Spring Festival Break: Pt 12. Chongqing And Our Yangtze Cruise

After three days in Chendgu, it was time to move on. The girls were working to a deadline and had now decided to try and fit both Xi'an and Beijing in before they flew home, so we wanted to press on. But we wanted to press on via a scenic route.

And what could be more scenic than the famous Three Gorges of the Yangtze River.

Firstly we caught a bus from Chengdu to Chongqing. Our days had been beginning earlier and earlier throughout our stay in Chengdu and at a 5.30am start, this topped it. I thought we were supposed to be on holiday! The journey was
uneventful and a few hours later we arrived at Chongqing city.

I was really keen to see this city. It is massive, and polluted as all hell (the bushes beside the roads as we drove in were all coated thickly with dust and dirt), but extremely interesting too. We only had half a day to explore though, so it was tough to see anything at all. After an unsuccessful trip to see the ancient (but rammed) village of Ciqikou nearby, we came back and I headed off alone to do some exploring. The city is built on top of a hill and there were alleyways and flights of steps criss-crossing the city as well as cablecars across the docks to the opposite shores of the two rivers that converge here. There was a nice mix of old and new, and I just love that juxtaposition so was in my element as I wandered through old markets and from the remains of the old city wall down towards the docks.




But evening was drawing on and all to soon it was time to board our boat. The first part of our trip was to be overnight, and although we had to be on board by 8pm, we didn't leave til 11pm. So we sat on the deck at the back of the ship, with a beer and our bags of dried fruit and seeds (I've said it again and again - China does 'healthy' far too well) and watched the ships come and go as it became night and the city began to glow. Sat on board I felt really relaxed and at peace, yet at the same time excited and full of anticipation.

Having said all that though, I had anticipated a little more in the way of accommodation. We
had paid about 750 yuan each for three nights in
a 4-bed 2nd class room with meals, entry to three sights and the bus to Chongqing included. We could have paid much more, and that was apparent from the smell, the leaky roof, and the fact that manoeuvring 4 people round in that room when one person wanted to change position was as tricky as trying to solve a rubrix cube.

Still, it was better than 3rd class and for just over 50 quid all told, we couldn't really complain. Some did though, and with good reason. A later boat had been cancelled so some had been accommodated on this sailing, but just shoved in wherever there was space. People with previous bookings for 1st class were now in 3rd, some were sleeping on the floor in two random rooms and there was just an atmosphere of real confusion that thankfully we weren't a part of.

The next day we woke up as the ship was docking. It was 7am as we were pushed off the ship and escorted in the pouring rain to our first 'sight' - the Ghost City of Fengdu. I wish I could say the place lived up to the image that name
conjures up in your mind, but it really was utter bollocks. It was barely light and we found ourselves wandering round a deserted 'souvenir village' up to a modern 'Palace of the Ghost King' which looked partly abandoned from the piles of rubbish lying around and the shut up buildings. The one thing that was open turned out to be some kind of...well, I don't know what it was really, but it was damn funny. Just take a look at the pictures. Something to do with the afterlife, torture, sin and whatever. It would have been morbid, had it not been so hilariously pathetic. Just check
out the layers of dust on these things.


Once we escaped from this wax-dummy nightmare we got lost in an old abandoned part of the complex. It was raining, it smelt of wee, it was just not worth it. I don't know if we were just in the wrong place, but, wow. Mistake.

Back on board we sailed onwards into the mist. We could barely see anything, but that lent a quite cool kinda atmosphere to it all. At least at that point we hadn't reached the really scenic part so could afford a cloud-shrouded view.

The rest of the day was uneventful. We spent most of the time making new friends - with three young British teachers from Nanjing, a few guys from Ireland, a couple from Bolivia and a Chinese guy called Charlie who had studied business in Cardiff. Actually both he and his sister had studied in the UK and their English was amazing. The family invited a group of us for dinner in the evening and we had a really cool time.

That evening we spent the night moored at a
town called Qipan, next to the second of our three 'sights' - Zhangfei Temple. This temple, dedicated to a famous general who was murdered by his soldiers, was moved from further down the valley, where it was below the projected level of the Three Gorges Dam reservoir. I'm not a fan of reconstructions generally. This one seemed ok, with some original materials, but didn't really feel right. It didn't help that the whole place was lit up in red and white neon like some shopping mall. I thought the nearby bridge was much more of a sight, but then, thats me...

I think I just had temple overload at this time.
There's only so many temples you can visit without having a clue as to why they're there before they all become much of a muchness. Anyway, we browsed the antique stalls outside then went back onboard and to bed, ready for the Three Gorges proper the next day.

The journey so far...
Days: 20 Distance: 4400km (but who's counting..)

Spring Festival Break: Pt 11. The Embodiment Of Cute

Need I say anything more.

We went to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base and saw a lot of Pandas. I never got why so many people love them before, but now I do too. In one enclosure there were about 9 baby Pandas running around, climbing trees and play-fighting, while in an adjoining nursery, two more were happily playing together on a see-saw. Cutest thing I have ever seen. I could have stayed all day.

I'll let the pictures say the rest.

Spring Festival Break: Pt 10. BIG Buddha

Chengdu, and Sichuan in general, has some pretty amazing sights. I'm fairly sure I will have to come back at some point to make the most of them, but at least I know I saw the two most famous.

On New Years Day itself, we caught a bus to a small town two hours from Chengdu, called Leshan. This town's main attraction is a 70m high (can you see the people next to his head in the above pic?) seated Buddha carved out of the sandstone cliffs above the river. It is a really magnificent sight. The photos speak for themselves really. We came upon the Buddha

level with his head and, after queuing for about an hour, walked (slowly) down a congested staircase lined with further carved niches to get a fantastic view of this massive creation as we wound our way down to his feet.

It's quite a difficult sight to comprehend really. Bloody huge. And bloody old. Coming up to 1300 years old. Amazing.

The rest of the day was uneventful. We went to an awful restaurant and once back in Chengdu were unfortunate enough to get in a taxi driven by the world's worst taxi driver. We gave the woman the address of our hostel only to end up being dropped off at some random crossroads - not at the hostel as we wanted. We hadn't got a clue where we were but she was adamant we get out, so we stood around for a bit looking lost, and were about to get into another taxi to see if they could take us all the way to our destination when our original driver swung round in her car and pointed us down
the road. Okaaay. So we walked a bit further, tailed the whole time by this woman in her empty taxi, shouting out further directions as we came to each junction. Finally we came to a place we recognised, gave her a thumbs-up and she went off on her way. Ok so we got there, but I mean why?! Would it not have been easier to just take us to exactly where we wanted to go?! Sometimes I just don't get people.











































The journey so far...
Days: 17 Distance: 3860km (give or take the usual crap)

In The Meantime...

Taking a break from holiday stories and pictures, I need to recap what's been going on in the intervening two weeks since I came back to Lanshan. I was back roughly a week before school was due to begin, and seeing as the school canteen was not open, I was invited to eat with our foreign affairs officer, Susan.

Every day.

Twice a day.

For a week.

It was intense. When not eating at her house I was taken along to visit her family and eat with them. I think I must have met a good thirty different family members. One thing the Chinese do well is family. No matter how distant the relationship, they were still family and I met and drank with them all. I have no real idea who most of them were, as the Chinese also use terms like brother and sister pretty loosely and the words for aunts and uncles on the mother's side are different to those on the father's, but one fact I was certain of was that I would always have a good time as long as Susan's niece was invited.

She's the little girl I'm holding in the picture above, with her mother on the right, Susan on the left and random relations inbetween. She is one of the sweetest little girls I've ever met, and we've become firm friends. She always runs out to hug me if I walk by her mother's shop. It's so cool. She doesn't make me drink rice wine, she cracks open seeds for me and I actually understand almost everything she says as she speaks so deliberately and simply.

So, I'm hanging out with a five year old, is that so strange?!?

I did find some friends my own age there though, with some of Susan's cousins, who took me up a nearby hill one day to visit a tiny temple (ie. wooden shack with a couple of incense holders and a picture of Chairman Mao) where we had an amazing view of Lanshan. The three pictures above are taken panning from left to right. It all looks bigger in the picture than it actually is in real life, but most of the peripheral areas are pretty spaced out. I found out that the whole county of Lanshan has just 350 000 inhabitants, so the town's population can't be huge. The tall building under construction is a new hotel and to it's left is the town square. So far there are only
buildings on one side of the square, but the town is expanding rapidly, so will soon catch up I'm sure. You can also see just how easy it is to get out into the surrounding countryside.

There were two shows put on over the past fortnight. One was in celebration of a new supermarket that just opened and featured some of my students dancing, while the other was in honour of Women's Day and featured us! Both were kinda strange. It seemed like everyone in the supermarket show had been made to walk through a glitter shower before coming onstage and had a massive advertising sketch with girls


dancing around carrying baskets and saying 'I bought meat!' while 6 men in make-up and high-waisted trousers marched around them in a circle out of time to the music. Bit odd. It did have some cool kung-fu kids and a dragon though.

For the Women's Day show it was originally planned for Anthony and Seven to read a Chinese love poem together onstage. I had no part to play. When we came back though, we were told that they'd had a better idea. Our roles as propaganda material for the school are starting to become more and more pronounced.

Anthony and I were to write two sentences in Chinese in gold paint on big red boards behind two of my students as they read out a poem. Anthony had to write 'I love great women', while I had to write 'I love Lanshan county No. 1 middle school'. After doing this we were interviewed onstage by two non-English speakers, which was a complete farce,
but everyone laughed so I think it went down well.


The rest of the show was pretty boring and consisted of many women reading poems dressed up either in flouncy dresses like princesses or butch suits like militant feminists. Chinese poems are something else. I don't think the words 'rhyme' or 'rhythm' are in modern poets' vocabularies. I can barely begin to describe how awful some of those poems were. They were just spoken prose, which is ok, except the speakers kept trying to add emotion so artificially that some lines were started with a big sighing 'aaaahhh' and ended with each word getting louder and louder and louder until they literally pierced your ears. You'd have to hear it to understand but I just wouldn't want to have to put anyone through that. By the end of the show the hall was almost empty and this was despite the organisers giving away holidays to people in lucky seats. The final draw had to be made a couple of times over before they picked a seat that was still occupied!



Last weekend our 'group' of teachers got together to go eat and celebrate women's day together at a restaurant nearby. By the time we ate there was only one woman present, but that didn't really seem to matter... We had taken it fairly easy with the rice wine and were quite pleased with ourselves, until Mr Li the principal and Mr Feng the communist party chairman walked in.

Suddenly 3 new kettles of wine appeared on the table. Bit of a worry, but karaoke had been cancelled for the night, so we had reason to celebrate and finished it all fairly easily. Now feeling pretty buzzed, we wanted to go out. So we headed over to Happy Tom for some ice-cream, managing to collect a random crazy girl on the way who now won't stop phoning us. After ice-cream we went to the bar. It was fairly dead. We ordered a beer, and then a bottle of red wine. I don't know why exactly, because it's bad stuff, but Anthony had just learnt the word for it and had it written on his hand so I guess it made sense at the time. We finished it off with a couple of young Chinese people stood by the bar. The girl had the wierdest hair. Perms are big here, and so was hers. All except the fringe that is, or most of it anyway. The edges of her fringe were permed but the middle section wasn't. This way it looked like she had two big tassels hanging either side of her forehead, which shook around every time she moved her head. We were chatting away and mentioned how Lanshan has no clubs or late-night places to go to, or so we believed, but our new friends told us they knew differently. Being pretty drunk now we demanded to be taken. The first place looked the part, but was completely empty, so we left to find somewhere else. We ended up in a karaoke bar. Typical.

We totally gatecrashed a private room but no-one bat an eyelid as we walked in. Wierd-hair-girl went straight away to go dance with the air conditioning unit and Anthony was sick on the floor. I don't think anyone noticed though so it was ok. Not long afterwards the guy took me outside and tried to explain that these people were not just drunk. He did a sniffing motion with his fingers over his nostrils and I knew he didn't mean poppers. We'd just crashed a coke party! Not the first and certainly not the last, but at that point it didn't matter whether these guys were shooting heroin or drinking herbal tea - we were in a ktv room dancing to bad bad music and I had to get out. As the four of us stood outside it became apparent that Anthony and wierd-hair-girl were getting a little close. Not wishing to be a third wheel I left them and went home. Besides, it was getting late. The time as I walked through the school gate? 11.30pm.

Next morning I was woken up at 7.30am by a knocking on my door. 'David...David...'. It was old Mr Li, the driver's father and ex-vice-principal. I turned over and pretended not to hear. Anthony had mentioned he wanted to take us for breakfast, but I was not in the mood for being sociable and was likely to be seeing any breakfast I would eat twice over, so decided to ignore him. 'David...David...'. This time he came round to my bedroom and was banging away on the window. F**k OFF!! I couldn't possibly ignore all this anymore so had to get up and see what he wanted. It was breakfast alright, with some teacher from some school or something. I couldn't really understand what was going on, so without a shower or even having brushed my teeth I was ushered out and into a waiting ma-ma-yo.

Anthony was with me and we recapped the previous night - or rather I recapped it for him. He couldn't remember anything. How he got home, when he got home, if he was alone...or where his coat was. I told him his coat was now most likely concealing a big pile of sick in a random ktv room and that he'd probably best be ready for some angry brothers coming to beat him up for defiling their sister. He had no idea what I was on about.

So we arrived at breakfast - a steaming bowl of mixed internal organs and a few plates of random foodstuffs. Not the toast I so badly needed. I miss toast... While picking through some noodles Mr Li explained to me that I had a new job. A woman who joined us at that point had just opened up an English-language school for children and had asked him to run it. He'd then decided to engage us as advisors, going there every weekend to watch over the classes and give the teachers some feedback and tips. We'd be getting 50 yuan each for our trouble.

What?

This was all a bit sudden. Where was the 'would you like to...'? Did I have a choice? Apparently not. He also revealed that after breakfast we would go to the school for a publicity photo-shoot. Great. Unwashed, unshaved, unable to see properly yet and about to have photos taken. Just perfect.

The school itself was nice though. Brand new and with about 30 kids there that morning. They were in classes of about 10 and their ages ranged from about 5 or 6 to 11 or 12. We had photos taken infront of the school, in the classes and with the students. We found out that we would only be expected to spend 2 hours there each weekend - Anthony on Saturdays and me on Sundays. It didn't sound bad at all. I had perked up by then and even managed a smile for the photos. The kids were nice and I thought, this could be fun. The picture above shows me with a few of the students. See the girl in red on the left? Very cute. Lovely red jacket. What brightened my day most was whenever she turned round and revealed what was written on the back. I didn't know 'Slipknot' merchandise extended to childrenswear?

We managed to stave off calls for us all to eat lunch together as Mr Li likes his rice wine a little too much, but we couldn't disappoint the old man so arranged another date for the next weekend. After all, he was already a little disappointed that Anthony couldn't bring him back the Viagra that he'd asked for. Apparently there's nothing he'd like more right now.

A little more than I needed to know. I can't help thinking that if he drank a little less wine he needn't be asking in the first place...

Spring Festival Break: Pt 8. Lijiang to Chengdu

It was a Wednesday that James, Julia, Ursula and I left Lijiang for Chengdu. We arrived three days later...

We took a bus early in the morning to a town called Panzhihua, just inside Sichuan province, from where we hoped to take a train onward to Chengdu. Like most other journeys in this part of the world it was long, 8 hours, and incredibly scenic. A short distance from Lijiang is a place called Tiger Leaping Gorge. This is where the young Yangtze flows through one of the deepest gorges in the world, and is a sight not to be missed. I'm sad to say that I did miss it however.
The weather was getting worse, time was dragging on, and I was certainly not prepared for any kind of hiking.

Still, I did get to see something along the lines of the gorge through the bus window as we wound our way up and down steep valley sides to cross the river and continue our journey. The view was impressive.

8 hours and a Jackie Chan film later, the landscape began to change. From green fields, farms and terraced slopes we went to mines, chimneys and heavy industry. Hello Panzhihua...

I've not been to too many industrial cities in China (with good reason) so it was interesting to see the contrast here, but we did not plan on staying long.

We went directly to the train station to get our tickets. We went up to the counter, asked for 4
tickets to Chengdu and were told there were none.

No tickets available for two days. All the trains were fully booked due to the volume of traffic at this holiday time. Hmm. Bit of a problem...

Luckily there was a tourist information centre by the station, so we took shelter there from the hecklers and touts while we planned our next course of action. Interestingly enough, the touts were offering taxis to Chengdu, but for 2000 yuan. We talked to a few and tried to negotiate, but they outnumbered us greatly so we bid a hasty retreat. Back in the office the lady recommended we fly - at about 800 yuan each and a tidy commission for herself. We asked about buses, but were told there were no buses because the roads were so bad. I found this a little hard to believe at first, as I'd read that Sichuan was investing millions in a new Expressway network, and as the woman was starting to book hotels for us anyway, we made a quick getaway before we had to start paying anything.

Back in the city centre we weighed up our options. Neither of us fancied spending two days of our vacation in a town whose main sights include an opencast mine and half a dozen power stations, and while flying was certainly too expensive, a taxi began to sound more and more appealing. Either way, there was not much we could do that night, so we booked ourselves into a hotel and got a good night's sleep.

The next day, as we watched the morning smog lift (see pic above!), we talked to the hotel's travel service and got ourselves a taxi. Still 2000, but that didn't matter so much anymore. We were on our way!
We were lucky. Our driver was a nice guy. His name was Zou, and you can see him here with his taxi at our lunch stop, a couple of hours out of Panzhihua. Julia had been studying Chinese in Beijing, and between her and James' manic gestures we managed to communicate quite well. For the first half hour he was phoning everyone he knew and we could tell the conversations were all along the lines of 'Guess what I'm doing? Driving four foreigners to Chengdu!!'. Not the usual job for sure. One of the first questions he asked us in the car was whether we were all 'together'. He asked Julia if I was her husband or her 'didi' - her little brother. She said didi. And all of a sudden that was it. We were a family! I had a new mother, father and elder sister. You can't blame the poor guy. We looked a pretty convincing family unit. From then on, everywhere we went people automatically took us for family, at least until they asked where we were from and got the names of four different countries in reply!

The first part of our journey was spent driving down small tree-lined roads through intensively farmed countryside. It was really beautiful. We soon came to the expressway I'd read about, and a sign saying 'under construction - opening 2008'... Great. A year too early. It was then that we considered this may take a little longer than we'd thought.

We kept on going, and going, climbing upwards,
until very quickly we went through one mountain pass and the scenery changed. We went from sub-tropical fields of peas, strawberries, bananas and oranges to a quite barren treeless landscape of dead grass, rocks and goatherds. The difference was considerable.




























Now, the landscape was simply astounding. Whether tall snow-capped mountains, broad open plains or narrow winding valleys, you never got bored with the view. And no matter where we went through this landscape the roads were bloody awful.

A good proportion was unsurfaced, sometimes dry and dusty, sometimes thick with mud but at all times rutted, pitted and strewn with rocks. A four-wheel drive would have been perfect. In our city taxi we just prayed that the thing wouldn't break down before we got there.

8 hours into the trip we came to a large-ish town that we could find on the map. We weren't too happy with what we saw. We weren't even half-way. Maybe a little more than a third. We knew then this was gonna be long-haul.

We drove on into the night. Zou reckoned we could make it by about 3am. We weren't so sure. The roads weren't any better and of course were not lit, so we'd be right on top of the pot-holes before we saw them, slowing down to a crawl to negotiate the way before speeding up again. It just seemed to be getting worse and we had severe arse-fatigue, so after stopping for dinner at about 9pm, we persuaded Zou to stop somewhere for the night. He said he'd like to try and make a certain big town first, maybe only an hour away, and that we could stop there. We agreed, but had driven no more than a few minutes before we came upon a police road block. We parked a little way from the barriers themselves, because I'm sure what we were doing anyway was not entirely legal, and Zou went to have a look. He came back with bad news. We couldn't go through. It was so late by now that turning round and finding another way just wasn't an option, so when someone ran out of a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street and offered us a room, we took it.






This was no four-star hotel. We were four to a room (for safety more than anything else - no door locks here) and it was basic, but comfortable. We had to go outside to brush our teeth and use the toilet (pictured!) and didn't even bother asking if they had a shower. And the price for one night? 10 yuan each. To put that in UK terms, about 70p. Breakfast included.

Bargain.

Next morning we were up bright and early, the roadblock was gone, and we continued on our way. This time we were going straight up. Soon
enough we drove into low-lying clouds and wound around this mountain in almost zero-visibility for about an hour before we reached the other side and began to climb down again. It was cold up there. All the trees were covered in a thick layer of frost and I couldn't help thinking that we were lucky to have stopped where we were last night. Attempting that in the dark would definitely have been a bad idea.

This stretch was bleak. Misty, wet and impoverished. Some of the small towns we passed through looked so desperate, but in the larger ones, everyone was out at the markets busily getting ready for the festival. It reminded me of what I was potentially missing out on right now in Lanshan.

We soldiered on for another 7 hours before we finally arrived in Chengdu. But not before a quick toilet stop at a random farm along the way. I have to mention this because it was just bizarre. The facilities were, well, not...really...there. It was situated in a tumble-down outhouse and consisted of an open pit, with a plank, a bucket, a god-awful smell and about ten enormous white rabbits watching you from hutches lining the wall. Julia was brave enough to stay in there long


enough to take a photo, which I'm very pleased to share with you lucky, lucky people. You don't know what you've got back home...

So anyway, three days later, we arrived in Chengdu. We payed Zou his 2000 yuan (which he'll probably need to buy a new taxi with) and we'd barely said goodbye before he raced off to try and get back home in time for the new year. Pretty exhausted, we didn't do much more than dump our stuff and get some food. The cafe we went to had a guest book, and we decided to contribute. James drew a picture of our taxi and I wrote a small rhyme to go with it. If you ever go to Chengdu, check out Dodo's cafe next door to the Loft youth hostel and take a look for yourselves.

The journey so far...

Days: 15 Distance: 3480km (give or take shitloads - I'm measuring on a small scale map with a piece of string...)