Once again, I find myself a couple posts behind. About one month ago, a friend of mine was down in the Kunming area, and the two of us coordinated a couple short trips to Lijiang and then to Sichuan. Lijiang is one of those quaint historical towns with winding waterways, cobblestone bridges, and alleys full of photos waiting to be taken. After receiving UNESCO World Heritage Site status in 1997, however, the town has been incredibly over touristed by Chinese and foreign tourists alike. Its photos have been captured a thousand times over (mostly by Chinese visitors sporting expensive SLR cameras they don’t know how to use), its alleys have been filled by trinket stores each as identical as the next, and its quaint charm has receded back beyond its main streets and squares. That’s not to say, however, that Lijiang is not worth visiting, or that its charm is gone. An early morning stroll or just after sunset shows the Old Town of Lijiang at its best—without the busloads of Chinese tour day-trippers.
We bought last minute overnight train tickets to Lijiang, and headed out on a Friday night. It was an easy ride, and we spent a large part of it playing Chinese chess, which my friend Shuo had just taught me how to play. Arriving at just after 7am Saturday, we shared a cab to the Old Town with a Chinese couple, and made our way through the alleyways to the popular backpacker respite of Mama Naxi’s Hostel. The Naxi people are one of China’s official ethnic groups (like the Yi). Researched extensively by the famed botanist, Joseph Rock, of interest are their matriarchal family structures and their waning pictographic script (Dongba—sharing a name with their religion).
We settled into our hostel, and went exploring, taking countless photos, and admittedly visiting more than one apparently identical souvenir/clothes shop. Beyond its main squares, Lijiang’s alleyways are still fairly magical, and certainly worth the visit. Later, we visited Black Dragon Pool park and climbed its hill, rented bikes visiting another touristy village—an offshoot of Lijiang’s Old Town—and biking out a bit into the countryside. When it started raining, however, we turned around and rode back to town. For the sake of brevity, I’ll leave my description of Lijiang at that. We took another overnight train back to Kunming, and rested up before heading to Sichuan for another brief trip.
With limited time in Sichuan (I had a short research trip scheduled for my return to the Kunming area), my itinerary wasn’t overly extensive. I wanted to spend a day exploring Chengdu, followed by a two-day hike up Emei Shan, another UNESCO World Heritage Site and the highest of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains, and finally a stop at the monolithic Giant Buddha of Leshan.
We were greeted at the train station in Chengdu by a friend of Shuo’s uncle, who treated us to lunch and showed us a local temple. I had planned to fly back to Kunming from Chengdu, and accidentally booked my flight for a day too early. In an attempt to fix my ticket, we went on a wild goose chase through Chengdu, arriving at the address of a Sichuan Airlines office that no longer exists, and eventually being told I could take care of the problem at the airport. It’s the rainy season in much of Southwest China, and the evening brought torrential downpours. We held up in a hotpot restaurant to try our tongues at Sichuan’s legendarily spicy cuisine. Sichuan or ‘Szechuan’ cuisine (for those who know it by this odd and often mispronounced spelling) is famed for its frequent use of chili peppers, garlic, and the strangely numbing Sichuan Peppercorn. At Shuo’s urging, we ordered a Spicy Frog Hotpot (we’re talking whole frogs, not just the legs), and enacted what Kermit has no doubt had recurring nightmares about.
The next morning we woke up early to grab a bus out to Emei Shan. With only a day and a half to hike the mountain, we took a bus up to the first tourist stop, and started climbing from there (rather than climbing straight out of town). My hiking shoes broke early on, and I switched to my boots, tying my shoes to the side of my pack. Interestingly, the Chinese tourists and locals were fascinated by the worn out pair dangling by my side. “Wow, look how bad-ass that foreigner is. He’s already worn out one pair of shoes hiking,” I heard one tour guide say. Emeishan is known for its resident population of Tibetan Macaques—a large breed of monkeys, who don’t mind hassling intruders for food and bottles of water (which they easily uncap and gulp down). In fact, a friend of mine had been bitten by one of the monkeys a month earlier, and had had to undergo a long series of prophylactic injections to avoid a disease they’re known to carry. 
So, we armed ourselves with large bamboo staffs, which acted doubly as walking sticks, and made our way up the mountain. We made a wrong turn early on, and ended up several kilometers out of our way at another entrance. Backtracking, we made it through the so-called “Monkey Zone”, where I witnessed a macaque jumping on a man’s bald head, licking off his sweat and subsequently beginning to hump his ear. The man was mostly oblivious to the monkeys intentions of aural sex, and the monkey was swiftly shooed away by a clearly bitter middle-aged woman of a ‘caretaker’. There are two paths up Emei Shan, an easier route, which most people take on the way up, and a steeper, more difficult and more interesting route, which most people take on the way down. We opted to climb up the more difficult path to get better views and save some time. Early on, it’s not uncommon to witness spoiled, overweight men being carried around by cigarette-smoking locals in shoulder-born litter sedan chairs like the lazy emperors they wish they were. After the Monkey Zone, however, the trail becomes steeper, and the crowds of fat Chinese men pay to be carried back to their tour buses.
It was a fairly steep ascent, and we stopped for lunch at a place called the Hard Wok Café, before continuing on. An hour or so before reaching our intended destination—a monastery mid-way up the mountain, it began to pour. We slowed down and reached the monastery as the light was beginning to fade. We negotiated with the monks for a place to sleep (not an uncommon practice), and eventually decided to plug on for another hour up to the next monastery to save time for the next day. The rain had slowed, but the light was failing. We powered up the last steep approach and made it to the monastery just as darkness fell. The monks prepared us a vegetarian dinner, and gave us a room and a place to bathe. We went to sleep early, the sound of mosquitoes buzzing in the air.
The next day had more steep ascents, but we powered through, and made it to the summit by lunchtime. Although it was very foggy, the huge golden statue at its top was still extremely impressive. We stayed for a bit before hopping a bus back down to town. From Emei, we caught a bus to Leshan, home of the world’s tallest statue of Buddha. Built in the 8th century, the giant Buddha of Leshan was the world’s tallest statue at that time, and was built to calm the waters at the confluence of the Dadu, Qingyi, and Minjiang rivers at his feet. Interestingly, the large boulders dropped into the water from the mammoth cliff carving over a period of 90 years filled pits in the rivers’ floors and indeed had the desired effect of calming the waters—though it’s doubtful anyone knew the true reason at that time.
From Leshan, we headed back into Chengdu, and did some touring, before enjoying a spicy dinner of Rabbit Gan Guo (dry pot). The next day, my friend headed north to continue his tour, and I (with limited) time, explored a little more before heading to the airport for my flight back to Kunming. At the urging of the airline, I planned to arrive at the airport an extra hour early to resolve my ticket problem. The hostel said it would take an hour to get to the airport. I hopped in a cab about 4 hours before my flight. It took 25 minutes to make it to the airport. I quickly resolved my ticket problem, and sat around for 3 more hours till my flight was scheduled to leave. Chengdu’s nightly downpours did not spare me, however, and the flight was delayed an extra two hours. I waited some more. Finally, the airline put us all on a people mover out to the tarmac and left us in the cold, rainy darkness beside the plane. There had been some miscommunication, and the flight crew would not let anyone board the plane. The people movers had left, and everyone was there, tired, cold, and wet, standing on the runway for another 20 minutes. The women and children crowded under the plane’s wing to avoid the rain, and the rest of us went to yell at the airline personnel for such horrible treatment. Finally, they let us board (with not one apology uttered), and we were on our way. We landed in Kunming just after 4am. I should mention, however, that there are NO TAXIS at the Kunming airport at 4am. So, I strapped up my pack, and walked out into the streets. It’s a good two to three hour walk to my house from the airport, and buses don’t run at that hour. I was aggravated, tired, and even a bit amused by my plight. Just outside the airport, however, a hei che (‘black car’ or illegal taxi), pulled out and offered to have me hop in with his three other customers for a somewhat exorbitant fee. I began to argue with him and he asked if I was crazy (with no other options around). Still, not in the mood to argue, he lowered his price and I made it home after dropping off his other customers by 6:30am.
The next few weeks were filled with long nights watching the World Cup, a couple research day trips around Kunming, and other work. I've uploaded photos from these trips and from a more recent research/hiking trip through Yunnan, which I'll write about in the next few days!
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