done eating 吃完了

Plates emptied and napkins wadded – and the last photo I took in Chengdu. On to the next meal...

Better late than never

It took us waaaay too long, but we finally went to Jiuzhai Gou (九寨沟) the otherworldly natural park in Sichuan’s Aba Prefecture where you can view exceptionally beautiful scenery along with busloads of Chinese tourists from all over the country.

Having this many people around at all times can be a little exhausting especially when they are enthralled with your son and keep trying to touch him. But it also increases the chances that someone will hand you an herbal remedy that immediately resolves the “I’m about to throw up” sensation that comes with riding a bus around mountain passes while seated backwards.

When I stood up in the bus aisle I must have looked ready to throw up because the guy sitting across the aisle, who was also riding backwards, handed me a small container of ointment and pantomimed, “Go like this” while rubbing his temples. I don't usually listen to strangers – and up until that point I would have insisted it sure wasn’t going to happen in China – but I gave the ointment a quick sniff and then did what he told me to do.

It smelled like eucalyptus or bay leaves or something that makes you feel better and I magically stopped wanting to throw up. Here’s to strangers!

After the bus made it’s way to the top of the mountain and everyone got out, we stood around for a bit trying to figure out what we should do next. It was raining and we had brought Xiao GuaiGuai’s stroller, mainly so we could use the waterproof  rain cover to keep him out of the rain while we roamed the park.

This was a good plan in theory except that what actually happened was we carried his stroller up and down the valley along wooden paths and staircases - often putting the little guy to sleep because he was being rocked around so much. We must have looked fairly crazy, Shiwen in the front, me in the back, carting a stroller down a mountain via a series of staircases. But that’s how Chinese parks help visitors experience their beauty – via staircase after staircase through the scenery.

Our plan was to get off the buses that go up and down the main roads and instead walk the paths that connect the various scenic stops. This plan would increase our intake of scenery and decrease our elbow-jostling with other park visitors. This decision was reinforced when two middle-aged women starting fighting at one of the bus stops and had to be pulled apart by the other members of their parties. So tranquil.

The aggressive nature of transport was a theme we’d been experiencing since we arrived at the airport. Jiuzhai Gou uses a really small airport up high in the mountains and after we landed we came out of the terminal into the parking lot to find a set of cabs waiting for riders. The driver who was next in line started to help us load into his car and the other drivers came to see who we were. They were especially interested in Xiao GuaiGuai and his car seat, neither of which form part of China's normal scenery. But this wasn’t the aggressive element of the ride.

That came immediately after we’d pulled out of the airport and the driver gave us the hard sell on changing our plans and diverting to a different park. We did not change our plans, but by the time we got to our hotel some 90 minutes later we had agreed to use this driver over the next two days, including for a long ride to another natural park that we wanted to see before heading back to Chengdu.

It made sense to make these plans but we learned that it didn't really matter with whom they were made since we never saw that driver again. Over the next two days we had two different men show up as our drivers, each with a different anecdote about why the original driver wasn’t available. My favorite excuse was that he’d had to travel to Chengdu to “do some stuff” at the last minute.

Jiuzhaigou is about 35 minutes from Chengdu by air (via fairly expensive tickets) but it feels like a distant planet. The air is clear, the sky is high and wide, and the colors are vivid and crisp. It’s everything that Chengdu is not and you get used to it quickly, daydreaming what life might be like if you could breathe air like this everyday and if people could go outside without having to worry about their health.

The water that flows through the valley is turquoise and has countless paths to the bottom of the mountains. It drifts and drops through moss and over rocky falls. There is always that water. It forms lakes and streams, waterfalls and pools, and it keeps moving and reflecting the sky and the mountains along its edges.

There is something about the water that keeps trees from dissolving and there are places where you see trunks through the clear depths. Branches that stayed above the water line now host greenery like little rafts tied to a pier.

The best places to see these waters are away from the throngs. The paths that keep you off the buses will guide you through the forests and along the rushing waters. Even if it’s raining (and it was) it’s worth it to follow the wooden planks into some of the only peace and quiet that can be found in this country.

There will still be other people, but some of them will be like you, looking for quiet moments and beauty away from the buses. Others will be fleeing from where you’re headed saying how they had to turn back, how it’s too far... "Whatever you do," they warn "don’t keep going!" We took their warnings as a hopeful sign that others may have turned back too, leaving the path empty for those who would truly appreciate the trudge. For how else can you describe hoisting a not-small child and his stroller up and down staircases out in the woods?  

It was the most beautiful place we have seen in southwestern China and we were glad to be there. We also had decided very early in the day that we’d be returning to the Tibetan restaurant where we ate the night before so we could re-order the Tibetan version of Shepard’s pie (with yak) that we had loved and try the sizzling mutton that had fragrantly passed our table on its way to other diners. This was a powerful motivator as we traversed the wet and cold park where, per usual practice, we were chided by various Chinese passers-by for not dressing our child warmly enough.

They didn’t seem to care that we were toting him up and down slick wooden staircases at a precarious angle. Nope, the problem was that he was not wearing mittens. (Neither was anyone else in the park but who are we to point out the obvious.) We tried to ignore the wardrobe commentary and instead focused on not dropping the stroller down a long flight of wet stairs astride a Chinese mountain.

The next day the rain stopped and we left our hotel for an adventure with the second of our two new drivers. His main goal seemed to be convincing us that the natural park where we wanted to go was too far away and at too high an altitude for us to visit in the time we had.

His case about it being too high did gain a bit of traction when at 4100 meters our mountain road entered the clouds and visibility dropped to about 30 feet in front of the car. When I asked if these were dangerous conditions he’d assured us that this was all right because sometimes you could barely see at all. Ah, yes, barely seeing at all – that would indeed be worse than seeing only 30 feet in front of you on a high mountain road. But not by much.

Before that point we had seen a fresh covering of snow as well as copious amounts of yaks and goats, in addition to several wandering horses. When we had stopped at a tiny restroom on top of a mountain we’d each felt woozy getting out of the car. The man staffing the rest stop had asked our driver if he was the driver coming with the supplies. He was not and when we left him there, at the top of the mountain, in the snow and cold and low-oxygen air, we thought we had an idea of how desolate it was as the man and his rest stop faded into the distant cold as we drove higher into the sky.

When we finally got out of the clouds and arrived at Huanglong (黄龙) Scenic Area we bought tickets that allowed us to take a cable car up the mountain to a great path that cut through a beautiful forest edged with moss and flowers, the tranquility of which was only occasionally disturbed by workers lugging 20 foot I-beams to an unseen construction project in the distance. Not quite what you expect on the mountain but it definitely makes you feel better about the sleeping toddler you’d mistakenly thought was a heavy burden. Hard to complain when a guy passes you with a metal beam hoisted on his shoulder.

This path was even more beautiful than the Jiuzhaigou paths, perhaps because it was open to the mountains and there were snowy ranges in the distance under a sunny blue sky. The lack of rain was also a plus. Overall it reminded us of vistas we had seen during hikes in Europe, absent the rifugios and Europeans you would encounter along those trips.

The pools that are the highlight of this park were suffering from what seemed like low water levels but they were stunning regardless. Their coloring was a contrast in yellow and bright blue and again showcased water in a way we had never seen before. We walked the loop at the top but then hiked back to the cable car rather than taking the path downhill.

Once we’d returned to the road at the foot of the cable car we reunited with our driver and headed to the airport with time to spare. We were in line at departures in less than an hour and headed back to Chengdu nearly on time.

After we'd arrived in Chengdu and piled into a cab to head home we waited for the driver to insist that we change our plans. Or compel us to make an adjustment of some kind. But that conversation never came.

Instead, we just sat back and drove into the grey urbanscape, wondering how two very different places can be so close together in the scheme of the world but so far apart in every other way.

(Aside from the noodles. Seems you can always find a decent bowl of noodles in Sichuan.)

road-tripping with Chinese characteristics

We can cross "road trip" off our Southwest China must-do list. 

As well as: "Decide against using gravel road with no guardrails to descend mountain." 

And: "Rely on gas station good samaritan to lead us to impossible-to-find highway."

Our caravan left Chengdu on Saturday morning and went 200+ miles to the Southern Sichuan Bamboo Sea in a not entirely direct manner due to a quick pass through the city of Neijiang. My visiting parents and our infant son had all begged to see Neijiang (not really) and when we took a wrong turn on the way to Zigong their dreams came true.

We might have turned back onto the correct path sooner had several advertised rest stops not been blocked off due to not being constructed yet. Note: Perhaps it would be best not to put signs on the highway announcing rest stops that don't exist. But then again I went on a Chinese road trip with neither a map nor a functioning GPS so maybe I'm not the best person to comment on travel management.

On our way to the forest we had lunch in Yibin with a table full of dishes that my parents really liked. And this brings us to the next item to cross off the list: Leave our own fork -- a fork that we had taken from our house that morning so my chopstick-impaired mother wouldn't starve -- at the restaurant. This meant that at subsequent dining locations we had the opportunity to mime the universal hand-sign for fork when the server didn't understand my Chinese. It's basically three fingers pointed downwards making a scooping-up or poking-at motion. Surprisingly the first reaction to this strange pantomime was rarely "bring customer a fork." Turns out I'm bad at both the Chinese language and charades.

When we finally got to the Bamboo Sea it was a rolling swath of dancing green. The name Bamboo Sea kind of gives you the idea but it still doesn't capture what it's like to have crawled slowly up a twisting mountain to look across the sky and see bamboo for miles. The road was a beautiful experience in and of itself. Ferns crawled the sheer walls and when the road wasn't clinging to the mountain it was running beneath an arched tunnel of lithe trunks that looked as if it they had always meant to connect in the middle. 

The paths up the mountain were slender and twisted and dotted with rocks, stray dogs, parked cars, slow moving bamboo trucks, and children. Drivers not infrequently swerved across the yellow line. Sometimes there was oncoming traffic and sometimes there was not. Thankfully we saw no accidents but this was after driving several hours on the highway so we were a bit desensitized to the state of Chinese traffic in general. When you've seen one truck driving with two other trucks on top of it, you've seen them all.

Back at the hotel we had a clown car kind of dinner where room service brought so many dishes, carried by so many people, that my parents reported there wasn't enough space in their room for either. When I finally got there (the server had raised her hand high above her head to ask my parents where the tall person who had ordered the food was) there was a platter of ramen noodles balanced on top of two plates of dumplings on a small coffee table. On the other side of the room the desk was supporting a bitter bamboo dish along with a greens and mushroom dish and a grotesquely large platter of rice. There was also a fork, a successful result of our earlier game of charades. 

The next morning there were giant horned beetles and stick insects in the parking lot. We walked over waterfalls and there were smoked ribs for sale along the wet hilly paths. There were rafts you rowed as a group using what can best be described as oversized croquet mallets. There was a man hiking the path with a small leather portfolio, orange loafers, and a fluffy dog. And there was the aforementioned gravel road which made my stomach sink as we left the park's east gate. All gravel. All steep. No guard rail.

We opted to perform a U-turn that required our car to drive to the edge but not over, and then all the way back through the park to the west gate where the road was slightly less rustic.

While lost in the outskirts of Yibin we experienced our first Chinese rail crossing sitting behind a manually-dropped gate as a long chain of rail cars slugged their way into view. Then they came to a stop. And sat there. And then faster than we could have imagined they reversed back from where they came and the gates went up.

At this point I should mention that on our side of the tracks the cars and scooters were lined up across the full width of the road. It looked like a one-way street. But it wasn't. And the other side looked exactly the same.

But when the gates went up it worked. I still don't know how, but everyone found their way forward. Traffic here is obscene and ludicrous and exceptionally dangerous but it flows and finds its way. And we found our way with it. (And managed not to lose the good samaritan scooter driver who had offered to lead us to the highway after we'd asked directions at the gas station where he was filling up.)

(Oh, and I had Xiao Guaiguai on my lap because we had incorrectly assumed there would be enough time to feed him as we waited for the world's slowest train. Wrong.) 

Coming back to Chengdu was fairly soul crushing. It was like returning to a lunar landscape that was dead and barren and in absolute contrast to the green depths we had just explored. Back in the city it was hard to even remember what we had just seen.

Which reminds me of one last item to cross off the list. "Avoid being bitten by humungous mosquitos in bamboo forest and bamboo forest hotel room only to get bitten inside own home within ten minutes of returning." 

Welcome back to Chengdu.

吃辣的吗？(Do you eat spicy food?) – Hangzhou

It took traveling across China for me to realize that without any effort on my part I have acquired a Chinese geographic pedigree. My life here may be temporary, and my Chinese spotty, but when I tell people that I live in Chengdu their eyes light up. I have given them something that needs no explanation. It’s a recognizable background they can wrap around me and all of my foreignness. Being “from” Sichuan (the province of which Chengdu is the capitol) gives us all something to talk about.

So during my week-long stay in Hangzhou, a city far, far away from Chengdu on China’s eastern coast, when I would tell people that I live in Chengdu they would immediately focus on the quality that distinguishes the Sichuanese apart from their compatriots: the food. Each would ask: 吃辣的吗? Do you eat spicy food?

And it wasn’t just idle chitchat. They really wanted to know how my western palette was weathering Sichuan’s famous chili storm. I told them I love it and that I’m used to it now. And then I stopped myself from asking them where Hangzhou’s flavor went.

Not to say that Hangzhou isn’t a great city. It is. Being less than an hour from Shanghai it shares that city’s modernity and flair. Hangzhou’s streets are teeming with fashionable folks and there are options for killing time in fashionable ways – shopping, snacking, drinking. Chengdu has these things too. It’s just that Hangzhou has way more of them. (And they’re better dressed.)

And I hope I’m not betraying my Chengdu home when I also add that Hangzhou has fewer people spitting, fewer folks out on the town in fleece pajamas and/or fuzzy slippers, and fewer children using the sidewalk as a commode. That being said, I also had a hard time finding anyone playing mah jong. Spend a minute in Chengdu and you’ll discover that the clicking of mah jong tiles is the background music for daily life -- a life that unrolls in a more traditional, and relaxed, atmosphere.

However, even with its western style modernity, Hangzhou still teems with one of modern China’s most intriguing calling cards – the art of juxtaposition. Alleys still have those “hot peppers hanging next to a bra and socks” kind of moments that I love about this country.

Hangzhou’s most famous site is Xi Hu, or West Lake, and it’s the kind of place that punches China’s reputation for rampant pollution and ugly sprawl smack in the face. Its beauty is on par with Lake Como – with layers of hills cracking the background behind sprawling and gentle waters. Along the lake’s edges are small pagodas, and bridges, and a bustling park full of attention hounds demonstrating their singing, dancing and strumming. I’ve also heard that there are more than a few Starbucks in walking distance – as sure a sign as any of a hopping metropolis.

I stopped to talk with a few people in the park and most were visitors from other parts of China. Their main observation was that the air in Hangzhou was cleaner and clearer than where they live. I don’t know if this is a credit to Hangzhou’s excellent air quality, or a nod to the fact that most of China lives under unrelenting smog.

Regardless, everyone seemed to be enjoying a beautiful day at the lake except, perhaps, for a man who seemed to be the only local who couldn’t carry a tune. He was singing along with a group of musicians under a weeping willow and he was forcing the group to repeat a part of the song where the rhythm was escaping him. I hadn’t realized anything was wrong until one of the musicians took it upon himself to sing the part. The musician’s voice, and his rhythm, and the beauty of the song… that was the way it was meant to be sung. You could feel it.

The only problem is that after the musician was done perfectly singing the part, the other guy gave it another try. And another. And then another. After each unsuccessful go, the musician would patiently re-sing the refrain with the correct rhythm and the correct notes. And each time the man would charge ahead and blunder it up all over again. At first it was a charming and quirky interchange, but after five minutes I think we were all ready to switch to an instrumental.

I’m not sure that I’ve identified what makes Hangzhou’s cuisine special but we certainly ate well while we were there. There was a chicken that had been cooked in mud and tasted of anise. Hunks of meat with fatty robes. Seafoods in soups and sauces and shells. And a dessert coated in syrup that tasted of caramel and molasses.

And the funny thing is, a Sichuan dish was included at almost every meal I had in Hangzhou. Each dish was an honest approximation of Sichuan food but lacked the real heat and thrum that I have come to expect from my food. Seeing Sichuan food from the outside – seeing it from a dinner table far away from the actual place – really hammered home the realization that this food is special. And that it is even more special in Sichuan.

So thank you Hangzhou. Thank you for being a city I would love to live in, and thank you for being a city that has deepened my appreciation for where I live now.