Southwest China
// October 8th, 2008 // No Comments » // China, Travel
As I stated in my last entry, the first week of October is known as “Golden Week” in China – one of only a few national holidays where the whole country takes vacation. For my vacation, I decided to spend 9 days touring China’s incredible southwest. Besides getting away from the city for a week, the trip for me was a chance to really put my Chinese to use on my own. Besides my coworkers helping me at the start with getting a plane ticket to Chengdu, I basically was on my own. I had to buy tickets, find hostels, use public transit, and basically “live” on my own in each city. What follows is a summary of my travels.
成都 (Chengdu)
Friday, 9/26/08
I left the office on Friday around noon to catch my flight to Chengdu. I took the metro down to the maglev station, which goes directly to Pudong Airport. While a bit pricy (40 yuan, one-way), the maglev to the airport is the fastest train in the world, reaching a maximum speed of 431 km/h (268 mph), so I had to take it this one time. I traveled about 30 km in about 7 minutes. The train goes so fast it has to bank the turns at a quite significant angle, pushing you down into your seat. While it felt like I was in the Indy 500, the ride was remarkably smooth. I boarded the plane on time and was sat between a young man and a woman with her toddler, who was not too excited about flying to say the least. I arrived around 5:00 pm to a monsoon of rain in Chengdu. Apparently Chengdu had been under rain for over a week, and there seemed to be more puddles/small lakes in the streets than asphalt. Nevertheless, I caught the bus into town from the airport and went straight to the train station to book my ticket out of town in the next couple days. The earliest I could get was a night train to 攀枝花 (Panzhihua) on Monday night, so I was set to stay in Chengdu for 3 nights. After a little bit of confusion with public buses, I finally reached Mix Hostel at around 7:30. I spent the night hanging out in the hostel and talking with other travelers.
Saturday, 9/27/08
In the morning, I grabbed breakfast with Katja (German) and Phillippe (Belgian). Phillippe was studying in Xian and he and his girlfriend were on vacation like the rest of China traveling around. Since it was still raining and damp outside, we decided to spend the day checking out the city. We first visited the 文殊院 (Wenshu Temple) just near our hostel, which was a vast and beautifully open structure with many gardens and rooms. Most of the rooms had a Buddha of some variety with people bowing and praying in front of them. I say “praying” for the lack of a better word as I am not familiar with Buddhist religious practices—“meditating” could also serve as an appropriate description. After the temple we went to see the big Chairman Mao statue in the middle of town (which was surrounded by scaffolding as it was under repair), then we headed to the rare “Mao Museum”. This was definitely the highlight of the day. The “museum” was no more than a garage in a back alley off a main road. We actually past by it several times until we noticed it. Run by a very, very old man, the room was full of the most bizarre and random collection of Chairman Mao paraphernalia I have ever seen. We took many photos and shared in the wonder of how all this stuff came to this one tiny room. In leaving, the man asked us for some money, and when Katja showed some pity and gave a little extra, he gave her a Mao pin from one of his collections. It was truly one of the best moments of the whole trip. The rain would not let up, so we headed back to the hostel and hung out for the rest of the day.
Sunday, 9/28/08
I got up early the next day to head down to 乐山 (Lèshan) to see its famous 大佛 (Giant Buddha), the largest sitting Buddha in the world! The rain had finally cleared and I got on the 10:10 bus to Leshan. The bus was a 2-hour ride with a young German couple and a young Israeli couple. I became the “tour guide” for the day since I was the only one who spoke Chinese. It turned out to be quite useful, as I was able to get us student discounts and helped navigate around the Chinese signs. We spent about 3 hours touring the gardens and caves until we reached the giant Buddha. Sitting 71 m (233 ft) tall, it was carved out of the side of the mountain beginning in AD 713, and it took 90 years to complete. When we left the Buddha, a Chinese man offered to give us a ride back to Chengdu for a reasonable price, and despite his rather dodgy appearance, we decided to take his offer. As we were loaded into a minivan on a muddy road, we were all questioning if we were actually going back to Chengdu. The driver took us to a tollgate, where he told us to wait for a bigger bus headed to Chengdu. 10 minutes of waiting seemed like an eternity as everyone began wishing we had not gone with this guy. Nevertheless, the bus finally arrived and we were off. 30 minutes later, the same minivan came driving up beside the bus and we came to a stop. To our surprise, the same man had gathered 4 more passengers to Chengdu and caught up with us down the road! After finally arriving in Chengdu, we spent another good hour taking a public bus to the hotel, where we had dinner and relaxed.
Monday, 9/29/08
After another early get up and breakfast, I headed out to the 成都大熊猫繁育研究基地 (Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding). Katja and Phillippe again joined me for the trip, along with Paul (a Chinese American), and a British girl whose name escapes me. We got there around 8:15 am to catch the pandas when they are most active and feeding. Fortunately, the crowds had not yet arrived, and we had a good hour to observe, photograph, and wonder how these creatures actually survived. With less than 1,000 left on the planet, pandas are essentially dependent on man now for survival as a species, which is probably a result of man’s interference. Regardless, pandas are definitely not “fit” for survival in the wild. They spend the vast majority of their time and energy eating bamboo, which has virtually no nutritional value, and they only eat about 30 of over 600 different types of bamboo. They rarely have sex (as little as once a year), and they are such cumbersome animals that the mother has been known to crush her baby on accident. All this and more was explained in a 20-minute video in the panda park/research center, which concluded our visit. Around midday, we took the longest public bus ride in my life back to the hostel, which included a “wreck” (scraped paint) and two bus changes. All in all, it was too much bus for one afternoon, so I decided to relax at the hostel until I had to leave for my night train to Panzhihua.
丽江 (Lijiang)
Tuesday, 9/30/08
My train to 攀枝花 (Panzhihua) arrived around 9:00 am. From the train station, I hopped a bus to the long distance bus station where I met some Chinese college students from Leshan who were also going to Lijiang. Unfortunately, the earliest ticket out was a sleeper bus at 1:30 pm, so we waited. When we finally boarded, I found my seat in the very back on the bottom level. The back of a sleeper bus is basically a two-story bed with about 6 people laid across each level like a double-decker can of sardines. It was an 8-hour, bumpy ride across a mix of paved and dirt roads, and it was difficult to sleep while bouncing around in the back like kids in a Moon bounce. The driver drove the massive bus down the winding roads like it was a Subaru WRX in a rally race, and he relentlessly smashed his horn the whole way like a kid playing “Mortal Kombat” on a Sega Genesis (it didn’t help that the horn seemed fit for a locomotive, not a bus). Arriving in Lijiang at 9:00 pm was a relief, and after a quick phone call to Mama Naxi, I was in a minivan to Mama’s hostel. I had dinner than night with an American couple and Tom from England. Tom was also planning to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge, so he decided to go with me the next day.
虎跳峡 (Hutiaoxia, or “Tiger Leaping Gorge”)
Wednesday, 10/01/08
I got up early and shared breakfast with Tom and Todd, an American who happens to be working literally down the road from me in Shanghai as a teacher. We hopped in a minibus at 9:00 am to ?? (qiáotóu), from where we begun our two-day hike along the Tiger Leaping Gorge. Marine and Antoine, a young French couple also working in Shanghai, joined us for the trek. After dropping off our big bags at the beginning, we started the trail at around 12:30. We struck a good pace and hiked along for a few hours, not knowing what to expect around the corner. After passing the Naxi guesthouse and taking a break, we pushed on to the 28 bends, the most grueling part of the hike. It was more like 50 bends as we weaved our way up the mountain. Thighs burning on the way up and knees beaten on the way down, we got through the bends and found ourselves starring at a most spectacular view of a shear mountainside. It seemed as if we could reach out and touch it as the rock wall rocketed upward and into the clouds. It’s no wonder that the province is called “云南 (Yunnán),” which literally means “South of the clouds.” After passing a man charging 8 yuan for a photo off a cliff (which he claimed he had carved out), we eventually reached Half Way House. The hostel was built right into the side of the mountain and was remarkably nice—an oasis in the middle of arguably the deepest gorge in the world. We all shared dinner and talked into the night over a few beers, relaxing from the 16 km hike we had just finished. At night the stars lit up the sky, and I realized that it was the closest I have ever been to them.
Thursday, 10/02/08
The next morning I had the saltiest eggs and sweetest coffee in my life for breakfast. We hit the trail around 9:00 and by 10:30 reached Tina’s guesthouse. From there we began the hour hike down to the actual gorge. The trail was pretty straight down and many steps were over a meter deep. We finally reached the bottom and found ourselves standing beside a gushing river and a shear wall of rock that reached up to the heavens. The bottom of the gorge was by far the most magnificent and humbling experience on the whole trip. We sat for a while staring in wonder, then after some photos began the hike back up. We took the 天梯 (Sky Ladder) route on the way back up, which was a pretty scary 10 meters or so up a rickety ladder of steel rebar fixed into the rock wall. We reached the top around 12:30 and grabbed lunch at Tina’s. After lunch, we all crammed into a tiny minibus and spent the most terrifying hour of our lives on our way back to Qiaotou. The road back was mostly a rock-filled dirt path that was literally on the edge of a cliff. Our driver, however, still found it necessary to pass other cars going too slow (basically anyone not going life-threatening fast). Many times the left wheels came within inches of slipping off the edge, but our driver managed to traverse the steep terrain like a mountain goat. After all the vigorous hiking, my heart never pumped as fast as it did on that ride. At Qiaotou, the rest of the group caught a bus up to Shangrila while I got one back to Lijiang. I bought my ticket to Dali and was back at Mama’s by 6:00. I spent the night walking around the old town and hanging out with more travelers sharing stories.
大理 (Dàli)
Friday, 10/03/08
In the morning I said my goodbyes to Mama and after a kiss on the cheek and a few gifts I was on my way to the bus station. On the way to Dali I rode shotgun, which gave me an incredible view of the mountains all the way there. I arrived around 2:00 pm and immediately started searching for a bus to Kunming. All I could find was a sleeper bus that left that night, so I took it. The rest of the afternoon I walked around the old town and tried to see as much as I could before the bus at 10:00. The town was jammed with Chinese tourists and I couldn’t take ten steps without an old lady asking me, “Hello! You want smoke Ganja?” After lunch I took a bus out to 洱海湖 (Erhai Lake) and had dinner at a tiny restaurant in town. At night I went to a small Tibetan café where I found an old guitar and played a bit in the back while chatting with a few people that came through. It was nice to just spend some time alone in the city and relax. As 10:00 neared, I walked around more and had a simple conversation with a few small children from Panzhihua that ran up to me in the street. They couldn’t believe I could speak Chinese and their mother smiled as they asked me where I was from and what I was doing here. The stay in Dali was short but sweet, and at 10:00 I got on the bus to Kunming.
昆明 (Kunming)
Saturday, 10/04/08
The “sleeper” bus was nearly impossible to sleep in, but I grabbed a few hours before arriving at 4:50 am. As I crawled off the bus, I found three Canadian college students searching for a taxi who also happened to be headed to Shanghai that evening. We split a cab to a hostel they knew and decided to get some real sleep. Around noon I woke up and showered then met my friend who had my train ticket. After buying some food for the train, I returned to the hostel, sent some emails, then left for the train station. I was a little bummed about not getting to see Kunming, but it was raining and time was short. It turned out that the girls were on a different train, so I boarded the 5:33 pm train alone. 42 hours later, I arrived in Shanghai at 12:30 in the afternoon. It was Monday. The train was long, but I got through 1.5 books and got in a lot of Chinese practice. I went straight to the office then home around 5:30. After 10 days of travel, I was home, and had the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had in China.
The entire trip was quite an experience, and I wish I had more time to explore. With the southwest offering so much, I am excited to explore China’s other regions in future trips.
