of the city on Sunday and was planning to hike the Jiankou Great Wall. I got into an accident in Huairou district. A Mazada 3 ran on my rare as I stopped for a traffic light. It was clear that it was the fault of the other driver. We all got out of the car and called the police. The police did not show up but called us back and asked for the details. The police said that it would take them about 1 hour to get here as it was a remote area and they were 40 kms away. The other driver had full insurance. After spoken with the police and the insurance company, we filled in a quick response form and got on with each others way. The quick response form has information such as the name, vehicle registration numbers, insurance numbers, and brief descriptions of the accidents, driver’s license number and the contact cell phone numbers.

We met in the insurance company Anbang Insurance office in Wangjing the second day. The customer service agent photographed the vehicles and recommended the repair shop nearby.

I left my car with the repair shop and will wait for the repair shop to finish the repair work. Since it is the other driver’s fault and he has full insurance, the Anbang insurance will pay for the repair for both his and my car.  It seemed that the process is rather easy and painless.

From all the accidents that I was in for the past 4 years, I have learned that the following lessons:
1: Get out of the car and put on emergency lights.
2: Call 120 traffic police and wait for them to come or if they are far away, they will have someone call you and try to figure out on the phone.
3: Do not move the vehicle until the police come or call.
4: Never argue or get into a fight with the other driver.
5: You must have your driver’s license, vehicle registration and insurance paper ready.
6: The role of police is to access the accident and determine whose fault it is. It is the insurance company to determine the reimbursement.

The GuiXiaoShi (Laughing Ghost Stone) is at N39,58.682,E116,10.865

Fragrance Hill is the most popular mountain in Beijing. It is just outside the Beijing 5th ring road and the closest hill to the downtown. Fragrance Hill is well developed. The terminal stations for many buses stop at the foot of the Fragrance Hill. It is a public park. There are high walls build around the park. The entrance ticket is 5RMB off peak season and 10RMB peak season (late Spring to late Fall).

The best time to visit the Fragrance Hill is in the Fall when the mountain turns red with the red leaves. However, there are so many visitors who want to visit the hill during Fall season that the roads are usually jammed. Thus, making visiting the Fragrance Hill one of the love to hate event in the Fall.

I have hiked many times on the Fragrance Hill. I have found a less known but equally interesting trail just outside the Fragrance Hill’s wall. As the end of the trail is a stone called Laughing Ghost Stone (Guixiao shi), I call this trail the Laughing Ghost Trail.

The entrance of this trail is very close to the Round City (Tuan Chen Yan Bing Chang). There is a small entrance (easily missed as it is very small) that leads to the Jinshanlingyuan (the JinShan bury ground). There is a huge parking area just outside the Jinshanlingyuan. One can drive up and park in this parking lot.

The starting point for the hike is a few hundred meters away from the parking lot. There is a stone archway. From the stone archway, there is a good 25 minutes hike all the way to the Laughing Ghost Stone. The road is build with stairs and very safe. The trail offers an un obscured view to the Beijing city.

On a clear day, one can see the GuoMao building on the east 3rd ring road from the Laughing Ghost Stone. That is nearly 30 km away.

I recommend this trail for the following reasons:
1: It is less travelled. In the weekdays, it is possible that you are the only hikers on the whole trail.
2: It is well developed with stone stairs and very safe.
3: There is only one road leads to the top, no need a guide.
4: It offers unblocked view to the Beijing city along the whole trail.
5: It is free.
6: There are as much red leaves here as those in the Fragrance Hill park in the Fall. (why pay 10RMB and jam yourself with tens of thousands other visitors)

The JinShan Lingyuan entrance (exit of the Fragrance Hill road)

The round city from the Jingshan Lingyuan raod

The Laughing Ghost Stone

In the distance, it is the GuoMao Building, Beijing CBD