The Long Trip Home

Wednesday morning we woke up on the train coming back to Shanghai. After a little while running around and shuffling luggage (which we would do for the next 72 hours), Tara, Nora, and I went to one of our favorite restaurants for the last time and had a going-away feast for ourselves. Tara’s plane took of around 7, so at 4 in the afternoon we took her to the airport. As Nora and I had half of our luggage with us and we would be taking the same flight 24 hours later, it felt like sort of a practice run. We saw Tara off and went to Nora’s friend Florbella’s house for the night.

Florbella and her husband Ling live in PuDong, the suburbs of Shanghai. Their house is beautiful and their food is delicious. They are rich. But they don’t have a backyard.

Today, after an amazing European breakfast, we went back to Fudan in the chauffeured Audi, where we were bombarded with reasons to want to stay. We saw friends we had made in our Chinese classes, ate a meal at the Muslim noodle place (no canary today), and had friendly conversations with Chinese people along the way.

To kill time in the afternoon, we had a haircut. When they wash your hair here, they do it for about ten minutes, and massage your scalp. It’s amazing.

Finally, at 4pm, just like yesterday, it was time to go. We had to call a van from the cab company just to fit all of our junk. A final goodbye to our international friends, and we were off. Now, almost 4 hours into a 13 hour flight, the plane is over the Pacific, coming up on the International Date Line. Time to go back to yesterday…

Hours later, but a day earlier, I’m in Chicago. There are fat people everywhere.

Chillin' in Xi'an

Today, we killed time in Xi’an. We had the day free, until we met at 5pm to catch the train back to Shanghai. We had to check out of the hotel at noon, which was probably a good thing, since we may have ended up spending the entire day inside watching HBO if we weren’t kicked out. We went back to the Muslim market for some lunch, and then to a touristy pedestrian street for a little browsing and shopping. At 3:30 we went to Pizza Hut where we would meet to go to the station. I had a pepperoni pizza.

The train station was really crowded (something I definitely won’t miss). A night on the train, a night at Nora’s friend’s hous in Shanghai, a night on a plane, and I’m home. Somehow I feel like the next three days are going to blend together into one. 

More History

Monday wasn’t very interesting. Really, it wasn’t. We went to a pagoda, and another temple, and a museum. The museum was ok. It was organized chronologically, starting with the beginning of civilization, and all of the pieces were found in Shaanxi province (which I estimate to be a little bigger than NY, but I actually have no idea). The pieces themselves were just old clay pots and tools (boring), but just the pure volume of history in the one small area of the world was really cool to see. The history of Shaanxi starts with one of the very first organized civilizations, almost 5000 years ago. New York, not so much.

Side note: Shaanxi borders a province called Shanxi. Same exact pronunciation, different tones. Gotta love this language. 

Over-indulgent Emperors

The weather is back to cold and gray. Suddenly Xi’an doesn’t seem so grand. I’m not sure if it’s true of American cities, but Chinese cities get a disproportionate amount of cloudy days, thanks to pollution. I wonder if the migrant workers know this before they move from the country in search of a job that pays more than farming does. I’d be pretty pissed if I gave up my country home in a sunny village only to find that the city is noisy, dark, and polluted. But then I don’t really know much about the daily life of a farmer, either.

This morning was all about the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, the first to unite China, around 200 B.C. And man was that guy self-centered. His tomb is a 70-meter high manmade mountain. The emperor, (who combined the words ‘god’ and ‘king’ to come up with the Chinese word for emperor, which he then had everybody call him) lies inside along with all of his concubines, anybody who worked on the tomb, and his most valued treasure. The concubines were buried alive with him, because a guy can’t be expected to enter the afterlife without his concubines, obviously. The workers had to die as well, for security, since they would know the secrets and booby traps protecting the tomb. The emperor was gracious enough, however, to spare the lives of some 10,000 soldiers, and allowed for a mere life size clay representation of his army to be buried for his protection.

The terracotta army is impressive. Some guy discovered it in the 1960s when he was digging a well for his farm. He’s still alive now, and he’ll sign your postcard, for a price.

After seeing the selfishness of one emperor, we skipped ahead about 1000 years to another horny emperor. The story is that of a woman so beautiful that she single-handedly brought down the Tang dynasty, the mightiest civilization in the world at the time. The emperor took this woman as a concubine, built her a palace outside the capital, and spent all of his time with her there, neglecting his duties while the rebellion gained momentum. There was a statue of her in the garden there, you can judge for yourself if she is stunning enough to bring down the greatest empire in the world.

In other news, we’ve decided to skip Hong Kong, or any other travel after the program ends. We’re out of money and out of energy and out of ambition to see more of China. Our tickets have been changed to December 1st, the day after we get back to Shanghai. Anyway, if I saw all of China on the first time around, I would have no excuse to come back. Except for the ’08 Olympics in Beijing. That’s a good excuse. 

Xi'an

The sun does shine in central China. It shines in your eyes at 7:30am when you’re trying to grab an extra hour of sleep on a train to Xi’an. At least it’s a nice day.

Although it isn’t the capital now, Xi’an was the capital of China for about 1200 years, for many different dynasties. As such, Xi’an has a little bit of history attached to it. It also has the world’s only complete city wall. Last repaired during the Ming dynasty (most recent, 1800s), the modern wall was used militarily once, in 1926 when a warlord besieged the city for 8 months. No really, it happened. A warlord besieged a city in the 20th century. The city has outgrown the wall since then, but most of the notable sites are still inside the compact 2x4 kilometer protected area. Between the drum tower, bell tower, and city wall, the whole place has a really imperial feel to it. You drive through the gate under the wall and can’t help but think about people doing the same thing 1000 years ago. You can tell this place has always been sort of in the center of things.

The three major stops today were all inside the wall. First, the Forest of Steles museum, then the Bell Tower, and then a mosque dressed up in traditional Chinese architecture. We walked from one to the next instead of being carted by bus, since they were all near to each other. Although I find myself less than excited to be back in a city, Xi’an is a pretty nice place to walk around.

In the Muslim corridor, there’s a night market. It’s not quite as renao as Urumqi’s, but it’s still a night market. The soup dumplings we got were somewhat disappointing, though.

The hotel here has HBO. Yessssss. 

Goodbye Sichuan

Today was for the most part uneventful. In the morning, we went back to the Buddha carvings in a different area. These ones were much bigger and better, but whether they were worth the drive is still questionable. Anyway, the weather cleared a bit more, going from cloudy to hazy.

We got back on the bus (ugh) for another five hours back to Chengdu, stopping for another delicious meal along the way. In Chengdu, we walked around for a bit, ate a horrible dinner at a mock-western restaurant, and got on the train, which is not crowded, luckily. And that’s the end of Sichuan. In a nutshell:
The food is spicy and delicious.
The land is beautiful.
There are a lot of Buddhas. Seriously, a lot.
The weather is wet, but not rainy.
There’s a lot of stairs. Again, not kidding about that one either.
Many people have dogs. 

Driving

We were told it would take the morning to drive from Le Shan to Dazu. Apparently, in this part of China, morning lasts until 4pm. The 7-hour bus ride rivaled the ride through the desert in Xin Jiang for length, bumpiness, and discomfort. We did get to see a lot of the countryside, though. Like the rest of China, every square inch of arable land here is used for farming. Terraces are cut into every hill and mountain, as high up as possible. We got to stop in a small farming village (not on the original tour path) and took a look around. The Chinese character for ‘home’ is the character for ‘pig’ under a roof radical. There’s a reason for that.

The destination in Dazu is another set of Buddha carvings. Impressive, again, but too much of the same thing. Especially after seven hours on a jarring bus ride. On the bright side, both meals today were delicious, despite the fact that they were not turkey. Professor Ferry has promised us some Thanksgiving Pizza Hut when we get to Xi’an. 

Monkeys!

Another cold, wet day in Sichuan. Today’s activity is Emei Shan (Mt. Emei). Emei Shan one of the four most holy Buddhist mountains in China. Scattered across the mountainside are Buddhist temples (which, again, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all). The temples, are connected by paths, not one step of which is on natural soil. Up, down, and across the mountain are millions and millions of stairs. This time, we elected to climb up and take the lift down. Having climbed a mountain or two in the past, a two hour hike up a mountain did not seem like it would be a big deal. But for whatever reason, a seemingly endless staircase is so much more intimidating than a normal trail up the side of a mountain. Emei Shan is actually quite large, so we only actually climbed a fraction of the way up. According to Sky, it takes three days to hike all the way up and back, a total difference of 30k. Judging by the map of Emei Shan and the 18-mile Marcy hike that Caitlin and I did last summer, I decided that it could be done in one long day, but I guess I’ll have to save that for next time. You wouldn’t have to carry a very heavy pack, if you did want to do it. Food and water was for sale all over the mountain, as well as the usual tourist trinkets and stuffed animal monkeys.

Why would they be selling stuffed animal monkeys, you ask? Well, its because Emei Shan is home to wild macaques. Yes, macaques are as hilarious as the name implies. My most notable encounter was when I was taking a picture of one, another snuck up behind me and reached in my front pocket. Tara and Nora were lucky enough to have monkeys jump on their heads and shoulders. Of course they didn’t think it was so great, but I was jealous. It was only slightly disappointing in that the monkeys weren’t truly wild. They were wild, but only really concentrated in the designated “monkey area” where handlers threatened with bamboo poles to make sure the monkeys behaved themselves. Something tells me they got most of their food from humans, as well, since they knew exactly where to look for it. So in that sense, it felt more like a monkey pettings zoo, but it was still pretty cool.

Anyway, we climbed up to the 10,000 year temple, and rode the gondola back down from there. The weather was a little clearer by this time, but still not clear enough for an significant views.

After Emei Shan, we drove to Le Shan (not French) where we would stay the night. The main attraction in Le Shan is the worlds tallest sitting Buddha. It was the world’s second tallest sitting Buddha, until the Taliban had its way in 2000. Le Shan’s Buddha is pretty cool to look at, but not much to talk about. 

Du Fu, Thousand Buddha Cliffs, Hot Springs

I woke up cold this morning, packed up, grabbed some chips ahoy from the small convenience store across the street, and got on the bus. The first stop today was Du Fu’s cottage. Du Fu is a famous Tang Dynasty (circa 800AD) poet. His cottage, the place where he supposedly got inspiration for his work, has since been expanded into a larger garden complex. The cottage itself is gone, of course, but there’s an exact replica on the site. Yes, Du Fu’s real cottage did have a gift shop inside. It’s an exact replica. Anyway, we looked around for a bit and got back on the bus to head to the thousand-buddha cliffs.

On the way to the cliffs, we stopped at an extremely large and extremely empty tourist rest stop. Apparently tourism in Sichuan isn’t so busy this time of year. As we ate in the cavernous, un-heated building, it wasn’t hard to see why. The staff did seem grateful for our visit, though. We could tell they must have been a little bored before we got there, as they waited on us hand and foot. The building was cold, but the food was hot, spicy, and delicious. I continued eating for ten minutes after everybody else had finished.

The thousand-buddha cliffs were not extremely spectacular, but I loved it anyway. So far, most of the sites we’ve been to on this trip have been everything that Shanghai is not: peaceful, quiet, scenic, charming, uncrowded, clean, refreshing… I guess it’s the difference between city and country. Ever since I arrived in Shanghai, I’ve been craving a place with fresh air and the rest of the aforementioned qualities, so when I get the chance to hike around and explore the stone steps on the cliffs, I was in heaven. Scattered along the cliff sides are various Buddha carvings (of which there are 1000, I imagine). Although the concept is cool, this type of stuff has never really sparked my interest, so I just enjoyed the hike. It was still overcast today, but the fog lifted, so there were some decent views of the countryside at the foot of the cliffs. The scene was as I had always imagined China to be like before I went to Shanghai. Steep, green mountains drop down into a river valley where peasants work on terraces and in fields. The houses have clay shingles, and people ride bikes slowly along bumpy roads.

After dinner, Nora, Alice, and I checked out the “hot springs” at the hotel. They were a series of hot tubs and heated pools, around 10 in all, each held at a different temperature. One was kept really cold, so I used it as an ice bath to ease my sore legs before returning back to the hot one to warm back up. I just got back from the hot springs and I feel like a million bucks. 

Pandas & Buddhist Chairlifts

The first stop on Monday was what everybody had been waiting for. The panda reserve. On the way there, Sky told us all the statistics about how endangered the pandas are. As soon as we saw them, it was clear why they struggle to survive in the wild. They look like couch potatoes. They eat 20kg of a specific kind of bamboo a day, of which they can only digest 20%. This keeps them busy eating pretty much all day. Nothing about them indicates that they would have what it takes to survive in the wild.



Next was a holy Buddhist mountain that I’ve since forgotten the name of. It has a temple built at the top, with a continuous stone staircase running all the way up the side of the mountain. Oh, a chairlift, too. The lift took us most of the way up and climbed the rest of the way. At the top were the temples and gift shops, but no view. A different kind of mountain than the ones I’m used to.

Half of us walked down the staircase instead of taking the chairlift. Apparently, every mountain worth climbing in China (excluding Tibet) has thousands of stone steps for a trail. We probably went down a little faster than we should have on the slick, wet stone, and ended up beating the chairlift to the bottom. It felt good to get some exercise and warm myself up, as I hadn’t been warm since leaving Shanghai. A lot of Chinese buildings don’t have heat, and when they do, it’s usually not on at this temperature. For this reason, it’s sometimes said that winters in Shanghai are harder than winters in Harbin (close to Siberia) because most Shanghai residences have no heat. Chengdu is about the same way. 

Fog, Spicy Food, & Aging Revolutionaries

At 5am, after 3 hours of sleep, we got up and started checking out of the foreign students’ dormitory at Fudan University. By the way, did you know that dorm houses almost as many people as all of Union College? Interesting. Anyway, I left my big rolling suitcase in storage there, filled to the brim with stuff bought in China, and not much else. In my backpack are clothes for the next three weeks traveling. Professor Ferry showed up at 6am with a van, as well as her husband Danielle (also a professor at Union) and their 4-year-old son Camille. They speak only Spanish with Camille so that he will grow to be bilingual, and I understand about as much of what they say as I do Chinese. After listening to Chinese for 3 months, Spanish sounds like English with a really thick accent. Anyway, I had been hoping to get a solid three hours of sleep on the plane to add to the four that I got in bed, but thanks to a charming little Chinese girl who sat behind me passed the time by kicking my seat, I only got about half an hour.

We landed in Chengdu in fog thick enough that I could not see the ground until we were on it. That was a little startling. As I write this two days later, the weather hasn’t changed much. It’s about 40-50F and as damp as it can possibly be. Feels just like November in Rochester. Sky, our tour guide, tells us that the weather here is so damp because the entire province of Sichuan is in a basin surrounded by mountains, which I imagine are very beautiful, if only I could see them. The upside to the dampness is the vegetation, which is so lush it looks almost tropical.

This tour is different from the Xin Jiang trip because we have our own private tour guide and bus driver. Though Camille’s energy is enough to replace the 40 Chinese tourists from the Xin Jiang trip, it’s still a much better arrangement. We can adjust the itinerary of the trip as we wish, skipping the stuff we know will be a waste of time.

The other major difference is the food. Sichuan is notorious for the food, which is amazing, especially if you like it spicy. The Sichuanese have a saying about their food. It sounds a lot more poetic in Chinese, but the translation is “I’m not afraid the food will be spicy, I’m afraid it won’t be spicy.”

Being so much further inland, the people here don’t have as much exposure to western culture and people. This basically means two things: more staring, and more spitting. However, they make up for both ten times over with one endearing quality. In Chengdu, people have a remarkable ability to drive their bikes, cars, trucks, and buses without laying on the horn every two seconds. It’s amazing how quiet a bustling city can sound.

The first tour stop after lunch was a Daoist temple, which was essentially the same as many of the other 10 we’ve visited. Behind the temple was a nice little park, where an ‘old people’s club’ had gathered. The old men gathered in groups of 4 or 5 around Mahjong and Chinese Chess games, where the spectators would study the board and give advice to the two players as they saw fit. Walking a little further on, we found old women dancing in pairs to the revolutionary songs being played by a small, ad-hoc band and chorus of more elderly men. Some of the men in the chorus were OK singers, but most were delightfully out of tune, and the guy with the wooden flute squeaked every four or five notes. Regardless, the energy was definitely there, helped along by a woman conducting the ensemble and an energetic old man half dancing half marching in place in front of them all. It was hard to tell if they were practicing for a performance or just singing and playing for fun, but I don’t think it mattered much. Every one of them was smiling from ear to ear. If ever a group of people truly earned there retirement, it’s these people. They endured Japanese occupation during World War II, fought the civil war during the Communist Revolution, suffered ten years through the Cultural Revolution, and worked hard every day in between. Almost every day of their life has been difficult. Now the state supports their hard-earned retirement, and nobody appreciates it more than they do. 

Flying Home

Thursday, December 1st:

As I write this, I’m sitting on the plane, about to copy all of the entries since November 20^th into my computer. Since I had limited internet access on our trip to Sichuan and Shaanxi, I hand-wrote my blog entries, and I will post them when I get home. All of the entries are copied directly as I wrote them on the trip.