Luoyang 4-Day Shaolin Culture Tour: Mount Song, Dengfeng, Yao Mountain and Zhongyuan Buddha

Leave at seven, ninety minutes to Dengfeng. At Shaolin, head east first for Chuzu Monastery and the Pagoda Forest.

The forest holds more than a hundred memorial stupas, with forms from Tang through Qing — size and storey count reflected the abbot's rank, the smallest barely over a metre. It is the clearest way to read the temple's history.

A martial arts demonstration runs around half past ten in a small arena inside the park. The demonstration itself is set routines; the practice rooms and martial arts museum are more revealing, showing the lineage of forms kept at the monastery.

In the afternoon, visit Chuzu Monastery five kilometres up the mountain, built at the site where Bodhidharma is said to have faced the wall. Quiet, with wind moving through the pines.

Stay in Dengfeng town; try the shaobing and spicy soup at the breakfast street on the south side.

Songyang Academy sits at the southern foot of Mount Song and was one of the four great Song academies. Arrive at half past eight and start with the gate and the ceremonial hall.

The trees are the point: a Han-era cypress reduced to a stump and two Tang cypresses still alive, bark cracked like stone. This is where the phrase about Mount Song's height was written.

The lecture hall is the core, hung with portraits and plaques of past heads. This is a Confucian institution teaching Zhu Xi's Neo-Confucianism — a different tradition entirely from Shaolin.

Lunch in town, then Zhongyue Temple in the afternoon, a vast and much quieter Taoist complex. The main hall is a Qing dynasty hip-and-gable roof built without a single iron nail. Take time with the bracket sets and flying beams.

Back to town for the evening.

Yao Mountain lies sixty kilometres south of Pingdingshan, ninety minutes from Dengfeng. Arrive at eight and take the cable car.

Three peaks stand side by side, with granite weathered into a field of stone pillars. Above Lotus Lake and Jade Emperor Peak, the rock beside the path looks tool-cut and the grain is clear. Geologically this is a Yanshan-age formation, unlike the Taihang range.

Half an hour of walking from the upper cable station to the summit, with wide views over the city and Baiguihu Lake in the distance.

Lunch outside the park, then the Zhongyuan Buddha in the afternoon: 108 metres tall, housed indoors, the tallest indoor Buddha in Asia. A passage connects the hall to the hillside, letting you walk from inside out to the mountain view.

Stay in Pingdingshan; the barbecue here is worth trying.

Drop-off after breakfast. Pingdingshan is ninety minutes from both Zhengzhou East and Luoyang Longmen. If time is short, return to Zhengzhou directly to avoid backtracking.

Pack the night before. Four days across Luoyang, Dengfeng and Pingdingshan cover martial arts, academies, Taoist architecture and rock formations — one theme a day.