At or about 11:10 pm on February 23, we began our bombing run, er, descent into Chengdu. As the pilot firmly planted the aircraft on the runway - known in the biz as a "carrier landing" - I began to suspect a lot of these pilots are either ex-military or taught by ex-military. Also, they might have been doing it for the handful of Westners on-board, but all announcements were in Mandarin and English. The flight attendant, when I pointed at the orange juice, said, with perfect elocution, "Orange juice?" Once the Chinese become a tourist force in America, maybe we'll see the same? Probably Spanish first though.
Through some small cosmic conincidence I arrive at Sim's Cozy Guesthouse exactly at midnight, which is what I had told the receptionist. This factoid is mostly immaterial, but pilots like to brag when they hit a checkpoint spot-on. Sim's is lovely. I had been staying in hotels I reserved on ctrip.com, which for my price bracket tended to put me in the equivalent of Chinese Best Westerns. Nothing wrong with this, but it left me outside the foreigner traveler-circuit. In the backpacker places, everyone speaks English. My Mandarin learning rate is suffering for it though. When I check-in, I find out the travel desk opens at 8 am.
I get up early, eat, and then sit down with the travel agent. In March, Tibet will be closed to foreigners. The ostensible reason is an upgrade of tourist facilities, but the same bulletin happen to include "...during the Tibetan New Year...," which seems more to the point. Focusing on the loophole, I try to make it clear that I only want to go for the last few days of February, that is, not March. No luck. I go back to my room and call another hostel, get their travel agent, and get the same response. She is apologetic, which I do appreciate. It's a little freaky: imagine trying to book a flight to Chicago, and Orbitz/Expedia returns a message "The US Government has temporarily closed Illinois."
Arrrrgghhhh! I am so incredibly frustrated, but I don't think I'll be swaying the bureaucracy of the People's Republic of China. Even more, I could have stayed with Xue and Tao and saw Lijiang, which is Tibetan though not in Tibet. So now I start exploring options of flying back to Kunming, and trying to meet up with Xue and Tao again, and then getting from Lijiang to Beijing. It's not working. I would spend a day and half traveling and maybe catch them, spend one day with them, then turn around start towards Beijing. *sigh*
All right, what's there to do in Chengdu? Well, I had planned on checking out Wenshu Temple. I also puruse the tour options in the hostel travel office. Horseback riding in heavily Tibetan Songpan - sweet, but you need to ride a bus 10 hours both ways. I have three days, so 20 hour of bus for 3 hours of horseback riding. Oh, here we go, Sichuan opera. And pandas, of course. Flipping through my guidebook, Mt. Qingcheng is nearby, a sacred Daoist site, and is low enough to have views (i.e., not reaching into the clouds like the summits of Huangshan). So temple, teahouse, and opera today, Qingcheng tomorrow, and pandas Thursday. I buy my flight to Beijing on Friday, paying an extra $30 for it to be an afternoon flight. This taking off at 10 pm and arriving at midnight is wearing me out. That gives me two and half days in Beijing - one for the Great Wall and one for the Forbidden City and surrounding sights.
I catch a cab to Wenshu Temple. There's a lot of shops and restaurants. I can't find the vegetarian restaurant. Re-re-re-reading the guidebook a little more carefully, I finally catch the phrase "...on its grounds..." Ah! I have to enter the temple first. I get aspargus and fake steak. Man, I love asparagus. (My inner six-year-old is shaking its head that I would harbor such feelings for a vegetable.) The waiter recommends one of the items on the sweets page I've been looking at. They are deep-fried, de-crusted white-bread, taro sandwiches. Wow, they managed to make something less healthy than a french fry. I also try walnut milk. Tastes like chicken...I'm kidding, tastes like soymilk.
The temple is beautiful. With the smell of incense wafting in and out, I wander through the gardens, gaze at the pools (complete with a small metropolis of turtles - significant in both Buddhism and Chinese culture, where they symbolize longevity), observe the holy areas. On my second route through the gardens, looking for a place to meditate, a guy strikes up a conversation. After some nice chit-chat, he mentions he does tours. *sigh* That's cool, I'll be polite, look over his list of services, oh, wait a minute, he offers calligraphy lessons. Sweet. He charges 30 yuan an hour. The only metric I have is the foot massage in Tangkou. That was 60 yuan for an hour (about half what I'd pay in an inexpensive area of LA). (Yes, I'm that metro, but don't judge me until you've tried it.) So, even if mediocre, it's still a deal. We arrange to meet Thursday night after I see the pandas.
Next, I wanted to go to the oldest teahouse in Chengdu. I'm not sure why, the oldest pub in Dublin was overrun by tourists and a bit anti-climatic. Eh, hope springs eternal. But I'm just plain tired - I only got about five hours of sleep between arriving on the late flight and getting up early to be disappointed on Tibet. I taxi home (the online version of the Economist includes a style guide with the injunction "Do not verb nouns.") and take a long nap. A quick dinner and then off to Sichuan opera.
I am dropped off early for the opera and invited to look around through the many shops. Why do I not expect this by now? There are many types of art I've never seen before: layered jade, carved to use the subtle shades of the layers and bamboo strips woven into pictures like cross-stitching. In an antique shop, a wooden Buddha statue catches my eye - 3500 yuan! Well, enough of that.
The opera is fantastic. It's a tourist amalgam, admittedly, but I love it. The puppet dancing and the shadow show are my favorites. I feel like a kid again with the wonder of it. An erhu and a drop-dead gorgeous MC don't hurt either. And it's the best tea I've had in China so far (the opera is staged in a teahouse). After the show, I head back to the antique shop, and offer 2000 yuan. It's accepted. I don't have that on me, so I promise to return Thursday, after I've had a chance to cash a traveler's check. I'm second guessing myself on this one since the guidebook specifically mentions antiques can be complete fakes. The manager had to come out to discuss my offer. I didn't feel like he was putting me on.
Tomorrow, I head to Mt. Qingcheng (Qingcheng Shan). I have to catch a bus to another town from the bus station nearby the hostel (the guidebook says they run every 20 minutes, but I'll double-check with the travel agent tomorrow morning). Then catch a minibus in the new town to Qingcheng Shan. Then reverse this on the way home. I'm nervous in that I don't exactly have a bus timetable, so I'll be playing this by ear. There is a cable car on this mountain as well, so maybe I'll do the same thing I did on Huangshan: hike up and cable-car down. A Daoist mountain should be a good place to meditate too!
It's weird to be on my own again. But Sim's is exactly my kind of place and it's restaurant is warm, wood-filled, and easy to order at: it has a vegetarian section. I try the regional mapo tofu. The braised vegetable balls (sound yummy, don't they) I had in Yangshuo are still my favorite though.
Wan an,
Dan
PS I took more pictures on my new memory card. I'll try to find a nice internet bar tomorrow, and upload the pictures. The idea being that if you have to pay a bit more, the anti-virus software will be up to snuff.
Through some small cosmic conincidence I arrive at Sim's Cozy Guesthouse exactly at midnight, which is what I had told the receptionist. This factoid is mostly immaterial, but pilots like to brag when they hit a checkpoint spot-on. Sim's is lovely. I had been staying in hotels I reserved on ctrip.com, which for my price bracket tended to put me in the equivalent of Chinese Best Westerns. Nothing wrong with this, but it left me outside the foreigner traveler-circuit. In the backpacker places, everyone speaks English. My Mandarin learning rate is suffering for it though. When I check-in, I find out the travel desk opens at 8 am.
I get up early, eat, and then sit down with the travel agent. In March, Tibet will be closed to foreigners. The ostensible reason is an upgrade of tourist facilities, but the same bulletin happen to include "...during the Tibetan New Year...," which seems more to the point. Focusing on the loophole, I try to make it clear that I only want to go for the last few days of February, that is, not March. No luck. I go back to my room and call another hostel, get their travel agent, and get the same response. She is apologetic, which I do appreciate. It's a little freaky: imagine trying to book a flight to Chicago, and Orbitz/Expedia returns a message "The US Government has temporarily closed Illinois."
Arrrrgghhhh! I am so incredibly frustrated, but I don't think I'll be swaying the bureaucracy of the People's Republic of China. Even more, I could have stayed with Xue and Tao and saw Lijiang, which is Tibetan though not in Tibet. So now I start exploring options of flying back to Kunming, and trying to meet up with Xue and Tao again, and then getting from Lijiang to Beijing. It's not working. I would spend a day and half traveling and maybe catch them, spend one day with them, then turn around start towards Beijing. *sigh*
All right, what's there to do in Chengdu? Well, I had planned on checking out Wenshu Temple. I also puruse the tour options in the hostel travel office. Horseback riding in heavily Tibetan Songpan - sweet, but you need to ride a bus 10 hours both ways. I have three days, so 20 hour of bus for 3 hours of horseback riding. Oh, here we go, Sichuan opera. And pandas, of course. Flipping through my guidebook, Mt. Qingcheng is nearby, a sacred Daoist site, and is low enough to have views (i.e., not reaching into the clouds like the summits of Huangshan). So temple, teahouse, and opera today, Qingcheng tomorrow, and pandas Thursday. I buy my flight to Beijing on Friday, paying an extra $30 for it to be an afternoon flight. This taking off at 10 pm and arriving at midnight is wearing me out. That gives me two and half days in Beijing - one for the Great Wall and one for the Forbidden City and surrounding sights.
I catch a cab to Wenshu Temple. There's a lot of shops and restaurants. I can't find the vegetarian restaurant. Re-re-re-reading the guidebook a little more carefully, I finally catch the phrase "...on its grounds..." Ah! I have to enter the temple first. I get aspargus and fake steak. Man, I love asparagus. (My inner six-year-old is shaking its head that I would harbor such feelings for a vegetable.) The waiter recommends one of the items on the sweets page I've been looking at. They are deep-fried, de-crusted white-bread, taro sandwiches. Wow, they managed to make something less healthy than a french fry. I also try walnut milk. Tastes like chicken...I'm kidding, tastes like soymilk.
The temple is beautiful. With the smell of incense wafting in and out, I wander through the gardens, gaze at the pools (complete with a small metropolis of turtles - significant in both Buddhism and Chinese culture, where they symbolize longevity), observe the holy areas. On my second route through the gardens, looking for a place to meditate, a guy strikes up a conversation. After some nice chit-chat, he mentions he does tours. *sigh* That's cool, I'll be polite, look over his list of services, oh, wait a minute, he offers calligraphy lessons. Sweet. He charges 30 yuan an hour. The only metric I have is the foot massage in Tangkou. That was 60 yuan for an hour (about half what I'd pay in an inexpensive area of LA). (Yes, I'm that metro, but don't judge me until you've tried it.) So, even if mediocre, it's still a deal. We arrange to meet Thursday night after I see the pandas.
Next, I wanted to go to the oldest teahouse in Chengdu. I'm not sure why, the oldest pub in Dublin was overrun by tourists and a bit anti-climatic. Eh, hope springs eternal. But I'm just plain tired - I only got about five hours of sleep between arriving on the late flight and getting up early to be disappointed on Tibet. I taxi home (the online version of the Economist includes a style guide with the injunction "Do not verb nouns.") and take a long nap. A quick dinner and then off to Sichuan opera.
I am dropped off early for the opera and invited to look around through the many shops. Why do I not expect this by now? There are many types of art I've never seen before: layered jade, carved to use the subtle shades of the layers and bamboo strips woven into pictures like cross-stitching. In an antique shop, a wooden Buddha statue catches my eye - 3500 yuan! Well, enough of that.
The opera is fantastic. It's a tourist amalgam, admittedly, but I love it. The puppet dancing and the shadow show are my favorites. I feel like a kid again with the wonder of it. An erhu and a drop-dead gorgeous MC don't hurt either. And it's the best tea I've had in China so far (the opera is staged in a teahouse). After the show, I head back to the antique shop, and offer 2000 yuan. It's accepted. I don't have that on me, so I promise to return Thursday, after I've had a chance to cash a traveler's check. I'm second guessing myself on this one since the guidebook specifically mentions antiques can be complete fakes. The manager had to come out to discuss my offer. I didn't feel like he was putting me on.
Tomorrow, I head to Mt. Qingcheng (Qingcheng Shan). I have to catch a bus to another town from the bus station nearby the hostel (the guidebook says they run every 20 minutes, but I'll double-check with the travel agent tomorrow morning). Then catch a minibus in the new town to Qingcheng Shan. Then reverse this on the way home. I'm nervous in that I don't exactly have a bus timetable, so I'll be playing this by ear. There is a cable car on this mountain as well, so maybe I'll do the same thing I did on Huangshan: hike up and cable-car down. A Daoist mountain should be a good place to meditate too!
It's weird to be on my own again. But Sim's is exactly my kind of place and it's restaurant is warm, wood-filled, and easy to order at: it has a vegetarian section. I try the regional mapo tofu. The braised vegetable balls (sound yummy, don't they) I had in Yangshuo are still my favorite though.
Wan an,
Dan
PS I took more pictures on my new memory card. I'll try to find a nice internet bar tomorrow, and upload the pictures. The idea being that if you have to pay a bit more, the anti-virus software will be up to snuff.
You must watch this as soon as you can: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LALgWz0xc0
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Thanks Amy!
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