China: Chengdu to Emei Shan

The miracle of flying still persists, even now, many hours after we have gotten our feet back on firm ground. We have just completed two journeys across the Pacific Ocean, the wonder of which never escapes me. I can only imagine the months it must have taken by sea not too many generations ago. Despite initial wondering how the trip to China would fit into the patchwork of experiences this year has held, we now feel very pleased with our adventure, and even wished we could have stayed there a bit longer to include things we ran out of time to see.

The long flight, improved by the introduction of a new companion with new stories (Gillian), as well as six movies (two of which were played twice), deposited us in Chengdu. Chengdu is the capital city of Sichuan Province, located in the west of China, abutting Tibet, and hosting the meanderings of the Yangtze River. Supposedly the city is ringed by mountains, but the pollution was so thick, we could never catch sight of them. In fact, to a large extent, we felt we could never even see the sky properly in Chengdu, the air was so still, and the brown haze so persistent. We were met at the chaotic late night baggage claim by a friend of Gillian's who escorted us to her apartment, where we were to stay for the first few days (while the friend went away on her own trip). Happily, jet lag didn't hamper us for long, and the next morning we were out in a rainstorm to get our first glimpse of China. Chengdu is certainly a bicycle town, and most streets have either a bicycle lane, or throngs of bicyclists thick at each side of the road. The rain didn't stand in their way, and we admired the various and colorful bicycle ponchos or umbrella stands used the keep them dry during their travels. Our wanderings through the city were an adventure right from the start, as it was rather difficult to read our map, printed entirely in Chinese. We were very pleased to find that the Arabic numeral system was standard, which helped us to decipher bus numbers and routes, but left us to determining streets and intersections based on distinctive visual clues, such as traffic circles, river crossings, and space relations between buildings. The sea of Chinese characters started out as chaotic visual texture to us, but by the end of the first day, we had learned our first character: tea, and decided that we should learn at least one new character every day. Even if we could read a word in our dictionary and pronounce the transliterated pin-yin to a native speaker of Chinese, this was no guarantee that they would understand us. Sometimes, pointing to the written characters was the only way for us to communicate. By learning a few characters, we could identify a few items for ourselves, and avoid tones (there are four) and pronunciation altogether. Chengdu is also known for being a tea and tea-house town, hence the proliferation of this character on signs everywhere, and our acquisition of it as our first character. We learned characters haphazardly, by necessity or sometimes pleasure in the form, and our first week's list included tea, person, big, sky/heaven, Sichuan, center/middle, one, two, and three. Reading and attempting to decipher characters became one of my favorite city-bus ride activities.

During our four days there, we explored many areas of Chengdu, although as a city of over 11 million, it largely remained a maze of streets and people to us. We passed through a variety of colorful street markets, where people sold beautiful vegetables in piles of amazing variety and abundance, as well as the more questionable meat products, some hanging pink and raw, others still alive--ducks or rabbits poking their noses from cages, and other items not easily identifiable except to say that they looked fresh and glistening. We visited a number of city gardens, large parks which included temples, ponds with brilliant goldfish, bridges with moon-gates, wandering paths, and lattice windows. We were impressed by Chinese garden parks, which were large and well-kept, and offered true escape to city dwellers who live in tall cinder-block apartment buildings with no yard. With personal living space tiny, gardens made available a piece of nature and solitude for whomever might visit. Our favorite architectural site was a working monastery, which included many temples and associated buildings in one contiguous complex. Courtyards gave way to courtyards, each with an adjoining space for prayer, meditation, and worship of a giant Buddha. Large pink sticks of incense burned in fragrant clouds, the smoke wafting from huge bronze pots filled with sand to support the forests of incense sticks. Along the periphery were small rooms for the resident monks, dark quarters with adjoining roofs and tiny balconies. The detail in painting, carving, lattice work, and luminous red color graced every eave, window, door, and threshold. The adjacent garden areas contained further structures in a similar architectural style, pavilions surrounded by ponds, multi-layered Buddhist monuments, and other courtyards, hosting people drinking tea and playing Mahjong. Game playing is an ever-present past-time in China, and often done in public places. Entering a tea-pavilion, it is not uncommon to find it filled with locals playing Mahjong, cards, Chinese chess, or other games which we grew to recognize but have no name for—and drinking tea. It was less common for such people to be young (white-haired folks were certainly the majority), and seemed to be a major source of social time for the community. In one quirky garden, we saw a group of women practicing some type of traditional singing, to the accompaniment of karaoke-like background music. It struck us as being a bit like a church choir rehearsal at home, yet held in a public park with various people listening, wandering by, or playing games nearby. In a different park we also heard traditional music being played on a variety of unfamiliar instruments, equally noticed or unnoticed by the people milling around (a bit like Folklife in Seattle, really.....).

Food was an ever interesting pursuit during our whole time in China, and the first few days in Chengdu we experienced a sharp learning curve. Our first night we ventured out onto the streets to see what we could find, not knowing what to expect. We had heard various stories about just what might be contained in Chinese food, and wondered if we would find these things. One restaurant had prepared dishes in a display window, which seemed like a good idea, since all we would need to do was point and choose. The hostess motioned me in and over to the window, but when I got close enough to see actual ingredients I grimaced and stepped back, trying to be politely revolted by the rat heads staring back at me, their front teeth jutting forward and their tails prepared separately and laid in a row on a platter. We left the restaurant hastily, happy not to be able to explain our true feelings in Chinese. Crossing the street to recover our composure, we had to turn away from yet another restaurant because the menu was in Chinese and was therefore not to be deciphered. Thankfully, we finally found another place where the dishes were already prepared and could be chosen without reading, the food contained pleasant, desirable ingredients, and the style was not a Chinese version of KFC. Miraculously, our dinner was delicious, and in the ensuing days we settled down to a routine which generally served us well. We ate at restaurants where you could point to the ingredients you wished to eat, the smaller and more informal the restaurant the better. Alley kitchens are extremely common in China, a set-up where a family has a wok over a coal heating drum, a make-shift counter, shelves on a cart with rows of vegetables, and a set of many bowls containing spice and chili mixes which can be added to food along the way. Some people choose a commonly known dish, but many choose just the ingredients they wish to eat, and the chef will create an individual stir-fry. We had fantastic luck with this type of cooking, as it enabled us to avoid weird meat or animal parts, we didn't have to master the Chinese names of a large variety of vegetables, and the food was extremely fresh and usually interestingly spiced. We did have a few on-going hiccups though. One was how to communicate how much food we wanted—we found that if we pointed to too many different vegetables, we might get six plates of food. It took some doing to figure out that we needed to start by communicating how many dishes we wanted, and hopefully a few different items would be combined. Another was how to get our spices. Some chefs saw us as "white people" and would make the food bland; other times they would just spice everything we ordered the same (garlic, garlic, garlic). I got an unexpected amount of practice at using my charades skills, figuring out clever ways to pantomime the type of flavors we liked. The other problem was if we could not find a restaurant with displayed vegetables in the window or an English menu. We usually did everything we could to get the waiter to let one of us go into the kitchen so we could point to various foods, and this tended to work. Over several delicious dinners we mused about being able to go into restaurant kitchens in Seattle and point to what we wanted—could we get really good Chinese food this way? One of our absolute stand-bys was eggplant. We ate it nearly every day, and almost always loved it. Two or three days we pledged "no eggplant" to each other, just to get some variety, but there was never more than one day off. Tofu was also widely available and tasty and eaten almost daily. Despite all the warnings I had received about Chinese food, I found it extremely easy to be a vegetarian in China (far easier than most parts of the US in fact). Lance may have surprised Gillian and I the most with his eating, as he was far more of a vegetarian in China than he is at home, happy to eat vegetables rather than risking "mystery meat" (even if we were quite certain it was free-range).

Our most memorable meal was the evening of "Hot Pot." We spent the afternoon with two Chinese friends met through a contact in Chengdu. After they toured us around the city, they decided that a hot pot dinner was the perfect conclusion to our day. We rode up an escalator to a second-story restaurant which was far fancier than any we had been to, and huge. Noisy people filled a giant room, clustered around tables with steaming pots in the middle of each one. As our hosts explained the protocol, we went through a cafeteria-like line where you chose which items you wished to cook in your hot pot. The choices were endless and included not only the usual variety of animal parts (our hosts were particularly fond of chicken stomach), but also tons of vegetables, noodles, and even sweet items. Everyone returned to our table bearing plates of chopped food, and our red-orange hot pot broth began to burgle. With our chopsticks (we were getting very good at using them by now) we tossed items into the broth and then waited for them to cook. After they had cooked, you reached into the pot with your sticks, withdrew what you wanted to eat, and nibbled it over your personal rice bowl. For a while, we enjoyed our food. But later, at some distinct point, we all started to not to want to eat any more. The spices of hot pot are strong, but only get stronger as they simmer. We three have a strong affinity for spice, but all reached our terminus point, and suddenly the food tasted much too sharp. We politely nibbled our way through the rest of the meal, but it was a bit overwhelming. Somehow, the combination of not only our hot pot, but also all the hot pots around us, swirled together, creating a penetrating scent which made the hot pot scent especially distinct. We left the hot pot extravaganza late in the evening, sensing the tradition of this meal in Sichuan Province, but tainted with its scent. Gillian and Lance were perhaps less affected, but ever after, when we would be walking the street in any town, if we walked by a hot pot restaurant, we would notice as we walked by without ever needing to read the menu. Hot pot was appropriately named for its spiciness in the evening and its effects the next morning; hence, we decided to avoid including it in our menu again.

We had one small excursion outside the city while in Chengdu, and that was to see pandas. Sichuan is home to the premier panda breeding site, a research center respected world-wide. We visited for a morning, and were able to see pandas such as we had never seen before. We were able to get close, and especially to see them eating, relaxing, and climbing trees. The research center really focused on breeding, featuring a humorous eye-brow raising video which detailed the stages of panda courting, reproduction and gestation. The red-panda exhibit was also neat, featuring red-furred raccoon-like creatures which played and ate only yards from us. It was reassuring and fun to see a scientifically oriented site such as this in a nation where endangered species have only recently gained their appropriate status.

We left Chengdu to head to the town of Le Shan, two hours south and home of the giant Buddha. The Le Shan Buddha is carved into the hillside at the confluence of two rivers, and guards over their waters there. The Buddha is 71 meters high, as tall as a city building. The cliff is red sandstone, and the Buddha is correspondingly striped and graded in shade. We first took a boat ride to see the giant Buddha from the river, and the next day spent several hours exploring the park over which he presides. The Le Shan complex includes not only the great Buddha, but also a myriad of temples, pagodas overlooking the river, contemplative paths, rock slabs of calligraphic poetry, waterfalls, and graceful bridges. We spent hours wandering the various hilly paths, visiting the gardens, gawking at the Buddha, meditating silently with the chanting monks in the temples, and enjoying the views across the surrounding landscape. The Buddha itself is impressive, not only tall but huge, encompassing a large section of cliff. The adjacent trail is carved right into the cliff, zig-zagging down several stories and offering amazing views of the Buddha as you descend. The ear alone is seven meters high. The Le Shan complex is both typical and wonderful, offering a many hour experience exploring a natural environment which is also a site of spiritual enlightenment and contemplation. It was easy to be drawn into this space as we tried to appreciate what this place meant for those who have lived there for generations.

Not far from Le Shan was Emei Mountain, our next destination, and another locus of spiritual pilgrimage. We came to Emei to climb the sacred mountain, and did so in the company of many Chinese people. Happily dropped nearby for our hotel, we woke up early one morning to begin our climb. Before we began, we did not realize the extent of what we wished to accomplish, but it was not long before it was quite clear. The mountain rose to 9,000 feet, over 4,000 feet up from where we began, and the trail led up innumerable steps to the final destination. The steps were impressive: they ascended in front of us as far as the eye could see, and curved around each bend to climb steep slopes and rock ledges. It looked just like the traditional Chinese paintings I have admired for years, and it was hard to believe we were actually climbing something as sheer as the mountains in those images. Emei mountain is not one solitary peak, but rather a grouping of peaks, one rising from the next, forming what the locals call a single mountain with its substantial mass and many peaks. We were also impressed by the cleanliness and maintenance of the trail, something which added to the feeling of nature in its spiritual splendor. The summit was apparent only at the very end, so the rest of the time we walked among lower peaks wreathed in shifting mist, the subtropical forests clinging thickly to the sides of the peaks. Between cliffs beautiful water rushed down in waterfalls, creating narrow gorges in some places where the trail wound through. Our least favorite aspect of the Emei hike was the monkeys—they were fed by humans, and thus aggressive, but simultaneously encouraged to both approach and avoid people, a terrible system of wildlife management. Our favorite part of the hike was the "Chinese Grandmas." The Chinese Grandmas were everywhere on the trail; they ranged in age from perhaps 60 to 80, were tiny compared to even me, cute as a button, and strong as horses. While we may have passed them as we hiked up step after step, they were never far behind, and were always climbing. After our first night in a mountain temple (where you spend the night while you are hiking), we were even more impressed, as the Grandmas (which actually included a few grandpas too) had gotten up at three am to begin their day's hiking. Apparently, proper ascent of the mountain included the sunrise as part of the ritual experience, and the grandmas were quite ready, as we were all too aware through the thin walls of our temple abode. While we couldn't talk with any of them, a certain camaraderie developed as we hiked along, and in time we were exchanging prayerful bows and knowing looks with these white-haired hikers. We watched with interest upon reaching the summit, as our companions circumambulated the Buddhist monument found there, making many rotations as the culmination of their pilgrimage.

The temple monasteries were wonderful places to stay on our Emei excursion, as well as being part of the spiritual experience. Over a dozen temples graced the mountain, and most were open for spending the night. While similar to many temples we saw in cities, these monasteries became special because of their high, scenic locations, and the sense we had of being part of a living Buddhist community. We ate with pilgrims and monks one night in the hectic cafeteria-like kitchen, shared baths with the Chinese Grandmas in a shower room, and passed through the prayer rooms lost in our own meditations as they knelt in prayer. The summit of Emei offered splendid views across the tops of peaks, as well as our first glimpse of blue sky in China, although the throngs of tourists there who had simply ridden the bus and gondola to the top (yes, you didn't have to do the hike, but we wouldn't have missed it for anything) diminished the spiritual experience we found there. Indeed it was the journey which made this the highlight of our trip: a sense of experiencing nature, aesthetic appreciation, and spiritual understanding together to create a bit of the transcendent.

We were sad to leave Emei, although other mountains beckoned to the west, in the foothills of Tibet. I will send this now, telling of the rest of our journey when I can—I find that there is so much to share of this rich experience, and it takes time for the telling.

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