Shaolin Monastery 少林寺

An hour drive outside Luoyang is the Shaolin Monastery, credited as the birthplace of Shaolin and Kung Fu.
The monastery was built on the north side of Mount Song, one of the sacred mountains of China by Emperor Xiaowen of the Wei Dynasty which was about 447 AD.
The monastery has a long cyclical history of flourishing then being destroyed by bandits or rebels fighting against the dynasties that supported the monastery. More recently, during the Cultural Revolution (1966) the five monks in the monastery when the Red Guards attacked where shackled and paraded through the streets where people threw trash at them. The Red Guard destroyed many of the relics the monastery once housed.
More recently, martial arts groups all over the world donate money for the upkeep of the monastery. At the temple we saw many monks and many people of all ages taking martial arts classes.
The monastery had a really beautiful pagoda forest which are pagoda tombs for monks. The pagodas were built from 791 AD through 1917.
We also went to Shaoshi Mountain which is a sacred Taoist mountain. We rode a pagoda up half of the mountain but didn't hike up the mountain where we could cross a hanging bridge and go to a monastery at the top of the mountain.

Shaolin Temple

Pagoda Forest

Luoyang, China 洛阳

We took a day trip to Luoyang, China which is east of Xi'an. Luoyang was an ancient capital of China and sits where the Yi and Luo rivers meet.
Luoyang is the home of the Longmen Grottos. over 23,000 caves were carved into the hillside and 100,000 Buddhas were carved into the caves and surrounding stone, making this one of the most exquisite examples of Buddhist art. The Buddhas ranged in size from 1 inch to 57 feet. The caves also had 2,500 in scripted stilles and 60 pagodas carved into the rock. Unfortunately, many statues were looted by the Japanese during the Sino-Japanese War (they are housed in Japanese museums) and the statues that survived the Japanese invasion had most of the heads chiseled off the Buddhas during the cultural revolution.
My kids thought it was boring and hard to walk up and down the stairs, but I thought it was breath taking and worth the hike.