If flying is cheating then call me Rosie Ruiz, the journey by bus and train from Lijiang to Chengdu would have taken the best part
of two days and had multiple points of failure, so choosing the hour long flight was an easy option.
Chengdu
Liquid Capital, my old employers, have an office in Chengdu, so we arranged to meet friends for dinner. Sichuan is famous for its spicy cuisine and we would be treated to it’s most famous dish, the Hot Pot. Hot Pot consists of a large vat set over a burning flame set in the
middle of the table. The vat is divided in two, with one side bubbling with fiery hot with chillis and the other a more tame side. Various raw meats and vegetables are then brought out and cooked in the bubbling vat. Loving
spicy food, I had been looking forward to this meal for a while and it didn’t disappoint.
When discussing Chengdu we made the faux pas of saying the city was more polluted than we had expected, it turns out that the Mandarin word for pollution is “cloudy”,
Chengdu apparently was more ‘cloudy’ than usual.
However, it was not too cloudy the next day to stop us getting out and about to visit the Wenshu Monastery and a huge statue of Chairman Mao at Tianfu Square.
In the evening we met up with / crashed a Liquid team dinner. This time we were treated to a buffet at the Sheraton where we were like kids is a sweet shop, returning time
after time to fill up on the great food. It was here that we realised that the hostels with nice touches that we look for aren’t quite the same a nice hotels!
We’ve come across some interesting scams on this trip and i’m not sure if the following is the most elaborate or the most dangerous. At the hostel one of the staff asked
if we would like to earn some money for a days work. Cristiano Ronaldo was filming a Nike commercial just outside Chengdu and they were looking for westerners to appear in the audience. However, they already had enough males
so they were only looking for females. I was suspicious because the football season had started and Portugal had a World Cup qualifier against Hungary the following day. I need not have worried as Jo’s response was “We’re
going to the Panda’s tomorrow aren’t we? And why would I want to meet Cristiano Ronaldo anyway?” Pandas 1 Ronaldo 0!
The following evening we met up with Liquid again and were treated to a traditional Chinese meal, followed by some Chinese drinking games. As we had to get up early the next
morning Jo deferred her drinking responsibilities to me and promptly made me drink 12 glasses of beer with HER rolling of the dice.
Pandas
Jo had been looking forward to visiting the pandas in Chengdu ever since we decided to visit China. They were very cute and playful and we even got to see some new born cubs
in incubators, which apparently were “adorable”. Panda’s aren’t very active, they have adapted to survive on bamboo but it provides them with very little energy, much like Koala’s with eucalyptus. They’re only
active around breakfast time and then sleep for much of the day, so it was funny to see them get out of breath easily, flop over and even fall off their apparatus.
We managed to find a solitary giant panda called Ling Ling, who sat in his enclosure and did nothing. There were many Chinese tourists shouting at him trying to get him to
eat so that they could take a picture of him, but he wouldn’t budge. As soon as the Chinese tourists left, Ling Ling wandered right up to us and then went on a bamboo binge. It was amusing watching him peal the bamboo leaves
off the bamboo and them roll them into a cigar shape before munching it in the side of his mouth, with his eyes closed!
I wasn’t sure I would enjoy the trip as although its a conservation and breeding centre none of the Pandas have been released into the wild, but even the scrooge in me has
to admit that it was fun.
Emei Shan
Our next destination was Emei Shan, two hours outside of Chengdu. Emei Shan is one of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains. Buddhists make a pilgrimage by climbing the
40 km of steps up the mountain to see the pagoda on the top, but 99% of pilgrims now get a bus 35 kms up the mountain, then walk for 1.5 kms before getting a cable car up to the top rather than attempt the last steep two hour
hike up 6600 steps. Some don’t even walk the 1.5 kms and get a Jampan to take them instead.
Pushed for time and not wanting to collapse like Pandas, we decided that we would get the bus the first 35 kms and then do the rest ourselves. After the first 1.5 km I had
a call of nature and went to the toilet and pondered the advice given...
Jo arranged a head start and I was to catch her up. However, it was very misty and Jo decided the weather was so bad that she didn’t want to walk to the top if there would
be nothing to see, so she started to descend. Unfortunately there was a monastery at the start of the trail and two ways around it to reach the path up. It turns out as I was going one way to start my climb, Jo was coming
back down the other way. Having not caught her up, and after waiting for over 2 hours at the summit and wondering where Jo could be, I decided to enlist the help of the local police. The policeman spoke as much English as
I did Mandarin and correspondence was done with a novice English speaker over the telephone. After an hour of wishing I could speak more Mandarin and that I knew metric rather than imperial we had a description of Jo out and
the policeman said to me the one English sentence he knew, “Welcome to China”, it made me laugh and in the situation it was just what was needed.
Another policeman arrived and we set about looking for Jo, we would get the cable car to where we had separated and start from there. While waiting for the cable car, one of
the policeman got a phone call and he passed me the phone and on the other end was Jo, who had been spotted down below by another officer. Relieved we started our journey to meet Jo, where when we were reunited, the policeman
repeated his ‘Welcome to China’ phrase to Jo and we laughed together, before we posed for a few photographs with him on his mobile phone. Jo maintains that she had done what any good child would do and stay where you are
if you get separated, so she had been sat in the same spot for 4 hours in the cold, waiting for me to find her and according to her she wasn’t lost as she knew exactly where she was the whole time!
Jo’s punishment for ‘bottling’ the climb the day before was to get up at 6 am to complete the climb because she had the camera the previous day so I couldn’t take
any photos.
She made it and was rewarded with a great view emerging through the clouds 3100m above sea level.
We left the summit and started to descend to the bottom. On the way down we saw about two dozen people walking up, with a 50% mix between Chinese and Western pilgrims, all
who looked shattered. Add to the fact that you can’t see anything as everything is covered in clouds and mist, and we began to realise why most pilgrims take the bus.
The path was wet and slippery, so we only managed to walk down 25 km rather than the 40 km we had planned, before catching another bus off the mountain. As I had caught a
cable car the day before Jo decided that as her legs were shot she would take the one on offer to the bus station while I walked the last 3 km, thankfully we were able to meet up at the bottom without any issues this time!
It was hard going and very tiring but was also great fun, the climb up is meant to take 2 days but I think it would have taken us 3 or 4. But then again, does Emei Shan exist?
As from the town at the base you can’t see the mountain standing over 3000m tall and when you are on it, you can’t see off it as it’s surrounded by cloud and mist, maybe that is why it’s one of the mystical sacred
four.
Leshan
On our way back from Emei Shan we took a slight detour to see the worlds largest sitting Buddha at Leshan.
Dafo, as he is known locally, is 71 meters tall and was carved as an offering to the gods to calm the rivers and protect boatmen from lethal currents on the river, which he
overlooks. The rocks discarded from the carving process were dumped into the river, filling the river hollows and quelling the dangerous currents and thus a legend was born.
Dafo is looking very weathered these days, but was still an impressive sight considering his age of 1300 years and didn’t have any hair growing out of his 7 meter long ears!
We went on a weekend and it was very busy with people paying their respects.
We caught a bus back to Chengdu for an evening, before catching an early morning bus to our next destination.
Jiuzhaigou
The bus journey to Jiuzhaigou was the longest of our trip, a 16 hour doozy. To be fair though we were expecting it, travelling to Jiuzhaigou in Northern Sichuan has always
been problematic even more so since the richter magnitude eight earthquake hit the region in May 2008, killing 88,000 people.
Travelling through the mountainous region you can see the devastation in the roads and the surrounding areas and the ongoing rebuilding effort. The road we took to Jiuzhaigou
has only recently reopened from the earthquake and is subject to landslides at this time of year, one of which was still being cleared from a few days before and caused a huge traffic jam along the way.
The road took us through the epicentre of the quake and through towns that were devastated, but today they are nearly all rebuilt, with new housing and schools.
Just as we had finally traversed the earthquake area and onto some tarmac the gearbox and brakes decided they had had enough, and bellowed their disapproval into the bus,
which became very smoky. Luckily we were near enough to Jiuzhaigou that there were buses going there that could take us. So we spent the last 3 hours of the journey sitting on the floor next to the driver of an already full
bus, before finding accommodation and crashing out exhausted.
This is the reason for making the trip to Jiuzhaigou National Park.
It’s not possible to walk the whole park in one day so at some points we used the very expensive park buses, but Jo was happy as the buses had pictures of pandas on them,
some people are easily pleased! They’re known as green buses, because of their colour not because they are environmentally friendly, which is a shame considering the beauty of the area.
Dinner was amusing, none of the restaurants had English menus so we had to order in Mandarin, we were able to order the Sichuan speciality of spicy tofu and a chili pork dish,
but didn’t know the word for basic steamed rice (mifan), doh! We got there in the end and then had a candlelit dinner when there was a blackout, a romantic end to a great day.
Huanglong
We to’d and fro’d with whether to go to Huanglong or not, we were probably not going until we found out that there was a five day wait to travel east by bus from Jiuzhaigou
due to a landslide. We could head back south and then catch a train north to our next destination of Xi'an, but it would cost as much as a direct flight and take a great deal longer. Oh dear our carbon footprint isn’t looking
too healthy right now!
As our flight was in the evening and the airport was close to Huanglong, it made sense to go and we’re really glad we did.
Huanglong was different too but reminded us of our time at Yellowstone, with it’s terraces of limestone ponds, which were spectacular despite the poor weather. The park
is at high altitude, nearly 3600m, and there is oxygen for sale in special oxygen sheds along the route. We didn’t need any, although we easily got short of breath if we walked too quickly.
Now we're off to Shaanxi province, more on that next time!
Are we still loving China? ........ You Bet!
Until next time
Ryan and Jo
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