Having spent 3 fun days exploring the old town of Fenghuang it was time to move on. We had many highlights and a couple of low lights; great hostel with a balcony overlooking the river (and it had a western toilet!), freshly fried ‘bing’ bread with chili paste and pickles for breakfast, Patti being given a ‘push’ for her cough (some tablets), street food vendor stomping on a rat right next to our table mid-kebab (what is it with Patti and her China rat stories), ordering the recommended special dish only to discover it was pig offal (and awful).
From Fenghuang we took an overnight train (24hrs) to the ancient Song dynasty’s capital of Kaifeng. Most of the old city lies buried about 10metres below the surface, but the city still has some amazing old traditional wooden buildings and an absolutely fantastic food market!
The last two nights we have joined the scrum of people wandering the streets at the Kaifeng night market enjoying various new and wonderful dishes, including fried and steamed dumplings, stuffed naan breads, fried duck pancakes, candied crab apples on sticks, fresh noodles in beef broth, squid skewers, poached pears, peanut brittle and almond tea. There are hundreds of stalls lined along the streets selling all kinds of other crazy things – duck blood soup and sheep’s eye kebabs to mention a couple – all to the sound of Chinese opera music being played out across the square.
On our first day in the city we hired a couple of bikes and explored the narrow back streets, weaving between fruit stalls, roadside butchers and steamed bun vendors whilst dodging rickshaws ferrying muslims to Friday prayers. After leaving the city walls we headed north to the Yellow River Scenic Viewing area to get our first sighting of the mighty river and birthplace of Chinese culture. On our return we passed ‘The worlds greatest pagoda’, called the iron pagoda after it’s iron coloured glazed tiles. It is set in a beautiful park where we enjoyed a bit of peace and quite having safely made it back to the city along the chaos that is China’s roads.
The second day we spent strolling around the hutongs making a stop at the Sacred Heart of Jesus church which offers some tranquility from the madness that surrounds it. Kaifeng is known for it’s early Jewish and Christian settlers and today still has a small Christian community.
We also made a visit to the Temple of the Chief Minister which was first founded in AD 555. Inside a giant Budda carries the inscription ‘big belly can endure all that is hard to endure in the world’ and contains the aptly titled ‘Four-faced thousand hand thousand eye Guanyin’ statue, a stunning 7m tall gilded statue with 1048 arms and eyes – quite a sight!
Having thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Kaifeng we continue our journey to the northern capital, Beijing.
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