| "The Yellow River Links
With Edo River"
|
At dusk of a snowy day, we arrived in Sanmenxia City from Luoyang.
Located between the two ancient capitals of Luoyang and Xi'an, Sanmenxia, surrounded by mountains and waters in almost all directions, is known as a pearl of the Yellow River.
With rapid development in tourism in recent years, Sanmenxia now boasts three travel agencies, a motor vehicle team and a boat team catering to overseas tourists, and six star-  Waterfall of Hukou in the Yellow River |
rated hotels. The best hotel in the city is the Sanmenxia Dapeng International Hotel,
which is a Hongkong-Mainland joint venture capable of accommodating tourists, business talks and conferences. The city offers diversified tourist programs including the Yellow River tour, folklore tour, pilgrimage tour and tour to ancient sites. One highlight is rafting on the Yellow River in summer,
which is reputed as "a breathtaking romance". Since it was winter when we were in Sanmenxia, we missed the chance of the rafting.
The second day in Sanmenxia, we visited the scenic Hangu Pass. Located in a mountain gorge, the pass first built during the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) was a strategic point on the way leading to the ancient capitals of Chang'an in the west and Luoyang in the east. It was here that Laozi, the founder of Taoism wrote the immortal
"The Classic of the Virtue of the Tao"
over 2,000 years ago. The reconstructed Han-style pass tower looks too modern, while the valley which lies to the north of the Qinling Mountain and to the south of the Yellow River reminds people of the ancient saying "If one
man guards the pass, ten thousand can
not get through".  Sheepskin rafts on the Yellow River |
Yang Ping, deputy director of the
city's Tourism Bureau, told us that
many Japanese tourists said they deepened their understanding of the Chinese
culture after visiting the Hangu Pass.
Some of them even claimed that their
ancestors were immigrants from the
Pass.
How Hangu Pass is related to Japan? Maybe the Japanese have had a deeper study into it. Around the time of the New Year, several Japanese tour groups visited Kaifeng, Zhengzbou, Luoyang, and Sanmenxia, and found
Japanese culture has close links with
these places. In conclusion, they said it
is in vain to learn Japanese history
without learning Chinese history. In his
letter to the Henan Provincial Tourism
Bureau, a Japanese reporter who had
covered a Yellow River tour wrote "the
water of the Yellow River links up with
the Edo River in Tokyo".
 Yellow River drifting in Sanmenxia
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