Ninety minutes from Xi'an and on the main line east, which is why most people see Luoyang from a train window. Two days is enough for the grottoes, the temple and the museums, and the water banquet in the evening is the sort of meal you plan a trip around rather than fit into one.
At a glance
- Day 1Longmen Grottoes → the Luoyang Museum
- Day 2White Horse Temple → chariot pits → Yingtian Gate → the water banquet
Day 1
The cliff of buddhas
Longmen Grottoes → the Luoyang Museum
Longmen is two kilometres of cliff on both banks of the Yi, carved between the fifth and eighth centuries and holding something over a hundred thousand figures, from a few centimetres to the seventeen-metre Vairocana that everybody photographs. Go early and walk the west bank first, then cross the bridge and look back — the view of the west cliff from the east bank is the one worth having and most people leave before they get it. The Luoyang Museum in the afternoon is the free and unhurried counterweight.
Day 2
The first temple, the chariots, and dinner
White Horse Temple → chariot pits → Yingtian Gate → the water banquet
The White Horse Temple is where Buddhism arrived in China in the first century, and it has Indian, Thai and Burmese halls in its grounds built by those countries — a strange and rather moving thing to walk through. The Eastern Zhou chariot pits are a small museum over an excavation of horses and chariots buried together, and take half an hour. The reconstructed Yingtian Gate is lit after dark and worth seeing, with one warning: the north square in front of it is worked by hanfu photographers most evenings — reflectors, light stands and stools every metre or so along the central axis, including the spots the light show is watched from. You will queue for a clear view or take it from the side. Then the water banquet: twenty-four courses, mostly soups, served one after another as fast as you finish them.
Eat like you mean it
- Luoyang Water BanquetTwenty-four courses, mostly soup, arriving in sequence. Go with a group.
- Luoyang hulatangThick peppery breakfast soup. Ordered with a fried bread stick and no discussion.
- Mudan YancaiThe banquet dish carved to look like a peony, because of course it is.
- Jiang mian tiaoNoodles under a fermented bean sauce — the everyday lunch.
- Peony cakeFlaky pastry with a sweet filling, stamped with a flower. The thing to take home.
- Ba bao fanEight-treasure rice, turned out of the bowl under dates and preserved fruit.
Where to stay
- Laocheng · the old townBest for the evening: the lit gate, the night market, the water banquet.
- XigongCentral, ordinary and cheap, with the metro and the buses.
- Luolong · Longmen stationFor an early train, and closest to the grottoes.
- JianxiQuieter and further west, near Wangcheng Park and the peonies.
Before you go
- Cross the river at Longmen and look back at the west cliff. Most visitors leave without seeing the view the site is famous for.
- The square in front of the Yingtian Gate is full of paid costume shoots in the evening, tripods and reflectors along the middle of it. Watch the lighting from the side, or come on a weekday.
- April is peony season and the city fills. Book beds weeks out or come in September instead.
- The water banquet is twenty-four courses and does not scale down. Two people will eat a fraction of it.
- Luoyang is ninety minutes from Xi’an by fast train and on the main line east, which makes it the easiest two-day stop in central China.
One honest thing — Come in April if you can. The peonies are not a marketing line here — the city plants them by the hundred thousand and the whole of it turns out for three weeks.
