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Published: October 13th 2006
Friends
On the way to our Stupa, Tagong Shangri La is generally recognised as being some kind of heaven on earth, a remote & hidden Himalayan paradise. No one really knows where it is, in fact most suspect that it doesn't really exist at all. It was perhaps made most famous by James Hilton's 1933 work of fiction 'Lost Horizon' - the book being largely based at a mysterious monastery hidden in the impenetrable depths of the Himalayan mountains.
Various towns & regions in China, Tibet, India & Bhutan have all tried to claim the name Shangri La as their own. In fact as you arrive at Zhong Dian bus station in South West China the signs even welcome you to Shangri La rather than Zhong Dian. But is it really there?
I've come to the conclusion that such a place cannot be built or rediscovered as attempted recently in China, but that if you have a vivid enough imagination then it can exist almost anywhere on earth.
It's hard to know where to start this episode. When I started writing this we were about to leave China for
Vietnam (the start of September) - looking forward to the change and looking forward to meeting more welcoming people. We were in Kunming, a pleasant southern city, although once again we faced constant swings in behaviour. On arrival no taxi drivers would take us to our hostel. No reason at all - it was a good distance & would have been a good fare. Finally we ventured onto a bus where friendly locals gave up their seats which we collapsed into with our giant backpacks. Later
on as we boarded another bus home from town grown adults from 20 to 60 years old all pushed & shoved as if we were fighting for our lives. That's just the way it is.
I am happy to say that although over 40 hours of the previous week or so were spent on busses, we found what could perhaps be our own Shangri La. From Leshan we decided to take the back route south west from Sichuan Province to Yunnan Province, skirting along the Tibetan border, through Tibetan towns high in the mountains but still technically within China on the eastern side of the official border. It was a journey that left
Tagong Locals
Making their way through the Prayer Wheels around the Temple us stinking & filthy. My one set of vaguely warm clothes having taken the toll of a week's solid wear.
It was a journey like no other.
Few travellers take this path - on average there was between two (being just us) & ten people heading the same way each day. Our journey began with an eight or so hour bus trip gradually climbing up through the mountains to Kanding which sits 2616 metres (8580") above sea level. The town straddles a gushing mountain river & is like a border town - China meeting Tibet. Han Chinese may be the largest ethnic group across the rest of China, accounting for 98% of the population, but here for the first time we were in a place where they were a minority. Alongside the usual 'interesting' Chinese fashions were people in all kinds of ethnic dress making a colourful change with their bright scarves, head dresses, tunics & jewelry. The mood changes too and the people are friendly, smiling & welcoming - 'Tashi Dilek' the Tibetan greeting taking over from 'Ni Hao' the Chinese.
The town itself is nestelled among mountain peaks, although most were hidden by cloud while
we were there. Being at altitude there's a very distinct change in temperature, although it would get a lot cooler as the journey continued.
Kanding is a small & likeable town. There's little to see or do other than enjoy the change of scene & pace of life. We stayed in a quaint Tibetan guest house with tea shop, next door to a Lamasery - a small & beautifully painted wooden Tibetan Temple. For the first time we saw a constant flow of local worshipers, prayer wheels in hand passing through. Prayer wheels vary in size from hand held to wall mounted - they are a wheel on a spindle & on the wheel are normally written prayers or mantras (such as Om Mani Padma Hum). According to the Tibetan Buddhist belief, spinning the wheels has the same effect as orally reciting the prayers. Our tea shop was invariably full of local monks passing time, drinking tea & eating Tibetan snacks.
From Kanding we moved on to Tagong, a small detour from the Sichuan/Yunnan highway. We weren't originally planning to go to Tagong at all, it meant heading even further of the beaten track & even more hours
Kanding Temple
An impressive entrance of dubious mountain roads. It didn't even come particularly highly recommended. But we are very very glad that we made the effort.
Tagong is our Shangri La.
To us it was an almost perfect place that nowhere else is ever likely to compare to. The road to Tagong is not great; it's bumpy & dusty. For most of the ride we were in a cloud, with no idea what we were missing in the way of views. When you're driving on such bad roads, punctures & flat tyres are a constant risk. Not long before reaching town we had a puncture & we waited while the driver changed wheels without the aid of a jack. I've seen this done many times before but never fails to impress me. The replacement tyre was bald & the layers beneath the rubber showing through. Fortunately we were soon at our destination.
To try & justify Tagong in words or pictures is almost impossible. It's certainly not a perfect place; there's rubbish, it's dusty & there certainly can't be much in the way of work for the locals. But it's like stepping out of China & into another land. The town
Prayer Flags
at a Kanding Temple looks like it's straight out of the wild west. There's one main street with a row of buildings either side & a town square behind which sits the main temple. Small hills rise either side & on every hilltop is a Stupa (a Buddhist religious monument). On almost every hillside hundreds of prayer flags gently sway in the breeze. The buildings are all beautiful - all painted in similar colourful Tibetan designs.
The locals are almost all anything but Han Chinese - I've no idea how many different minorities are there, perhaps fifteen perhaps more, each group having its own distinctly different style of dress. Horseback is still a major mode of transport & cars are rare. Big almost Harley style motorbikes are very popular too - some of these people have no idea just how cool they are. Big bikes with leather straps flailing in the wind. Speakers fixed on board with loud local pop music blaring out. Big cowboy hats, mirror sunglasses, long flowing hair, and that's just the kids.
If there's any one activity that unites the town it's not work, it's prayer. Alongside the monks people of all ages & all minorities walk round
Prayer Flags
reaching across from one hill to another, above Tagong & round, spinning their prayer wheels & chanting constantly. Around the permiter of main temple are positioned over 100 large prayer wheels & around these is a never ending flow of people spinning them.
We spent most of our time in Tagong on a small hilltop observing life below in town. Occasionly we would be joined by locals - the stupa beside us being another popular place to walk around chanting.
We'd no idea when we arrived, but Tagong sits at an altitude of 3700 metres (12,000 feet). Once you are this high altitude sickness can kick in. Luckily we weren't seriously affected - we just had to get used to being out of breath on a regular basis - climbing the stairs or walking too far too fast can be hard work.
(To give a comparison, Mt Snowdon is 1085m, Ben Nevis 1344m, Mt Cook 3754m & Mt Everest 8848m. 12,000 feet is about the same height as that you would be if you've ever jumped out of a plane). At such high altitude the weather can be harsh. Being so high the sun is intense & burn time is cut to minutes. The climate can
Kids
in Tagong also change very fast, this isn't four seasons in one day, it's four seasons per hour. When we arrived in the morning we were in a could & it was fairly chilly. By nightfall it was around 5 degrees (41f), quite a contrast to the mid thirties & early forties we were used to. For the first time in three months I gave in & put on a pair of long trousers. The next day I even succumbed & put on socks & shoes. It was lucky I had any, I'd given away my original shoes to a homeless guy in Guangzhou. As it happened, the new NZ$2 (69p) shoes were gone by lunch; the sun was back & my feet needed to breath again. I haven't ventured back into shoe & sock territory since.
Tagong itself doesn't sit in an impenetrable mountainous valley, so can't be the true Shangri La, but it does lie in an area surrounded by mountains & vast grasslands. The grasslands stretch almost as far as the eye can see, only ending where the mountains begin. Clouds came & went, but at times snowy peaks would reveal themselves, a reminder of how high we
Prayer Beads
Tagong locals, constantly working the beads were. Chequering the landscape are a handful of monasteries & nomad's tents, with colourfully kitted out horses & locals constanly on the move.
The ground floor of almost every building in town is a shop. A few sell souvenirs - although there's few westerners there they do have a steady flow of Chinese tourists who pass through very rapidly. Most shops sell all the things that locals need - all the tunics, gowns, overalls, dresses, trousers, beads & jewels that are their fashion.
Our friendly guest house sat beside the monastery, another great place for people watching. The owners spoke no English, so we had an interesting time when late at night, mid powercut, I tried to explain that we wanted to move rooms away from the rat that we were sharing with. The rat wasn't actually scaring us, he'd been there a few hours already. However he was threatening to keep us awake all night as he ran round & round in circles on the floor. As it happens I think he was just looking for the way out of our room as when he finally found the door he left for good & was later seen
Tagong Temple
You can see the Prayer Flags on the hill behind too by Kylie enjoying the view from the longdrop toilet.
We spent an hour or two helping a couple of local kids with their English. The young girl who befriended me had an English textbook full of vocabulary which she read out as fast as she could over & over again. 'Policeman, car, shop, television, policeman, car, shop, television and so on over & over & over again. Every so often she got stuck on a word ('accan... accan....') & I'd tell her how to read it ('accountant'). The next time she'd get stuck on the very same word. This went on & on & on for some time. The next day she was practicing with the cafe owner, but she still it was 'accan, accan, accan...?' She had no idea what he words meant either, she could say them, but had no idea what she was really saying at all.
One afternoon we were on our hill when we heard singing. About four or five teenage girls dressed in their colourful ethic wear were singing & dancing by the stupa. They were happy to carry on while we watched. You can pay a lot of money & go
Stupa
Tagong to a lot of effort to see 'ethnic' villages & performances across Asia, but in Tagong we stumbled upon an experience unmatchable anywhere else I've ever been.
It was a surprise to see Dalai Lama badges for sale in Tagong, in fact we saw his image in a number of places. As far as I am aware it is illegal to display, sell pictures of or even mention the name the Dalai Lama in China or Tibet. Of course I can't really check because the internet is censored. The 'Great Firewall' of China blocks anything remotely sensitive & there's a number of internet related prisoners locked away across the country. Strangely if I look up something like 'Tiananmen Square' or 'Dalai Lama' with Google then I get the usual list of results. It's only when I click on the responses that I get the 'page not available' screen. It's the same if I look at something like the BBC - I can access the main site, but can't get to lots of pages within it (many seemingly harmless, such as weather). Surely if you were a curious Chinese person this would just increase your suspicions?
Tagong is undoubtedly
Grasslands
Reaching as far as the mountains our Shangri La. Our own paradise. Few tourists make it there; some may agree with us & others may not. But that's the beauty of Shangri La. It can only really exist in each individual's mind.
From Tagong we travelled south to Litang. The road soon began to deteriorate as we began winding up & up further into the mountains. The driver instilled no confidence at all as he took the corners at speed & chose to overtake wherever it looked most precarious (I have to admit, it's much the same as how locals drive on the South Island of New Zealand). Much of the road we travelled is part of the main Highway 318 that bisects China, a mammoth road that I believe begins as far east as Shanghai & finishes in Lhasa, Tibet. The part we took is the the road less travelled & a lot less maintained. The scenery wasn't amazing although every so often a magical scene would emerge. Nomads & their tents come & go & finally we arrived in Litang 4700 metres (15,500") above sea level. The guide book sells Litang as the place you don't want to leave (perhaps it was the
Front Door
Tibetan Guest House, Xiang Cheng author's Shangri La?). We knew soon after arriving that even one night was too long for us. If you've come from almost anywhere else in China you would probably be impressed - but to us it resembled a noisy, bustling, dirty & horn tooting city. It had been so nice to be away from towns, cities & horns in Tagong. The scenery around is probably stunning, we glimpsed a mountain or two but not a lot more. You can trek out to villages, but we weren't impressed enough to want to stay longer. Even our guest house was grim, dirty & pretty unwelcoming.
Early the next day we set off to Xiang Cheng, further south again. Apparently there was no public bus so we 'chartered' a minivan with two Polish girls, a Japanese guy & a very irritating English guy. The drive was stunning - mountain after mountain after mountain. We drove over them, around them, alongside them. Wild flowers, yaks, nomad's tents, gorges, villages, farmland, rivers & the occasional disappearance into a cloud. I wish I had photos but I have none - I could never capture what we saw & do it any justice. At times we
Buddha Hands
Time for some renovations were so high the view was like that from a plane - driving along mountain roads with a couple of feet between us & the edge of a road that dropped hundreds & hundreds of metres to a tiny but fierce white river below.
The driver was Tibetan & spoke almost no English; he spent the entire journey mumbling various chants to himself. It's hard to know whether to like this or not - it was strangely soothing, but for all we know he was chanting something along the lines of 'please help me get us there safely as I don't really know how to drive properly & there's roads are really dangerous'
Xiang Cheng is a place you have to stay as there's no same day connecting transport onwards. The small town is perched on the side of a cliff, with the river below & a steep climb above. We shook off annoying Brit & stayed in a magnificent shared dormitory room in a stunning Tibetan house. Our first (& hopefully last) shared dorm, it was worth it for the room. The beds & walls are quite beautiful - all exquisitely carved & painted wood. Sadly the
Tibetan Guest House
The very impressive dorm room (infuriating Londoner not pictured) room filled up later that day with random people that spent most of the night disturbing the peace & tranquility of the experience. In the unlikely event that the Londoner of Indian descent who was in our room that night is reading this then thanks. Thanks for talking loudly to your mates while we were clearly trying to sleep; thanks for being in such a remote & difficult to get to place, but have having absolutely no idea where you were, had been, or were going; thanks for saying 'man' every other word; thanks most of all for playing bollywood music on your mp3 player extremely loudly all night. All much appreciated when we had a five am start the next day. No more dorm rooms for us.
When travelling with your wife rather than a few friends or on your own you seem to up your standards a bit. There was a time when I frowned upon people paying for double rooms & ensuite bathrooms when there were cheap dorms & shared showers on offer. I must be getting old as I'm now one of those ensuite people. Makes for a much more pleasant experience, but does dent
Prayer Wheel & Beads
another Tagong local the budget quite severly.
Xiang Cheng earns itself the unfortunate reputation as one of our most frustrating places in China, thanks to the staff at the bus station. You could say we were lucky - at least we knew it in advance that it would be tough to get out of this place. We were told there was no bus, then someone else said there was. They wouldn't sell us tickets, but others we met had managed to buy them. Every time we tried to buy them it was an extended meal break, no matter what time of day it was. At the end of the day they probably just wanted us to pay an over the odds rate to travel in their uncle's mother's brother's minivan instead of on the public bus. We went to bed with no idea whether we would really leave town the next day or not.
5.30am the next morning in absolute darkness, & there we were again trying to buy tickets. Why they had to lie so blatently the day before about there not being a bus, I really don't know. Apparently we bought the last two tickets on the bus -
Woodwork
Such a colourful contrast to much of the rest of the country it seemed that the Brit & the Japanese would be staying behind.. until after much begging they were finally squeezed on. Much song & dance was made about the bus being full, however as is the norm, two minutes down the road we started to take on more people. We were apparently so full when we left the depot that we somehow managed to take on at least as many people again just down the road. But then that's part of the fun of travel - squeezing into a small & uncomfortable bus, especially when the people sat on top of you smell like they haven't washed this year & are carrying an immense amount of luggage that smells of fish. That said some of the people turned out to be very friendly & were very once again very keen on my Mao watch. I wish I had bought a big stash of them.
Having exhausted the usual 'phrasebook conversation' (how old are you? what's your job? etc etc) on busses & trains I like to enjoy the scenery & disappear into an iPod playlist. But apparently iPods & laptops can't survive once you hit 3000m, if you turn
Tibetan House
Typical Tagong house it on it freezes or something. So the 40 hours in one week on busses was undertaken with just tooting horns for accompaniment.
The trip to Zhong Dian was again often stunningly beautiful. Again no photos - my camera was buried under something fishy for most of the ride. Besides, I could hardly ask them to stop every few hundred metres to take photos. The road was appauling - 288km (178 miles) in 10 hours gives you an idea of how slow our progress was. The people the previous day had to get out & push their bus four times, but we were lucky - the only real delay was a bus in front that was stuck in the mud. These roads can be treacherous & the drivers insane - but our driver today was absolute pure genious. Undoubtedly the best driver I've ever encountered in Asia. At the end we just wanted to hug & thank him.
Zhong Dian / Shangri La. Two names that are apparently, according to the Chinese, interchangeable. If Zhong Dian is paradise then I want my money back.
This is what Zhong Dian is: A very typical Chinese town. There is
Stuck in the mud
Just another normal day for the local bus drivers an 'old' town - an ever growing area of largely brand new buildings (once again) built to look like old buildings. The 'old' town is not a real town, every single place is a tourist shop all selling the same tourist souvenirs as each other. The people that live & work there aren't even local - they are Han Chinese from elsewhere in the country who have come in search of some easy Chinese tourist dollars. Beside 'old' town is the proper town, which would look like every other Chinese town had they not built ugly brick buildings & then painted them to try & make them look like Tibetan buildings.
For me the only redeeming feature was the divine Tibetan breakfast, including some mind blowing pungent yak cheese. I have to say, the Tibetan influenced food was easily the best I had in China. Across China I did find some great food (including lots of genuinely veggie tofu), but the Tibeten food was far better. Momos (dumplings), breads, potato cake, yak cheese balls, tsamba, barley flour pancake & a divine previously unseen type of noodle as well as a few locally influenced pizzas, beers & teas made it
a culinary treat.
Perhaps around Zhong Dian there's something resembling Shangri La, but there was no sign of it that we could see.
Shangri La or not, it's sad to see that wherever you go in China there is rubbish. Noodle pots, coke bottles & cigarette packets are strewn not just in the cities, but across all the places that claim to be Shangri La. In fact in cities you're perhaps less likely to see rubbish; as well as an ever present army of people attempting to clean the streets as quickly as they are littered, there's also an incredible number of people recycling bottles, cans & paper. More often than than not if you have an empty bottle in your hand someone will notice & ask you for it. Sadly though most people don't seem to have much respect for the environment, and it doesn't matter if you're on a train, bus or just on the street, people will deposit their rubbish wherever is most convenient to them.
Another 8 or so hours on & we reached Lijiang. Yet another place with an historic 'old town' the difference being that the town here really is old.
Our beautiful wooden guest house has stood there over 200 years. Narrow cobbled streets & small canals make it a very pleasant place. The local Naxi people have lived there for centuries & are famous for still wearing their traditional dress as they go about their business. Sadly new 'old' streets are being added & the locals again being pushed out by Han Chinese. Every shop is a souvenir shop & tens of thousands of Chinese tourists flock there daily. Lijiang is also trying to claim that it is the 'real' Shangri La. It still is a stunning place, but the tens of thousands of Chinese in tour groups leave it feeling some way short of being paradise.
From Lijiang to Kunming & the final destination on our Chinese journey. In seven weeks we have come almost full circle & it's time to move on to Vietnam. I can't tell you much about Kunming. I can tell you that the bus we caught there was the business class of busses. I can tell you that although Kunming is still a thousand or so metres above sea level it's low enough to enjoy the iPod again. For us, Kunming was
Saddle
One of many colourful saddles a necessity, all we were there for was to get a visa for Vietnam. In the Vietnamese embassy I got talking to an English woman who thought the three month visa we were applying for was a waste of time. All it takes is two weeks to see the country she said.
Next stop; Hanoi. (aside from an undoubtedly mammoth journey to & from the border on either side). Kunming will be remembered for the NZ cheese we found & the betroot that I ate with it. All that was missing was Hellmans mayonnaise.
Is there a conclusion to China? I feel there should be. Something about China seems to make us question it all so much. It's as if we have spent the past 7 weeks trying to understand what it is that makes this country the contradictory place that it is. I recently read the book 'Into China' by Eileen Bigland (thanks Dom). It was written about 70 years ago about an overland trip taken from Burma to China. Much as I enjoyed the book, it seemed so outdated to me. Her thoughts & her language about the 'natives' were at times shocking. But 70 years
Grandfather
Of the kids we helped 'learn' English later when you've experienced yet another extraordinary train or bus queue, when you've been deliberately lied to, when your patience is at the absolute limit, you can see that at times she wasn't so far off the mark.
China is a staggering country. Natural beauty, man made miracles. There's so much to see & be bewildered by. And there are some amazingly friendly & helpful people too.
Then there's also those who would rather run you over at their red light to gain just a few feet in a trafic queue rather than let you cross the road.
And there's Tagong, which we will forever benchmark other places by.
China is changing fast - the most obvious change being the rebuilding of towns & cities. The past is being replaced with identikit buildings, all white porcelin tile & blue glass. I read another book recently that likened new Chinese buildings to public toilets in England. Thinking back it's true, they look much the same.
Almost every time I sit down to write about China my opinion has changed. Constant frustrations followed by constant awe. Again, in Kunming - getting photos developed, they print just 80
Shop
Tagong of over 120. Any reason why? No. The negatives are fine. There's no reason at all. As we fight our way back to the hostel I just hope that when we hit Hanoi we remember not to elbow & prod people out of the way. Oh, and I must try to remember to stop spitting again too. But it's just so liberating.
Reading our story you may think that we didn't entirely enjoy our time in China, but looking back I would say that on the whole I did. It's just a shame that almost every single day something would happen to frustrate us.
In case you think I've been exagerating here's a few words from a friend who I heard from recently:
"Just as I remembered. reading your blog I was right back in China. the spitting, the coughing, the dirt, the noise, the staring , the ignoring, the absolute frustration and then the person who helps you out that will never know how much it mean't to you. same happened to me at a ferry terminal.. I was ready to burst into tears when a little girl approached me with some pigeon english and saved Fashion
Lijiang style my life. well it felt like it at the time. I also remember the lonliness of being in a town of hundreds of thousands of people and never feeling so alone"
The final saga in this chapter - a 27 hour journey from Kunming, China to Hanoi, Vietnam. Although the final sleeper bus to the border was the oldest & dirtiest we've seen it was a fairly painless journey.
We left China as the school holidays ended. I've no idea how we managed to plan our trip to coincide with the summer holidays almost to the day at both ends.
Of course our farewell to China was never going to be simple. The immigration officers pondered for awhile as they scanned the pages in my passport. But they pondered a lot longer as they perused Kylie's. She asked if there was a problem, but they assured her that there wasn't. That didn't stop the officer taking it to show his numerous comrades. The passport was then taken to their office where we could see them all gathered round to inspect it. Moments like this you think back to episodes of 'Border Patrol' that you've seen on tv.
Tea Shop
Our final Chinese tea tasting (& buying). Lijiang There's always a few people who seem to get wrongfully locked up, strip searched & the glove treatment just because the immigration officers had nothing better to do. Of course the real problem was Kylie's name - finally someone had noticed the surname differences. Rather than ask her about it they let us sweat while they tried to make sense of it.
Finally she was stamped out of China & we walked across the 'no man's land' bridge that arrives in Lao Cai, Vietnam. Funnily enough the arrival wasn't so smooth either - fortunately it wasn't our fault, the immigration guy had used the wrong stamp or something.
The highlight of the arrival in Vietnam was seeing Chinese people trying to push in the queue at immigration & being told to move back & join the queue by the Vietnamese staff.
Welcome to Vietnam.
Apparently they've changed the way that photos work on here. Hence there's probably a load of extra thumbnails at the bottom.... you should be able to click on them to enlarge Wellington - Sydney - Bangkok - Khao Lak - Chaweng (Koh Samui) - Lamai (Koh Samui) - Bangkok - Macau - Guangzhou - Yangshuo - Guangzhou - Zhengzhou- Guangzhou - Shanghai - Huang Shan - Shao Lin - Beijing - Xi'an - Chengdu - Leshan - Kanding - Tagong - Litang - Xiang Cheng - Zhongdian - Lijiang - Kunming
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chenlifen
non-member comment
At least you've been to China
I don't have much time to read all your blogs, but hope you have a good time. After all these sightseeing, you are only a passer-by.Your life won't change a little.But you have the memory of it.