End of Chengdu (another catchup)
So think back to the 25th July... What were you doing? That's a rhetorical question, unless it was more interesting than a trip to Wuhou Ci and a very spicy hotpot then I'm not that interested. :)
Wuhou Ci is a temple complex dedicated to some of the heroes of the three kingdoms era of Chinese history, most specifically Zhuge Liang. In about 200AD or so the Han empire went a bit downhill and three kingdoms sprang up to replace it, the Wu, Wei and Shu. This period was made famous by a book written several hundred years ago (I think) called the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and has entered more popular culture in recent years through the dynasty warriors series of computer games. Its certainly how I came across it first.
The temple complex itself was quite big and impressive with a couple of temples, random statues of various important ministers (not so much statues in the stone way but more like 150 year old Madame Tussauds style. They didn't look realistic as such but they were going for the real hair look and so on. Frankly looked very scary more than anything... :)
There was a lot of tourists there and this meant lots of touristy stuff as well which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. In this case it meant pretty dressed up people paying music and trying to sell you the chance to have your picture taken in costume. people in costume are always cool though. There was also a museum type thing that was unfortunately all in Chinese so though fun to look at but not very meaningful.
The last thing of particular note was the burial mound of Liu Bei, one of the emperor's of the Shu Kingdom. There wasn't really much to see because it is a big mound basically with not even an entrance. There was a wall around it and a nice little entryway with animal statues. One animal was apparently a mythical animal made up of parts of several others that represents justice or something like that. I must look it up at some point to find out what it is...
After the temple area closed I wandered around the neighbouring park area a bit before heading back to the hostel. I'd been there about 20 minutes, feeling quite dead but sitting doing email and stuff when Kath, Em and David came in one by one saying "You coming to dinner later?". My response to the first of them was "Dinner? What dinner?" whereby it was explained that people were going to go out for a hot pot. The second time I was asked my response was "I think I'm going to hang out here and catch up on the internet". The third time I was asked they used the whole "its our last night here" line on me so I went along.
We met up with Jonathan, Vanessa and Norah and wandered off to a hot pot. I think I've described the whole hot pot thing before and this was much the same. I was a bit worried when I first got in that just the air was spicy and I could feel a slightly spicy tickle at the back of my throat before even sitting down. It wasn't too bad though except that I think I got some food poisoning, probably from something unidentifiable not being properly cooked...
It was a good evening ending with watching some random friends from the DVDs that Em had bought (totally legit, of course) before heading to bed.
In the morning I woke up long enough to say goodbye to Em and Kath who were leaving early for Tibet but was already feeling too rough to get out of bed (and thought if i was ill hugging them goodbye and potentially giving them illnesses would be bad).
The day was spent largely just sitting around feeling sorry for myself. On the other hand it was pissing itself down outside so I wasn't too upset about not being out in the rain. I should have spent the time writing up these sorts of LJ posts to be less far behind but didn't really feel up for it.
Next day though I was feeling much better and so was able to head to Leshan to see the giant Buddha that has already been mentioned. It was a nice coach ride down there which had complimentary water, a TV with Iron Man on it (for a bit until whoever was in charge of it decided to turn it over). Once I got to Leshan I changed to a local bus as I had been told to to get to the Buddha And it all went smoothly. I wandered around a bit and saw various bits and bobs including a giant pagoda and I think the "dragon pools" or something like that. When I got to the Buddha it was up by his head and I was already impressed by the scale of the thing. It had been carved out of the cliff face many hundreds of years ago and is a pretty impressive piece of work considering how inaccessible it was...
There was a massive queue on the steps down to the feet so I spent a while on the slightly scary cliffside path but if I hadn't i might have missed some things like the small Buddhas carved into alcoves in the wall next to the path...
At the bottom I got a random stranger to take a photo of me at the feet of the Buddha and then made my way slowly up again. At the top I got a drink (Frozen coke - I was briefly worried but it freezes ok and doesn't separate or anything nasty like that) and chilled for a bit. I think I bumped into a school group. Hard to be sure but it seemed to be a bunch of teenage girls with a few adult supervisors so I assume that is what it was. They were messing about in a waterfall while I rested and refreshed and then one of them was brave enough to ask if they could have their photo taken with me (with the help of another kid I'd spoken to a bit earlier who had pretty good English). When it turned out I was willing this opened the floodgates and a five minute photo shoot occurred as all the girls wanted photos. Luckily it was mainly group photos or I'd have been there all day. The person I am crediting as their teacher was also pretty cool and got in on the photos much to everybody's delight.
I finished looking around and at one point discovered that having computer game boss fight music (The overclocked "Galvanized Bosses" final fantasy remix) could be quite evocative in the right setting. I think that might say that I play too many computer games though. The fact is though that a lot of the place that I am visiting do seem very different from what I am used to seeing in real life and much closer to things in computer games...
After Leshan as I came out I was offered a bus ride back to Chengdu for45 Yuan, the same as from the main bus station. I considered and thought I might as well get the bus from there instead. I waited a while and then got minibus which seemed to get to a toll gate and then stop. we waited a few minutes and then a tour bus came along and I got loaded on with a few other people. there was clearly some dodgy deal going on here but it got me home. It was probably less comfy than the proper bus but otherwise seemed to do the job.
That is until I got to Chengdu and got dropped off at a coach station...but not the one I expected... there are several it seems but I hadn't realised this so was dropped off miles from where I wanted to be, not even on the map. There were a fair few of what I now think of as "con" taxi drivers about but fortunately a real one came along and got me back to the hostel for about 20 yuan more than a taxi from the real bus station would have been. All in all it could have been worse but another reminder not to get the cheap side of road transport options...
Once home I organised my flights to Shanghai where I was headed to meet up with George and Hannah. It was a bit of faff because they wouldn't accept my non-Chinese credit card for flights in the next 24hours. Luckily the hostel sorted me out the next morning though. :)
Wuhou Ci is a temple complex dedicated to some of the heroes of the three kingdoms era of Chinese history, most specifically Zhuge Liang. In about 200AD or so the Han empire went a bit downhill and three kingdoms sprang up to replace it, the Wu, Wei and Shu. This period was made famous by a book written several hundred years ago (I think) called the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and has entered more popular culture in recent years through the dynasty warriors series of computer games. Its certainly how I came across it first.
The temple complex itself was quite big and impressive with a couple of temples, random statues of various important ministers (not so much statues in the stone way but more like 150 year old Madame Tussauds style. They didn't look realistic as such but they were going for the real hair look and so on. Frankly looked very scary more than anything... :)
There was a lot of tourists there and this meant lots of touristy stuff as well which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. In this case it meant pretty dressed up people paying music and trying to sell you the chance to have your picture taken in costume. people in costume are always cool though. There was also a museum type thing that was unfortunately all in Chinese so though fun to look at but not very meaningful.
The last thing of particular note was the burial mound of Liu Bei, one of the emperor's of the Shu Kingdom. There wasn't really much to see because it is a big mound basically with not even an entrance. There was a wall around it and a nice little entryway with animal statues. One animal was apparently a mythical animal made up of parts of several others that represents justice or something like that. I must look it up at some point to find out what it is...
After the temple area closed I wandered around the neighbouring park area a bit before heading back to the hostel. I'd been there about 20 minutes, feeling quite dead but sitting doing email and stuff when Kath, Em and David came in one by one saying "You coming to dinner later?". My response to the first of them was "Dinner? What dinner?" whereby it was explained that people were going to go out for a hot pot. The second time I was asked my response was "I think I'm going to hang out here and catch up on the internet". The third time I was asked they used the whole "its our last night here" line on me so I went along.
We met up with Jonathan, Vanessa and Norah and wandered off to a hot pot. I think I've described the whole hot pot thing before and this was much the same. I was a bit worried when I first got in that just the air was spicy and I could feel a slightly spicy tickle at the back of my throat before even sitting down. It wasn't too bad though except that I think I got some food poisoning, probably from something unidentifiable not being properly cooked...
It was a good evening ending with watching some random friends from the DVDs that Em had bought (totally legit, of course) before heading to bed.
In the morning I woke up long enough to say goodbye to Em and Kath who were leaving early for Tibet but was already feeling too rough to get out of bed (and thought if i was ill hugging them goodbye and potentially giving them illnesses would be bad).
The day was spent largely just sitting around feeling sorry for myself. On the other hand it was pissing itself down outside so I wasn't too upset about not being out in the rain. I should have spent the time writing up these sorts of LJ posts to be less far behind but didn't really feel up for it.
Next day though I was feeling much better and so was able to head to Leshan to see the giant Buddha that has already been mentioned. It was a nice coach ride down there which had complimentary water, a TV with Iron Man on it (for a bit until whoever was in charge of it decided to turn it over). Once I got to Leshan I changed to a local bus as I had been told to to get to the Buddha And it all went smoothly. I wandered around a bit and saw various bits and bobs including a giant pagoda and I think the "dragon pools" or something like that. When I got to the Buddha it was up by his head and I was already impressed by the scale of the thing. It had been carved out of the cliff face many hundreds of years ago and is a pretty impressive piece of work considering how inaccessible it was...
There was a massive queue on the steps down to the feet so I spent a while on the slightly scary cliffside path but if I hadn't i might have missed some things like the small Buddhas carved into alcoves in the wall next to the path...
At the bottom I got a random stranger to take a photo of me at the feet of the Buddha and then made my way slowly up again. At the top I got a drink (Frozen coke - I was briefly worried but it freezes ok and doesn't separate or anything nasty like that) and chilled for a bit. I think I bumped into a school group. Hard to be sure but it seemed to be a bunch of teenage girls with a few adult supervisors so I assume that is what it was. They were messing about in a waterfall while I rested and refreshed and then one of them was brave enough to ask if they could have their photo taken with me (with the help of another kid I'd spoken to a bit earlier who had pretty good English). When it turned out I was willing this opened the floodgates and a five minute photo shoot occurred as all the girls wanted photos. Luckily it was mainly group photos or I'd have been there all day. The person I am crediting as their teacher was also pretty cool and got in on the photos much to everybody's delight.
I finished looking around and at one point discovered that having computer game boss fight music (The overclocked "Galvanized Bosses" final fantasy remix) could be quite evocative in the right setting. I think that might say that I play too many computer games though. The fact is though that a lot of the place that I am visiting do seem very different from what I am used to seeing in real life and much closer to things in computer games...
After Leshan as I came out I was offered a bus ride back to Chengdu for45 Yuan, the same as from the main bus station. I considered and thought I might as well get the bus from there instead. I waited a while and then got minibus which seemed to get to a toll gate and then stop. we waited a few minutes and then a tour bus came along and I got loaded on with a few other people. there was clearly some dodgy deal going on here but it got me home. It was probably less comfy than the proper bus but otherwise seemed to do the job.
That is until I got to Chengdu and got dropped off at a coach station...but not the one I expected... there are several it seems but I hadn't realised this so was dropped off miles from where I wanted to be, not even on the map. There were a fair few of what I now think of as "con" taxi drivers about but fortunately a real one came along and got me back to the hostel for about 20 yuan more than a taxi from the real bus station would have been. All in all it could have been worse but another reminder not to get the cheap side of road transport options...
Once home I organised my flights to Shanghai where I was headed to meet up with George and Hannah. It was a bit of faff because they wouldn't accept my non-Chinese credit card for flights in the next 24hours. Luckily the hostel sorted me out the next morning though. :)