xi'an and surroundings

Sorry for the lack of posts, but I've been on vacation (along with the rest of China). I also had the post-vacation work rush to deal with, hence the mid-week post.

Brian and I took a train up to Xi'an on Monday. We had a hard sleeper which was counter-intuitively comfortable, albeit intuitively hard. On the train we talked to a gaggle of strangers. One woman who I met after just getting on the train and putting my bags away was a real charmer. I told her in Chinese: "It's too hot!" She returned, "Perhaps it is just that you are too fat." Delightful. Now don't get me wrong, almost everyone calls me fat in China. It's just the too fat that bothers me. (Luckily, my Chinese teacher told me that she might have meant very fat, not too fat. Great.) The ride was a piece of cake, most of the sixteen hours happening while I was asleep.

Xi'an was cooking. Spring has sprung in China. Everywhere women had their umbrellas, their giant welder's-mask-like sun visors, their newspapers. We spent the first day checking out Xi'an proper, inside the giant city walls.

The day after, we went to the Terracotta Warriors, because if you're in Xi'an and you don't, you're an idiot. I wasn't too sure. First, we had to wait 45 minutes for a public bus. Then, about 2 or 3 kilometers away from the site, we hit huge amounts of traffic. It's barely a two-lane road, and there are buses up and down it. We finally get off the bus and walked. We walked past the entrance, and up into this tourist complex. It was filled with vendors, restaurants, and more vendors. All of them selling Terracotta miniatures for "one dollar!" When we arrived at a gate, we were told, nay gestured, that we were at the exit, and we had to walk back through the complex. And the vendors.

We finally made it in, and it was impressive. I can't imagine having all that built just for my dead body. But hey, maybe the afterlife is a rough place, and you need a division of clay soldiers to protect you. The sheer scale of everything in China is pretty amazing, and this rests its case.

We stood in line for another hour and a half for a bus back, and when we arrived, we ate some Paomo (noodles and lamb poured over pieces of bread), and I passed out.

Next we went to Hua Shan (Flower Mountain), THE MOST DANGEROUS MOUNTAIN IN ALL OF CHINA!!!!! Boy was it dangerous. We hiked for eight hours, and the scariest moment was when we thought we were going to be caught in a mob that was trying to push past some security guards/police. The place was crowded with tourists, but if you kept hiking up and up, you eventually outpaced the rest. On the east peak (there are five peaks in the shape of a blossom[I guess...], hence the name of Flower Mountain), we bought beds at exorbitant prices, and prepared for the sunrise the next morning.

We must have arrived early, for the rest of the night people trickled in. They either took a bed, or just bought a long army parka called a da yi (literally big clothes). By the time I turned in, there were people huddled against every wall, sometimes in a da yi, many times not. When I woke up at 4 (a little early for even a sunrise) I had to step over people sleeping outside my door. I staked out a spot and absorbed the quiet beauty of the mountain without an incredible amount of people. By the time the sun was rising at about 5:30, the barriers on the peak of the mountain were crowded like people were waiting for the Shriners at a parade.

A gorgeous sunrise, then a race to the bottom. Some of the other tourists waited for the last cusp of the sun to clear the horizon, and set off at a dead run for the bottom (Or to be accurate, the cable car to the bottom). We set off at a leisurely pace, and got to the cable car (after standing in line) at about 10:30. We then had a horrendous bus ride back that took almost twice as long, due to construction, and you guessed it, traffic.

The next day I spent relaxing, and the day after that, we took the train back to Chengdu. Now when I bought the tickets I could have sworn the lady said soft seats. Considering my Chinese, I was completely wrong. I booked hard seats. But since this time I had an seat assignment, and I wasn't standing room only (like I was for my previous 14 hour hard seat experience) it was cake.

My favorite thing about hard seats is that they try to sell you some great stuff. Sure there's snacks, drinks, beer, and even hot food, but they also try to sell you bracelets and toys and cool games. By far, the best, however, is the sock salesman. First he throws packets of socks at you, the motivation being that if you are simply close to the socks, you will want to buy them. Then he lets you touch the socks. Then he takes a fork, or some other object with a bunch of tines, stabs it into the sock, then drags the fork the length of the sock three or four times. The sock comes out unharmed! It is amazing. The final act is when he gets some unsuspecting audience member to grab one edge of the top of the sock while he grabs the other, and they both are unable to tear this incredible garment asunder. I'm shocked that I've been through two hard seat rides and I haven't bought any socks. I have a will of steel I tell you, a will of steel.

Finally our trip was done, and I was able to get some good spicy food. I missed Chengdu.

Editor's Note: Never ever travel in China during the first week of May, first week of October, or Spring Festival. These are national holidays, and everywhere is packed. I saw numerous guided tours, families, tourists, and it drove me nuts. You could come at any other time to China. Do not come during national holidays. DO NOT.

mu ge cuo

after having a nice breakfast of bao-zi and duojia (soy milk) i met patrick at a hostel so he could have some "coffee" (nescafe). while we chatted and he sipped, a chinese woman about my age asked if we had any plans. when i am a tourist, i become very suspicious and defensive. i treat everyone like they are trying to rip me off, and i'm always looking for an angle. here the angle was they had four people, and they needed six for a minibus up to mu ge cuo. it turned out she was just a nice person like us, and we were (like we were quite often this trip) at the right place at the right time.

we took the minibus (and yes, the honking and the passing continued) 35k out of town. as we drove northwest, the foliage became more striking, and the altitude became higher. the six of us were 3 seperate parties. two girls were masters students from southern sichuan, and the other two were a couple from shanghai. the woman from shanghai was fairly haughty. i told her that one of my goals was to learn chinese. she replied, "i don't want to worry you, but..." she had a friend from hungary who came to shanghai for a year and then went back and studied on his own for a few years and became a chinese translator.--so far, it sounded good.--after fifteen years however, he still makes mistakes. she made it sound like he was barely fluent. great. another example of the brutal honesty you can be exposed to when meeting new chinese people. she was no longer my favorite.

we arrived, and it looked like the parking for a fair. a field was stuffed with cars, and minibuses and cabs drove up in a steady stream and deposited chinese tourists inside the park. mu ge cuo consists of six lakes with a 9 km road connecting them all. you can walk the road, but with the 4 hours our minibus driver gave us, we decided we better ride. that being said, we spent about an hour in line all told for the bus. i'd say there were about 300 people in line for the bus when we first got there. fortunately, the buses came often so we didn't have to wait long.

the leaves were changing slightly, giving the forest an overall green feeling with highlights of warmer colors.. this is where my homesickness got rough. the red and orange made want to see new hampshire foliage in a bad way.

after disembarking halfway through the park, we got in line for a minibus to take us to mu ge cuo, which is the largest lake in the park. after a ten minute ride around hairpin turns we arrived. a quiet foggy lake encircled with a board walk was what greeted us. we began to circumambulate the lake when it began to rain. we drew near a skewer stand that was putting up an umbrella and we ducked in there. by the time patrick had ordered us a few delicious meat skewers, the rain had died down, and we continued to walk.

each pagoda we passed had at least one skewer person in them, surrounded by chinese trying to warm their hands. we kept walking, and slowly the density of people lessened until it was about 2 per 100 feet. it was nice. we finally arrived at the end of the board walk where three laborers sanded, varnished, and fixed the final pagoda. then it began to rain.

we began to walk back. we met two of the other people we came on the minibus with going the other way. they were both dressed in warm, yet not waterproof coats. we said hello and kept walking. patrick began to draw away from me as i stopped to snap photos like a good tourist. by the time i was halfway to the bus pickup point it began to pour in earnest. i ducked into a pagoda, and was welcomed around a skewer fire by a bunch of vendors and tourists. the vendors had been in the open and had come in when it started to really dump. we had a nice conversation, and i had some skewers while i warmed my hands by the barbeque. at the end of the storm it began to hail, and finally after that, it let up.

by that time i was wet and cold. the lines for the bus down were non-existent as most of the tourists had already left. we went down to the halfway point and walked around there for a bit before heading back down to the parking field.

the field looked like a woodstock had been there. muddy tire tracks, litter everywhere, chinese tourists walking around looking dazed. we met the two of our minibus party we had met before, and they seemed to be in good spirits, all be it a little wet. at about 4:15, fifteen minutes before we had agreed to meet the minibus, they began to worry. where was the minibus? why wasn't he here? they couldn't seem to care less about the shanghai people, but it seemed it was very concerning to them that the bus wasn't fifteen minutes early.

at 4:29 by my watch, the bus driver showed up, and a few minutes after the shanghai people did too. we drove back to the hostel where i crashed. my new mantra is you can never have too many chinese tourists.