Daily Light

It’s been two weeks since I got back from China and I haven’t updated in almost a month… the reason? I’ve been adjusting to being back. Don’t fret though, as I have not forgotten about the blog and I have a very good memory so I will be able to write about my adventurers in as much detail as I did before.

The reason I stopped updating during my trip is simply a matter of time and energy, or more precisely the lack thereof. By the time I made it to Beijing I was already starting to feel the strain of the long days and nights of travel, I’d worn a hole in my shoes even!! So anyway, I should have some updates coming over the next few days.

City Walls

A view from the South Gate looking North up along South Street.

As I mentioned in myprevious blog entry, the mornings here are quite cold and mostof the time overcast as well, so I decided to do something that would allow me to see the city but at the same time keep me relatively warm. The inner city section of Xi’an is surrounded by the original city walls and visitors can gain access to them at the North and South gates. Not too sure if they can be accessed by the East and West gates but I didn’t see anything resembling a pedestrian access at those gates.

The length around the entire city walls is approximately 40km, so walking around them might take half a day or longer. There are three other alternatives though: take a 10-seater electric powered buggy, a rimshaw taxi pedalled by a shifu, or hire a bike of your own and ride around it yourself. I chose the latter, which unsurprisingly also turned out to be the cheapest option at only 20 yuan (plus 200 yuan deposit).

Here is my point-of-view while riding around the city walls in Xi'an...well sort of, I had to get off the bike for this photo. :)

The bike ride around the walls is supposed to take, according to the people who rented the bike to me, about 80 minutes but it actually took me about 90 because of the prevailing easterly winds that morning, which slowed me down along that section of the wall. I brought my gloves with me that I had haggled for the previous day and they came in handy for this long bike ride by not only keeping my fingers warm but also preventing my thumbs from getting blistered from the rubber hand grips.

As I travelled around the wall I was able to cycle close to the sides and take a peek over, and also stop whenever I wanted to take a closer look. At one point I spotted some people flying some kites but these guys weren’t just flying kites like I did as a kid, they had professional looking equipment with belt-harnesses to keep hold of the kites. I couldn’t hazard a guess how high they were but by the look of the massive spindles they had, the kites must have been extremely high.

Here are some of the people doing their dancing.

At another point along the wall I heard some music as well as karate-style yelling coming from outside the wall, so I stopped for a peak and found people dancing in a courtyard, and others doing some kind of martial arts exercises. Further along the wall I spotted more people doing various sporting activities and execises in the well manicured park that ran along the outside of the wall.

Before even the half-way point (about 20km) I was getting worn out and having to cycle into the wind wasn’t helping. I also had the impression I was riding uphill slightly, which was confirmed later on the return sectionof the wall where I could allow the bike to roll along without pedalling much. It made a great start to the day and definitely added to the positive experience of Xi’an, which up till then hadn’t been so great.

Awesome Food

Just prior to going to the wall I went to find a restaurant that a friend had recommended on the previous day. I found it and worked out, after asking the people standing out the front, that it would open at 11:00am. When I finished my bike ride, I asked someone for the time and it was almost exactly 11:00am. Perfect! Time for brunch then! The restaurant was quite close to the South Gate so it only took me a short time to get there. I alked in and asked for the menu first to make sure it wasn’t going to be too expensive, it wasn’t so I indicated (with hand and body language) that I wanted to dine there and to be seated.

And so began a quick realisation that I lack proper restaurant vocabulary. I’d never had any problem buying food and drink off the streets but when you go to a restaurent, zhege and nage (this and that), don’t always cut it. You can tell them that you want “this” or “that” of course but I guess they also want to know how you want it, and choosing the tea to drink with the meal was also just as difficult. It took maybe ten times longer than it should have to order my meal but I got what I was expecting when the food did arrive in the end, so I guess that’s all that mattered at that point. It did give me some ideas on what language I needed to work on though, so that was good.

Here is the wonderful, toffee covered stuff.. still not sure if it was some kind of fruit or sweet dough.

I ordered some Lamb (cooked with some sort of thin, crumbly batter on the outside; cut into strips) and a bowl of Dumplings in some kind of spicy soup. Before those two dishes arrived however, they brought me some kind of complimentary tofu soup. It didn’t have a lot of flavour but it was light and even a little sweet so made for a good starter. Most likely it was something that would assist in the digestion of food. The lamb was succullent and juicy, with the dry batter on the outside making for a perfect combination. The dumplings were also better than the average dumplings I’ve had in China, with the level of spiciness of the soup just right.

The thing that surprised me the most was the dessert, which was also complimentary. It was a small plate of what seemed to be sweet dough, cut into strips and then completely and utterly drenched in warm and sticky toffee that was going hard as it cooled. The moment I had one bite of this, I basically pushed the other dishes aside until I had eaten about half the plate. I could feel my stomach getting full so I took a break, had a smoke (yes in the restaurant) and a couple of cups of tea, then went back to work on the meal in front of me till I could not eat a single bite more. I didn’t eat again till the next day because I was so well fed there and it only cost me 65 yuan for everything: 20 for the dumplings, 25 for the lamb and 20 for the tea, as per the menu prices. Amazing food, the best I have had since arriving in China. I’d arrived at around 11:10am and by the time I left, at around 12:45, the place was packed full of people. Obviously this was a very popular restaurant locally.

Massage

In every city I have been to so far, with the exception of Wuhan, I have had a massage. Each time the massage has had a lot of similarities but also little things that are not common to the other city. In Xi’an I actually went to a low-quality place thinking it was the place that the same friend, who recommended the restaurant, had recommended I go to. The place she recommended was actually about half a block away and had all the same features at the front of the store, which is why I thought it was the right one.

In any case the massage was average, not bad by any means but it was obvious that these people didn’t have the same professional training nor resources that the other previous places did. I paid less for the 1.5 hour long massage though, so I guess even in Chinayou get what you pay for when it comes to professional services. In this place they had the same foot bath at the beginning but also put some kind of milk extract powder into the water that, upon making contact with water, expanded into hundreds of tiny little squishyballs. Admittedly, this actually felt great on my sore feet and later she added more hot water and more of the milk extract powder.

The actual massage itself was, as already stated, mediocre but the conversation was at least different to the regular “where are you from?” conversations I have with most Chinese people. So at least I got to practise a bit more daily-life style Chinese language at the same time as the massage.

Afternoon with Daphne

Nothing to do with what I am writing here but another good photo of the Xi'an City Walls. :)

After the massage I went back to the hostel for a while to access the free wifi internet there and to make contact with a friend I met online who lives in Xi’an. We organised to meet up after she finished work at 3:00pm so she could show me around a little. Daphne teaches English and Chinese to primary and middle-school students. She teaches mainly to the expat children that go to school in Xi’an. She took me to the South, out of the inner city area to where the White Goose Pagoda is. It was a much more pleasant part of the city because there were less people and it had a lot of park areas surrounding the main tourist attraction itself.

We grabbed some coffee from KFC, which was better than I thought it was going to be but certainly not cafe level of quality, and sat in one of the parks and chatted the afternoon away. After we had finished chatting about life, work and language, we decided to grab a bite to eat at a nearby noodle shop before she helped me get a taxi back to where I was staying. Having friends in a city that you are visiting, even if you just have a cup of coffee with them, makes a big difference to the experience in that city. All in all, Day 15 was perhaps the best day I spent in Xi’an: the city walls, the food, the (mediocre) massage, and afternoon with Daphne made it all seem worth it.

Actually this picture was taken the day after but for some reason I didn't take any photos on Day 14.

Trying not to let the previous day’s events bother me too much proved to be more difficult than it would seem. I was constantly aware of the people around me and was expecting to be pick-pocketed or something at any moment (and even now a couple of days later, I find myself a little on edge though much less). The thing is, the vast majority of Chinese people are honest and wouldn’t even think of stealing or scamming someone but nevertheless, the previous day’s events weighed heavily on my mind.

I decided to have a decent sized breakfast at the hotel and give them one more chance at redeeming themselves but the breakfast was mediocre and reasonably expensive. After breakfast I headed out to see the Great Mosque in the Muslim Quarter of the city, On the way there I discovered a StarBucks coffee shop on the West-South corner of the Bell Tower intersection. No.. not South-West corner.. the West-South corner.. hehe.. As I’ve previously mentioned, most of the time you cross the road in Xi’an by going underground and at the Bell Tower intersection there are a number of exits around the points of the compass. The South-West corner would come out on to South Street on the West side of the street. The West-South corner exit comes out on West Street, on the South side of the street. Confused yet? Well, it’s actually really handy to know the difference in the street sides and makes it much easier to navigate the main part of the city,

In Australia, StarBucks coffee sucks so badly that they had to close about 50 or so stores Australia-wide because no one was drinking the coffee. :) Fortunately for me, the StarBucks coffee in China is superb and I ended up having coffee there every morning since finding it. It’s a little expensive but definitely worth it in a country where “good” coffee is hard to find in large quantities. With my big, venti-sized cup of Caramel Latte in hand, I strolled westward down the West Street (西大街 on the map, the exit to StarBucks would be 西大街南口). Along West Street a little way can be found the Muslim Quarter off to the North of the road itself. Within this section is a plethora of little shops and of course the Great Mosque.

During my failed attempted to gain access to the Great Mosque on this day, due to the route I took being closed for construction, I decided to buy a couple of things I’d had inmy mind to buy for about a week. The first thing was a good pair of warm gloves because the further I went North, the colder the the mornings got and the longer it took for the day to warm up. In Xi’an it was taking till about 1:00pm to get to a decent enough temperature to be comfortable without a jacket. I haggled with the lady and managed to get the price of the gloves from 100 yuan down to 20 yuan. I attempted to haggle with the same lady for the second thing, a t-shirt, to below 20 yuan but she wouldn’t budge even with a lot of joking around. I left the store saying that I would find it elsewhere but she didn’t follow me and negotiate a new price.

This experience taught me two things, how to haggle a little better and also that the t-shirt’s real price was 20 yuan. With that information, I would later (on the following day) get the same shirt from another shop for 20 yuan because I knew that was the proper price. The fact that she didn’t chase after me was a good indication that 20 yuan was the real price of the shirt and that it is unlikely I could get a better deal elsewhere in the city. Unless I was to buy multiple shirts and then I could ask for a further discount because I was buying in a higher quantity. The thing I noticed with the haggling was that you didn’t really need to know any Chinese at all because they all use calculators to show the price they are asking and offer you the calculator to enter your own counter-bid. I think the fact that I used a bit of Chinese and played around with her a little helped a lot though as: 1. She knew she wasn’t dealing with a complete idiot and 2. the playful banter put us in a good buyer-seller relationship where both sides felt more comfortable.

For the rest of the day I basically walked around the city to get a feel for the place and find the essential things in the environment that I might need to use later, like an ATM that would accept my card (as not all the ATMs will). The tourist information centre was also another good location to know as you can basically walk in there, tell them what you are trying to do and then they will give you all the information on how to do it. I also attempted to locate a decent tea-house to sit in and drink tea but they are few and far between in Xi’an for some reason. There are literally hundreds of Noodle shops littered all over the city but next to impossible to locate a tea-house. Failing that, I just wandered some more before returning to the “hostel” and bumming around for the remainder of the night.

Saying goodbye to new friends. If I ever go back to Chengdu, I'll definitely stay at Sim's Cozy Guest House again.

My flight was due to leave for Xi’an at 1:00pm today and so I made my preparations early in the morning, packing my bags and doing everything except for actually checking out of the room itself. Had a shower and a shave, ate a bigger than normal breakfast, said goodbye to some of the friends I had made and so on. I arranged for a driver to take me from Sim’s Cozy to the airport because it cost the same and was more reliable than trying to get a taxi. On the way to the airport I was able to write a couple of blog entries so I am starting to catch up with myself in real-time now. :)

The flight was with China Southern and the meal and refreshments plus the service level was, as I expected, far superior to that of Air China. The flight was surprisingly short at just 1 hour from take-off to landing but upon arrival there was some confusion over whether I should be debarking from the plane or not as it was a 2-stage flight that continued on to another destination. I asked the flight attendant and showed my ticket and she confirmed that I had arrived at my destination. I had called ahead the day before to arrange an airport pickup, so I made my way out of the airport and found someone holding a sign with my name.

He was a little confused as he assumed that there was supposed to be two people arriving, one person called Luke and the other person called Parsons. :) I told him that my famly name was Parsons a few times and then again in Chinese and he finally caught on to the concept. He immediately got on the phone and sounded a little annoyed with whoever he was talking to but I signalled to him that I needed to use the bathroom and I left him to his conversation. I was put into a decent looking car and my backpack into the trunk of the car and away we drove on to Xi’an city, which is about 40km from the airport.

We arrived in Xi’an after a fairly uneventful drive, except for the last 500m or so when we got into the centre of the city and the traffic got really crazy. After I got out of the car and my backpack was retrieved from the trunk, I was greeted by a man who claimed to be from the hostel that I had booked in, who led me into the foyer of a hotel. Only thing was, it was not the same hostel or hotel I had booked online. After questioning him about this, he advised me that the hostel was under emergency repairs and that it only had a few rooms left occupiable. He told me that I could stay in a single room here for a little bit more than I had booked for but I argued nicely with him that it was not what was agreed on, so he lowered the price to a more acceptable level.

At this stage I was already suspicious but I had no further evidence to suggest that he was playing games, so I went along with it and he showed me the room which looked nice enough and after a bit more questioning, I handed over the money for the room. From that point onwards everything started to get really weird. Stories about the room’s services, my check-in receipt discrepancies and a whole bunch of things just kept adding up to, what is obvious to me now, a scam. I called a couple of friends in China and had them do a bit of digging and I even tried calling the original hostel number but it was his phone. In the end I demanded my money be returned, minus the airport pickup fee of course, which I got and I walked out. It took a few nasty words in Chinese to get through to them that I wasn’t going to stand for it.. such as “fei hua” (Bullshit), when the girl at the counter suddenly couldn’t understand English. I made her check the money for counterfeit right there in front of him, in the special machines they have here in China. I left telling him that I was sorry but I just didn’t feel comfortable with the situation and sorry for the trouble, to try and leave the situation with him keeping at least a bit of face.

So, there I was in Xi’an with nowhere to stay and the sun quickly sinking in the sky. I called one of my friends in Shanghai again, and asked her to help me out in finding out where I was so that she could give me the closest, and easiest, hostel to stay at. It was at this point that my China Mobile ran out of credit.. aiya!! :) Luckily there are China Mobile stores just about everywhere and a few doors down there was a full service store who were able to assist me directly with adding 50 yuan credit on to the phone. As it turns out, the hostel where I am now staying was only a few more doors down the road. I checked in to the hostel and went to check out my private room.

Compared to Sim’s Cozy this place was a, ’scuse the french but no other word justifiably describes it, shit-hole. Maybe I was a little jaded after my bad start to Xi’an and nearly being scammed big time but the more I stay at this place, the more I realise what a bad hostel it is. The food is 3 or 4 times more expensive than all of the hostels I have stayed in, the drinks are 2 or 3 times more, the music they play into the early morning hours is crappy club music you’d hear in any dive across the world. The people who frequent the place seem to be people who don’t even stay at the hostel and just come here for the food and drink, as if the place serves more as a pub with rooms to rent than an actual hostel. Anyway, I am extremely underwhelmed by the place to say the least. Perhaps the only good thing about it is the location; it is dead centre, in the middle of the city,which makes it easy to get to places.

I had a decent shower to wash both the physical and mental grit of the day away and went to bed early. The bed is more uncomfortable than all the beds I have slept on in China and would be the length of a standard child’s bed in any country. Apparently the place changed ownership in the last year or so, and so that is probably why it is so bad now. It can only get better from here on out, right?.. .Only time will tell…

It turned out to be a beautiful day with a few wisps of clouds in the sky over Leshan.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I met Ian in the bar at Sim’s Cozy and we decided to go to the Giant Buddha at Leshan together. During the time between meeting Ian and meeting up in the morning, he had met an English girl who also wanted to go and see the Giant Buddha so we all would go there together.

Leshan is about 2 hours, by bus, south of Chengdu so the first thing we had to do was get ourselves to the long distance bus station. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to get a taxi, so after getting some extra cash out from a nerby ATM we started to look for a taxi. In a big city, at about 8:30am in the morning it is terribly difficult to locate a taxi that is available. We had been standing around waiting for about 10 minutes when I spotted a taxi dropping off a fare and quickly signalled the guys to jump in. Fortunately for us Sim’s Cozy provides pre-printed taxi instructions that we could take with us and the taxi driver knew exactly where to go.

On arrival at the bus station there was this huge line snaking around in the direction of the bus station and we were a little worried that it would take hours to get a ticket. Queue Chinese Language Moment. I asked if anyone spoke English and it was no surprise that someone in the line did speak a little, so with my limited Chinese and their limited English I was able to etablish that the line was not for the buses we wanted and where we needed to go for the tickets. Fee, the English girl confidently approached the counter and tried to buy herself a ticket but of course no one in the ticket office spoke English..hehe.. no surprise there. By that time I had moved in behind her and told the lady what tickets we wanted, how many people and asked how much. We had our tickets and also the number of the gate we need to go to a few seconds later. :)

What I’ve noticed about using Chinese, even when I know what to say with the correct tones, is that if you don’t sound confident and direct, the people you are talking to will most often say “ting bu dong” (I don’t understand what you are saying.). You really need to sound as if you know what you are talking about, even if you don’t, otherwise it’s going to be “ting bu dong” constantly. When I told the lady what tickets we wanted, I barely even listened to her replies and just basically told her the essential information. There were no perfectly constructed sentences, and I probably even got some of the tones wrong but because I was confident and direct with her, the transaction went without a hitch. In contrast, when I tried to do the same in Wuhan, I was unsure of myself and fumbled through my request, causing an “event” that took 15 to 20 minutes of messing around.

The bus we took to Leshan was actually just a 8-seater mini-van rather than a proper tour bus but it did the job and got us there in one piece. On the way I started to need to use the bathroom and with about 40km still to go I was really busting. It took all of my will-power to hold on to the fuel-stop we made just inside the Leshan border. I’d never been so happy to see a dirty, smelly Chinese public toilet in my life.. haha.. :) I found out later that the others also had a similar experience. We made sure to go before we got on the bus for the return journey.. hehe. One interesting thing happened on the bus ride: as we got to the opposite side of Leshan at what must have been the city limits, we were shuffled from the min-van into another mini-van that took us a mere 1 or 2 kilometers down the road to the actual site of the Giant Buddha park entrance.

just inside the entrance was this beautiful long river canal that I couldn't resist taking a picture of.

The entry fee for the gardens was 50 yuan and another 70 yuan was required to enter the section of the park that contained the Giant Buddha. It was another Chinese language moment where I had to negotiate what the price was and what each ticket was used for. Pretty simple though as the person at the ticket counter spoke a little more English than most did around this area. Just inside the entrance was a beautiful garden with a path down the middle leading to a traditional-style bridge over a river-canal. From the river-canal bridge it was possible to see the 170 meter long Buddha carved into the side of the mountain. This is not the Giant Buddha of course but it was still an amazing thing to see and makes you wonder how long and also how it was done.

Nestled up on the mountain side was a Buddha sitting in a pagoda.

As you wander around the gardens you can see “pagodas” nestled along the mountain cliffs and one in particular that contains a smaller Buddha, maybe 15 or 20 meters tall. However we decided that we should head for the Giant Buddha first as we weren’t really sure how long it would take to get there and that was the main reason for our visit. We did have the opportunity to take some distant photos of it though as we walked up some steps in the direction of the Giant Buddha. Ahh the steps.. We probably walked up and down about a thousand steps during our stay there. As everything is contained within or upon the small mountain range, there was a lot of up and down movement as we made our way along the extremely scenic pathways.

One thing that was really great about the place was the sense of peace and quiet. It was refreshing to be out of the cities that I had been spending most of my time in over the last 12 days. The previous day had been a overcast with a constant sprinkling of rain throughout. On this day however, it cleared up and there were almost no clouds in the sky at all and so I carried my jacket around in my arms unless we were sitting own in the shade to take a rest. That’s when you reaise that its still just the start of Spring and this part of the world hasn’t yet warmed up fully. It was such a different feeling to be walking through the trees and plants, along paved paths with LOTS of steps. Of course there were the touristy rest-areas every couple of kilometers but in between, it was very peaceful. We did have the opportunity to take a boat along the river from the South Gate to the park, which would have been easier on the legs and feet, but I am so glad we didn’t because the park was so beautiful.

Here I am standing near the head of the massive Giant Buddha

We arrived at the Giant Buddha around lunch time and even the pictures I took of it with people standing nearby for reference don’t fully justify the vast size of this statue. I stands at 77m tall and was obviously given painstaking detail. We took a few photos at the top standing near the head and proceeded down the side of the cliff to the feet of the statue. The steps cut into the cliff side were extremely steep and some of the steps were at least a foot high making for some awkward and slow moments as older people trekked down the stairs in front of us. This is one moment when I was glad to have a sturdy railing. While we were going down the steps and also at the bottom, there was also the awesome view of Leshan city to beholld over the river. Even though it was just a city, I couldn’t resist taking a couple of quick photos of it from that vantage point and I am glad I did. Being at the feet of the Giant Buddha makes it even more obvious how large the thing is and looking at my photos and video I took of it, it just doesn’t compare at all to actually standing there and looking up at it.

After taking some time to soak up the awesome view we trekked around the cliff-side road which is a series of caves and steps that go along, obviously, the cliff-side and eventually back to the path that runs parallel with the path we were on to get to the Giant Buddha. We also visited the tombs, a fishing village, and of course the pagoda areas that we had seen when we first entered the park. Fortunately we came out of a cave and we at the top of the steep stairway that we had seen earlier leading up to the pagoda containing the smaller Buddha because by that time my legs were just about giving way under the strain of the all the previous steps climbing and trekking around the park. It really is a massive park and not something I would recommend not doing in a single day, as we did, unless you are quite fit. You could easily spend two days here even if you were fitter than I am. Just before leaving we sat down near the bridge at the entrance and enjoyed some locally produced Chinese tea, which had quite a strong bite to it but refreshed and cleared our minds.

There's the Buddha sitting in the pagoda at the top of all those steep steps.

The final leg of the journey was of course the return trip to Chengdu and Sim’s Cozy Guest House. The bus ride to Chengdu from Leshan was uneventful except that we rode in a proper tour bus, which made it a much more comfortable ride. Upon arrival back in Chengdu we were a little surprised to discover that the bus stopped at a different bus station way, way to the south of the city. Fortunately the city buses also stopped here and using my limited Chinese skills I was able to ask for directions to which bus to take. We paid our 1 yuan each and got on the bus, which arrived within a few minutes of us getting to the bus stop. I had a map of the city and could see the route on the map but when it didn’t make a turn I was expecting it to I realised that the map I had showed only the route of the bus as it travelled in a southerly direction rather than the return trip. I kept my wits about me and maintained a fix on our location as we travelled around the 1st Ring Road. About 5 or so kilometers away from the guest house, the bus took a left turn and changed over to the 2nd Ring Road. It was still going in the correct direction but was now on the outer road. I was happy to wait and see if it went to the correct place, which I am sure it would have but the other two grew increasingly worried so when I was sure we withing close proximity to the guest house, we got off the bus and got a taxi. Sure enough, it only took us about 5 minutes to get to the guest house from where we got off the bus.

The streets of Chengdu are wide and uncluttered.

Since I had been doing a lot of walking around and generally doing a lot of sightseeing, in my own ways, pretty much non-stop since arriving in Shanghai, I deicded that it was time for a break and to just enjoy my holiday without any effort required. I had the pleasure of being taken to a massage place in Shanghai already and felt that today was a good day to try going to a massage place by myself. I asked the hostel staff to recommend one that was professional and would be able to cater for me being a foreigner with limited Chinese. They knew of a good one in the next street so I headed off there with the name of ir written down in Chinese.

About the only thing that really helped from the foreigner’s perspective was that they had a laminated sheet of paper with the prices written in English, Japanese and Chinese. All the rest was completely Chinese including the lady who performed the actual massage. Luckily I had learned some Chinese words at the massage place in Shanghai that served me well during this lone massage I had in Chengdu. The massage started off the same and had similarities to the one done in Shanghai but there was also a lot more stretching done, a more extensive back massage and also a facial and head massage, which all were not done in Shanghai. In Shanghai, they did do a back massage but not as extensively as the one in Chengdu. In this massage place they also did the entire thing in one room, and at the end to finish off, they used some bag of hot pebbles that was rubbed overallthe areas that were massaged, except for the face and head.

After the massage I went back to my room at Sim’s Cozy and watched another DVD before deciding to have a few hours of sleep in the afternoon. Later on I bumped into Ian, who is from New Zealand and we organised to go to Leshan together on the next day.

Zhenzhen was our guide on the Panda Tour. Took this picture standing in one of the bamboo archways.

Before going to bed I decided to get a DVD to watch in bed. They don’t charge anything for the hiring of the DVD, you only need to make a 10 yuan deposit that you get back in full when you return the DVD to the front desk. I always make a habit of taking off my glasses before I go to sleep but this night I fell asleep with them on. At about 3:30am in the morning I woke up to findmy vision distorted and it took me a little while to realise that my glasses were broken and the right-side lens had come out completely with the screw missing that holds it in place. I was understandably a little disconcerted by this as I couldn’t see properly and even with the left lens in place,I could barely see what I was doing or going.

I decided to stay calm and see it as a challenge rather than a brick wall and set my alarm for a little earlier than I needed to get up for the panda tour. Upon waking I went and advised the front desk of my problem and that would probably need to cancel, or at least postpone, the panda tour. I needed to get the glasses fixed as a priority before doing anything else as I still had over 2 weeks left in this country. Fortunately there was a glasses shop only 3 or4 shops down the road and they had my glasses repaired in a matter of 5 minutes, even adding a new screw to the left side in case that failed at some point in the near future. It cost me nothing and I was still able to make it in time for the panda tour!! Amazing! In hindsight, I am glad that it happened here because if it had happened later in my trip it may not have been as easy to have them repaired and I may have really got stuck!

The trip to the Panda Breeding Research Base took us across the city and arrived within about 30 to 40 minutes. The total price of the tour was 100 yuan and included the drive there and back, plus the 58 yuan entry fee to the base itself. One of the staff members from the front desk also came with us to serve as a guide while we were at the research base. Her name is Zhenzhen and like the rest of the staff at Sim’s Cozy, she was very friendly and helpful. We saw lots of pandas up close and I learned a few more words in Chinese as we strolled leisurely around the gardens. The gardens had frresh spring blossoms on the trees and really amazing bamboo forest sections where the grounds keepers had shaped them into archways over the paths.

For 100 yuan ($25) I was able to hold and have my picture taken with a cute red panda cub.

The main attraction was of course the pandas themselves and there was no shortage of opportunities to see them up close. At times the pandas were nearly within arms reach and the younger ones could be seen playing around their habitats and with each other. At a certain point during the tour, we were given the opportunity to actually hold a baby panda but it was a very expensive fee to do so. For the baby panda it was 1,000 yuan, and to take a photo sitting with one of the older pandas it was 400 yuan. One of the people in our small tour group did pay the 1,000 yuan but it was her whole purpose for visiting Chengdu. A little bit later we also saw the Red Panda and were also given the opportunity to hold a young one for 100 yuan. I decided to do this and had someone in our group tak4 photos of me.

This panda was almost within arm's reach, happily munching on bamboo.

The remainder of the tour consisted of a small movie presenting what they were trying to achieve at the breeding research base, as well as a reasonably decent museum of the history of the base and the pandas. I also was able to purchase a fridge magnet for someone back in Australia who collects them, which I had a lot of trouble finding in the other cities I had been to. One attraction at the research base that we almost completely ignored and only stopped to see because someone had to use the restroom, was a find with over 100 carp. Some people from another small tour group had bought some food for them and the carp were literally teeming near the shore making for a decent photo moment.

After the tour was over I had a lunch date set up with @xiaoyi from Twitter who lives in Chengdu. I was supposed to arrive back from the panda tour at around 11:30am but we were delayed by traffic and didn’t get back until 12:00. It took me about 20 minutes or so to find a taxi to get me from the north end of the city to the south side of the city, which takes about 20 or 30 minutes by car. I finally arrived at 1:00pm but was able to catch the tail end of the lunch and share in some light chat with XiaoYi and his friends.

All in all, day 10 turned out to be a very enjoyable day despite the initial issue with my glasses nearly ruining it for me,

[Will add photos later, running out of battery]

A great place to stay if you're ever in Chengdu.

With the flight from Wuhan to Chengdu only taking a little over one and a half hours, as well as the fact that I was tired and slept most of the way, it felt like I was in Wuhan one minute and in Chengdu the next. The Air China staff and services provided were a little ordinary compared to the South East Air offerings. There was no yoghurt, no cake and the meal was akin to a school lunch packed by your mother: a small roll a small bit of meat and some lettuce. The plane itself was packed full of people in this case and the plane was moving from the terminal within 10 minutes of boarding. So Air China wins the efficiency award but not the service award in my book.

Upon arrival at Chengdu airport I was greeted by a man that the hostel had sent to collect me from the airport because I arrived so late it was easier to have an airport pickup. The man and his friend sat in the front and spoke a very strange language that I hadn’t heard before. It was the Chengdu local dialect, Chengduhua. This dialect is as far removed from standard mandarin as Shanghainese and Cantonese is, so I couldn’t understand even a single word they were saying. The drive from the airport took about 30 to 45 minutes but eventually we came to the hostel, Sim’s Cozy Guest House.

Luxurious by comparison to the other places I have stayed.

Originally I had planned to stay in a dorm but felt that I might try the private room instead for one night and see what the difference was. While I was checking in the reception girl told me that the price was 80 yuan per night but because I was staying 5 nights, I could get the 5th night for free. I liked this idea very much and decided to pay for all nights in the private room. I was actually quite surprised by how nice the room was and how big the bed was. By western standards I guess the room would be considered to be quite sparse and not so nice but having already stayed in a few hostels in China, I was very pleased with the room. It had a queen sized bed, TV, DVD player and also wifi internet in the room itself. With the 20% discounted rate it was an extremely good value for money.

On the first day, after enjoying my large, clean, private bedroom, I decided to do what I have done in all of the cities on the first day and just walk around within a few blocks of the hostel to get a feel for the place. Chengdu is said by many to be one of the prettiest and nicest cities of all the cities in China, and with its wide, open pedestrian walkways and semi-organised traffic it is easy to see why. Like many of the northern cities, Chengdu is laid out in a grid based off ring-roads, so getting lost is quite hard to do. All you need to do is remember which ring-road you are one and the section of that ring-road and you can easily find your way back. Sim’s Cozy resides on YiHuanLu BeiSiDuan (1st Ring-Road, North Section 4). Each section is only about 1 kilometer long so if you can get to the correct section, you are within 1 kilometer of the place you want to be so the people in that area generally can point you to the exact place.

James is a big brother with a big heart. :)

After a little walk around, I decided to return to Sim’s Cozy and check out what was around the city that I could go and see. A friend had recommended a few things and I found that Sim’s Cozy had a package deal for two of them: the panda breeding research base and the Sichuan Opera show. I booked myself into both and got a 10 yuan discount plus bonus souvineers for the price of 240 yuan total. The opera was on this night at about 7:15pm so I killed a few hours in the bar socialising and using the free wifi there. I quickly made friends with the barman, James, who is a big guy with a big heart. Tingting was a small girl who appeared to be quite studious and serious at first but slowly warmed up to me over the days that I spent at the hostel. The other regular barkeeping staff member was Jasmin, who is a trainee at Sim’s Cozy. She is just 20 years old, full of energy (hehe.. perhaps too much energy!) and keen to learn English.

The Sichuan Opera started on time and we were seated in the 2nd row from the front so we could see everything very easily and I took a few pictures as well as video of the event. A couple of favourites were the shadow puppetry and the sololist on the traditional violin-like instrument that is held vertically. All of the acts were good however and it was definitely worth the time and money to see such a wide variety of traditional culture in one show. The show itself only lasted about an hour or so, so it didn’t seem to drag on and on. In fact I was surprised that it ended so quickly because I was interested in all that was on offer.

There were many interesting acts with this one being the first of the singing and dancing.

After the show we were ferried back to the hostel and I essentially had a couple of drinks at the bar and went to bed to be up early for the panda tour in the morning. These were the first paid tours I had taken since being in China but I think that getting the 2nd row and being ferried there is more convenient and let me concentrate on the show rather than worrying how I would get myself back to the hostel.

Day 8 was the day I had to fly on to Chengdu but in order to get to the airport I would have to catch the Airport Shuttle Bus (feiji chang) so that it wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg. First of all I had to ensure that I checked out of the hostel before 12:00pm to avoid paying an extra 50% of the room rate so the morning was spent showering and packing as well as having the first shave I have had in a few days.

I asked the hostel staff where the bus station was and they gave me a little map with it on there. I realised that this was a street I had already walked past and felt confident that I would be able to find the bus station since it should have been an obvious looking blue building, or at least a building with a big blue sign. The walk from the hostel takes about 30 to 40 minutes, so I’d estimate it being around 3km or so.

For some reason I completely missed the bus station and walked about 300m past it before I stopped and asked somepeople in a train ticket office. A little bit of Chinese was needed here and I even learned the word for meter which is “mi”. So I had gone 三百米 (300m) too far and had to walk back the way I had just come, much to the amusement of a few locals that recognised the lone laowai walking back the way he came.

On the way I back I still didn’t see the building and asked a guard to a building complex, which just so happened to be the actual building that the bus station ticket office was housed in. Basically if don’t know how to read a lot of Chinese, like me, then you are most likely to miss this building because it doesn’t look any different to any of the others in any way. It even had a McDonalds on the 2nd floor making it even more ambiguous as to what was inside.

I made my way inside and found that the inside looked very much like a bus station would with reception desk, baggage checkin and of course the ticket windows. It was really surpirising that it would look like a normal bus station on the inside but on the outside be ;so nondescript. I made my way to the ticket window and made sure they were all the same before standing in line. A lot of these places have special queues for first class or express customers, luckily I haven’t made the mistake of getting in the wrong line yet.

When it was my turn to buy a ticket I found out the sad truth that the ticket booth lady didn’t speak even a single word of English. No problem I thought and so proceeded to tell her, “wo xiang mai feiji chang piao”. Yup, she understood that and then she asks me what time I want it for. So I reply with “liu dian san fen”, the only problem with this is that I left out one very important word “shi”. This created a huge international incident.. haha.. I was asking her for a bus ticket for 6:03pm and of course no buses leave at 6:03. There are buses that leave at 6:00 and 6:30 but not 6:03 but eventually I settled on a ticket leaving at 6:00pm because at least we could both agree on that. Later when I got back to the hostel, I realised my mistake. What I should have said was “liu dian san shi fen”.. oh well.. lesson learned.

On the way back from the bus station to the hostel I stopped off at a baozi dian (Steamed Bun Shop) and grabbed my first ever Beef Steamed bun, which was slightly more expensive than the others. I was delighted to find that the inside had a spicy curry type flavour, which was completely different to the normal pork steamed bun I had been eating since arriving in China. I was also pleased with myself that I could read the menu and see the different meats and prices without fumbling.

During the wait till the 6:00pm bus, since it was only 2pm by the time I made it back to the hostel, I sat outside and chatted with a couple of local girls who could barely speak English. Eventually I had the idea to pull out my phrase book and we compared English and Chinese language. Like how in Chinese you say “zhu rou” (lit. Pig Meat) but in English you just say “Pork”; and how with Chicken you say “ji rou” (lit. Chicken Meat) in Chinese but in English you just say Chicken.

The checkin and “special check” (security) went much more smoothly then the one at Pudong in Shanghai. The only hitch was that I forgot to hand over my cigarette lighter, which you are not allowed to take on the plane. I learned an interesting tip afterwards that if you can find the basket at the destination airport with all the discarded lighters, you can get one for free. If you think it about it though, it’s not free.. it’s like a little sharing and trading system between smokers. hehe.

I’ll write a separate post about my arrival in Chengdu as there is a lot to say about the place I am staying at, as well the different language here.

The Yangtze River bridge is a little over 1.6km long making for a long walk and a great view of the city.

Having not done much the day before in the way of sight seeing, I decided to pick a place to visit where I wouldn’t have to use the bus system and could instead just walk there. I’m still not ready for the possible hell involved in taking a bus even though it is the cheapest transport option available in all the cities. I guess the worst thing that could happen is that I get to the end of the bus route and realise I have to go back again but I’ll leave that for another day…maybe.

Both the Yellow Crane Tower and the bridge that spans the 1.6km wide Yangtze River were within walking distance of the hostel so I decided to work my way towards those. I had a quick look at the map to find which road to go down from the main Zhongshan Lu but of course like with any city, there are many unexpected distances, twists, turns and surprises involved in any travel through an unfamiliar city. I wasn’t too worried though because as long as I kept track of where I was in relation to Zhongshan Lu and the other road, Minzhu Lu, I could find my way back to where I started and try again.

I walked for what seemed like the required distance and saw a big sign all in Chinese, so decided that it must be the correct road to go down. That’s another thing that is different about Wuhan compared with Shanghai, almost all of the street signs are in Chinese with no English or even Pinyin (the romanised form of Chinese). This makes things a little bit more tricky if you don’t have a clue where you are going and don’t recognise enough characters to make sense of the signs. However, like I said in the previous post, there are hardly any foreigners in Wuhan (other than Chinese from other provinces) so I can’t really blame the sign designers for that.

As you might have expected, it turned out to be the wrong road but I did get to walk through an old tunnel underneath the highway. On the other side I

was greeted with some decent music being played by a young Chinese man on his guitar. His was actually quite good as well as his playing and even though I would have been a little loud for Sydney, it seemed to fit right into the underdeveloped landscape that was around that immediate area. I wandered down the road a little further about halfway down the hill and

turned around to see if I could spot the Yellow Crane Tower to give me an idea of which direction I might need to head in to get there. I couldn’t see it, so I headed back to Minzhu Lu instead and continued on further west towards to the river.

After a while I came to a rather small T-intersection that had a lot of modern-style shops with lots of glass, metal and lights. I looked to the left (south) and saw some stairs that I might be able to use to get up on to the bridge and possibly on to the bridge. There were a lot of steps to get up to the highway and sure enough it seemed as though I could walk west to the bridge or keep going east to the entrance of the Yellow Crane Tower, I opted for the former. I’m not sure why I decided to see the bridge first but I just went with the flow, like you have to do with most things in China, and ventured off in the westerly direction.

As I said before, this bridge is really long.. 1.6km long in fact! What can I say about the bridge itself other than it was really long and there were military guards posted at each end of the bridge. What was really worth coming to see however was the view from the bridge, which was amazing! I could look down on the streets I had just been walking along and see everything with a lot more clarity than before. There was a little park area on the east side with a circular paved area but no one seemed to be standing in, walking through or using it in any way. I can only assume it is used for more official things, even if that is simply a band or something. From up here everything was put into perspective and the chaos below become more of a synergy of the city and people.

After passing the second guard tower and buying “yi ping shui” (a bottle of water) for 2 yuan (50 cents AUD) I continued on to the bridge proper. I was almost oblivious to the traffic passing by my left side as I gazed out across the murky waters of the river Yangtze. After a little while I turned back and looked at the shore to see some stairs right on the water’s edge where people had gathered to chat and eat together in the warm sunny day. Up further I was able to witness some of the large cargo boats going up and down the river. There was not a great deal of traffic on the river that day, which is most likely due to the downturn in the economy as Wuhan is a large manufacturing city due to the ease of moving things up and down the river.

A little park along the riverside that I really wanted to go check out but couldn't find a way down to.

On the other side of the bridge I found that there was a riverside park area with lots of rock sculptures and well manicured gardens as well as what could be considered as a small beach. For some odd reason someone was having what appeared to be their wedding photos down on the dirty looking beach sand, Maybe to these people it was more than just having a glistening white sandy beach and crystal clear water. Maybe this river is so important to the heritage and culture of the city that it doesn’t matter it is a commercial river rather than a leisure river. In any case I really wanted to get down there and check it out, so I continued along hoping that there would be a similar set of stairways down like the west side of the bridge had.

I walked a fair distance and came to the end of the bridge proper and all I could see was the road snaking off into the distance so I figured that while there must be a way down there, the amount of walking required would most likely have killed me. From here I could have easily just walked back the way I came along the same side of the bridge but since I’ve had my share of Chinese roads, I decided to attempt a crossing at the designated “zebra” crossing (where there are white lines painted adjacent to the direction of the road).

Now in Sydney, and I am guessing most cities, when someone approaches a zebra crossing all the cars that are not about to go across the zebra crossing will slow down and stop. This is not true in China, though I assume that is the point of the zebra crossings in China. I guess these crossings are more or less a way of warning drivers that people my walk across there and to be on the look out but not necessarily stop. :) Crossing any road in China is ever changing balance between moving forward across the road and not getting run over. Only at rare intersections have I seen all of the cars come to a complete stop and that was most likely only because there were so many people crossing at the time.

Notice how the train is leaning over as it comes around the bend? This seems to be quite common in China, whether intentional or not I am unsure.

I made it across the road of course and like every time I get across the road in China, I feel a little bit triumph. Laowai 1, City 0. haha.. :) It makes me feel like I am part of the daily life culture here to be able to confidently cross the road and stand in the middle of two lanes while cars drive past. On the way back I spotted a train coming up the train line that then continues along the underneath of the bridge. It’s just a train of course but with the addition of the scenery around it, it made for a nice picture moment.

I had a few more nice picture moments as I walked the long distance back over to the side of the river I started on and as I got over to the other side I spotted a little area down beside the bridge that I thought I would check out as a consolation prize to not being able to go and see the park back on the other side of the bridge. I went down some stairs and into a little room that sits directly beneath the road above and found out that to go down any further I would have to use the lift/elevator. However not many things in China are free and the sole person there advised me that it would cost 2 yuan to ride to the bottom. I declined and decided to go back to the original side of the bridge where I had began from so at least that was one road crossing I wouldn’t have to deal with. :)

Up the stairs was a familiar sight of 2 or 3 ladies sitting around chatting, one selling drinks, another selling some type of food and the other sewing or knitting. These little jack-of-all-trade outfits are all over the city and I saw more of this type of activity in Wuhan than I did in Shanghai. In Shanghai, these types of places are more often found at the front of other shops rather than just on the side walk by themselves, with the exception of the food stalls which are just about everywhere you ever go in China. I wanted to buy a little spicy sausage on a stick and she was saying “liang yuan” (2 yuan) and I was trying to hand her a 5 yuan note but she wouldn’t take it and kept saying liang yuan. Why she couldn’t have given me 3 yuan in change I don’t know but I fished around in my pocket and found two 1 yuan coins.

From here I set my sights on the Yellow Crane Tower and proceeded in an easterly direction back the way I had originally come. I had a little rest in the shade of a tree before going up more steps to the entrance of the tower and noticed, for the first time that day, the stares as people walked past. You tend to get used to this but on occasion it does feel a little awkward and it’s usually the older people who look rather than the teens and kids. I almost had to ask where the ticket office was for the tower because it is sort of hidden to the right of the turnstiles at the entrance.

Here I am standing in front of the main gate of the Yellow Crane Tower.

I paid my 50 yuan and proceeded inside, evading all the other people who were sitting and standing outside the entrance. I’m not sure whether or not they had already been in and were having a rest or were there just to see the tower from the outside and gaze over the city from the elevated position, I did get the impression it was the latter though s some were taking pictures of each other. Of course I started to take pictures immediately as soon as I had entered the turnstiles and a fellow tourist, though a Chinese tourist, helped to take a picture of me. I knew he would be ok because he himself had a big camera worth at least 10 or even 20 times what mine was worth. :)

I didn’t get bogged down into the detailed history of the place so I don’t really know many of the facts and figures of the place. If I want to know that kind of stuff, I can always look it up on the internet. What I did do was soak up the atmosphere of the place: the art, architecture and majestic quality of the tower and the surrounding buildings. I was also able to take some nice pictures of the city from the elevated balconies around the outside of the tower. I’m unsure if it is the highest point in the entire city but it certainly was higher than anything I could see. All in all, it was definitely worth the 50 yuan entry fee and made the trip to Wuhan so much more worthwhile than I would have expected.

Looking down from one of the balconies of the Yellow Crane Tower towards the Yangtze River bridge.

I didn’t come on this trip to see the tourist sites but the more sites I do see, the more I get out of the cities that I have been visiting. The Pearl Tower in Shanghai for example is just a bg tower thingy but looking at it from a reasonable distance together with the rest of the cityscape really gave me a great memory that I will remember for a lifetime. (thanks for that one John!). Still with me? Sorry about the length of this post but so much needed to be said about this day and the things I learned about China. There’s so many other little details that I will save for other times when I am chatting with people but I think Wuhan was definitely a place worthy of a visit even if it is a short 2 or 3 days.