Spring Break: Day Five

Day five saw us getting back on the dreaded bus, yet again.  Things started out very well, mostly because we appeared to be making good time.  I didn't even mind when we stopped at a market that specialized in yak jerky.

Know what these are?  Wrong, they're yak shoulders and hooves.  Get your head out of the gutter.

There were about a hundred different kinds of jerky.  I would know, I tasted them all.

 After that, we drove until lunch, when we stopped for possibly the worst lunch I've ever eaten.  In addition to the terrible food, the place was freezing cold.  I didn't much care though, because we were still making good time.

You know you're not in Kansas anymore when you see a yak tied to construction equipment.

Perhaps I should have kept that kind of thinking to a minimum, because about an hour later, we ran into a small problem.  I knew were in trouble when we suddenly stopped in traffic.  They kept us on the bus for over an hour before they revealed that there had been another "disaster" (read: landslide).  I should have known the trip was going too smoothly...

I climbed a hill next to the bus to get an idea how long the traffic jam was.  Somewhere around the mountain was the "disaster"

Even in these desperate times the Chinese tourists still wanted a picture with the foreigners. 

Hear you can see the size of the rock slide that precipitated our stop.  I shouldn't complain about waiting when I could be sitting under all that rubble.

To add insult to injury, our four hour wait for the landslide to be cleared was followed by only a mile of driving before we stopped.  Like the "places of interest" that we visited on the way up to the park, this location had a distinct lack of interest.  It was intended to be an authentic minority village, but it was clearly built in the last decade or two, and was decorated with what looked like Navajo cave paintings.  Needless to say, we were the only ones that doubted its authenticity.  At one point we asked our Chinese friend, Luzheng, who was buying into the whole thing, to ask the guide when this place was built.  Her reply was, "It's older than me."  Great, except she was maybe nineteen years old.

With that over, we drive straight back to Chengdu, not even stopping to eat dinner.  Of course, once we arrived at 8:30 that night, we had to flag down two taxis in the rain.  Good times.  All was forgotten, however, once we reached our hotel, and then headed to the nearest McDonald's.  After three days of yak meat and sour roots, I was prepared to eat anything that vaguely resembled American cuisine.  So I settled into a booth with two Big Macs, two fries, and two drinks.  Somewhere they're is a picture of me with this monstrosity, but I have chosen to bury it forever, as it could only be used against me if I ever ran for public office.  Oh, but it was delicious...

Spring Break: Day Four

I often heard people refer to Jiuzhaigou as a fairyland.  A place that didn't seem to belong here in the real world.  As the consummate skeptic I awoke on Tuesday morning expecting to be underwhelmed.  I was happily disappointed.   I was, however, underwhelmed by breakfast.  I am used to the fact that China's concept of breakfast differs from what I am used to.  That's all well and good, but no matter where you're from, this stuff was far from tasty.  The short bus trip that followed brought us to the entrance of the park, which is essential shaped like Y, with two branches spreading to the northeast and northwest.  Our first bus ride took us to the northeast branch, and I got my first look at the fairyland from the window as we climbed.

This garnered the same reaction from everyone in our group, "There is no way that's real."  As someone in our party pointed out, "It looks like Listerine."  It only got better from there. 

Our time on the bus was rewarded with the view you see above.  Definitely worth the wait.

A short walk brought us to the Primeval Forest.  As is my habit, I wanted nothing more than to wander among the trees for a few hours.

Primeval Forest, obviously.

When in China, do as the Chinese do.

Being a foreigner in a popular tourist spot like Jiuzhaigou is akin to being a celebrity, everybody wants a picture with you.

Told you.

My hero, Lu Zheng, the Chinese roommate that pretty much planned this whole trip.

As we made our way down, the views only got better.  We soon reached Panda Lake, so named for the black spots on the bottom.

You could pay to wear traditional minority clothing and take pictures.  This was common practice in almost all the places we visited. 

Another fan!

We walked past the lake to find ourselves in one of the strangest places I've ever seen.  We were surrounded by the slow trickle of water coming off a thousand little waterfalls as the water seeped towards the lake below.  They only grew more impressive as we continued.

That's a camera in my pocket in my sweatshirt pocket, I'm not getting that fat, I swear.

Just in case you still didn't believe I was actually there.

These lovely ladies thought it would be a good idea to take a picture of us while we weren't looking.  Sadly for them, I was looking, so I walked about three feet from them and took this picture.  I've never seen anyone actually die of embarrassment, but they were close.

The Pearl Shoals, so named for the peculiar way in which the water falls, not in streams, but in millions of individual droplets.

From Pearl Shoals we boarded another bus to reach the northwest fork of the park.  The ride ended at more than 10,000 feet in altitude.  While beautiful, it did cause some altitude sickness among our group.  Thankfully I was not counted among the casualties.

Long Lake, the highest and largest lake in the park.  It is twice as impressive in person, trust me.

Five Color Pond, or a giant pool of Gatorade, it's hard to tell.

When development outpaces common sense, you get this.

The day ended with us exhausted, so exhausted that I didn't even care that I hadn't bathed in three days.  I used to think I would never see a place to rival Yellowstone.  I still think that it is the greatest place I've ever been, but Jiuzhaigou is just as beautiful in its own way.  I really the hype would leave me disappointed, but I am so happy to say that it was everything I wanted it to be.  Now the ride back to Chengdu the next day was another thing entirely...

Spring Break: Day Three

My doubts about our tour group had began the day before, when we handed over our money.  I have never traveled with a tour group before, but I have seen drug deals on TV that were less sketchy than the exchange we made Sunday.  Our Chinese friend, Lu Zheng, had made the arrangements for the tour.  On Sunday, he received a call and informed us that we would be heading to the travel agency to hand over our money.  If you're picturing a glass fronted business with plastic palm trees and men in ill fitting suits, you're way overestimating this travel agency.  "Going to the travel agency" actually turned out to mean we were meeting a man in a black Mazda 3 in the parking lot of a rather large hotel.  This made us, or at least the Americans, understandably nervous.  I wasn't handing over my life savings or anything, but I wouldn't sneeze at losing the equivalent of $80 by handing it over to some guy in a leather jacket.  As if that wasn't bad enough, he then produced a contract that we were told to read and sign.  That's great, except for one small issue...it was in Chinese.  You might be saying, "But, Ethan, you know Chinese, don't you?"  Have you ever read a contract in English that you actually understood?  Yeah, now try that in another language.  Thankfully, we didn't sign anything, apparently the travel agency representative wasn't really worried about getting the foreigners permission, so he just let Lu Zheng sign for all of us.  Things were starting out great...

Monday morning we awoke at 5:00 to meet the bus that would transport us to our destination, Jiuzhaigou Park in northern Sichuan.  This day started on an even sketchier note, when were told that we would be transported to the bus by another car.  After walking to the meeting point, we waited on the curb.  We joked that after this thing was so cheap, we would probably be transported in a truck bed filled with livestock.  It wasn't all that bad, but the tiny, unmarked van that pulled up did little to settle our growing nerves.  After squeezing eight people and their luggage into something with the interior dimensions of a phone booth, we made our way to the waiting buses.  We boarded, along with the thirty odd Chinese tourists with which we would be traveling.  We were definitely the only foreigners.

The flat tire that sidelined us for an hour after only twenty minutes of driving would prove to be an ominous sign.  The ride was pleasant enough for a while.  We were mesmerized by the amazing geography that seemed to be around every corner.

We came out of a tunnel to find this.

Better than your average gas station view.

This was quickly broken up when we came to two conclusions.  First off, the bus would be stopping along the way to visit "places of interest."  The second conclusion was that our definition of interesting differed from that of our company.  We found ourselves stopping at locations that sold themselves as possessing "authentic" architecture and goods.  That's all well and good, but the buildings were clearly built about three years ago, and the hodgepodge of beads and plastic that the locals were selling as authentic art was undermined even further by the presence of modern children's toys being sold right next to them.  The most fascinating thing about the experience was that the Han Chinese tourists with which we traveled ate it up and asked for more.  You see, when people think of Chinese people, they picture the Han Chinese majority that lives mostly in eastern China.  This fails to encompass the dozens of minority groups that inhabit other parts of the country.  This is a gross oversimplification  but it is important in understanding why the Chinese tourists with which we traveled were so fascinated by the "places of interest."  I don't mean to insinuate that they were unintelligent or ignorant, they just had a knack for ignoring the obvious fact that these places were contrived shows of "minority culture" that were merely a way to extract money from the relatively wealthy Han Chinese tourists that visited them.  I don't blame the minority groups in the least.

We quickly tired of our frequent stops, and we soon despaired that we would never make it to the park in the ten hours we had been told to expect.  This proved more correct than we imagined.  About five hours in, we realized that our bus was stopping, and an hour after that, we realized it wouldn't be moving any time soon.  A chat with our guide revealed only that there was a "disaster" that had resulted in the traffic jam in which we found ourselves.  Thankfully, the view from the bus wasn't bad.

Realizing we were in for a long wait, we went about finding things to do. I myself watched a funny Chinese movie about a grown man that wets the bed, and the effect that has on his relationship with women.  Great stuff.  About three hours after stopping, we were finally told to board the bus.  As it turns out, the "disaster" was a landslide that had covered the road and had to be cleared.  Crossing our fingers that it would be our only "disaster" of the trip, we drove on.

What followed were more trips to places that completely lacked interest, and one of the worst meals I've ever had.  Who knew you could mess up rice that bad?  We're in China and they can't cook rice?!?!?!?  We finally reached our destination around 9:00 PM, about thirteen hours after starting.  We weren't done yet, however, as we still had a cultural ceremony to attend.  This involved drinking yak butter tea, and eating a variety of mysterious vegetables.  This was capped off with a wine that tasted like bad apples, and a bit of yak meat.  

Man, I am such a good photographer...

In  a separate, hilarious side note, one of our party was a vegetarian, and had hyped themselves up to eat their piece of yak meat.  Unfortunately for them, they were also a girl, and soon realized that in the super patriarchal minority culture we were imitating, women didn't get to eat the yak meat.  Much laughter ensued.  Frankly, I would have happily given them mine, as I would hesitate to call it tasty.  After ending the ceremony we milled around for a while, eventually finding ourselves in a tent where they were playing the ever annoying "Gangnam Style" (You know, because that is a traditional minority song, obviously).  Maybe it was the bad apple wine, but we soon found ourselves dancing in a circle.  After what was quite literally ten seconds, we had attracted a crowd of probably twenty Chinese tourists, all of whom wanted a picture of the foreigners dancing.  We happily obliged them.

We were finally dropped off at our hotel around 10:30.  It was only about 45 degrees out, but our hotel rooms were somehow much colder than that.  To add insult to injury, the air conditioners that were featured in some rooms had cords that were too short to reach the outlet.  That building was clearly built to very high standard.  I didn't care, I was so tired that I passed out in minutes.  It may sound like we hated every minute, but that's not true at all.  Thanks to a good attitude (at least from most people) and some well placed jokes, we had a wonderful day.  And, the next day, I would get to the most beautiful place I've seen since Yellowstone National Park.

Spring Break: Day Two

The beginning of day two saw us waking nice and early to take the return bus to Chengdu.  We were expected to meet the remainder of our party when they flew in from Beijing around lunch time. The bus ride was a chance to get one final look at the Giant Buddha, perhaps more impressive as it receded into the distance across the river.

The bus stop in Leshan.  Not too shabby.

The drive back to Chengdu, while uneventful, was quite beautiful.  The scenery below was certainly helpful in keeping me awake.

 After we rendezvoused with our friends, we made our way to downtown Chengdu, hoping to locate our hotel.  This proved more difficult than expected, as our Chinese friend, in addition to never having visited Chengdu, was also unfamiliar with the Sichuan dialect.  Our 45 minutes of wandering did indeed prove rather fruitful, however, as it allowed me to take these pictures of the sprawling metropolis that is Chengdu.

If it weren't for the Chinese characters and bamboo, I would think I was in New York.

Funny how communism looks so capitalist sometimes... 

With the hotel found, we flagged down a cab and headed to our next objective.  For a brief minute we were quite convinced that our cab driver was merely driving us in circles, but, eventually, we reached our destination.

Warning: Not actual size

The Panda Reserve!  After the heartbreak that was the Beijing Zoo, I was a bit hesitant to get excited.  This place, however, proved to be a different beast entirely (pun intended).  The habitats for the pandas were well maintained, and there was plenty of staff on hand.  It appeared, however, that the pandas had made an agreement earlier that day to sleep with there butts facing in my direction as soon as I arrived, but there were some who didn't go with that plan.

Butt....

More butt...

FACE!!

Back to the butts...

Turns out they do indeed poop in the woods.

What, me?  Just chillin'.

That's a borrowed hat, I swear.

This is a red panda.  As the redheaded step child of the panda world, they are neither as famous, nor as cute as there larger brethren.  

The whole experience was wonderful, and a great chance to wash my hands of the Beijing Zoo.  If you want pandas, take the time to go here.  That night we enjoyed a responsible good time, and went to bed early.  This would prove to be a great idea come Monday morning...