Trip to Leshan and Mt. Emei: October 3-4

Friday, October 3

I knew we were a bit crazy to be visiting two major tourist sites during the National Holiday week, and before we received our air shipment, which includs all of our guidebooks. We were flying blind. Yet this was Mark's only vacation for quite a while that we would be spending in China, and it sounded better than staying in Chengdu for the week. Besides, Zhang was anxious to take us, and had a friend who could get us a 30% discount on a room at a 4-star hotel. We were a bit dubious; we told Zhang that we didn't need a fancy hotel, but in the end we decided to go for it. Once we have our guidebooks, and our permanent driver, we can be a bit more assertive.

Mark had pointed out to me that Zhang has been calling me Lucy; I hadn't even noticed. Ruth is a decidedly unChinese name; syllables end in a vowel, n, or ng, and the th sound isn't used in Chinese. Again, I decided to go with the flow; it's more of an amusement than an annoyance.

We had originally planned to leave at 8:00, but then Zhang had to check in at his company office, so Mark went in to his office for a while, so it was a little past 10:00 by the time we left. The urban area extends for quite a ways to the south; we passed by some very upscale high-rises. When we finally got into the countryside, even it looked fairly high-density, with every square meter put to use. There were what I assume were harvested rice paddies (on the way back some of these were being burned, generating a thick white smoke that hovers in the basin), then, once we got into some hills, neatly terraced rows of tea. Mark and I tried to make out characters on the signs. Our dictionaries are still in our air shipment, but the book I have of the top 800 characters contained a fair number of them. If we could catch the blilingual signs in time, we would add the English name to the Chinese map we were following. (The only English map of the area we have is in the hardback English atlas of China we had purchased and left at home.)

The Chengle toll road goes from just south of Chengdu to the outskirts of Leshan. It is a well-kept road, two lanes each way, separated by a hedge, with tree-lined borders - taking up a minimum width of valuable farmland. The toll was 50 yuan ($8), and it took slightly over an hour to travel the 120 kilometers. We were surprised to find out that Leshan is a major metropolis, with broad boulevards and block after block of highrises. Its traffic was more leisurely than in Chengdu; we saw a lot of becaks (three-wheeled bicycles that can carry two or more passengers in back), quite a number with women drivers. In Chengdu, these vehicles seem to have been banned from the city center.

On the outskirts of the city we got into the tourist area. Zhang pulled into a large parking lot, then took us to a nearby restaurant for lunch. It wasn't fancy, but it looked clean. I was given the "honor" of ordering; there were English translations of a sort. I selected tea, rice, a pork dish, sweet and sour fish (which turned out to be an entire fish - quite bony but with some meat on it, excellent sauce), and what I thought were dumplings, but turned out to be cold pickled cabbage and other unnamed stems - actually not too bad. Our tea cups were constantly refilled from a teapot with a 30" spout (a specialty of Sichuan) by a waiter wearing a gold silk costume - the only bit of the restaurant that was the least bit fancy. This was the first time that I've seen the individual place servings - small plate, bowl, handless cup, and small glass - come in shrink-wrapped plastic. I've had them several times since - perhaps to shop the cleanliness of the dishes. The meal came to 134 yuan for the three of us ($23) - more than I expected but not enough to break us.

As we left the restaurant, an old woman came up to us trying to sell us a tourist map of Leshan. We bought it at the printed price of 3 yuan. It was not terribly accurate in scale or proportion, but it was better than nothing - mostly in Chinese with a few English summaries.

The entrance to the park containing the Leshan giant Buddha was across the street. When Mark came back with the tickets, he had two apiece: one for the Leshan Buddha (70 yuan) and one for another area (50 yuan) - we weren't quite sure what it was. We walked through a large gateway with the tiled roof with turned-up eaves, and up a paved path past the odd pagoda and statue. Most of the signs had an English translation as well as Chinese. My favorite was one that said "Slip carefully," especially since many of the stone steps on the way were smooth and sloped slightly downward from heavy use. There was a fair crowd going up with us. The first site we came to was a large Buddhist Temple. Inside, on either side, were 10' statues - the 18 arhats or disciples of Buddha. I don't know if the artist had a sense of humor or if there is a hidden significance to their poses, but one was scratching his back, and another was cleaning his ear with a long pick. In the courtyard were two large altars, one with hundreds of lit incense sticks, and the other with lighted candles in glass cups. On the far side was a room with a large statue of Buddha and three round cushions in front for kneeling. Off to one side of this was a souvenir booth. The juxtaposition of praying and selling has always struck me as a bit odd. We saw a few people praying at this and other spots, but I doubt that most of the visitors were Buddhist. (we saw only a handful of other Westerners the entire day.)

We got our next shock when we saw the line to see the Giant Buddha. It was a cattle-drive arrangement that made the customs lines at the L.A. airport seem piddly. The Buddha is 71 meters high, carved out of the cliff rising up from the river. We were on level with its head. From an observation area we could see its head, with its hundred of curls; Mark took a picture of me head to head with the Buddha. By getting to the edged of the observation area, we could look down and see - from an overview - a hand and foot of the Buddha. We could also see the trail leading down to see the Buddha - which was solid people. They did not seem to be moving. Out on the river we saw two-story tourist boats with dozens of people in bright orange life-vests. It seemed to me that they were getting a much better view of the Buddha than the people who were right down at his feet. If we come back here with visiting friends, we will probably see about taking a boat ride. We could also see a narrow island in the river with people wading out in the shallow water. At first we wondered what they were doing there; then we realized that they were getting a good view of the Buddha. Mark and I decided to go on and see what else the park had to offer; neither of us felt like waiting in line for hours.

Mark and I then walked up to another temple area with a pleasant garden and seating area. After a tour went through, we had it to ourselves for a while. There were numerous tours of 15-20 people. The members of the tour all had ID cards around their necks with the number of their tour, while the guides carried a flag and talked through a microphone. A lot of the women were dressed more for fashion than for hiking; we realized later that this and Mt. Emei are popular places for having your picture taken, so they were dressing for their pictures.

Mark and I then wandered up another path, its major attraction being that it was away for the masses of people. There was a small abandoned building up at top. We sat down at the doorstep, took out our map, and tried to figure out where to go for our other ticket. Then a young teenage girl came up to us (the first person to pay any attention to us at all in the park) and said "How are you?". She then asked "Where are we?", and we answered "We don't know." She looked at the map, as did her friend and mother. We got the feeling that the map puzzled them as well, but they were pleasant. We then headed off in the direction they had pointed, which indeed led us to a beidge to the island where our second ticket was required. We were relieved. The day would have felt like a complete bust if we had missed both the Buddha and the attractions for the second ticket.

I have searched the internet for more information on the second part of the park we went to, but I didn't find any site on Leshan that went much beyond the Giant Buddha. I will add in the name when I find it. We came into this part of the park through the back way, and it was somewhat less than a grand entrance. We climbed long sets of stone stairs, only to go down other stairs, then up again, where there was a pleasant resting spot, but nothing to blog about. We eventually arrived at a rounded entrance to a tunnel sloping downward. It looked like the entrance to a theme park ride (just add water), with the path winding down into darkness.

The cave opened out into a large room with two large pillars intricately carved with figures. Into the recesses of the red stone walls were carved Buddhas and other figures. It felt like a holy place. From the distance I could hear the long, low beat of a drum or gong reverberating. On the other side, the cave opened onto the top of a temple. To one side was a massive carved Buddha. On the other was a stone staircase with hundreds of stairs leading down to a circular plaza with an altar the shape of a lotus flower. The upper part of the temple, where we stood, formed a semi-circle, with other large carvings along the side. There were also some small caves, with their entrances barred, that were labeled as grave tombs; one of them had a small statue of a tiger within it - one of the many items that had been excavated from the grave.

A display case off to one side of the large Buddha had a variety of shiny padlocks, 2 - 4" long, for sale. On areas on the top, and all along the thick metal chain that serves as a handrail for the steep staircase, were thousands of locks, most of them quite rusty. I'll try to see if I can find out their significance.

We walked down the steep stairs, which weren't quite deep enough for my whole foot. I stayed close to the metal chain along the side, but didn't have any trouble. There was a nicely-landscaped park area below. To one side was a large cave with a lot of erotic statuary. I wondered exactly what kind of meditation they were supposed to inspire. Another cave had hundreds of carved Buddhas in the wall, each about a foot in height.

At this point Mark and I were suffering from visual overload, as well as getting physically tired, so we decided to head back. At this point we were near the second gate to the park. It would have been less strenuous, but decidedly less pleasant, to walk back by the road. Instead, we decided to backtrack, even though it meant climbing all those stairs to the top of the temple! It was worth it though for the opportunity to pass through the cave with the giant carved pillars again. Up, down, then up and down again til we got back to the Giant Buddha part of the park. The cattle drive area was completely empty of people - perhaps it would be possible to get down to see the Buddha! We got in line, which didn't move for a while. When it finally did, we got down to another area, only to see that there was still another cattle drive area completely filled with people. We waited there for about ten minutes, only to be jossled by teenagers behind us squeezing ahead of us. We saw an older Chinese couple pushing through to get out of the line, and we did so as well. We'll be back there another time, hopefully under less crowded conditions.

It was past 5:00 by the time we exited the park. Zhang was there to meet us. It took close to an hour to drive the short way from Leshan to Emeishan, where we would be spending the night. Mark and I sat silently in the back seat, exhausted.

Zhang drove up to the entrance of a large hotel, then told us to stay in the car while he dashed inside. He came back in ten minutes, having made all the arrangements - which can be lengthy. All we had to do was show our passports and pay (616 yuan). The Emeishan Hotel is a massive resort which looks like it was made during the Communist years to accommodate large tours. There were a fair number of tour buses in the parking lot, but we saw very few people around. To get to our room we had to walk through a maze of corridors. It had the standard features found in a Western motel room (except it had tea instead of coffee), but it had a slightly musty smell. The two beds were larger than twin, but not as wide as a standard double. They also felt like they had boxsprings only instead of mattresses.

Mark and Zhang wanted to go out to eat. I asked for half an hour to shower and change, after which I felt much better. We left through the back of the hotel going out onto a street with a lot of restaurants. Zhang wanted me to chose one, but he eventually chose one across the street that looked larger and fancier than many of the others. We found a small table outside in a small courtyard - everything else was full. Zhang wanted me to choose the food - the menu was in Chinese only, with a few tiny pictures. I suggested vegetables - eggplant or mushrooms. We ended up with eggplant and mushrooms and a very bland soup that was little more than congee - the breakfast rice porridge that is usually livened up with a lot of condiments. We also had a plate of boiled peanuts (in the shell) with a few chillies. They reminded me of my friend Peggy back in Lafayette, Louisiana, who had brought over some Cajun boiled peanuts the first time she came to my house (hers were better).

Before we had left on the trip, Mark had agreed to give Zhang 300 yuan for his overnight expenses, but he had decided at the hotel to give him 400 instead, which Zhang reluctantly took - after Mark suggested that the extra money was for food. Zhang insisted on paying for our meal - fortunately it came to less that 100 yuan.

Zhang is an excellent driver and takes great pride in doing his job well. We like him, but it is also difficult for us to have someone so involved in our lives and so committed to doing things for us.

We walked back through a street full of food stalls, all doing a thriving business. We then came to a gateway through which we could see a fountain shining a dazzling gold in the darkness. This was the front of our hotel.

Mt. Emei, Saturday, October 4

Breakfast at the Mt. Emei Hotel was served from 7 to 9. Zhang had told us that he would meet us at our hotel room at 8:00, so we scurried down the multiple halls at 7:30 to get something to eat first. The ballroom-sized dining room was filled with large round tables, each with 9 chairs, but they could have easily accommodated 12. Considering that this was the peak of the national holiday, I was surprised to find only a handful of other guests there. Perhaps the large tour groups ate a bit later.

At one end of the room was a massive display of food. Two chefs stood at a station ready to cook eggs. One long table was devoted to congee – the tasteless rice porridge that basically serves as glue to hold together a variety of condiments. I like it quite well with onions and cilantro; I haven’t gotten brave enough to try the quail eggs and various pickles. I took a little with what looked like peaches in it; it turned out to be pumpkin. Another long table held perhaps 20 large covered pans with fried rice, sautéed beans, steamed pork dumplings, and an array of other dishes I would have expected more for dinner. A smaller table held some watermelon and a a few types of rolls with a hint of sweetness. There were two large urns and a pot of various teas. The one pot of coffee was boiling furious on the burner, but it didn’t taste too bad for all of that.

Zhang was outside our room waiting when we returned, so we were off a few minutes later. We first stopped in a vast parking lot; I stayed in the car while Mark and Zhang went off to buy tickets. They were not cheap – 150 yuan each for the three of us. They had pictures of the Golden Summit on them – the gilded monument with elephants at the bottom which is at the crest of a peak, and is the primary Buddhist destination on Mt. Emei. Zhang said that we should not try to go to the top at this time – too much traffic. Looking at a map of the hairpin curves leading up to the spot and remembering the previous day’s crush at the Giant Buddha, we thought he had a good point.

Instead, we worked out a game plan. Zhang would drop us off at the bottom of a gondola, which we would take a ways up the mountain, then wait for us in another parking lot. Since the trail down was only 5 km, we had the option of going another 5 km up to the monkey area and back.

Just beyond on parking lot, we had to go through a toll booth, this time to pay for the car. We went up the mountain a ways, then stopped at another large parking lot, where Mark and I got 40-yuan tickets for the gondola. It was very modern. At the entry way, where we inserted our tickets, there was a camera that took our photographs – security in case we got lost on the mountain, I suppose. We were the only ones in line, so we were soon off on a leisurely ride over the tree tops.

Any thoughts we had had of enjoying a nature trail were quickly dispersed at the other end of the gondola. We stepped out to find a paved path that varied between brick and steps, with a fair number of tourists going in either direction. There were numerous choices to make as paths intersected and diverged, but for the most part they were fairly well labeled with signposts.
We had read that you need to be prepared for cold weather as you climb the mountain, so I had brought along a sweater and gortex jacket. I was a bit concerned that Mark had only a T-shirt and long-sleeved shirt. It turned out to be a sunny, warm day, and I ended up wearing the sweater and coat tied around my waist for the entire trip. Soon I had my shirt around my waist as well, down to just a sleeveless shell. We had also brought water – which we needed – and a packet of cookies that Zhang had urged upon us. He needn’t have worried. About every five minutes we arrived at another widening of the path where vendors were selling food, drinks and souvenirs. There were piles of dried mushrooms and roots, frames containing six or more large mounted butterflies, and hordes of stuffed monkeys in bright orange, yellow, and purple. They had their front paws sewn together, so people could wear them around their necks. We saw some wooded signs with pictures of the most common souvenirs, along with their listed prices. Another sign gave 10 do’s and don’ts for vendors, such as not charging first quality prices for second quality merchandise.

There were porters sitting around with a webbed seat between two wooden poles; two porters would carry a person, in a nearly prone position, on their shoulders, 60 yuan for 1.5 kilometers, 80 for two. At this point they didn’t seem to have much business, but later in the day, when we were in steeper areas, we saw a fair number of them. The lead porter would heave out a deep “Hutt!” to get pedestrians out of the way as they came through. At one point we saw two skinny porters carrying a man who must have weighed well over 200 pounds. Another time we saw a man in a business suit talking away on his cell phone while two porters carried his wife behind.

We stopped at a couple of Buddhist temples, then decided to pass on one which required an additional admittance fee. Eventually we arrived at a wide area where the downward path led back to the parking lot where Zhang was waiting. Up to this point it had been a pleasant stroll, with lush green scenery, but no particularly memorable views. We decided to go up toward the monkey preserve, even though Mark had no interest whatsoever in interacting with any monkeys. We walked upward a ways, up a gorge with a good-sized stream at the bottom. When we came to the monkey area, there were signs warning us to feed the monkeys only with special foods. Then there was a table with a woman selling small packets of that special food. She urged us to buy, but we declined.

The monkey area had a series of paths running through it, on either side of the gorge, connected with arched wooden bridges, all about 4 feet wide. We saw perhaps a dozen monkeys in all – several mothers with the babies hanging in trees just out of reach, and several larger ones wandering around on the ground. A few professional photographers offered to take our picture with a monkey – each seemed to have a working relationship with a particular monkey.

A number of the more inviting-looking paths were closed off to visitors -- a security guard sitting at the entrance waved us off, but eventually we found one that a few other people were taking, but was mostly empty. We decided to follow it up the mountain. It was on this part of the path that we saw the few other Western tourists we saw that day. Although the path was still paved, it was more of the nature trail we had been hoping for.
The path was fairly steep upward. I had worn my jeans, which were getting sweaty and sticking to my legs, making the many steps up that much harder. There were not as many rest stops along the way. Eventually we reached the “Hard Wok” café, which is a small restaurant with a view. It had a whiteboard with rave comments written in English, Swedish and German. We weren’t ready to stop, so we carried on, past another café, then up a good deal further till we came to a Temple. It was a peaceful place, set on a slope among the trees – it felt more like a monastery and a retreat than the previous ones we had seen. A security guard at a table indicated that we needed to register with him before we proceeded any further. He had Mark fill in the blanks with his name, nationality and passport number.

The path up beyond the monastery.passed along a sharp drop-off; a wash-out part of the path had been replaced with a hanging wooden bridge, which we were glad to get off of. Then the path turned into a series of steps. It seemed like we must be close to the top, but around every bend we’d see even more steps. At last we came to a small rest stop, and I told Mark that I had had enough.

We weren’t able to just rest. A couple of porters kept hassling me to use their services, so we decided to escape into the café and order a drink. The bottled drinks were 8 yuan up there; the same ones were only 5 further down, but we realized that was the price to pay for having it brought to that level. On our way back, we saw older men and women with heavy backpacks carting supplies up to these mountainside areas, and one man walking down with large baskets of empty bottles.

The drink revived me somewhat, but it was time to turn back. I counted the steps down: 1193 down to the monastery, then another 1670 down to the monkeys.

By this time the monkey reserve was a real zoo. We had to pass through a narrow area that was packed with people. A mother and baby were hanging from a tree on one side, and a male was just off the path on the other side, so we saw dozens of hands up with cell phones snapping photographs. Traffic was trying to press through in both directions. Mark pressed his way through. I eventually got right behind an aggressive young woman who was going out direction, and rode out in her wake.

The rest of the way back was easy, and we passed through some of the best scenery of the whole day. At one point the gorge got extremely narrow, then the water split in two around a large boulder. There was a viewing place where we could look back and seen a pagoda with an arched wooden bridge on either side. It was a popular place for photographs. At last we got down to a large placid reservoir, where one side was lined with souvenir vendors. We bought some ice cream bars and sat down to rest and enjoy the view before heading out.

Mark’s phone rang. It was Zhang, who was worried about us. We had been out of a service area for a while, and it was later than he had expected us. Mark communicated to him (we think) that we would be out shortly.

It took about two hours to drive home. Mark and I sat in the back silently, content with our long day of hiking.

When we finally got back to the apartment, my first priority was to get out of my sweaty jeans and take a shower. I could have crawled into bed right there, but Mark wanted to eat, and we had almost nothing in the kitchen. We walked out the back gate of the Waterfront and crossed the street to a row of restaurants. There were at least a dozen restaurants around the block, most of them “hot-pots”, where there is a place for a boiling pot in the middle of each table. Many of them have outdoor seating, and were crowded, even through it was already past 8:00. It was a beautiful evening, and there were a fair number of small children out with their families. In the plaza area before some closed stores, a couple of young women were batting around a badmitton birdie.

We weren’t ready to try hot-pot on our own, so we selected one of the few restaurants without it. The menu was entirely in Chinese, but we were able to select some of their dishes that were already made up. We also order what Mark thought was white rice, although the waitress protested. It turned out to be a snack food – sweet corn kernels dipped in batter and fried. They were quite good, but difficult to eat with chopsticks and a bit too greasy to eat by hand. Mark vowed that he would go back and photograph the menus of some of the restaurants so we could decipher the menu; he didn’t want to feel this helpless again.