25 March 2012

all kinds of tall


Visiting LeShan’s giant Buddha is all well and good until you have to climb down the steps.

I know what you’re thinking, what sort of bozo complains about going down steps? Especially when there’s so much to complain about when it comes to the going up part? I would usually agree but I’m increasingly finding that the worldview we use in other places often hits some snags here in China. And thus we reach the part of the story in which I complain about going down the steps at the world’s largest Buddha.

We waited a fair amount of time before it was our turn to enjoy the Stairway of Nine Turns. This one-way staircase is cut into the same cliffs as the Buddha and offers fantastic views as you wind your way down to his toes. It's the only way down the cliffs and as we waited in an amusement park-style line we played boredom-cure for the rest of the crowd who seemed mystified and delighted by the fact that we weren't from around there. Note the little girl who can't take her eyes off of the tan-sweatered Shi-wen.  


Before getting in line for the stairs we'd explored other parts of the park and Shi-wen was asked by several young Chinese if they could have their photos taken with him. I asked one of the girls why she chose Shi-wen out of our group of three (we were there with a friend) and she said it was because she thought he was very tall. But then etiquette took hold and she extended her invitation to the two of us as well. This was after our friend had used a hotdog on a stick to singe the roof of his mouth but I don’t think it affected his smile for the photo.

But back to waiting for the steps… once it's your turn you realize there's no shade and since this is the one day the sun decided to make an appearance you're now roasting hot and burning off your first layer of skin. But thanks to a fairly widespread aversion to tanning in China there is no shame in using an umbrella or anything else to protect you from the fiery rays. 

All I had were the clothes on my back so I opted to hang my sweater off of my head. It sounded like a fine idea at the time and I was further buoyed up by people catching my eye with an “I hate the sun too” kind of look. Then again it could have been a “you foreigners are messy and weird” kind of look, but I was peering out from under a sweater so it's hard to know for sure.


Just when we were finally heading down the numerous flights of uneven steps (one of us with a sweater on their head) and feeling like at any moment we might pick up speed, we were forced to remember that China is the world’s most populous country and going anywhere, let alone a tourist attraction, can be a slow-moving process.

It wasn't that we were moving down the stairs so much as we were clumping down them. It was one step, wait a while, another step, dead stop. And although each step brought with it a little bit of joy, it also carried a lump of frustration because the people swarming behind us seemed quite focused on climbing up and over our backs. The main offenders were an insistent elderly man with a cane, his wife and her knack for full-body shoving, and an unrelated kid who brought an oversized wooden sword to the park.

It was like pouring people through a funnel except the funnel was already clogged with sunblind tourists trying to protect themselves from aggressive elders and medieval weapons. On the plus side the slow pace gave us a lot of time to look at the Buddha. And it was awesome.


At 233 feet high Le Shan’s Dafo is literally the world’s largest Buddhist sculpture and it just happens to be two hours from our house by bus. Taking a car would probably be quicker, but driving doesn’t give as great a view of the yellow rapeseed flowers that take over the Chinese countryside this time of year. Plus, to drive somewhere you kind of need a car, which we don't have. What we did have was the new issue of Vanity Fair, which our friend brought from New York, and that in itself is pretty special for Chengdu.

When we were taking the bus I tried not to think about how it makes my legs feel trapped and crushed at the same time, and instead focused on how the world’s largest Buddha was waiting at the end of the line. Or more accurately, at the end of the line there is a city bus that takes you to the world’s largest Buddha. But after having seen the giant Buddha you should not take that city bus again. You should take a cab to the bus station because it will be a lot quicker and it will also result in fewer passengers falling on the floor when the driver stops short.


The cabbie you find in front of the park will likely refuse to use the meter and he'll try to get you to pay double or triple the fare, so after you get in his cab just keep saying a number that is less than the number he says. No matter what he says, just repeat your number.

It’s a good strategy especially when you don't quite know what he's saying. Bargaining aside, when he asked where we were from we could understand him, so we said we were from America. He said we were all very tall, and that Americans are tall in general, which was the second time that day someone had commented on our height.

The day's most joyful moment came after we'd visited the Buddha and boarded the bus back to Chengdu. It was so hot on the bus that passengers started to remove layers of clothing as soon as they stepped on, which is a serious heat indicator because Chinese people are a lot like Italians in terms of their willingness to bear extreme temps. So if they're taking off their clothes you know it's hot. I also knew I couldn’t sit on that bus for two hours.

But it was too late. The bus had already pulled out of the station and begun its slow crawl for Chengdu. Except that then in a beautiful and wholly unexpected turn of events the air conditioning switched on and cold air was blowing all around us. It was pure magic and that bus ride was worth every yuan that we paid for the tickets.

The same can be said for the world’s largest Buddha… which, even when compared to a bunch of Americans, was pretty damn tall.

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