Southern Sichuan Bamboo Sea/Shunan Zhuhai/蜀南竹海

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We were pretty much done with the sights in Chengdu and ready to hit some beautiful nature again. We considered going to Jiuzhaigou up in the highlands, which is probably one of China's most famous parks, with beautiful waterfalls, brilliantly colored pools and unique rock formations. However, we already had our fill of pukey 10 hour bus rides on questionable roads, so we decided to head south to the Southern Sichuan Bamboo Sea. There is actually a separate bus station in Chengdu, specifically for buses going to tourist destinations and they had two busses a day running to the bamboo sea - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. We were kind of silly and left "just on time" for the morning bus. Therefore we got there 20 minutes late, bought our tickets, and had a day to kill before our late afternoon bus.

We basically just wandered around town. We went back to the People's Square and Mao Zedong to find that there was a little water fountain show to who else but Kenny G! I am not sure if I mentioned this before, but the ENTIRE trip we kept hearing this one particular Kenny G song like everywhere - on the speakers on the train, blaring out of random pubic speakers, at tourist destinations, and often as people's ringtones. To me, Kenny G conjures up images of the overly-perfumed useless gift shops with specialty candles and hand moisturizers in downtown Exeter. We couldn't help but giggle every time we heard him.

We hadn't had spicy Sichuan hotpot yet, so we decided to do that for lunch. In Beijing at least, we always got a super tasty peanut sauce along with our hotpot, which was perfect to cool down and complement the steamy spicy food. However, though Sichuan is very famous for their hotpot, we did not find a restaurant with that tasty tasty peanut sauce! So we finally just picked one. Oh boy, I am glad we selected the option to get both spicy and not-spicy! The food we dropped in the spicy option turned bright red which alerted us to the multi-alarm spicy level. There were also TONS of numbing peppers in there too, which helped to mitigate the chili peppers a bit, but made for a very intense experience.

Finally, we had killed enough time, so we hopped on the bus. The bus played two amusing movies. One was Lizzie McGuire-Disney-Channel-Original-Love-Movie-like and the other one "Crazy Biker" had gangs, coke, intrigue, bike racing, murder, all of the exciting things in life. Stupid movies with bad plots are pretty easy to follow even if you can't understand the script. Our tickets had the bamboo sea listed as the destination, but the public bus stopped in a nearby town about 1 hour away from the bamboo sea and we had to switch to a random minibus to get to our destination. (Everyone on the original bus who wanted to go to the bamboo sea did this. The random minibus seemed to be part of the ticket.) The other passengers chatted away in Sichuanese/Sichuanhua/四川话 and it was hard to understand what they were saying. It seemed to us like lots of words in Sichuanese and Standard Mandarin/Putonghua/普通话 are pronounced the same but with a rather southern accent and different tones. At one point on our Sichuan trip, we asked someone how to say hello in Sichuanhua and I believe they said it was ni1hao1. (In Putonghua it is ni3hao3 or I guess ni2hao3 because you don't usually say lots of 3 tones in a row.) In the south, people often say "si" instead of "shi." This is very confusing because the number 4 is "si4" and the number 10 is "shi2"... so 4, 10, 14 and 40 are all pronounced like "si" and "sisi." You have to really listen for the tones, which people sometimes use very subtly in real life.

We made our way through windy roads flanked by tall bamboo. The other passengers hopped off at various pre-arranged hotels, until it was just us and a very fun and adorable ~70 year old couple from Chengdu. Our driver said he would help us find a hotel in the park. He brought us to one particular one and it kind of seemed like that was our only choice. Turns out it was his family's hotel! Actually it was very nice and only something like 100 rmb for a double with a private bathroom. Also the four of us agreed to pay the driver to take us around the park the next day. It was surprising how a public bus could lead to this one dude's specific business as the final destination! The moon that night was full and beautiful, so I took a long walk in the bamboo, looking up and listening to the crickets.

Early the next morning, our driver woke us up early by knocking at our door. Our travel companions were already ready to go and they wanted to get moving! We grabbed a quick breakfast of some mantou and a hard-boiled egg and hit the road. The couple had more energy than we did. One time the man had the driver pull over... he very excitedly said "绿色的瀑布!" - "green waterfall!" and we had to stop and take pictures of some green ferns growing on a hill next to the road. Our first official stop on the tour was the Cloud Watching Pavillion, where indeed we looked over a hill and saw a sea of clouds in the valley. Later that day we would return and see that the sun had burned them all off. Everywhere we went, there were many people sitting by the side of the trail selling mushrooms and other foods particular to the area.

The second stop was a huge waterfall. There were several tiers where you could walk around and under it, and then the trail moved away so we could see the whole thing from afar. From several vantage points, we could see a rainbow in the falling water. It was unreal, like a picture of jungle paradise. There was one part of the trail that you had to pay a bit more money to access. The four of us decided to go for it, but then we discovered that the trail was falling apart and kind of dangerous up ahead. Nainai and a group of other women mostly went back and tried to argue for our money back, basically yelling at the people who had sold us access for a full 5 minutes. I estimate that nainai was something like 4'10" and 90 lbs. She was so very nice and nonthreatening. However, when it came to bargaining, she changed into a totally different person! I would NOT mess with her. She even argued down stuff like 2 kuai water. It was awesome to have her on our side. Nobody even tried to overcharge us!

Next was a lake where scenes of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were shot! Very cool. Other tourists had rented boats and were boating about. I am still working on changing my attitude towards people yelling (yeah literally yelling) "waiguoren!" and "laowai!" ("foreigner!") when they see my friends and me. I have talked to my coworkers and others about it and they assure me that it is just because a lot of Chinese people have never talked to a foreigner before, and they are just excited and interested. That's cool, I'm happy to chat with people... I still don't like getting yelled at. Also I didn't like it when people posed in front of us for pictures and snapped pictures of us without asking for permission. It's kind of funny, a lot of culture shock gets better over time, but this might be one part that gets worse. Because after some time (as I write this it has been 5 months), you would hope to start to adapt and fit in. But I still hop on the local bus and everyone stares and I hear several people around me discussing that there is a foreigner on the bus and maybe they think I am from Russia.

Then we walked down to this interesting place where many figures and even a reclining Buddha were carved into the salmon-colored stone. It was a fun windy path that traveled through caves carved into the mountain and also offered terrific views of the agricultural valley below. As we walked, an unnatural number of vibrantly-colored butterflies flew over our heads. We also hit up Fairy Lake and a newly-built temple (it wouldn't be the outdoors in China without a temple!). We also tried delicious wet soft rice-based cakes covered in a brown sugar sauce - one of that area's specialties. After checking out the lame bamboo museum, we headed back to our hotel and got dinner - soup with lots of the local specialty mushrooms inside. They were strange-looking and tasty!

The next morning and early afternoon, we still had some time to wander around before heading out. I saw the first praying mantis I have ever seen in real life!! We did some more hiking and wandering, then caught the bus back to Chengdu.

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Photos

Huge Lois Vuitton Store
Who actually shops there??

Moonlit Walk
I walked to a clearing to see the moon framed by the surrounding trees.

Our Travel Companions
In action!

Rays of Sunlight
Like in Lion King hahaha.

Waterfall Tier 1
We took a boat across the water. As we moved across, a rainbow moved up and across the falling water.

The Whole Thing
Rainbow

Hm...
You can see where people have rubbed their hands.

Cloud-Watching Pavillion
After the clouds had gone away - just a bunch of mounds.