Pandas, Buddhas and Opera

The last time I posted something, I was getting ready for a 2-day travel extravaganza to get from Lijiang to Chengdu.

The traveling went well, with just a few minor hiccups, as can be expected. My trip from Lijiang to Kunming was an overnighter, by sleeper bus. Now the sleeper bus was a new one for me, having thus far avoided taking one since I don't like traveling at night. I was a bit, I don't know, skeptical I guess is the word, that it would be comfortable or a good way to travel, but it really was pretty OK. The sleeper bus consist of many rows of bunk beds, both lower and upper ones. The beds are very narrow, short and have somewhat of a slope to them, the head area being higher than the feet area. I of course had a top bunk (is there really any other one available for a plus-size non Asian person???), but was very (very very) thankful that I had a 'single' bunk instead of the 'triple' or even 'quadruple' ones at the back of the bus. They still are individual spots for each person, but in some cases there are no separations between the beds, so you are in fact just basically lying 3 (or 4) people in the same small area. Case in point: the 2 Chinese girls in the row next to me were not impressed when they ended up sharing a bed with a middle-aged man. They giggled for 5 minutes, then tried everything to avoid touching him for the rest of the night. Good luck with that, even for skinny Chinese girls...

The bus left at 7PM and by 7:05PM it seems everyone on the bus was already asleep, save for me. I haven't quite learned to condition myself to fall asleep at the drop of a hat, so by 2AM I was wondering if I ever was going to sleep that night. I did eventually fall asleep, but then the bus stops every so often to let you pee or buy food, like at 10PM, 12AM, 3AM, so you never sleep for very long. At least the girl I bought my ticket from said that they let you sleep on the bus until about 7AM, even if they arrive at the destination before that. Not so for this bus! At 5:45 AM, just as I had fallen asleep for a 2nd time that night, the bus stopped and the driver started going up and down the aisles, poking people in their sides and screaming like a banshee. Even if I don't understand Chinese, I somehow figured out he wanted us off his bus, and NOW.

Off I get, grabbing all my stuff and sort of stumbling in the dark at the bus station. My next goal was to get to the train station so that I could drop off my big backpack in storage for the day, allowing me to walk around Kunming unencumbered until my train that night. I had my map of Kunming in my hands, knew where the train station was but it's all pointless if you don't know where you are at the moment. There are a few bus stations in the city, all of them identified on my map, but who knew which one I was at? And since my sleep-deprived brain wasn't up to trying to figure it all out, and since it was still pitch black outside and I'd read the bus and train stations in Kunming are generally not good areas at night, I decided to take a taxi. I quickly found a taxi driver, a woman, and pointed out the train station on my map. Luckily, it was also in Chinese, so she understood where I wanted to go, but she was still looking at me funny, as if to say: you want to go THERE? really? I was in no mood to figure out what was wrong with going to the train station, so I just kept pointing at it on my map and nodding yes yes yes. She finally relented and nodded yes, she'd take me there. No sooner had I closed the door and the meter been started that I looked out the window and saw that we had arrived at the train station. No, I did not fall asleep or pass out, we had not driven more than 100 meters from the bus station exit to the drop-off at the train station. Now I understood her reluctance to bring me there! I could have walked it in 2 minutes flat!

I wasn't upset at her, since she'd obviously tried to convey SOMETHING to me, I just couldn't understand what it was. So I quickly paid her my 10-yuan fare (about 1.25$) and got off the taxi. By this time, it is maybe 5:48AM, so I have roughly 14 hours or so to kill... Yay. I'll spare you the tedious details of how I killed 14 hours in a city I'd already visited and didn't really have any enthusiasm for seeing again, but let's just say it involved a lot of walking and many hours in one of the MEGA internet cafes they have in China.

The overnight train from Kunming to Chengdu was good as well, maybe not as comfortable as the sleeper bus, but still OK. I had the top bunk again (but of course), but I have to say this time it did end up being a bit hard to get down from, since there are 3 superimposed beds and it is quite high. Getting up there wasn't a problem, but I almost had vertigo trying to get down. No problems sleeping though, but I think that had more to do with the fact I'd just spent a sleepless night.

It's a weird experience being the only westerner in a whole bus or a train carriage. You get a lot of attention, as people are very curious as to what the hell you are doing there amongst them. I felt a bit like a star in the train, with one group of elderly Chinese men trying to 'talk' to me (1 of them spoke some English), and their wives trying to feed me constantly. We managed to talk a little bit after I took out my Mandarin phrasebook, and Mr. Wu tried teaching me to count to 10 in Chinese, but I'm hopeless. I can't for the life of me get the tones right, as was proved when I tried telling them I was going to Xi'an next. Xi'an, to my western ears, is pronounced Shi-Ann. I said it 5 times, all with a blank look, but then found it in my phrasebook. Mr. Wu took out his glasses, read what I was pointing at and said: "Ah yes! Shi-Ann! Right!". It all sounded the same to me, but obviously it mustn't have been. I am in no danger of changing careers to become an interpreter, that's for sure.

I stayed at an amazing hostel in Chengdu, so I took advantage of it and spent the first 3 days doing nothing much at all. On my first day, I met an American girl and we had ourselves a 'western' day: a mocha-choca-whacka-whatsit at Starbucks, tacos and burritos at a Tex-Mex restaurant (good food, even if her taco was identical to my burrito...) and finally 2 pints each of Guinness at the local Irish pub! Each pint cost almost 10 dollars, a third of my daily budget for China, but what the hell! It was excellent and worth every penny!

The next day my western-themed break continued, as I had dinner at KFC and went to a movie. I saw 'Forbidden Kingdom', the movie with Jet Li and Jackie Chan. In it's original form, this movie is in English with some subtitles on the rare occasions they speak Chinese. Here in China, it was dubbed in Chinese and had Chinese subtitles as well. I had to go to a 'special' viewing to get to see it with English subtitles!

The last day of my break was spent reading not 1 but 2 books borrowed from the hostel's library. Excellent.

Having just spent 3 days doing nothing, I then crammed in all the Chengdu sites during the following 2 days. I went to see the pandas at the breeding center near by, and really enjoyed that. They 'look' cute and cuddly, but they are still big enough to remind you they are from the bear family. And even if I'd have loved to have a picture of me hugging a panda, I'm just too cheap for that. Can you imagine that it cost 1200 yuan, ie about 170 USD to hug a Giant panda?Isn't that crazy? Next up was a night at the Sichuan opera, which isn't anything like I'd have imagined an opera to be. A bit of singing, a bit of dancing, some comedy, acrobatics and the piece the resistance: 'changing faces'. The performers have masks on their faces that can change in a blink of an eye. My analytical mind didn't really enjoy that part of the show cause I spent all my time trying to figure out how they do it. I didn't come close to figuring it out, so I still ended up impressed.

The final 'must-do' for the Chengdu area was to visit the Giant Buddha in Leshan. Now after more than 6 months, I've seen my fair share of Buddhas, so my enthusiasm would have been so-so had I gone on my own, but luckily I had met 2 other American girls (there everywhere these days! :-) ) and went with them. We had a fun day figuring out the local transportation, walking countless steps, wandering around without ever getting lost once, and making our way back safe and sound. Oh, and the Buddha was nice too. ;-)