Thursday, August 17, 2006
Sichuan: Good Times, Good Eats
Just finished a delicious plate of spicy pig liver and mushrooms, the result of that reliable fallback, expressing "I'll have what they're having" through pantomime, and my play of charades made me think of you all, my silent readership. I know you're out there -- why don't you comment? Regardeless, time to share some stories and acquired wisdoms of the road. To wit, if an old Chinese lady offers to grate an unidentifiable gelatinous mass into flat gummy worm noodles and cover them with a variety of spicy sauces, though it may seem counter-intuitive, I say go along for the ride. It's been working out great for me.
Today's my second full day in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province, and though it is the bustling home to 10 million people, and, like practically everywhere I've been in China it is undergoing massive construction projects, it is actually quieter than Kangding, the Tibeto-Chinese mini-city that I just left. I'm not sure what possesses the drivers of Kangding to invest in the loudest horns possible and to lean on them whenever something moves in their field of vision, but it makes it so that the relentless sounds of traffic drown out the birdsong, even after hiking an hour up into the mountains between which Kangding is snugly nestled at the confluence of two rivers. Though I've been on the banks of much larger rivers this summer, and seen some seriously huge rapids, I'm not sure I've ever been in a city with a long stretch of Class 2 rapids right downtown. The horns notwithstanding, the physical and cultural geography of the area warrented a stay of a few days.
The trip to the alpine lake was very nice. With a multicultural crew culled from The Black Tent, the hostel around which Kangding's backpacker universe rotates, we assailed Muguecuo Lake with a minibus and Japanese dirt bikes. Actually, I assailed nothing with a dirt bike; as previously related, I can barely drive stickshift. But our crew contained two Americans (from Hawaii), who'd bought some badass motorcycles in Chengdu and were driving around Sichuan, unlicenced and unregistered, having a great time. When I met them on the streets of Kangding, they had about four bucks between the two of them, and no way to get more money for at least a couple of days. Funny dudes, yet I digress. The lake, about 11,000 ft. elevation, was a bit too cold for swimming, but we played in the sand on the beach and climbed up to a mountain pass, from where one would be able to see the majestic Gongga Shan (about 26,000 ft.) on a clear day. As it was grey and blustery, we huddled in a horse farmer's lean-to for a bit until, glory of glories, the sun came out. It just got better from there.
The Chinese girls that we were with asked if we wanted to wash our feet and eat some eggs. After a bit of back and forth, we determined that nothing was being misunderstood in translation, and decided as a group that footwashing and eggs sounded grand. We were a mite peckish anyway. We proceeded en masse to a bubbling hot spring, far too hot to submerge your feet in for any extended period of time (over 190 degrees F), but nice enough to sit around on the rocks, eating soft-boiled eggs (apparently cooked in the springs, they were very tasty, though, not knowing they were going to be soft inside, I got the first one all over my shorts). But, perhaps even more exciting, we stopped at another lake on the way home where they had excellent wild mushroom soup, and we got a clear view of Gongga's peak. To be honest, I guess because it was pretty far away (maybe 50 miles), it didn't look that big, especially in the pictures I took, but I knew that I was viewing one of the highest places on the planet. Next time, must return with camping gear to hike up close to the peak and its disappearing glaciers.
My other primary adventures concerned Paoma Shan, the mountain on the edge of town immortalized in a love song that I guess all Chinese people know, which I heard over and over again in my time in Kangding (most enjoyably put to an electronic beat, being danced to by a number of young women in white silk costumes with furry white mohawks improbably balanced on their heads, but I digress again). [a further musical digression -- the old woman watching television just put on Chinese Idol, or some other Chinese karaoke show, on which a tiny pretty Chinese girl was belting out "Killing Me Softly" with the soul of Roberta Flack. Bizarre.]
Anyway, the first time I tried to climb Paoma Shan, I began to climb the stone as the sun was going down behind the mountains across the valley. I figured that a couple of hours of dusky light would be enough to get up without a problem, but after reaching a pagoda with an amazing vantage point on the town (photo to come), I decided to descend, but by a different route. Travel wisdom #2: when time is pressing, don't start exploring new routes. I ended up at the locked back gate of a lamasery, which sat on a cliff about fifty feet above the roadway, in the twilight. Most of the wall was topped in shards of broken glass, but I found a part of the wall where the monks must climb out at night (I found a nearby clearing in the woods with armchairs and a table where they probably sit around, drinking beer, playing cards). I pulled myself up on the wall and yelled "Tashi Delek? Ni How? Hello?" for at least five minutes. I'm sure the lama heard me and decided not to come to my aid. What grandmotherly kindness. I ended up jumping the wall, dropping down into the lamasery, sneaking through the courtyard, and letting myself out the front door. When I finally got down onto the street, a crowd was watching me, doubtlessly having heard my calls for assistance, and probably having watched me break into the temple. Embarrassed, I ducked down a staircase, praying that it wouldn't dead-end in an apartment complex as most Chinese alley seem to do. Miraculously it let me out just across the river from my hostel. Then I saw them. Three ridiculously cute Chinese girls, all about five or six, closing in fast. They looked back and forth at each other, and then assaulted me with big smiles and "Hello!"s. I didn't know whether to laugh or run, and one of them, the ringleader of cute, asked me, "How do you like China?" "I love it!" I replied, gave them a grin and two thumbs up, and made a break for it, leaving them giggling.
My other adventure on Paoma Shan came the next day when, after eschewing the stairs for wooded trails and summiting in record time, I decided to forge my own path down the mountain. Sliding down a steep slope covered in thornbushes, I carefully rethought that decision. Finally I made my way back to the open woods, and, relieved, I decided to relieve myself. I had barely zipped up when I was startled by an old man with a white goatee in a grey sportscoat emerging from amongst the trees, carrying a crumpled white plastic shopping bag. I thought he was homeless, perhaps. I thought of how the Lonely Planet warned that a UK tourist was killed hiking alone on Paoma Shan five years ago (I hate it when they tell you stuff like that). The old man called out to me and I got in the sprinting stance. He was asking me something in Chinese; my apprehension grew. He slowly opened the bag; I expected it to be full of the severed shrunken heads of other backpacers so unwise to penetrate the backwoods of Paoma. Would there be a love song written about me? Would they set it to an awful house beat and dance to it for tourists in a cheesy Tibetan club? I don't know, but the bag was full of mushrooms -- foraging for wild fungus being a popular and delicious pastime in these parts. Sweet relief yet again (thank goodness my bladder was already void).
Today's my second full day in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province, and though it is the bustling home to 10 million people, and, like practically everywhere I've been in China it is undergoing massive construction projects, it is actually quieter than Kangding, the Tibeto-Chinese mini-city that I just left. I'm not sure what possesses the drivers of Kangding to invest in the loudest horns possible and to lean on them whenever something moves in their field of vision, but it makes it so that the relentless sounds of traffic drown out the birdsong, even after hiking an hour up into the mountains between which Kangding is snugly nestled at the confluence of two rivers. Though I've been on the banks of much larger rivers this summer, and seen some seriously huge rapids, I'm not sure I've ever been in a city with a long stretch of Class 2 rapids right downtown. The horns notwithstanding, the physical and cultural geography of the area warrented a stay of a few days.
The trip to the alpine lake was very nice. With a multicultural crew culled from The Black Tent, the hostel around which Kangding's backpacker universe rotates, we assailed Muguecuo Lake with a minibus and Japanese dirt bikes. Actually, I assailed nothing with a dirt bike; as previously related, I can barely drive stickshift. But our crew contained two Americans (from Hawaii), who'd bought some badass motorcycles in Chengdu and were driving around Sichuan, unlicenced and unregistered, having a great time. When I met them on the streets of Kangding, they had about four bucks between the two of them, and no way to get more money for at least a couple of days. Funny dudes, yet I digress. The lake, about 11,000 ft. elevation, was a bit too cold for swimming, but we played in the sand on the beach and climbed up to a mountain pass, from where one would be able to see the majestic Gongga Shan (about 26,000 ft.) on a clear day. As it was grey and blustery, we huddled in a horse farmer's lean-to for a bit until, glory of glories, the sun came out. It just got better from there.
The Chinese girls that we were with asked if we wanted to wash our feet and eat some eggs. After a bit of back and forth, we determined that nothing was being misunderstood in translation, and decided as a group that footwashing and eggs sounded grand. We were a mite peckish anyway. We proceeded en masse to a bubbling hot spring, far too hot to submerge your feet in for any extended period of time (over 190 degrees F), but nice enough to sit around on the rocks, eating soft-boiled eggs (apparently cooked in the springs, they were very tasty, though, not knowing they were going to be soft inside, I got the first one all over my shorts). But, perhaps even more exciting, we stopped at another lake on the way home where they had excellent wild mushroom soup, and we got a clear view of Gongga's peak. To be honest, I guess because it was pretty far away (maybe 50 miles), it didn't look that big, especially in the pictures I took, but I knew that I was viewing one of the highest places on the planet. Next time, must return with camping gear to hike up close to the peak and its disappearing glaciers.
My other primary adventures concerned Paoma Shan, the mountain on the edge of town immortalized in a love song that I guess all Chinese people know, which I heard over and over again in my time in Kangding (most enjoyably put to an electronic beat, being danced to by a number of young women in white silk costumes with furry white mohawks improbably balanced on their heads, but I digress again). [a further musical digression -- the old woman watching television just put on Chinese Idol, or some other Chinese karaoke show, on which a tiny pretty Chinese girl was belting out "Killing Me Softly" with the soul of Roberta Flack. Bizarre.]
Anyway, the first time I tried to climb Paoma Shan, I began to climb the stone as the sun was going down behind the mountains across the valley. I figured that a couple of hours of dusky light would be enough to get up without a problem, but after reaching a pagoda with an amazing vantage point on the town (photo to come), I decided to descend, but by a different route. Travel wisdom #2: when time is pressing, don't start exploring new routes. I ended up at the locked back gate of a lamasery, which sat on a cliff about fifty feet above the roadway, in the twilight. Most of the wall was topped in shards of broken glass, but I found a part of the wall where the monks must climb out at night (I found a nearby clearing in the woods with armchairs and a table where they probably sit around, drinking beer, playing cards). I pulled myself up on the wall and yelled "Tashi Delek? Ni How? Hello?" for at least five minutes. I'm sure the lama heard me and decided not to come to my aid. What grandmotherly kindness. I ended up jumping the wall, dropping down into the lamasery, sneaking through the courtyard, and letting myself out the front door. When I finally got down onto the street, a crowd was watching me, doubtlessly having heard my calls for assistance, and probably having watched me break into the temple. Embarrassed, I ducked down a staircase, praying that it wouldn't dead-end in an apartment complex as most Chinese alley seem to do. Miraculously it let me out just across the river from my hostel. Then I saw them. Three ridiculously cute Chinese girls, all about five or six, closing in fast. They looked back and forth at each other, and then assaulted me with big smiles and "Hello!"s. I didn't know whether to laugh or run, and one of them, the ringleader of cute, asked me, "How do you like China?" "I love it!" I replied, gave them a grin and two thumbs up, and made a break for it, leaving them giggling.
My other adventure on Paoma Shan came the next day when, after eschewing the stairs for wooded trails and summiting in record time, I decided to forge my own path down the mountain. Sliding down a steep slope covered in thornbushes, I carefully rethought that decision. Finally I made my way back to the open woods, and, relieved, I decided to relieve myself. I had barely zipped up when I was startled by an old man with a white goatee in a grey sportscoat emerging from amongst the trees, carrying a crumpled white plastic shopping bag. I thought he was homeless, perhaps. I thought of how the Lonely Planet warned that a UK tourist was killed hiking alone on Paoma Shan five years ago (I hate it when they tell you stuff like that). The old man called out to me and I got in the sprinting stance. He was asking me something in Chinese; my apprehension grew. He slowly opened the bag; I expected it to be full of the severed shrunken heads of other backpacers so unwise to penetrate the backwoods of Paoma. Would there be a love song written about me? Would they set it to an awful house beat and dance to it for tourists in a cheesy Tibetan club? I don't know, but the bag was full of mushrooms -- foraging for wild fungus being a popular and delicious pastime in these parts. Sweet relief yet again (thank goodness my bladder was already void).
