On the morning of Sue's birthday, we were treated to a traditional Chinese breakfas buffet, which included: roasted peanuts, finely sliced pickled peppers, cabbage and chillies, giant fluffy rice dumplings, an odd tasting sponge cake (no candles!) and buck wheat tea (an acquired taste). To most people, rising at 7.00 to eat such fare might not be the ideal start to their birthday, but strangely we both really enjoyed it.
The reason for the early start was that we had a long day ahead of us. Our first stop of the day were the nearby Baoding Shan Caves, a UNESCO heritage site that dates back to the 9th century Tang Dynasty. We were enchanted from the first moment and even though the weather had turned grey and grizzly, this just added to the atmosphere. The early start also helped, because we pretty much had the place to ourselves, before any megaphone wielding tour groups arrived.
The complex started at the 'Treasured Summit' and we slowly descended through rain-forest, until the granite rock sharply dropped away into sheer cliff faces. The path then levelled and curved around to reveal a series of wonderful carvings under the overhangs of the cliffs. The largest was a 31 metre long, 5 metre high reclining Buddha, but there were numerous other Buddhas that towered several metres above us. What was most impressive, bearing in mind their antiquity, was how intricate and well preserved they were and several even had their original paint intact.
The site descended a couple of hundred metres to a valley floor which was cleaved by a clear stream, which we crossed on stone bridges: first looking down from high above, then close enough to feel its spray as it crashed over large boulders. In between, we came across several enchanting temples and pagodas, hidden away. We could easily have spent the day wandering around this site, with numerous peaceful places to stop. We were both taken by the contrast of the contemplative stillness of this place, with today's freneticism and information overload. Where is the time and space in modern life to simply sit and make sense of ourselves and our situations?
Buddhas carved from the rock at Baoding Shan Cave
The Baodang Shan site steps down to the valley floor
All too soon, we were leaving Baodang Shan, for the 6 hour drive to Chegdu, though we did have a date with some pandas coming up to keep us interested (more on that later). We drove through a mix of mountains, farmland and industry, passing the large industrial city of Chongqing, with its huge factory chimneys belching out smoke and chemicals over the Yangtse valley.
Chengdu is another big city with around 4 million people, but is much cleaner than Chongqing. It also feels quite lively and everyone was looking forward to going out in the evening - there were two birthdays to celebrate, as our Belgian accountant was turning 36. Sadly Sue was exhausted by the past few days and rapidly coming down with a migraine as we arrived and she was the only person not able to come out. I went along for the birthday meal, but felt quite sad when a big birthday cake arrived after dinner, with 'Happy Birthday Kevin and Sue' piped onto it. The cake quickly disintegrated, but I managed to smuggle a couple of chocolate roses back for Sue.
Sue was a little better the next day, which was a free day, but as we were staying in quite a nice room, we seized the opportunity of a lie in to recuperate. Our main activity of the day was to walk for a couple of miles through the city centre to a huge new Carrefour supermarket. Walking through the streets is always the best way to get to see a place and we quite liked Chengdu, despite the usual noise of Chinese streets and the constant peril of being run over. Green lights on pedestrian crossings only seems to be a guide: traffic can, and will, still come at you from all angles and one just has to start crossing the moment there is a gap in the first lane and then dodge between cars, lories, buses etc, playing a kind of game of chicken.
The Carrefour supermarket was quite an experience when we got there. Most Chinese supermarkets focus almost exclusively on dried goods, with fresh fruit and meat difficult to come across. Carrefour seem to have come up with a good formula, mixing a standard supermarket with a farmers market. In the fresh goods area, we found large aerified tanks filled with a variety of live fish, which you could chose and have killed and gutted for you on the spot. We also found live crabs and frogs on display: we watched carefully in case one of them hoped into our basket! There was also an amazing variety of fresh fruit and vegetables: we counted more than 20 types of mushrooms for example. Sue, in particular walked wide eyed around the place, which was jammed full of people.
On the way back, we passed a junior school. It was a Friday afternoon and as a treat, the whole school seemed to have been brought out into the playground to watch a clown / magic show. We stopped to watch and, though we had no idea what was going on, it was hugely entertaining just to watch as the children jumped up and down with excitement, laughing, cheering and shouting when prompted. It seems that the future Chinese generation isn't going to be any quieter than the current one!
In the evening, we headed out to an area of traditional hutongs close to our hotel. This was a maze of narrow paths and alleyways, criss-crossing streams and a small lake, with covered stone bridges where courting couples sat, clandestinely holding hands. Dark was falling as we arived and the lanes were lit up by tunnels of glowing red lanterns. The air was filled by the hubbub of the locals out for their Friday evenings, the sounds of music from bars, restaurants and a nearby Buddhist temple and the smells of roasting meats. The whole effect was quite intoxicating and we just walked for a while taking it all in.
Eventually we stopped in a small restaurant that was full of Chinese people. With no means of communicating, we picked 2 random dishes with no idea what would come our way. One was a big bowl of noodles filled with a greasy red oil, chillies and some bones of indeterminate animal origin and was pretty much inedible, the second a plate of stir fried vegetables with rice which kept us going. In any case, it didn't really matter, because we had a prime window seat looking down over the street below.
We will finish this post on the streets of Chengdu. The next day was another big day, taking in the nearby panda sanctuary, the world's largest Buddha and ending in one of China's holiest mountains at Emei Shan. We will let you know how we got on with that in our next post!
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