Chengdu
Mountains, pandas, and spicy food
Midterms finished up two weeks back. In a sort of celebration, a group of us decided to spend the past week in Chengdu.
Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province (also known as Szechuan), and is famous for its pandas, natural beauty, world’s largest building, food, and a whole bunch of other things. Truth: Chengdu is a UNESCO City of Gastronomy.
We spent the week in a tornado of joy and exhaustion. This place was cool. I’d never spent time off the east coast of China. Glad I finally did.
Our travels go something like this…
Hangzhou → Chengdu
It’s easy, yeah? All we were doing was traveling from one large city to another.
We left the university at 12:30 PM for a 5:00 PM flight. Yes, the 4.5 hour difference is due to my undiagnosed paranoia. The bus to get to the bus station to get to the airport was easy. No problem. Cha-check. The bus to get to the airport was also easy, except for the part where the TV at the front kept playing videos of horrific car/truck/bus crashes and then flashing 系好安全带 — Fasten Your Seatbelt. In the words of Mary, my friend and traveling partner, “There were some limbs akimbo in that one.”
We arrived at the airport, etc. etc., waited a bit, waited some more, and got on our plane. And waited. And waited. People started getting fussy. And then yelling. Turns out we were waiting for one late passenger. We waited 40 minutes. He was in First Class. One woman in particular was P to the I S S E D. She stood up in the aisle and rallied the economy passengers and yelled something along the lines of, “Let’s make him apologize!” to which most passengers replied “Huzzah!” I, meanwhile, tried to figure out how I could jump out of the sealed plane window. Yes, he apologized. It was awkward.
Oh, but the fun was just beginning! We touched down after a pleasant enough 2.5 hour flight. Mary and I made to get off the plane but were told quite firmly, no, we could not get off. I pulled out my phone and realized we were in Hebei province, nowhere near Chengdu. My dear friends, we were aboard a commuter airplane. After dropping off 0 passengers and picking up about 5, we again took off. And again landed. Welcome to Chengdu.
All that was left before bed was a quick taxi ride. We arrived at our hotel and checked in, took the elevator up to our room on the 5th floor, and entered a thriller movie. Lining the hallway were mattresses and bed frames. Each bedroom door was wide open, empty, and dark. Except for our single room, at the very end of the hallway. After a moment of reflection, Mary and I looked at each other, yelped, and ran back downstairs to change rooms. Minus the vague smell of dead animal in the bathroom, our new room was just fine. We both had some strange dreams that night.
Chengdu City
We woke up to piles upon piles of veggies for breakfast. It was really much more exciting than it sounds. I think we expected to subsist on bananas and bread, but the hotel provided us with a lovely breakfast of steamed buns, steamed veggies, and hot soy milk.
Stop one of day one in Chengdu was Wuhou District. It housed a large and quite beautiful shrine. We walked around staring at the miniature trees and waterfalls and reveling in the quiet. It was quiet!
But as it turns out, a plateful of veggies for breakfast doesn’t stick with you for too long, so we were soon ready for lunch. The powers that be were in our favor. Smiling around the shrine stood Jinli Street, one of Chengdu’s most famous 小吃 (xiǎo chī — small eats) streets. We started off with spicy tofu, then some balls of fried dough, a beef pancake, the world’s best noodles, and peanut mud. We finished off with a bowl of mango ice with mangos, mango ice cream, and glutinous rice balls. A foodie’s paradise. A word about Chengdu’s cuisine — much of the food carries the 麻辣 (má là) flavor. 辣 means spicy. Painfully, eyes wateringly spicy. 麻 means tingling. Gums, lips and tongue go immediately numb and food ceases to have much flavor for the next few minutes. Then it passes. As uncomfortable as it sounds, I’m pretty sure it carries some sort of addictive component, because I couldn’t stop eating it.
We walked off our lunch by shuffling through Chengdu’s Tibetan district “Little Lhasa” complete with incense, buddha statues, and lots and lots of monks. Browsed some things, bought some things. Kept on trucking.
As the supreme planner of the trip, Mary suggested we next go to a Japanese department store. Japanese marketers have got to be some of the best in the world. Everything was far too expensive, and yet, I wanted to buy it all. This tiny clear plastic container for ¥20? Give me six! The best part had to be the basement. It was filled with food and employees desperate to fulfill their handing out samples quota.
At this point we were pretty wiped out. We made our way to meet up with Monica, Paul, Nelli, and Vici, friends who had separately traveled to Chengdu for the week. Dinner was great. We ordered as many of the stereotypical Sichuan dishes as we could: twice cooked pork, mapo tofu, Kung Pao chicken, noodles, and some veggies.
And then slept.
Leshan Giant Buddha
I’ll skip past the boring part. Bus #1 → bus #2 → we’re there. Cool.
Upon arriving at the Leshan Giant Buddha, one must decide between the following options:
- Take a boat ride and see the Buddha from the water. Total time: 1/2 hour. Total cost: ¥70.
- Climb 100 meters and see the Buddha up close. Total time: ~3 hours. Total cost: ¥50.
We opted for the climb. But first we used the “Level 3 Tourist Bathrooms”. Marble floors! Clean squatty potties. Good times were had by all.
It was a warm and dewy day, so the tree-lined stairs felt much like a rainforest. Apparently, in centuries past, this area of Leshan was considered a place in which you could “become drunk by the beauty of nature”. It was lovely. And ancient. Everything felt old, and not reconstructed old… real old.
We meandered through the gardens and temples near the top of the Buddha for a while, and then began the trek down the cliff-face. The stairs were so narrow that I wasn’t able to turn around with my hiking backpack on. At the bottom we took pictures by the Buddha’s toe. Look how big!
Getting out proved to be a bit of a challenge. In the grand words of Robert Frost, we took the road less traveled by, and ended up in a small unpaved parking lot a few kilometers from the nearest main road. I was wigged out, but cool-as-a-cuke Mary figured out which sketchy black van would take us to our next destination some 40 kilometers away.
Yes, we made it safely to Mount Emei. We checked into Time Machine Hotel (what a name), and went hunting for some grub. The food here, it was a bit too fresh for my liking. Huge grey bunnies and ancient catfish waved hello at the entrance to each restaurant. We settled for noodles and veggies and called it in early in preparation for our ascent the next morning.
Mount Emei -or- The Day of Buses
We rose with the sun. We had already decided to bus up to near Mount Emei’s Golden Summit and hike the rest of the way to the top. Starting fresh at the bottom is something like a 10 or 11 hour hike. Yep. Nope. We bought our bus tickets easily and were on our way up in a matter of minutes. Except… after about a half hour, we got dropped off nowhere near the top of the mountain. So we bought a second bus ticket. This time, at least the bus drove in the upward direction. After another 45 minutes, we were again kicked off the bus. S’ok though. We had to buy entrance tickets to the mountain. After a few confused moments, we sprinted. Had we not sprinted, we would’ve missed getting back on the bus. Nobody panic. We made it.
We got off the bus and followed the river of people first past a coat rental for the underprepared, and then past a swarm of monkeys. I had read that the monkeys were aggressive (and fat) from being continuously fed by Chinese tourists, but I didn’t expect to see people just handing them bags full of food. I was fascinated and infuriated.
Two hours of stairs in thin air. Try it some time. It’s good fun. With each meter, the air got a bit colder and the snow a bit thicker. The balmy spring we had greeted at the bottom turned into blustery winter at the top.
But truly, I’m not complaining. It made reaching the famed Golden Summit all the more literally and metaphorically breathtaking. Air gets a bit thin at 10,167 feet.
I’ll let the pictures speak.
Running short on time, we took the gondola back down to where we started our hike. Two hours up, three minutes down. We got yet another bus ticket back down to the base of the mountain. On the ride, we discussed the many routes for finding transportation back to Chengdu, all rendered unnecessary by the beat-up bus labeled “Chengdu” conveniently awaiting us.
No mountain hike is complete without a dinner of Sichuan hotpot. The centerpiece of each table is a stove, which a server covers with a giant bowl of broth. The bowl is split, half of it a mild fish broth and the other half a flaming spicy red broth. Each person goes into a refrigerated room, fills up a bin with skewers of their choice of every type of veggie, tofu, and organ (including brain) they’d like to eat. The feast commences with the dunking of the first skewer into the broth. At this point, the broth is at a rolling boil, so food cooks quickly. Then you eat!
Chengdu Giant Panda Base
In many people’s minds, Chengdu = pandas. Of the hundreds of pictures I took in Chengdu, at least half of them contain a panda hat, panda flag, stuffed panda or real panda.
Obviously, we couldn’t forgo a visit the the Chengdu Giant Panda Base. The cuteness was overwhelming. I tend not to ooh and aah, as my father whom I most dearly love taught me at a young age that screeching is NOT ok, but by the time we reached the Sub-Adult Panda Enclosure, even I let out a few squeals.
Proof of Cuteness:
We finished up early enough in the day to head back to our favorite Wide Narrow Alley. We decided to eat at a tasty looking hole-in-the-wall noodle shop. You’d think I’d learn that saying, “I’ll have your specialty” is quite the risk. I haven’t yet. I ended up with a bowl of noodle soup with pig intestine, Mary got our favorite dan dan noodles, and we split some spicy wontons.
Mouth numb from the spice, we unabashedly ran towards Starbucks to cool ourselves with frappucinos. After two days of hiking, sitting and sipping on coffee was divine. Mary and I chatted about China and life. Born in China, Mary moved to Canada when she was four. I love learning her perspectives on China and Chinese culture. I think non-Chinese and especially non-Asian students of the Chinese language tend to have an overly idealistic view of China. Yes, I want to see the best in China, but I also want to hear honest opinions.
We browsed the shops on Wide Narrow Alley and found a DIY store. Inspired by the pandas we saw in the morning, we spent the next two hours coloring. I hadn’t been so zen in months.
Still stuffed with noodles and calm as can be, we floated to the nearby People’s Park, where, in the words of Vici, there was public karaoke and old people flash mobbing everywhere. It was a strange little park, full of miniature amusement park rides, ear-blasting singing and eye-singeing dance costumes. It did detract from our zen state, so we continued on to dinner.
China is home to dozens of 少数民族 (shǎoshù mínzú — minority groups), of which the the Tibetan people are one. We sought out a highly reviewed Tibetan restaurant just to try something different. For dinner we carefully selected butter tea, beef dumplings, beef pie, and pork stir-fry. Discovery — butter tea is literally butter and tea. If it sits undisturbed for too long, butter forms a 1/4 inch film at the top. Not for me. As for the beef dumplings and beef pie, well, what was listed as beef in fact was not beef. It was yak. Although we didn’t exactly enjoy dinner, we enjoyed the experience. Minus the shameless SHAMELESS staring of our fellow restaurant-goers.
To fully embrace the zen-ness of our day, we ended the night with some calming music and hotel yoga.
Huanglongxi Ancient Town
Living in China Rule #682: If you value your physical well-being, do not, under any circumstances, enter a bus station during a national holiday. Happy Labor Day!
We woke up at what we thought was an early, quiet hour. Apparently everyone at the bus station thought the same thing. Buying tickets out of town was easy. Pushing our way through the security line was a fifteen minute ordeal that involved flying elbows, tramplings, and way too much pelvis-on-pelvis action. We were shepherded through the gate to a bus. Wait. Invisible bus. Wait. No bus. After being hushed and told to sit quiet for a bit, we were then told to return through the gate and go to the end of the now winding line. Mary put up a valiant fight and we were able to stay at the front of the line.
The bus ride was long but totally uneventful.
For the first hour, the crowds were tolerable. We got lost in this beautiful maze of a pedestrian village, taking pictures and going into one of five temples. At the risk of being sacrilegious, I just do not understand temples. I’ve seen dozens at this point, and I don’t get ‘em.
Hunger started to set in, so we went a bit crazy with the snacks. We ate a pancake cooked by a clown man, a whole bunch of local cookie-type snacks, some nasty flavorless gelatin, some delicious spicy tofu, a long noodle, steamed cornbread, and fried ice cream. Of these, the bowl of a singular long noodle probably had the biggest wow factor.
We grew tired of the holiday crowd so we went back to our hotel early and had a little workout date with Shaun T. After days of oily food, it felt great.
I found a nice-looking restaurant using China’s version of Yelp or Foursquare but paid no attention to the address. We ended up squarely back at the Japanese department store we were at a few days earlier! Dinner was mellow, but the restaurant had the first wifi we’d seen in about three days, so we ordered a pot of tea and overstayed our welcome catching up on the happenings of the world.
Then we watched Crazy, Stupid, Love and went to bed.
Chengdu City
Our second day in Chengdu proper was pretty chill. Our first stop was a monastery. It was nice! We walked around for a bit. Realized we were in the middle of a Buddhism conference. Left.
We intended to find a top-notch restaurant for lunch, but our hunt was fruitless. What once was was no more. Instead we kept heading south to the world’s largest building, the New Century Global Center. Ok… technicality… it’s “the world’s largest building by floor space”, the Boeing Factory is “the world’s largest building by volume”. But it was big.
We browsed a small portion of it, bought some things we didn’t need to buy, ate some foods we definitely needed to eat. Kaya toast — it’s coconutty cinnamony toast served with pats of butter. The Singaporeans got it figured out.
We returned to our Chengdu home, Wide Narrow Alley, for another round of Starbucks and coloring. We ate again at the Sichuan restaurant in which we had our first dinner. It was… good. For the most part. The duck was superb. The mapo tofu was delicious. The lettuce covered in peanut butter was just weird.
On our walk home, we again stopped by the Japanese department stores to further stoke Mary’s obsession with Muji. If you’ve never been to Muji, it’s rather difficult to explain. Basically, they take the simplest of items and make them look sleek and make you feel like you need them. It’s nigh impossible to resist the pull of the tiny plastic box.
Back to the hotel and back to sleep we went!
Stone Elephant Lake
Mary planned most of the trip, so she relegated the picking of today’s activities to me. I selected a park called Stone Elephant Lake. It was advertised as having some of the best flowers in the region. We took our three hundred and fifty-seventh bus of the week out to the gardens. The whole time, Mary and I spoke only Chinese. She’s much much better than I am, so it was great practice. For me, the hardest part about speaking Chinese is keeping my frustration meter low. Once I start to get frustrated, I speak less smoothly and become even more frustrated.
The flowers at Stone Elephant Lake were somewhat disappointing. We hit exactly between flower seasons, so everything was either dying or just blooming. The forest part was nice, though. We walked in circles trying to make our way to a temple, and then called screw-it and took a boat ride on the lake instead. The lake wasn’t round, it was more shaped like a cartoon virus. The boat traveled up and around the little islands dotting the center and dropped us off a kilometer down the way.
Worn out and hungry, we took bus number three hundred and fifty-eight back to the hotel. For our last meal in Chengdu, we ate dan dan noodles, spicy wontons, and a beef pancake. Spicy perfection. And what night can’t be made better by The Muppets and an 8:30pm lights out?
Chengdu → Hangzhou
That 8:30pm lights out I mentioned? Yeah, it was because of the 4:00am alarm we had to set. We shuffled out of bed, groggily checked out, and fell into the taxi eagerly awaiting a customer outside of our hotel. With plenty of time to spare, we met up with Monica, Paul, Nelli, and Vici at the airport. We found our gate, swapped stories, and waited to board.
Then… take off. Land somewhere not in Hangzhou. Stay on plane while a few passengers get off. Start taxiing for second take off. Mechanical failure. Wait. Take off. Land in Hangzhou. Get on bus to go downtown. Get on another bus to get back to the university. Walk through the rain. Arrive at the dorm. Total time traveling: 11 hours.
It was a phenomenal trip. It’s good to be back to the simple life, studying characters and eating cafeteria food.
I’ve only got two months lefts in China. Wow.
Much love.
