During times of extreme boredom, namely exam revision, Lea, Anja and myself dreamed of an adventure which would take us out of the cities and to new and exciting destinations, to forge new paths, to write our own travel guide. This blog post is the conclusion to the trip, and first and foremost it is intended to inspire others to strike out to the lesser-known parts of this diverse country. The greatest thing I took out of our trip is excitement, excitement in the realisation that in one city, one province, one country there are corners, hidden wonders which are unknown, forgotten, undocumented (even by the likes of lonely planet, contrary to popular belief.)
There are so many places in the world which have the ability to inspire and amaze, that one cannot possibly see them all in only one lifetime. Isn’t that sad, yet oddly reassuring.
Hunan 湖南 Ａ ｍｏｕｎｔａｉｎ
The first stage of our trip was Changsha city in Hunan province. Due to the timing of the trip (close to the Chinese New Year) we were unable to go directly to Changsha, and instead went via Wuhan. The unfortunate thing about catching connections is the absolute importance of making your train, you miss one, you miss both. We managed to run onto the train in Nanjing moments before the doors closed and the train sped away, we smiled to each other as the adrenaline slowly filtered away, and knew that this was the start of a truly ultimate adventure. In Changsha, I immediately took a liking to this smallish city, maybe partly due to the charming YHA hostel we stayed in that night. [Changsha-Hunan International Youth Hostel, Dongfeng Rd.]
The next day, we bought tickets on a 5 hour bus to another small city, Zhangjiajie 张家界. The bus station is outside the normal (not G train) station of Changsha, but the long distance buses leave from another area around the corner and across the road from the train station. Ask for directions earlier than us, when we were told ‘it’s over there, but you’re gonna miss it anyway.’ Ha! She didn’t count on us sprinting and jumping the dividing fence to make that bus.
Zhangjiajie is a city built up due to tourism (mainly domestic) because of its surrounding mountainous area. It seems to have recently been experiencing boom, but still shows evidence of its history as a more isolated small town, we walked past a sign spray painted on a wall saying ‘男生，女生一样好’ (boy or girl, both are equally good), discouraging abortion or abandonment of female babies, nowadays more common in rural areas. The hotel we stayed in wasn’t much cop, and it was freezing at night, but the owners made up for that with their total helpfulness with our travel plans [www.zjjyjq.com, 一家亲旅馆, yijiaqin hotel.] The owners knew people in all the tourist spots and made calls for us to confirm opening times, prices, etc. They don’t speak English, however.
The first place we went in this area was Tianmen Mountain 天门山, the cable car left from the middle of the city, near the train station. The tickets are only discounted for students under the (arbitrary) age of 24. The cable car ride itself seems obligatory, because I couldn’t imagine how long it would take to climb up yourself. Probably days. Although there is a winding, unfenced, abso-freaking-amazing looking road which goes into the mountains, twisting like the Great Wall. In the summer, you can bike it. One day, I will cycle (or maybe rollerblade) down that path. Going into the mountains, even on a misty winters morning, was incredible. Even better for being so unexpectedly amazing. The mountains layered onto each other in shades of sky blue, I realised then that traditional Chinese landscape inkbrush paintings are not as fantastical as I once thought, these paintings are realistic, the ink is pale, dreamy, translucent, reflecting perfectly the subject matter.
It turned out that it had snowed the night before, and the entire mountain was a winter wonderland. I had never seen snow before and became absorbed in throwing it, photographing it, stomping on it and eating it, much to the amusement of my European friends. The paths were quite slippery, and the glass walkway we had wanted to go on was closed due to ice, but it was worth it to see the blue mountains contrasted with the stark white snow and the red silk ‘blessings’ tied to overhanging trees. The caves were also closed that day, probably most of winter, and we managed to make our way around the entire Tianmen mountain, all the while marvelling that we were walking on a flat surface, like an island suspended in space. The last cable car back left at 6.30pm on that day. We got to see the sun setting on our way down, over the mountains and the city nestled at its base, perfect.
After a good rest we were ready for our next outdoor escapade, following our hotel-turned- travel guide to the bus station, we were pushed onto a bus with no number going to town only 45mins away (last stop, 12 yuan.) From here we took a taxi to the ticket office of 武陵源 wulingyuan, one of China’s largest national parks. Again with the student under 24 restriction (?) the price of the ticket is 160 students and 240 normal. The ticket is valid for 3 days, so make the most of it. A 7 day ticket is about the same price, and would be a good option as there is accommodation within the park, I’d love to stay at the YHA there and wake up to the sound of golden monkeys calling. There is also a cave area the opposite way to wulingyuan, which is cheaper but apparently not so impressive. We gave it a miss. There are shuttle buses to various parts of the park, so get a map and plan your route to see everything you want to. We went to a high point via cable car and worked our way down (cable car to tianzi mountain 天子山, 40 yuan conc. , 100yuan normal.) We walked the entire day, only taking one free bus between one area and another in order to make it out before closing. The scenery was amazing, but it wasn’t until we found a secret path through the rocks to a stone jutting out over the abyss did we really get so gobsmacked that we actually shut up for a moment to honour the view. We had a small picnic on that stone, and found it was hard to look out to the forest of craggy, sandstone, time-formed pillars, which stretched as far as the eye could see, because it hurt our heads, it was so beautiful and surreal. My mind was trying to convince me it was photoshopped, I’m sure, because how could something like that be real?
We also revelled in the quiet, hardly another tourist around in some parts, so quiet we could hear the wind, and the birds, could notice the strange bright orange squirrels before they were scared off by any loud noises.
We enjoyed ourselves so much, that by the time we came to the final valley, a creek running through it, it was dark and we had missed the last bus out (6.30pm) Not to fear, we found a taxi at the gate who took us back to Zhangjiajie for 100 yuan. Another exhausting, beautiful day. I will go back yet.
Over Wulingyuan from our secret lookout (Photo: Emccall 1/14)
The sunset over the mountains and zhangjiajie city (Photo: Emccall 1/14)
Hubei 湖北 Ａ ｄａｍ
Putting aside our hiking gear, we managed to get a train from Zhangjiajie to Yichang in Hubei province, taking about 6 hours, although in the middle of the day, so a travel day it would be. I wasn’t expecting anything from the city, but it was clean and modern, the hostel we stayed at [yidou hostel, 宜豆] was located in a bar and cafe district so it was nice to have a few luxuries again. The staff spoke English, and the dorm rooms were only 50 yuan a night. They were also really helpful, one even using her own bank card to buy us train tickets on the chinese website 火车票网, to save us the hassle of doing it in the station. (The website seems to be trying to exclude foreigners from their convenience, it is only in Chinese and you must be using a Chinese bank card, although if you can manage this you just need to book and then take your passport and booking number to the train station to pick up the tickets before you depart, although times may change slightly and you wouldn’t know it as you don’t have the tickets, allow about an hour.)
The reason for being in YiChang was to see the three gorges dam, the largest dam in the world and which was surrounded by a lot of controversy during its construction. It affected the Yangtze River flow so that already endangered wildlife (including fresh water dolphins) became even more threatened, if not already extinct. It also covered homes, an entire village, displacing people. Ancient temples, steps carved in the Ming dynasty and other treasures were also covered by the high water level in the name of progress. So, on a misty morning we went to check out this monstrosity, public bus 4 to yemingzhu 夜明珠, then travel bus 8 to the dam. Get off at the last stop, climb the lookout point for 5 yuan, demanded by a random villager. We… Couldn’t see anything. The visibility was just too low, maybe winter wasn’t the best time to go. We went back on the bus to the museum and had a private English tour for 20 yuan, she explained the processes involved in the dam. I wasn’t too interested, admittedly, I wanted to discuss the social problems it created, not look at diagrams of boat lifts and photos of presidents looking happily out to the dam over the years. There were also poems penned by presidents, praising the dam, a tradition started by Mao Zedong. In this fashion, I write my concluding thoughts in poem form:
The Three Gorges Dam
shows me
The Unnatural Stillness
Of Industry
It shows me
The Shadows among Piles
Of Slag rock
The Vegetables Which Grow
between scars
Living Things
Which can’t quite cover
Blank Spaces
A gravestone,
which stares solemnly
into nothingness.
After our disappointment of the dam, we still had another day to burn, and so went to a cave site suggested by the hostel staff, The Three Visitors Cave sanyudao (not sure of the characters, as ‘yu’ must be an old word not in my dictionary.) Regardless, I wouldn’t recommend it. You can pay about the same price as to get into the three visitors cave as to the entire area, in the area you can see some stupid totem poles, take a stupid speed boat ride for two minutes and steal some pomelos which don’t taste so nice. Ok, there is a cave called 白马 white horse, which is so-so, and I was happy to tick off that particular activity from my travel wish list. And seeing the Happy Valley area was also nice, another perspective on the Yangtze River. Otherwise, a tourist attraction gone to seed. The three travelers cave wasn’t even very ‘cave-like,’ although it had some interesting history attached to it.
The end, I wash my hands of further explanation.
Henan 河南 Ｋｕｎｇｆｕ ｍｏｎｋｓ
The next day, leaving Yichang to Luoyang, Henan Province via train, it was 8 1/2 hours and one of the slowest, grossest trains I’d been on to date. I was laughing getting onto the train, having seen an old woman happily climbing onto the conveyor belt for luggage x-ray, and her daughter who pulled her off before she could get through to explain that they could simply walk through a people scanner.
It was the middle of the day, another travel day, but we made up for it with an exploration of the amazing street food night markets two minutes walk from our hostel [YHA Hostel yijia, 宜家]. Red lanterns line the cobblestone street of this area and we drank the local specialty, hot fruit and red date tea and ate a special type of long fried dumpling.
The next day, we took the public bus to the train station in the hopes of getting a bus direct to shaolin 少林, to see the world famous kungfu Shaolin temple, the purpose of our trip to Luoyang (and my precious brainchild). Asking at the ticket office, they claimed that there were no more buses to shaolin that day (it was before noon) and that we needed to get a bus to dengfeng 登封 first and then transfer. In hindsight, I believe taking up the hawkers on their offer of a bus/taxi to shaolin would be the better option and probably not particularly expensive if you haggle well. Anyway, so we took the bus to dengfeng and then did the transfer, it took about 3 hours in total (25 yuan) and really wasted a lot of our precious time unnecessarily. We were (I was) quite worried because the temple closed at 5.30 and I felt we wouldn’t have enough time. We lucked out though, because the first place we went to was the hall where the monks did their performances which ran roughly every hour for half an hour. And there was a performance just about to start, so we got a great intro to the temple by watching the animal style patterns of shaolin kungfu, as well as some amazing feats of rigorous training in action, one performer did a show of gathering qi (life force, 气) in his arms, then preceded to throw a pin at a thick pane of glass, a balloon being held on the opposite side of the glass. The pin bounced off. He threw another pin. The audience held a collective breath as it, too bounced off and onto the floor. And a third pin. Finally, he threw a fourth pin and the balloon popped. The pane of glass was turned towards the audience and we could see that a single, perfect hole had been worn clean through to the other side. Every pin had been thrown with maximum force and perfect mimicry to the exact same point each time. The Shaolin kungfu is legendary, the Shaolin monks would have been practicing and using martial arts as defense since about the Tang Dynasty (618-907CE) and would even assist others, they were so successful in helping out one emperor defend his lands that they were rewarded with the privilege of drinking wine. Drunken Boxing style Kungfu was invented shortly after (no, I’m serious, check this out [Wikipedia, Zui Quan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zui_Quan%5D) The temple was eventually raided and sacked during the cultural revolution, the monks were executed.
I had already heard a lot about the temple before going there myself, it had been on my bucket list for a long time, not only because of its legendary status, but because of the more recent criticism of the rampant commercialism of the temple. Monks are sent around the world performing shows, lessons are offered at the temple starting at $5000USD, heck even their now deceased head monk had a car engraved onto his grave pagoda. I was going into the temple to see for myself, but I already had a preconceived idea of how I would dislike the ruination and exploitation of a place which could have otherwise been so tranquil, cultural and mystical.
After the Kungfu demonstration, we fought past rows of hawkers trying to sell us holy beads and made our way to the stone pagoda forest, where you could walk around the hundreds of pagodas marking the deaths of important monks of the temple. It was quite beautiful, but we decided to move along quickly as we were running out of time. We went to the original temple, the original training grounds of the monks. Some things were closed already, and there was almost no one about. We admired the ancient, twisted trees in the temple courtyard and wondered at the many small holes bored into their trunks. Later on, I would read that the monks of old would strengthen their fingers by stabbing them into the trees. We wandered around, lost in our own musings of the place, when I heard some chanting coming from a hall. I investigated and found around 30 monks, dressed in saffron robes, chanting to the beat of a gong. I sank down onto a step, amazed that through all the temples I had been to in China,the temples forever playing the same recordings of sutra chanting, the people in those temples who dressed in robes but wore jeans underneath and tried to sell you things, out of all those places, it was in the supposedly most commercial of them all that I finally found what I had been looking for. I sat alone, entranced by the monks, the setting sun, the bell on the pagoda which seemed to ring in time to the chanting. A monk pushed aside a commercial billboard to step out of the temple, bow, and pour water across one of the statues to return again, replacing the board as he stepped through. Because that, I think, is the real beauty in what has happened at the Shaolin temple. People criticise, but primarily the temple should be for pursuing their faith, and what more is the Kungfu for, both now and in the past, than a method of protecting their faith. If they hadn’t exploited their Kungfu today, they would have been in the same situation as so many temples in China, dead or dying, never fully recovered from the Cultural Revolution.
A novice monk performing in the stage show (Emccall 1/14)
Our final day was spent wandering around the old streets of Luoyang, taking photos of beautiful old tea houses and pointing out the many buildings with the character for ‘demolish’ spray painted in red on the sides. In a way, it was the perfect ending to our adventure. We saw some really amazing places, historically significant, yet so often forgotten by the masses who flock to other, more well known tourist destinations. China is constantly changing and developing, so much has already been lost. I hope that more people will get off the beaten track, because as challenging as travel can be in China, it is also totally worth the rewards.
Rubble surrounding a building in old Luoyang (Photo: Emccall 1/4)
Soaring Red Bucket 