Whooooah! The last time I posted a blog on this blog (?) was the freakin' 16th of October! What the heck has happened to me???
Oh.
That's right. I've become used to this place. Seeing a bicycooter
trundle past with a 4-metre-high load of crap is now not out of the
ordinary. Seeing cute little babies bundled up for the cold but
having their bottoms exposed for, er, do-I-need-to-explain, is nothing
new. Not seeing the sun for weeks on end is just a part of life.
Spending an afternoon hugging the toilet bowl during a huoguover is
what you do around here. Need I say any more? So of course, I haven't
been taking any photos, I haven't written any bloggles, and I've been
pretty bad with emails. Sigh. The life of Pies in China.
BUT.
Now, things are about to change. Why you ask? Well, for the first
time since arriving in Chengdu, I have finally done the unimaginable.
I have gone on a vacation. Out of Chengas (pronounced: Ch-ung-uhzz).
Away from my safe hidey hole and into the big wide world that is the
rest of China (or a part of the rest of China... and a small part at
that.). Why should this be such a big deal? Surely I have all this
time on my hands, so why didn't I go, like, 2 months ago or something?
Well,
the answer is quite simple. Imagine this - you are a spaceman and you
have landed on the moon. You want to get to the local moon-restaurant
coz it's been a while since you've had anything to eat. So you ask the
nearest moon-man how to get to a restaurant. Of course, he speaks
moon-ish, so a) how the*%#&@ is he supposed to know what you've
just said, and b) even if he could barely understand you, how the *^%^%
are you supposed to know what he says when he gives you directions?
He's speaks moon-ish, for Pete's sake!
Replace the
word "moon" with "China", and you have an idea how daunting it was for
us to leave the safe hidey-hole of Chengas, a city in which we had
finally begun to feel quite comfortable. Fortunately we have been
learning Chinese, and I must say, 我门说的不错! However, 我觉得学习汉语很难!
Consequently, 我们将要学习汉语很久...
No, I am not very good at
Chinese. Yes, it took me about half an hour to write the above
sentences. No I have not checked them with a native Chinese speaker.
Yes, they might be rubbish.
So we split from Chengas, and we went to a fantastic city called...
Kangding.
Páo mǎ liūliū de shǎnshang, yìduǒ liūliū de yún yo
(The horse rides around the mountain, below the mountain is a cloud...)
So what the hell am I on about now?
This
is a real picture, and was not taken from National Geographic nor
wikipedia (although you may see a striking resemblance to the wikipedia
photo... or you may not, because you are not an uber-nerd like I am,
and actually have a life and spend your days doing fun things instead
of sitting on the couch reading wikipedia. Back to Kangding). Dingers
is a small-large town that is a *%#^$%# 7-hour bus ride from Chengas.
It is the coolest place in the universe. As you can see, it is nestled
in a valley and is surrounded by mountains which are just awesome.
Here is a mountain or two for you:
Notice
something else? Well, probably not, because it's been so long since
I've blogged, but here is what I want you to notice. This is a Chengas
sky:
Yes
that faintly glowing circle just left of the top middle is the sun.
Aaaah, a beautiful day in Chengas, where one can feel the air that you
breathe clogging your lung-pores. Here is a Dingers sky (pardon the
power lines):
Spot
the difference? Yes, that's right. That is a cloud. Now for those of
you that live in places which have "clouds", we who live in Chengas do
not believe in such fictional inventions of the human imagination.
Until, that is, we go to Dingers, and we see that "clouds", like Santa
Claus and the Tooth Fairy, do exist. I love Dingers. Dingers is also
home to a whole bunch of buddhist monasteries. Check this one out for
cool:
While
we didn't visit that one per se, we did go to one right next to the
Dog-Turd Cafe, but I forgot to take a pic of the front of it because -
what? Oh, the Dog-Turd Cafe? It's where we stayed during our visit.
Huh? Why do I call it the Dog-Turd Cafe? I'll let you work that one
out. Here's a monastery pic I did take, though:
Those
streamer-looking things are actually prayers, of all things, printed
out on colourful sheets and dangled just about anywhere you can think
of. Like a power pylon, for instance:
Or, er, whatever this thing is:
Pretty
neat, huh? We took these phots on the way down from Paoma Shan, which
is the mountain made famous in the Kāngdìng Qínggē song which everyone
in the whole of China knows.
Arright, well I have a
bunch of other pictures which I'll put up in the next post (I know what
you're thinking... how many times has Chinapies promised to do
something in the next post, and then never done it? Ten times?
Fifteen times? Every time? Well I am sorry, but tough bickies said
the kitty. Now you'll want to know what that means. Well I'm not
gonna tell you.)
Speaking of tough bickies, Dingers is
also home to the notoriously ferocious Ding-Dang Attack Dog. This one
nearly took my leg off when we passed by:
KootchiSCHMOOSHIpootchypoooh!!!
Pies out, fer now.
