Sichuan Province - Qingchengshan

The next morning we took a train to the Mount QingCheng (Qingchengshan).  I really wanted to come here more than any other place in the Chengdu region.  It was near impossible for us to get tickets because of the National Holiday.  We spent hours at the train station the day before trying to organize tickets.  We were able to get standing room only train tickets for 645 am along with return tickets around 4pm the same day.  The train took about 45 minutes to get to QCS.

QCS is the supposed origins of Taoism.  It is a mountain with many temples and pagodas nestled in the temperate forest.  The QCS park has hiking trails up the mountain, as well as a cable car line and old Chinese boat to help you get around and see everything.  The surroundings are gorgeous.  The forest is dense and lush, the mountains are beautiful, and the temples are all intricately detailed and appear to be placed with purpose within the environment. 

We hiked up part of the way, took the boat across the lake, then took the cable car up.  Outside the cable car was perhaps the best sign I have seen so far in China.  It said that you shouldn’t ride the cable car if you “suffer from habitual abortions.”  I tried to take a picture but it was so dark and far away I couldn’t get it sharp enough.  Anyway, it was a perfect day.  Wispy clouds enveloped the mountains.  Looking out across the valleys and the peaks was breathtaking.  Seeing temples and traditional Chinese buildings nestled amongst the trees and the hills in the distance was something to behold.  It was a very relaxing and beautiful place.  After reaching the highest peak and the final temple, we headed back down the mountain. 

Much like the previous day at Leshan, there were loads of people.  It wasn’t so bad going up because we got there so early.  Going down was almost impossible though because of the sheer number of people coming up.  After we eventually made it down though we walked through “town” back towards the train station.  I say “town” because it was either abandoned or had never been lived in.  At least the part of town we saw.  We walked along a “biking green” that cut through town and saw nobody except for one worker sweeping.  Looking in the apartments that were to our left and right along the path it was clear that no one was living in any of them.  It was a little bit creepy.  We did however stumble upon a small Taiwan Food Festival though and grabbed some lunch before heading back to the train.  I had some fried bacon wrapped cucumber and some dumplings.  Wasn’t bad, wasn’t great. 

At the train station while we were waiting a young mom took her 1-2 year old kid over by the wall and held him while he peed on the ground.  Yes inside the train station.  With a bathroom about 100 feet away.   The janitor saw her encouraging the kid to pee and walked over to her and began to yell and scream at her.  She just walked away and sat back down in the waiting area.  He followed her and continued to give her hell.  He eventually walked away, however he never did clean up the pee during the time we were waiting (about 45 minutes).  China is an interesting place.

Sichuan Province - Chengdu

Two roommates (Mary and Adriana) and I flew to Chengdu during our week off of work for National Holiday and the Mid-Autumn Festival Holidays.  I wanted to go primarily for the food and they wanted to go to hold some pandas. Turns out the food wasn’t all that spicy, though it was still good, but fortunately there was a ton of other stuff to do and the trip wasn’t a failure. 

The first day, while they were holding pandas, I went on a walking tour of Chengdu.  It was led by a pretty Chinese lady named Laura, and it was just me and 4 other people on the tour.  We went all around the city, touring monasteries, nunneries, Chinese street markets, the snack street, an 800 year old tea house, and more.

The highlight of the tour and also possibly the lowlight, was the street market.  It was in an old part of town that was only accessible to foot and bike traffic.  The stalls were filled with meats, produce, drinks, cigarettes, spices…pretty much anything.  There were some ear cleaners and even a dentist office set up (scariest dentist ever, unfortunately wouldn’t let us take pictures). We stopped at one of the vendors selling various spices and peppers, and Laura asked if we could try a few of Sichuan Province’s famous peppers.  First we tried some dried red pepper and it wasn’t particularly spicy to me, however a few of my fellow tour partners felt differently.  Next she asked who wanted to try the famous “Sichuan Black Pepper.”  I was the only volunteer in the group and I soon came to find out why.  She handed me a small handful of peppers that looked like innocuous little seeds of some kind.  I popped them in my mouth and started to chew.  They tasted really good and didn’t have any kind of kick initially.  Laura asked how I was feeling and I said “great, no problem!”  About 5 seconds later my throat, lips, tongue and pretty much my entire head felt like they had swollen up about 3 times their normal size.  I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t swallow, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t spit.  My eyes started tearing up and I felt like I was going asphyxiate.  I was scared that I was having some sort of allergic reaction and that I was going to die in some back alley market in Chengdu, China.  Fortunately after about 30 seconds to a minute of that horrible feeling I was able to spit, swallow, kind of talk, and most importantly breathe.  Lots of Chinese people had gathered around and were having a huge laugh watching me try to eat these peppers and then try to survive the aftermath.  Laura at some point during my suffering bought me a bottle of water which helped a ton to get the pepper remnants out of my mouth and to get me on the road to recovery, so I appreciated that.  She was a great guide and it was a lot of fun walking around the city with a local. 

Laura also took us to snack street as mentioned earlier, which was just lined with food.  I purchased a deep fried scorpion on a stick.  It was fried up in front of me, the stinger was removed, and it was served still sizzling.  Eating it was odd, the pinchers, arms, legs and head all tasted like nothing except for the seasoning that had been added. They were pretty much just crunchy things with seasoning.  It could have been anything really.  The body of the scorpion however was pretty delicious.  It is hard to describe what it tasted like.  It was a sort of meaty, sort of metallic tasting thing, again covered in seasoning. It wasn’t something I’ll probably ever have any desire to eat again, but it did taste a lot better than I had ever anticipated.

The city of Chengdu was much more open than Shanghai, with broad streets and wide sidewalks which made it much more pedestrian friendly.  However it was also a town with a lot less happening.  Shanghai is always so alive and Chengdu felt a bit slow in comparison.  It may have also had something to do with the holidays, with many shops and restaurants being closed or closing earlier than usual.  More about the trip coming soon, including monkey holding extravaganza.

Why Not?

I find myself saying this quite a bit out here in China.

People peeing in the street.  “Why not?” 

Baby pants with no crotch to better facilitate peeing and pooping in the street.  “Why not?”

People spitting or blowing snot rockets right next to you, inside, outside, whatever… “Why not?”

Cigarette packs in a claw machine.  “Why not?”

People wandering the streets in boxer shorts.  “Why not?”

People walking in the road when there are perfectly good sidewalks (though the sidewalks aren’t any safer than the road I suppose, you still have to watch out for traffic).  “Why not?”

People carrying massive amounts of stuff on their bikes, handcarts, mopeds, cars, etc.  “Why not?”

People pushing each other, ignoring lines and ignoring logic (train stations have arrows clearly illustrating that people boarding should be to the side and people exiting should leave through the middle so as to facilitate easier entry and exit of the metro train).  People still crowd around the middle and push and shove to get on the train first.  “Why not?”

Mobile pet stores.  “Why not?” 

Mobile gas stations.  “Why not?” 

Crickets as pets. “Why not?”

How about Chipmunks?  “Why not?”

Drinking on the streets, in the trains, wherever you want?!  “Why not?”

There is so much more that I ask “why not?” about but this city and country and culture are just so overwhelming I often forget the strange shit that I have just seen because something else strange just flashed before my eyes.  But that’s the cool thing about China. It doesn’t matter.  And it doesn’t seem to phase anyone.  Weird shit is so common it is just normal in China. If you want to do it, you seem to be able to do it.  I mean heck, why not?

QQ

The Chinese Facebook equivalent.  Pretty cool I suppose.  Like Facebook in that it has the timeline and you can upload pictures and has an IM system.  Like Myspace in that you can pimp out your page so it looks customized and stupid.  Everybody in China is on it though.  I have a QQ now of course, have a few coworkers and people I’ve met on there.  It’s funny, you don’t add people by name, but you get a unique QQ number when you sign up.  I asked someone why and they said that there are so many Chinese people and so many with the same names that if you looked by name it would be impossible to find anyone.  You can actually search by real name but you also need to know a bunch of information like birthday, favorite movie, blood type,  mother’s maiden name, etc.  Haha. It’s actually pretty close to that for real though. 

It’s definitely useful to have out here, good way to contact people as everyone is pretty much on it all times through their smart phones.  It’s also a good way to make friends as people are more willing to give up their QQ than their phone number to a new person.  The only downside is that it’s all in Chinese…running the website through the google chrome translator helps a bit, but it’s still hard to figure out a lot of the things because not everything gets translated and not everything gets translated properly.  It’s ok though, all part of the experience.