My latest, and perhaps last trip for now in China, was to Sichuan Province, with my friend Emma from Canberra.
Sichuan is in south western China (which is really south central china), right next to Tibet. It is where the big earthquake was earlier this year, home to panda's, and also has embraced a lot of Tibetan type culture due to its close proximity.
Sichuan province has a tonne of really interesting things, and really should be higher on the list of things to do in China I think.
The reasons I went were for panda's, the giant budda in Leshan, and the Jiu Zhai Gou national park.
We flew into Chengdu on a Saturday. Chengdu, while listed as the third most liveable city in China, was a bit of a hole I thought. It had the worst smog of anywhere I have been in China! Worse than Beijing. Like all Chinese cities it just seems a bit sprawling, smoggy and run down, with the odd bursts of new (which quickly look old as the smog settles onto it and makes it all dirty looking).
The best thing about the city of Chengdu, apart from pandas which I will get to soon, was the hostel we stayed at. Sims Cozy Guesthouse. While I am not a big fan of hostels in general, this one was amazing. We had our own room which had its own bathroom - all very clean and nicely presented. We also had our own dvd player in the room, and got fruit baskets twice in three days! We used the dvd player to watch 30 Rock season 2 and Mamma Mia (twice)!
They had a great travel desk downstairs which helped us organise our tours, and a bar with cheap food and fresh juice. They also have a cute little puppy, which always helps the ambience.
The day after we arrived, we took a bus to see the panda's at the panda research centre. Despite the horrible smog, the center was actually really well done. All quiet and green, bamboo forests, etc. There are around 50 panda's there, and 8 babies, which were each around 3 months old. So cute! Although, from pictures I can see that they are horribly ugly when they are just born. They are like a bald pink mouse, with a long skinny tail and everything, and it is no surprise that when they give birth for the first time, panda's often get such a fright that they try and kill the ugly little parasite. But then after only two months they are much bigger and covered in fur and super cute.
I got lots of photo's and some videos - videos are actually better I think,as it really shows how cute they are!But you can see how they are endangered, as they seem quite stupid, they don't naturally know how to procreate, and they have evolved so that they eat bamboo, which it is difficult for them to digest, it requires them to eat around 40kg of the stuff a day, and doesn't give them much energy. I think they are really thick.
The park also has red panda's - which aren't really panda's at all are they? they are like raccoons or something. Poor red panda's, no one cares about them.
While at the panda centre, we met a lovely woman called Janice. Janice is a Canadian-Chinese, who has left her canadian job as a project manager and came to volunteer in the reconstruction process post-earthquake in Sichuan. She also speaks and reads mandarin, so Emma and I (and a few others) tagged along after her as she took us to a local jiaozi or dumpling restaurant for lunch. For less than $2 each we ate our fill of dumplings filled with a variety of celery, chives or meat. It reawakened my fat cat expat guilt on how much I spend on western food in Shanghai....
In the afternoon we explored a nearby monastery, drinking tea in their tea garden, seeing the millions of turtles in their turtle pond (will have nightmares), and enjoying the tranquil gardens in the middle of the horrible smoggy city (Cannot stress enough how smoggy Chengdu was).
After this Emma, Janice and I went to a nearby snack street where I was not brave enough to partake in the sweet-purple-soup-tofu something or other Emma and Janice ate, however I did eat some of the wierd sticky ricey ball thing (only because Ihad had it before). Then spat it out and was laughed at by locals. It could have been worse though - we saw roasted rabbit heads, and millions of tiny little roast birds that I think were song birds (mean! I thought they were pets!!!).
There was also the stinky tofu of course (fermented tofu, like normal tofu wasn't bad enough) and lots of spicy meat on a stick - Sichuan is known for being the home of super spicy food, so spicy in fact that it numbs your mouth and is sometimes used in rural areas as an anaesthetic. (seriously)
The next day, we went in a mini bus for a three hour drive out to Leshan to see the thousand buddha caves, and then the giant budda. The thousand budda caves are a lot of carvings in a cliff lining a river. I am not sure if there really were 1,000 buddha's, but there were lots and lots. All carved into different configurations, different sizes, etc. Afterwards we ate in a local restaurant full of bai jiu drinking locals who were totally off their face. As the only one of our small group that had any chinese at all, I was responsible for organising the lunch - looking into the kitchen and using a mixture of pointing and not-real words, I ordered us a lavish 6-course vegetarian meal for around $4 each.
After this we headed to see the giant buddha (Dafo). Since the destruction of the big giant sculptures in Afghanistan by the Taliban, this buddha is now the biggest in the world. It is over 70m high, and carved into a cliff over a river, facing another horrible smoggy city. (poor china, it has such beautiful historic and natural wonders, and such horrible cities/suburbs/etc).
I mean, I am quite getting over China having lived in Shanghai for a year now, but travelling to Sichuan reminded me of the lovely things that China has to offer. Many say that Shanghai is not the real China anyway - I think that is such bull. China has over 100 cities with more than 1 million people. Big new cities are China now - they are just not the China you might have expected.
Anyway, after three nights in Chengdu, we then took a regional flight to Jiu Zhai Gou, around 50 minutes away (or a treacherous 10 hour bus ride - no thank you!), and 3,000m higher in altitude than Chengdu. It is the most amazing airport I have been too, in that it is way up in the mountains.
Jiu Zhai Gou is home to another UNESCO site - the Jiu Zhai Gou national park, which is what we went to see. Not many westerners go there for some reason. It is a bit out of the way for the wealthier time-poor tourists, and too expensive for the time-rich money-poor backpackers. Entry to the park is 310RMB per day, or around $50. However, we went for two days, which shows how worth it it was - considering how tight I am.
Jiu Zhai Gou is a 620 square km reserve of mountains, valleys, lakes, snow capped peaks and tibetan villages. It is famous for its amazing coloured waterways, which vary in colour from bright acqua's (sp?) to blues and greens. Seriously, the photos of the place look photo-shopped, but I have been, and can say it is all 100% natural!
We were lucky, we went at the best time of the year, when the leaves are changing colours, which adds to the surreal brightly coloured nature of the place. For two days we walked and bussed (they have a great bus service in the park, as it is too big to just walk all the way) around the park. Taking a million photo's and sometimes being the subject of photo's - lots of chinese tourists there, not many westerners, meant that we were often photographed paparrazzi-style. At one point we had a crowd of people in front of us taking photo's while we ate some biscuits. One had a tripod set up! (emma refused to remove her sunnies at his request, but I am a sucker...). I wonder what they do with these photos?
In testament to how beautiful this area is - on the 1.5 hour taxi drive from the airport to our hotel, our taxi driver pulled over 3 times to take photo's even though he is from there! The first time he pulled over in the middle of nowhere, I thought we were going to be murdered! but he just wanted to take photo's of his cab with the beautiful scenery in the background.
The Jiu Zhai Gou hotel was not very good at all. I wish Sims was up there. The rooms were nice enough, but freezing cold, and the tv had no english channels - which we missed since there is nothing else to do in a national park area at night. For respite we kept going to the Sheraton down the road, for meals, use the internet, get warm...
Ah, now the piece de resistance of the trip. The trip home. I couldn't get a direct flight to SHanghai from Jiu Zhai Gou, so I had to go back to Chengdu. This was all fine, fine, although inconvenient, and meaning a long wait in between flights. So, when I finally got on the connecting flight home, I was, to be honest, a bit cranky and ready to sleep on the plane. However, I was unfortunately seated next to a "Little Emperor". A tiny, loud, bossy little boy, who would scream at me in Chinese, calling me Ayi (aunty) and refusing to stop talking to me even though I couldn't understand a word of his slurred mandarin. I kept telling his mum I didn't understand, but she didn't care, glad to have his attention off herself, and she often disappeared leaving me with him, as he jumped over my lap, kicked everything in sight and pulled the armrests up and down for hours.
And then comes my number 1 China story - the mother reached for the airsickness bag, and I thought - Oh CHRIST! he is going to spew, which could make me spew. But he didn't seem ill, so then I thought, - She is just going to spit in it, which, while disgusting, is very common in China, and perhaps bearable.
No, on both counts. As she opened the bag, the boy stood up on the chair right next to me, and began pissing in the bag. Seriously. He pissed in the paper bag, she folded it up (and I freaked out about what she might be going to do with it), then she wiped him down with some tissues and handed the whole sorry mess to the poor air hostess!!!
They then repeated the process again later in the flight!!!! Seriously. Ah China...
