Back Roads of Sichuan
The View through a "Ferenji's" Eyes
We'd done it. We'd explored the horse treks of Songpan.
We'd climbed by bus to the highest peaks of Huanglong, swallowing nervously over narrow dirt switchback roads and eyeing precipitous drop offs and crumbling outside ledges as our bus driver honked happily rounding the bends.
We'd munched on Tibetan tortilla pancakes in the heart of the tiny village, watching chunks of Mongolian hotpot sizzle on the open fires-but not daring to try the dangerous street cooking.
And we'd taken the "Old Road" back to Chengdu because a landslide had closed the "new" main road." That was a trip and a half in itself.
Marooned by a landslide at the top of a dirt pass in the mountains, we waited patiently in the hot noonday sun for a ton of gravel, a tractor, and men with shovels, pickaxes and wheelbarrows to come up the mountain to fix the landslide by hand! No problem. We were used to scenes like that! We were the "ferenjis," the "foreign devils," but we were taking it all in stride. Along the way, Nancy and I often repeated our mantra. "We can do this," we said at each unexpected obstacle.
Hours later, once again on our way, we peer out the bus window at an endless parade of tiny villages, with old people and babies sitting on stools in all-the-same stall fronts, children perched on rocks in isolated spots along the high road, old ladies hauling baskets full of green cuttings up the dusty road, young women with shovels or sticks tied with heavy rocks at one end, slamming into the rocks by hand to break them up for a road bed, working alongside the hard hat road construction crews.
Straining our necks to look high up on the mountain peaks, we marvel over patches of neat little terraces carved out of the rock, land where nothing is left uncultivated. Healthy corn and apple trees and cabbage and other green squares of unfamiliar plantings stagger up to the highest peaks like step stair giant checker boards.
As we bounce along, hanging on to the bus hand holds to stay in my seat, I peer with unending interest into the hidden courtyards behind the ancient stone walls to see sights that go back 500 years in Chinese history. The sometimes tattered clothes hung on stone walls to dry, the chickens pecking in the dirt, the bare bottom children squatting in the dust-and the ubiquitous white satellite dishes perched on the roofs of huts everywhere-- even in the highest mountains of China they have TV. What a contrast of ancient and modern culture we see on this fascinating trip!
Back in Chengdu, we returned to the familiar hotel lobby of our previous stay---the Kaqiusha Big Hotel. Would you believe, we stayed in an all Russian hotel with a Russian-style roof a la the buildings of Moscow's great Kremlin square in this Chinese city of ten million? How come?
We learned that the Russians built many buildings in Chengdu, and this is hotel is a prime example of their architecture and building codes. Though comparatively new, the hotel is already dreary and broken down though the entire staff is dressed in traditional shining gold and red Russian garb and fur hats and we eat a Russian dinner in the dining room. But we are flabbergasted when we find a World War I GASMASK in the dresser drawer of our room.
We had already marveled over the bizarre experience we had had during our previous stay at the same hotel---there we had paid the Chinese representative of CITS who had picked us up in the airport the first time around. He was no more than 20, we figured, with the usual lack of English. But he brought us safely to the hotel. We said we'd pay him for our entire tour in the lobby---remember, way back in Zibo we had with great anguish and agony taxied to the Bank of China to get Chinese yuan advances from our credit cards because they would only take cash.
But he gestured, "no" in the lobby and led us up to our isolated room.
There hidden in the dark recesses of this obscure Russian hotel room in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, he asked for our cash payment. We asked for our itinerary-up to now we had none! He hauled out a tiny single piece of translucent green paper-almost all indecipherable since it was written in Chinese, though we could recognize a few English words. This would be our itinerary for the next nine days, and we could hardly decipher it.
Nancy and I looked at each other, rather uncertain about what to do. He wanted the money. We didn't know precisely what our future route would be and he couldn't tell us. We had to take it on faith. We shrugged helplessly. OK, we agreed. We handed over 3800 yuan apiece (equivalent to $450 each for the entire nine day journey we had half finished by now.) Shei shei, he said and left. (Thank you in Chinese, with probable misspelling.)
We said to each other, "How do we know who he is? How do we know this itinerary is legitimate?" We didn't. Once more, we had to take it on faith!
But at least the hardest part was over. We had lived through the incredibly arduous but fascinating journey into the mountains aboard a third-class Chinese bus tour. Now it was time for luxury! We couldn't wait! We were going to sail down the famed Yangtze River in style, dining on Western food, having access at last to clean Western-style bathrooms. It would be heaven!
[Go to China Part Five]
