Luminous Darkness

With my visit to China complete, I have updated my list of visited World Heritage Sites to include those we saw there. This brings my total to 30!

I write this on the eve of my departure from China.  The slogan above was for the Olympics, and is plastered everywhere in Beijing (in numerous languages) as well as elsewhere across the country.

To take up the story where I left off yesterday, we headed up to the summit on our second day on Mt. Emei.  This first entailed a two-hour bus ride, a fairly steep hike (already at 2540m or about 8330 feet), and then a cable car ride to fairly near the top (the Golden Summit is at 3099 meters or 10160 feet).  Vanessa was not feeling well with the altitude so I ended up finishing the summit myself, but she did not miss much as the mist was so thick that I could barely see the golden temple at the top, even when it was ten feet in front of me!  Needless to say, there was little to see at the sign which read: “Best place to take photo on Mt. Emei.”

On the way down in the cable car however, the mist cleared away and we were treated to a spectacular view of the whole mountain and down into the valley below.  This really is a quite large mountain, and very spread out when you see all of it.  The bus ride back down held several things of interest.  First is that fact that, according to Vanessa, Chinese people do not deal well with bus travel (several got sick — lovely), and the second is that at our rest stop I walked out to discover the driver pouring cold water on the brake pads and laughing at the amount of steam coming off of them — just what you want to see when you are only halfway down the mountain!

The next morning, we took a short walk up to see the Crouching Tiger monastery, which is actually now a nunnery.  It is tucked away in the woods relatively close to the base of the mountain, and is the largest temple there.  It was magnificent, and a fitting end to our stay in Emei.  The bus trip back to Chengdu was a bit adventurous however, as the driver apparently decided to skip the tolls on the highway and take the back roads.  These were relatively unpaved and we had to keep swerving into the the other lane to miss the mats of wheat put out to dry in the sun in the middle of the road.  Even the Chinese people on the bus were wondering out loud where we were going!  Our flight back to Beijing was uneventful and I am happy to report that the Chengdu airport does have a First Class Lounge for anyone with Star Alliance Gold status.

For our last day in Beijing we wrapped up with coffee in the morning with another friend of Vanessa’s, then a visit to the Temple of Heaven, and finally back to the Pearl Market to pick up our orders and do the last of our shopping.  Then to dinner at a Uyghur restaurant, one of the minority groups in China with ties to Arabic culture.

So ends my trip to China; Vanessa heads on to Japan for a few more days of work next week before returning home.  It has been an amazing experience and I feel very lucky to have been able to experience this culture with someone who knows so much about it and could show me many things that are a fair bit off the beaten tourist path.  Thank you Vanessa!

The above is the phrase that we have been seeing in TV commercials advertising travel to Sichuan since we arrived in China.  When we actually got there, Vanessa’s mobile sent her a welcome text with the same mesage.  “Sichuan: Land of Abundance, Home of the Panda.”  It has become a bit of a mantra for the last few days here.

We arrived in Chengdu from Beijing on Sunday evening after a relatively uneventful flight.  We spent the evening exploring a local neighborhood, sampled the cuisine, and watched people in full Moon Festival celebratory mode.

The next day we headed to Leshan to visit Dafo, the largest Buddha in the world.  He is carved into the rock of a riverside cliff and is 71 meters (about 215 feet) high!  We had a bit of an adventure getting there, as we were dropped off at the opposite end of a sizable national park which had nice temples to see, but also a lot of stairs.  For a relatively hot day, and carrying our luggage with us, it was a bit much.  However, we made it in the end, and it was a fairly spectacular site.  We then took a taxi to the bus station and Vanessa had to bargain with the driver to get him to turn the meter on!  She finally told him that it was the law and he agreed, but then tried to overcharge us at the end.  Vanessa really let him have it in Chinese and clearly we were in the right since he capitulated relatively easily.  The bus to Emei was easy after that and we arrived at the Teddy Bear Hotel at the foot of Mt. Emei, our residence for the next few days.

The next morning, after advice from our host Andy, we headed off to climb Mt. Emei.  This is one of the four holy mountains of Buddhism in China, is dotted with temples, monasteries, and nunneries, and has been a site of pilgrimage for at least 1,500 years.  Our plan was to hike up, spend the night at a monastery, and come back down, but we left that open depending on how we felt as the day went on.

The first part of the trail, walking among the lower slopes was very beautiful, with streams running though the woods.  All of the trails on the mountain have stone walkways which mean that this is not really hiking, but on the other hand, the fact that it is a fairly steep mountain means that there are lots and lots and lots of steps!

After a while, we began to encounter monkeys, one of the features of Mt. Emei.  These have of course been well trained by generations of Chinese tourists to expect food, but you can also just push past them if there are only two or three.  However, at a certain point in the trail, Vanessa and I encountered far more than that.  We had seen a group of about ten a bit ahead of us and had stopped to take stock, when to our surprise, more and more started appearing out of the trees.  Apparently we had tripped some kind of monkey alarm because within a minute of two there were easily 40-50 monkeys all gathered, some of then fairly large at possibly 50-60 pounds.  We had a quick conference and decided that perhaps this was a good sign to turn back.  The monkeys are not generally violent, but they have been known to bite and scratch, and we did not feel confident about getting though that many on our own, even with our walking sticks to beat them off if necessary.  The thought of getting a series of rabies shots in some rural Chinese hospital was pretty good incentive to let the monkeys have their day!

We saw a beautiful temple on the way back down where Vanessa ended up having a very nice conversation with one of the monks who actually gave us a free set of prayer beads and blessed us on our way.  We just made it to the last bus down the mountain and had a very good (very spicy!) Sichuan-style hot pot dinner at a local restaurant.  This post is getting pretty long so I will pause here and post the rest shortly.

Laura is heading back to the US today and we are all feeling a bit sad.  I think that she has had a wonderful time here though, and we are already talking about future travel plans!  Vanessa and I are flying down to Sichuan in the south today to spend a few days in a different part of China where she has never travelled before.  One of the things that I did not really appreciate until recently is that China is geographically almost as big as the continental United States, so this will actually be a 2.5 hour flight.

For our last day we did some more shopping both at the “Dirt Market”, an ourdoor market with lots of haggling, and then at the Pearl Exchange where we bought lots of gifts and fulfilled lots of orders.  We had dinner at a wonderful Vietnamese restaurant managed by a friend of Kim’s.  We were able to eat up on the third-floor roof terrace with incredible views of Beijing itself, a trendy social area, and the lit-up Forbidden City.  We ordered more duck from the restaurant next door as well as some great Vietnamese food.  It was a lovely night and we stayed there talking for several hours.

I have no idea how much access I will have to the internet in Sichuan, but I will try to send updates if I can!

We are now almost at the end of our first week in China — hard to believe!  On Tuesday, we went out to the Summer Palace, a huge complex just ouside the city that the royal family would retreat to during the oppressive summer heat in Beijing.  Built around a lake, it includes beautiful temples, a three-tiered theater, and the “Long Corridor” which follows the edge of the lake for quite a long ways.  There is also a large Stone Boat built out into the lake that the dowager emperess Cixi built in the 19th century with funds diverted from the Royal Navy.  She pointed out that she had used the funds as they were intended since she had indeed built a boat!  Of course our trip would not have been complete without a paddle boat trip out into the lake and around the island where Cixi exiled various people to that she didn’t like (including her son).

We took the bus back into town and saw a lot of the city that way, and then spent some time wandering around a little local neighborhood.  We ended up in a local “fitness park”.  These appear to be very popular around Beijing and they have a fair amout of simple, outdoor exercise equipment where both old and young strut their stuff while kids play nearby and families walk through the park or sit and watch.

On Thursday we entered major shopping territory in the form of a five-story market with literally hundreds of stalls where you could buy pretty much everything and anything that you might want.  It is interesting that, while there is certainly a lot of tourist stuff to be had, there were a fair number of locals looking for clothing, shoes, backpacks, etc.  Vanessa’s true skills not only as a Chinses speaker but as a negotiator came to the fore here.  Everthing is up for haggling (to a point) and several times we played the ultimate card of walking away only to hear the cries of “OK, OK, your price, your price,” pulling us back.

In the evening we met up with some of Vanessa’s other friends who live here in China and went to a wonderful meal of Peking Duck (cooked whole and carved at our table), as well as various other dishes including sesame chicken, ribs, noodles with bean curd, and spicy tofu.  Laura and I have both commented that it will be very hard to eat Chinese food in the States again after this sort of thing!

Today was our trip to the Great Wall.  We went to a bit that was about a 90 minute drive from the city called Mutianyu.  We hired a driver that our host’s Ai (sort of like a maid) knows named Mr. Lee.  He was great — around our age, and we clearly had a lot in common with him.  Even though he did not speak English, Vanessa talked with him for most of the trip up and back.  He also got us a good deal on food at the Wall so we did not have to pay tourist prices from the street vendors!

The Wall itself is spectacular.  There is really no way to describe it other than that.  We did a fair bit of walking, though was quite hot and sunny today (about 90 degrees) so we did not venture far.  Since the Wall follows the contours of the land it has quite a lot of up and down steps to climb no matter which direction you go.  Perhaps the most amusing part was that there is a sort of “tobbogan” run to get back down — think of a bobsled and you get the idea.  Quite fun!  More news to come.

Laura (my sister) and I arrived in China yesterday after our flight was delayed by 24 hours.  When we did get to the airport on Sunday we discovered that even though our flight was cancelled due to the “hurricane”, ours was the only flight that was cancelled, and even our new flight was not full!  We have a pretty good feeling that United simply used the excuse of the hurricane to cancel a fairly empty flight.  Thirteen hours is a fairly long flight in any case.

Vanessa (my friend and most excellent translator) met us at the airport, which was beautiful and perhaps the most efficient customs and immigration procedure that I have ever been through.  We got to Vanessa’s friend’s apartment, dropped off our luggage, and headed to Tian’anmen Square to start the day.  We walked though a few neighborhoods nearby and then went to a bar on the river that Vanessa’s friend owns.  A bit of food and drink there was the best way to end our first day.

Today we started the day at the Lama Temple (Yong He Gong) a huge Tibetan Buddhist temple complex in the heart of Beijing.  There are dozens of temples there and the group inside was divided pretty equally betewen tourists and worshippers.  One of the interesting features is that the worshipping community is actually made up a fair number of young people (those under 30).  The most amazing statue was 50′ high Buddha carved from a single piece of wood (in the Guinness Book of World Records!).

We then went to lunch at a typical local street restaruant where that was pretty local.  Vanessa is fluent in Mandarin so we were able to bypass the very basic English menu and sample a fair amount of local cusine.  In the afternoon we toured the Forbidden City.  This is enormous and contains a huge number of temples, courtyards, gardens, and halls.  Twenty-four emperors over a five hundred year period lived there and it was absolutely beautiful and we were only able to see a small piece of it over three hours.

For dinner we went to a “hot pot” style of cuisine which involved cooking meat and vegetables in boiling water at your own table.  This was heated by aid of a charcoal burner at the center of the table that had a tray of water around it which you used in a somewhat similar manner to a fondue pot.

We are having a great time here and looking forward to tomorrow!