Catching Up

I will apologize in advance for this long entry, but, now that I have some time, I'm trying to get caught up. I've broken it up so you can read it in sections if you don't have the stamina. I have also posted more pics, including some from Xi'an here.

The Epic Conquering of Wundang Shan
What do you get when you cross a Kungfu movie theatre, a smoking parlor, a morgue, and four wheels? I really don't know, but I think it would resemble a Chinese "sleeper bus." Just picture a charter bus (only smaller), but instead of seats you get three rows, two high, of cramped bunks. I'm not sure why they call it a sleeper bus, because besides one set of snores from someone I am convinced was heavily dosed with valium, there was certainly no sleeping going on in that bus. It was basically a death trap. I can't really complain though because " Kungfu Mahjong" and "Kungfu Mahjong II" were still pretty entertaining despite the obvious language barrier and the fact that I'd already seen them both when I was "studying" Chinese in high school. Who knew Mahjong could be so exciting?

The bus arrived in Shiyan at 4 am, two hours earlier than we expected. We awoke and, after confirming this was the place, jumped off and into the throngs of taxi drivers. After intense negotiations with a taxi driver and, subsequently, a minibus driver, we were crammed in the back of a minibus and on the way through the dark to Wudong Shan mountain. Through some miracle, not helped by our almost complete lack of communication with the drivers, by 6 am we were at the base of the mountain waiting for the park to open. Just before dawn we jumped on another bus which wound up through the hills and valleys to the small collection of empty and run-down hotels. After securing a room with hot water and heat (or so we thought), Kevin and I headed up the mountain. While it had been raining on us at the base, the mountain got a light snowfall. If it hadn't been for the elegantly carved stone steps which wound up the mountain we wouldn't have made it far, but after three hours of walking up and down (mostly up) endless steps, visiting small temples and ignoring numerous gift shops, we had made it to the frozen summit - an impressive collection of large buildings and temples. It made me shudder to think of the labor involved with hauling up the thousands of steps and other building materials needed to build this complex. The hike up was beautiful in the snow and receding mist, and was a much needed lift after a trying and difficult trip from Xi'an. I found myself surprisingly grateful for the snow, as otherwise I might not of seen any winter at all.

Arg, more stairs

Wudong Shan

The peak was amazing. The high winds and snowfall left complex structures of ice flash-frozen on the plants and structures. We fueled up on some chocolate (kudos to Burdick for that one), checked out the Buddha at the very top, and then headed down. The trip down was filled with many people, an aspect strangely absent from the trip up, because I'm pretty sure we took the hard way up. They were all Chinese tourists and we would periodically break into conversation with them - a little English, a little Chinese and sometimes even conveying limited actual meaning. As far as I could tell, we were the only foreigners besides a small group we saw from only a distance - but like the yeti himself, they remained veiled in mist, may have been a figment of our imagination, and we never saw them again.

We reached the bottom and I was exhausted to the point where I honestly wasn't sure I could make it up the last hundred steps to the village, but after not too long we were sitting in front of a table filled with twice cooked pork (though it turned out to actually be undercooked bacon, rather than actual pork that was cooked twice as the name would suggest) a diced up chicken with mushrooms and some spicy tofu. After eating our deserved feast, we headed back to the hotel to soak up the heat in our hotel room. We stumbled in, turned it on, and...nothing happened. After two hours of shivering and watching our breathe as 6 different people turned the heater off, turned it back on again, played with some other buttons and scratched their heads (as if no one had actually used the heater before), we decided to take action. Though we were clearly the only ones staying there, they were obviously perturbed that we'd bothered their mahjong game as they all huddled around a warm bucket of burning coal, but we needed heat. I headed out into the dark to see when the last bus down the mountain was and, after passing a slew of more unattractive options, saw a slightly larger hotel which appeared to actually have occupants. I looked at a room and negotiated the same low price we had at the other place (all in Chinese I might add - pat, pat), but I had to feel the heat. Despite her objections, I made her turn on the heater, and waited patiently under it, my hand held toward the ceiling, waiting. After five minutes, I felt the hot air and immediately said the Chinese equivalent of "I'll take it."

That, I knew, was the easy part. The hard part was getting the money back from the old hotel. This wasn't the Holiday Inn off of I-80 where you politely ask for the manager; this was a family run Chinese hotel at the top of the mountain, where we were the only occupants. We grabbed our bags and headed to the lobby. They weren't budging so we had to kick it into a higher gear. Kevin was decidedly angry and didn't have a problem showing it going behind the desk to try and take the money back. I in the meantime, faced 10 people and kept asking for the money back in Chinese. Kevin started going crazy and I kept telling him to stop and then would turn to the men and say "Gei wo wo men de qian." It was a little good cop, bad cop type of deal and after not too long they caved and forked over the dough. It got a little hairy and I had visions of ending up in a Chinese jail, and couldn't wait to get off the mountain, but ten minutes later we were comfortably lying in our new heated room.

Yiching and the Dam to End All Dams
I took us the whole next day to get off the mountain and to Yicang. We got there about 9pm after a jam packed minibus, a four hour wait in Xiangfan and a four hour train ride with a 21 year old English speaking heater salesman (oh, the irony!), a 13-year-old girl who wanted to marry Kevin (don't they all), and a professional arm wrestler who was decidedly not amused by our antics.

Once in Yichang, we found a sketchy basement room in an otherwise nice hotel and hit the town. We got some kickass fried rice (thanks to my request for extra garlic and spicy peppers) off the street, and after looking for a nonexistent watering hole highly recommended by the book of lies, we found Johnny's bar where we were instant celebrities (especially me, sharing the first name of a Backstreet Boy!). After many a round of "xiao da" (literally "big small" - think hi low, but with dice) with the manager and cute bartender, we promised to return the next day for some live music.

The next day we scounted for ferry tickets and headed out ot see the Three Gorges Dam. The dam was almost exactly like the Hoover Dam except it's:
1. Actually big (I mean massively, massively huge)

2. Cold

3. In China

4. Not done yet

5. Awesome

The big dam

As an engineer interested in sustainable energy, the Dam was a definite highlight for me, though I found it more than a little ironic that the locks which bypass the biggest hydroelectric project in the world were filled with barges carrying huge amounts of coal upriver for the power plants. I really would like to learn more about the project, because our tour guide was of limited use - on the way to the dam after talking Chinese over the loudspeakers for about 25 minutes, she turned to Kevin and I and said, "Sir, this is the special road built to go to the dam. It has 4 bridges and 5 tunnels." and then continued on in Chinese. I'm sure it was interesting. Later though, she did recommend a good restaurant (though she wouldn't join us for dinner).

After steak and burgers, we returned to Johnny's that night as promised. We checked out the band (whom played "pretty woman" in English in our honor) and then met a crazed sherpa at a different bar down the road. It think he wanted to be our guide up Everest, though some info might have been misinterpreted in translation. Kevin got scared as the sherpa got drunker and more animated and gave the agreed upon sign that it's time to leave--a pinky figure up the nostril--so we high tailed it out of there. We eventually ended up in a strange "singing dancing club" upstairs in our hotel. We were there with five others (mostly couples) and the three bar tenders. Someone would sing karaoke at the big screen TV and then a couple would dance under the disco ball. They tried to get us to sing, but we feigned ignorance--you know what they say: it's all fun and games until AJ starts singing karaoke.

All in all, we were in agreement that Yichang was a favorite. It wasn't too touristy, and has very few foreigners and almost no English-speaking Chinese. It's a low key city, but is booming from the dam project and the cruise business up the Yangtze.

Up the River and onto Chingching

The next night we boarded our sketchy ferry for the trip up the Yangtze. We shared a six bunk cabin with a smelly squat toilet with three Chinese. The boat was pretty rough around the edges with a lot of rusty patchwork and we were definitely the only foreigners on the boat, and labored to communicate with the others in our room. This was no Yangtze River Cruise, this was a Chinese ferry. We ate dried noodles, sweet bread, peanuts, and drank our bottle of savory Bie Jui (previously mentioned strange and mysterious liquor), eventually getting the other younger roommate to join in these latter festivities (but only after his father left the room). I woke at dawn the next day to catch the end of the majestic three gorges, the boat seeming impossibly close to the huge cliffs, and then we enjoyed the rest of the scenic cruise upstream to Chongqing. The boat was a nice change from cramped trains, uncomfortable buses and claustrophobic sleeper buses. Life was pretty laid back and the scenery was great, though it was cold and overcast.

Hot Pot

Chongching has been great. After arriving late we headed out for sichaun hot pot, a boiling concoction of oil broth and tons of spices in which you dip veggies and meat. It turned out to be really cheap and gave me tears in my eyes, partially from the spice and partially from happiness. Chiongching is situated between the Yangtzee and one of its tributaries and is up on a high hill on a small peninsula. Like Yichang, there are few tourists and foreigners as it's the low season for Yangtze tours. Kevin and I hit a temple and the sketchy cable car over the Yangtzee today and after seeing him off to the airport, I explored the city by foot. So I'm back on my own, but was so grateful to have a new friend around for a couple days. It was a tough couple days jumping around from place to place and was good to have Kevin's experience in foreign travel as a resource. Tomorrow I'm on a bus to Chengdu to see the Panda preserve and to enjoy some more Sichaun cuisine. That's everything. Zai Jian.

Cable car over the Yangtzi