Log in
Join travelers community
Your Profile
Logout
1997
Route in China (CHINA - Luoyang)
Bec2004-09-19 16:18:50
Displayed times (last time: )
Luoyang
On the bus from Kaifeng I met a student whose parents and grand parents were members of the communist party. He was one of the very few Chinese who told me they still believed in the Communist Ideal. He was very friendly and walked me to the Tian Xiang Hotel which was full and then to the Luoyang hotel to make sure I found adequate lodgings.
I left my backpack at the hotel and took a cab to go to the Bank of China to change a traveller's cheque. Thanks to my wrist compass and the city map in Lonely Planet's guide book, I realized that the cabbie had turned west where he should have gone straight south. We stopped, I showed him the map and told him off in English. At first he screamed at me in Chinese but when I started to yell back "jingcha, police, jingcha, police" he understood in spite of my inability to use the tones properly and left in a hurry when a few people approached to see the show. I have had to deal with crooked taxi drivers in many countries but this was the only one I met in China.
This area along the Yellow river is the cradle of China. Agriculture developed here 6000 years before Christ. A neolithic village discovered in 1953 at Bampo near Xi'an, shows evidence of farming, animal husbandry and pottery manufacture dating back to 4500 BC. Bronze was cast into vessels as early as 2000 BC. Luoyang became important in the 12th century before Christ when the Zhou dynasty based in Hao near Xi'an west of here replaced the Shang dynasty who had reigned for 5 centuries from Anyang, north of here.
For 22 centuries (1200 BC to 1000AD), Xi'an and Luoyang took turns being the capitals of China until invasions from the north forced the Song Dynasty to move their capital to Kaifeng in the 10th century and then to Hangzhou on the coast, in the 12th.
Unfortunately there is little left of Luoyang's glorious past for the city was not rebuilt after it was razed by Jurchen invaders from
...
See photographs from:
China Gallery
