We get to the hotel in Chengdu after meeting up with Cait. My cousin has spent the last year living in China, teaching English to private school students. She has brought her whole life with her in several bags because after our trip she plans to go to Beijing and live and work there. Since she arrived an hour ahead of us, she has spent her whole time fighting off the taxi drivers and them trying to take her luggage, "Taxee, you want taxee??"
Our luggage somehow seems to fit in this small taxi -- mind you Karen and I each have a large suitcase and a carry-on. Cait has two large suitcases, and several small bags. She found out at the airport in Shenzhen that she was 32 kilograms over the limit originally which would have been 700 yuan to fly with ($100 US) and for the last year has been making a Chinese salary -- so she threw away loads of stuff at the airport to get down to 19 kilograms over. Three of the guards/drivers from her school were kind enough to help her start pitching stuff, including her extra underwear and they seemed, she said, surprisingly nonchalant at taking from her, even though she was a little embarrassed at handing it to them.
The Wanda hotel (a Sofitel hotel -- a French chain) is amazing and beautiful and only $100 US a night -- and we have two separate rooms -- Gram in one, Cait and I in another. The bathrooms are beautiful and deluxe according to Chinese standards, and Cait says to have a bathtub (which we do) is really a luxury. The shower actually looks out into the room but our stall is frosted. In Gram's king room hers is not -- and we all have a good laugh, teasing her that she can watch TV while she is in the shower. (Set to the 70s porn music soundtrack...)
Cait decides to go down to the lobby to ask about the panda center we are going to tomorrow and if there are any good shopping places nearby. She's looking for cheap and knock-offs and because her Chinese is excellent -- the woman is taken aback by her demands to know where this place is. She keeps trying to defer her to this place that is more expensive and refuses to tell her where the cheap market is.
The next day we all go down to the Western restaurant and have breakfast. We are more than a little punchy and as I leave to get some more food -- I can hear this uncontrollable laughter from the other side of the room. It's Cait and Gram and by the time I get back to the table, they are now crying from laughing.
They had been talking about how the Chinese will sell you anything and if they don?t have what you want, they will find it or try to sell you something else. And all the street vendors and shop owners will add "ee" to everything "Missee, missee, you buy Coachee, ok? "You buy massagee, ok?" And Cait didn't realize I was getting an omelet, but misunderstood Gram and thought she said I was buying a wallet. Well she starts laughing, thinking because as she has discovered in her trips around China that you can buy anything anywhere, that the omelet guy was multitasking and selling me a wallet along with my eggs.
So we continue our breakfast and catch up on our plans for the next couple weeks. Conversation drifts to our upcoming train trip to Tibet and since this is a new experience for all of us, we wonder about the bathroom/shower situation, the food car, if there are power outlets, etc. We had bought all four beds in our room and I tell Cait there will be an extra bunk we can store our stuff -- and she thinks I've said there is going to be an extra monk in the room. More laughter ensues as we all can picture this little monk bunking with all of us girls and our luggage in this tiny room.
After breakfast we go to repack -- and help Cait condense her luggage a little. Our itinerary for the day is going to the Giant Panda Research Center (which is about a 30-minute ride away.) We need a taxi and after much negotiating, we get the driver to take us, wait for us and bring us back all for 300 yuan (it is about 7.8 yuan per dollar right now) -- so for a 3-hour trip with the three of us -- it is downright cheap.
Cait rides upfront with the driver and converses with him, translating some things for us about the area. I'm practically hanging out the window taking pictures, amazed at all the sights, sounds, smells and colors that are flying by me. I love to travel and trips like these that are so different from my every day norm get me excited in a way about life that is so very hard to explain. I'm catching a lot on film as we move, and bob, and weave through traffic and it really is a saving grace that I'm not paying attention to our driver because Gram is -- and she says it is enough to give you a heart attack. There are no rules to driving in China -- bikes, scooters, rickshaws, cars, trucks all share the road and passing and weaving and coming head on with other vehicles is the norm -- cutting off people is their way of life and I'm glad I am so absorbed in watching the street life from my passenger side of the road.
The panda center is really beautiful with all of the lush bamboo and flora fauna. The paths are pretty clearly marked in Chinese and broken English and Cait serves as a tour guide to practice for her later summer adventure as one.
We get to see giant pandas at all stages of their life -- cubs, toddlers, teenagers and adults -- as well as these red pandas. The red panda looks cross between a cat, raccoon and bear -- it walks like a bear, has a long cat-like tail and a face like a raccoon. They are funny to watch and not really too keen on people as they decide to hide in the grassy areas or in the lower drainage area to get away from all of us gawkers.
Most of the giant pandas are napping as it is the middle of the afternoon and getting warmer. Many are in the trees or reclining on makeshift lumber gym sets they have built for them. We get to an area of teenage pandas and they are lounging around, with one guy deciding to be a little more active, playing with a rope, kind of having fun with climbing on the gymset. At this area, there seemed to be more people gathered and a somehow we have aligned ourselves with a large tour group so getting pictures of the panda is pretty popular.
Gram and I are standing next to each other and along comes this extremely overweight, heavy-set man who just as he gets to the viewpoint of this active panda, the panda turns around out of most of our camera viewfinders’ sight. He mutters menacingly (in a very American voice), “you better get up there after I walked all the way to see you!” Gram and I both turn to each other in disbelief. “Talk about your ugly American,” we both say. This guy just summed up why so much of the rest of the world has such a dim view of our country and its people. Fortunately most of the people couldn’t understand him, but she and I could and it made both of us cringe. Here we are halfway around the world, seeing an animal that is revered as China’s national treasure and all this man can say is something like that. Both Karen and I could only comment on the fact that he needed to walk more hills and it wouldn’t have killed him to make that trip up that particular hill.
We continue around the park, running into mostly people of Asian descent who have no clue that one of us in our group speaks fluent Mandarin and is eves-dropping on their conversations. Most people ask each other amongst themselves, where we are from, she’s so white, etc. But the best line overheard by Cait at the park was a conversation by this young woman and her boyfriend… “Why is it that every time I get here to take a picture of him, he turns his ass to me and I have no good shot. I don’t want any more ass shots.”
And sure enough that same couple is with us at the next panda enclosure and after our group gets its pictures, they follow behind us to get into position to take their own. But that bear is no more cooperative than the previous one and starts to turn around on them, and you can see from the expression on that woman’s face and the tone of her voice that she has had enough of the bears today. Cait, Karen and I crack up watching the interaction before us -- knowing what we know about the young woman’s previous comments.
We meet up with the taxi driver after haggling at the off-site panda souvenir stands (I score a couple magnets and fans with pandas) and we head back to town. The driver says he can take us to a “lady’s market” where there is knockoffs galore.
The market is definitely a sight to behold. Women are everywhere, haggling and browsing and trying on shoes, purses, jewelry, clothes. It’s like a really dirty mall with shops stacked up one on top of each other. Most of the shoes are too small for me as I have a large foot by Chinese standards (I wear a European 39, a women’s 8) and most shoes only go up to 38 and they are a small 38. The purses are cute but I really don’t see anything that catches my eye and the clothes are out of the question for me as most would accommodate maybe one of my breasts and oh, about one thigh.
We realize that we all have to use the bathroom and it is an experience that I have been told will be repeated throughout the rest of China. It is all squatters and the smell of urine is so overwhelming mixed with the smell of smoke -- it is all enough to make you gag. And trying to juggle a shoulder bag, pants with a belt and capris that you do not want to touch the ground -- it is all a lesson in coordination on how NOT to pee on yourself.
Also come to find out that taking pictures of certain things is highly frowned upon. After we had already taken many pictures of the interior lobbies of the Wanda hotel, a worker came up to us and told us not to. And I was yelled at by a woman selling street food, when I got too close to her and her cart. I have no clue what she was yelling AT me, but I got the gist of it.
After the clothing venture, we are trying to find some snacks and alcohol (Jack Daniels for Gram) for the train trip. We find the snacks (and honestly I could have just wandered around that store for days checking out the different packaging and things they have for sale. The colors, smells, people all had me on sensory overload.) But no luck with booze as most of that is imported and hard to find. Cait warns us about the Chinese liquor as it is mostly 70 proof and equivalent to moonshine.
We catch two rickshaws back to the hotel, which in itself was an adventure. Try traveling with just a bicycle and wooden box between you and a ton of steel and many prayers are said to just get to where you are going in one piece. Both drivers decide to cross a major intersection as oncoming traffic is speeding toward us. All I could think was, “Oh God, please get us to the other side.” There are many brakes locking, some near misses and three slightly frazzled woman riders. And to top it off, the rickshaw guys decide on many of the bicycle/scooter lane paths to go against the flow of traffic so for the rest of the ride there is much honking, yelling and some bumpy curb hopping. All of this was done for 20 yaun -- maybe next time we will take a taxi -- but even then there are no guarantees that you will make it where you are going in one piece.
Dinner at the hotel’s Chinese restaurant follows -- Cait doing the ordering, and explaining to the servers that we need to hurry this along as we have less than an hour to be somewhere. Fried rice, a green leafy vegetable, some grilled Sichuan eggplant (which come to find out after I have scarfed it down and raved about the taste of it -- has pork in the dish -- whoops!) and some garlic-loaded small shrimp. When I say garlic, I mean a whole minced clove on each these 40 shrimp that after a couple of bites, Karen says she’s done with. I love it, but our time is limited and the peels are still on so I suck a few out of their shells, pay the bill and we go down to meet our tour guide who will take us to the train and has our Tibet permits.
Cait and I come down to meet Gram and find a very pissed Gram and a tour guide named Sky on the phone, looking very upset. Come to find out that Sky does not have the Tibet entry permits as promised by many people over the past few days and Gram is clearly angry at her. Cait overhears the conversation between Sky and her boss, with Sky telling him in Chinese, “Women is VERRY angry with me.” Gram’s retort when Cait relays what is being said, “Ya think??!!”
A short taxi ride over to the station and we are dropped off at this very crowded train station. People are everywhere outside and navigating with all of our luggage turns out to be an interesting situation of weaving and stepping and people moving slightly so we don’t run them over with our heavy luggage. We get into the waiting area and there are people crowded everywhere, sitting on floors, in aisles, etc.
We ask Sky who we can give money to to get ahead of all of this madness, and she starts inquiring around -- getting a skycap guy to do all of our luggage and move us to the head of the line, all for 20 yuan. Score one for Sky as our opinion of her was already in the negative. We climb onto this large, oversized golf cart and the little guy who had to toss the luggage up on the platform is not to happy. “God…” he mutters in Chinese as he manages to get Cait’s large one on the truck. We all climb in after much charades of getting us space to sit on the vehicle since all of our luggage is taking up so much of it.
The luggage guy starts talking to me in Chinese, gesturing for me to give him the 4 receipts we received when we agreed to this little operation. Since I only have learned in the last two days from Cait how to say hello, thank you, grandma, let’s go… I give him this blank stare as he wildly gestures for me to GIVE HIM those tickets. And when Cait happens to realize what is going on, she tells me to give him the tickets, he responds, “S’ank you” in this almost deep kind of voice. You had to be there but by then Cait and I are laughing and giggling, the skycap guy is laughing, imitating us and poor Sky is confused as to what we are laughing about and asks me. “Just this whole experience,” I try to tell her. “You have to laugh sometimes.” Frankly, I think she thought we were all a little crazy…. And we probably were by then.
Boarding the train became a kind of knockdown drag-out adventure as no one from the train was going to help us and it was up to the four of us to get all of this luggage up the steps of the platforms by a method of pulling, pushing, sweating and grunting. We make it to our room and by some miracle get all of the luggage into this verrry tiny room. And we are all grateful we decided to buy the extra bunk in the room cause frankly there would be no room for all of our stuff and another person.
Once settled we make a trip to the dining car and it is jammed with all the Chinese workers, having beers and well we all stand out like a sore thumb. Some waters and tea are bought and after some talk and getting ready for bed… (there are no showers but a row of sinks and a western toilet along with a “squatter”) we turn in for the night. But my bladder disagrees a few hours later and navigating from the top bunk to the floor is a challenge at not falling flat on my face, or landing on Cait who is in the lower bunk.
Chinese people get up earrrrly… and my whole body clock is off so I wake up needing to use the restroom but have no clue as to what time it is. Surprisingly we went to bed around 11 and now it is 8 a.m. and as Cait puts it way too frickin’ early by Western standards. We miss breakfast by the time we get to the dining car but some snacks of fruit, dried fruit, and cookies seem to tide us over until lunch. Gram and I stake out a table and sit and watch the scenery as Cait decided to go back to the room and nap. Scenery and people watching passes the time as do some quick text messages back home as it is still a decent hour in Dallas.
Lunch is a cool experience as the menu is all in Chinese and Cait translates for us, finding homestyle cooking of potatoes, this egg and tomato dish, a green leafy dish, some beef and peppers and a pork and shoots dish. This table of four British people asks Cait to translate the menu for her. Chaos by then has ensued in the car as people are jossling for tables and waiting in line for spots to open. There is an interesting moment while we are waiting for the guy to take our order as I can see out of the corner of my eye there is an older Chinese guy blatantly staring at my chest and I have caught him. (We girls kid around that most of the men over here are probably taken aback as they are used to something of a smaller portion size.)
The afternoon has been spent watching the scenery of the towns we go by, some more industrial than others. We spend the afternoon watching out the window, typing, talking and catching up on our lives these past couple years and reading as well as napping. I have been up and pretty wide awake since 8 -- never really resting so I know I will be sleepy tonight. We keep the door to our room closed most of the afternoon also as Cait puts it “to get away from all the prying Chinese eyes,” because as we have learned in the last 24 hours people have a tendency to stop and stare at the three women traveling together. One young woman even goes as far as to stop and stare at us in our room while on her cell phone.
A few stops along the route give us a chance to walk outside and I take pictures from the hallway, watching the activity outside the train. One young station guard is fascinated by me, waving and saying hi and smiling. And he does a double take as Cait come out of the room, realizing he has been “caught” checking her out.
We can hear the activity outside our room as people walk by, the young couple with a somewhat hyper 4-year-old have her running around the hallway. The lady with the lunch/dinner cart comes by with food and we all laugh as the voice she uses is one that sounds so monotone as if she can’t liver her life anymore. It is this Eyeore-like voice that sounds as if the world is ending, she’s so bored, somebody just ends this trip all ready, why am I always going up and down this hall.
The scenery has started to change from the small cities with their plateaued hills and small caves carved out of the mountains to more rolling green hills and plains of scrub grasses. As we sit in the dining car, we pass a few large lakes and then the scenery becomes more arrid and dry, flat. Then it is back to lush green farming land, flat and full of sheep and those Brahman cows along with the keepers and their yurts.
At dinner, Cait becomes a celebrity with people taking pictures of her on their cell phones. Ordering our dinner becomes a three-ring circus as the guy keeps putting her off and Cait starts talking forcefully in Chinese to him and the eye rolls from her are all classic as they keep changing their story as to who will take our order.
Later at night, when we are all reading and trying to go to sleep, the young Chinese woman comes around handing out oxygen tubes. Cait takes hers, “What do we do with it?” I respond, “Put it up your nose.” Laughter ensues as we realize we will look like freaks of nature as we get up to the plateau. We plug them in and they haven’t turned on the system. We fall asleep to the lull of the train.
A few hours into sleep, I wake up to Gram having problems with her oxygen tube and this weird hissing sound. I turn on the light and find out her tube keeps coming out of the wall socket. We both are on the top bunks so I’m trying to jump from her bunk to mine and not fall -- all sans eyeglasses and I can’t see a thing. After fiddling with it for awhile, Cait is up and goes to find someone who works on the train to help us. The little Asian girl is all business as she takes off her shoe, steps on Cait’s bed to reach Gram’s wall tube and manages to plug it in. “No problem,” she tells us in Chinese and leaves. The hissing sound though is really loud and we discover that if you put the tubes under the pillows, it muffles the sound. We all fall back asleep until the morning.
Morning comes too soon and we are all up around 8 again. Oohs and ahhs are the morning sounds we make as we are into Tibet and the scenery has definitely changed. There are snow-covered mountains in the distance and the ground is all covered with snow. The conversation turns to what kind of clothes we packed and if it is adequate for the Tibet weather. Cait and Gram have a couple long-sleeve shirts and jeans and light jackets. Me: I have just long pants. “I’m screwed,” I retort as we talk about what we are going to wear. But the good news is that the weather we find out is pretty mild in the daytime (60-70s) but it is at night that it gets cold. Also an Aussie woman we have talked to tells us there is a large trekkers store in Lhasa and I get some stuff there. Oh goodie! Shopping for clothes I will rarely wear in Dallas unless we get some kind of cold snap.
We decide to go get some breakfast in the dining car and to check out what they would offer. By the time, we freshen up and get to the dining car it is almost 9 and breakfast is supposed to be served until 9:30. But again to our dismay, all the workers are eating. Cait inquires about getting us some food and Gram is insistent that all she wants is tea or coffee. Cait shows one of the workers how the hours posted say until 9:30, he says, “Oh. But the workers are already eating.” Then another worker comes along (the same one who kept giving her the runaround about where to order last night) tells her, “No, we can’t serve because we are on the plateau.” He kept insisting it was because of the high-altitude thing and they can’t cook now. Cait gets mad and insists they can serve us. “All we have is noodles and rice right now.” We leave and make do with the snacks we brought -- a creative breakfast of tea, granola, fresh fruit, dried fruit, dried peas and cookies.
We spend the morning trying to repack, read, I dissect a couple of necklaces that Cait brought so I can copy it at home (India glass, seed beads, jump rings and wire work -- easy peasy! and a floating pearl necklace). Also we keep taking hits of oxygen as all of us have slight headaches and it seems too help. But the tubes almost start to hurt your nose after awhile and mine starts to run like a little kid.
The oxygen tubes are popular with the workers as Cait stumbles upon them taking hits off the tube and passing it around as if it were nitrous-oxide party.
There is a moment when Gram thinks she is oxygen-deprived because she just spent the last 15 minutes trying to figure out why her American cell phone is not charging but than she realizes she took the battery pack -- d’oh!
Also the scenery changes again. The snow has given away to clear blue skies and glorious mountains and lakes with sheep and yak on the plains. Workers are out, watching over them or working on construction and we even see a motorcycle in the middle of nowhere used by one of the herders. We stand in the hallway and take as many scenery pictures as we can but it is really hard to capture the beauty of all that we see from the windows.
No comments:
Post a Comment