This is going to be rather a long post, since it covers a week. So last the Sunday before last, I left for Chengdu, a city in the south west of China that's pretty much as big as Beijing. A friend of mine from Sweden, Erik, has some family there, and we originally had the idea to go there together. In the end, we had a group of 11 people (!!), mainly Japanese and Koreans, and even in a group of big foreigners like us, I was still the only white guy. Haha. So I still got people asking to take photos with me on this trip. In the end, I actually ended up coming back to Beijing earlier than everyone else.
On Sunday evening, we took a plane from Beijing, it's a 30 hour trip by train so at least one way pretty much had to be on a plane. Unfortunately I decided to stay up late the night before, so I was already tired, a bad idea going into a week of travel. We didn't get to bed until late, then the next day had a very early start to go see the Pandas. As I expected, they were cute, cuddly and lazy. I swear people could have thrown stuff at them and they wouldn't have minded and just kept eating. Of course, the girls thought they was awesome. For me, it was more of a case of being impressed by the fact that I still got to witness these near-extinct creatures. Then on our way back we visited some nice temples, but I realised that I've already seen the best temples of pretty much anywhere in China on my last trip, so perhaps they were less impressive to me than the others. This trip taught me that I think I've just about travelled enough in China for impressive sights, anything else I do will be for relaxation. The fact that I was hot and tired was not helping, unfortunately. Getting anywhere was a pain: one of the three taxis got lost and didn't get to the first temple until nearly half an hour later than everyone else. In the end, it was a decent day, and I managed to get to bed a bit earlier than than the others, but the next two days were very tiring: DaFo, and Emeishan, one of China's top 5 holiest mountains.
Next stop: DaFo (literally: Big Buddha), and that he is: big. 70 metres tall, his toe is nearly taller than me. My big plan was to see the big guy in the morning and head to Emeishan in the afternoon, in time to stay in a monestary, then to climb up very early in the morning to see the sunrise from the peak. There were a couple of problems with this plan that stopped it from working: having a big group, having a big group mostly comprised of girls, and the huge, huge, huge crowds. I clearly underestimated this aspect, which I really should have seen coming, this was during one of China's largest national holidays. Photo ops were still great, if you look closely you can see people (smudges of colour) by DaFo's head on the top left, that might give you some perspective. Finally, we managed to leave, but by the time we got to Emeishan it was pretty much dark, and since the girls had decided to follow us rather than going back to Chengdu like they originally planned, we decided to stay at the foot of the mountain, and get a bus up the next day.
Big mistake: other people had the same idea. There were literally thousands of people trying to get up. First, we had to catch a bus from the hotel to get to the mountain's bus station, that was the biggest crowd crush of my life, including moshing. Then we couldn't get the student price tickets for some stupid reason, then when we got as close to the top as the bus could take us we were running late, so we decided to take a cable car to get to the peak, but everything had taken so long that we missed sunrise! This was after getting up at 3.30am. Not that it mattered, it was too foggy on the peak to see sunrise anyway. But still, I didn't get to see sunrise, actually hike the mountain, and had spent a lot of money for the pleasure, so unfortunately Emeishan didn't live up to my expectations. We went back down and saw some great scenery near the foot of the mountain though, including what the mountain is partly famous for: monkeys! There were some near the top too, but there were lots down the bottom, even though we were still running late so only got to see them for 20 minutes or so. But they would steal people's stuff literally from their pockets; I saw a monkey reach into a man's coat pocket and take a packet of biscuits, and I could have sworn he smiled. We didn't even leave until nearly dark. During the day, I'd gotten the idea that I might go back to Beijing early, that night in fact (Wednesday). The others were going to go to JiuZhaiGou, a national park a 10 hour bus ride from Chengdu, but I decided I'd had enough stress. So when we got back, I had dinner with the others, then went straight to the train station to change my ticket for that night's train. In the end, it was a good call, even though departure was delayed for about an hour in an extremely loud and hot departure hall. I met some nice students on the train, then slept for most of the 30 hour journey.
Finally got back to Beijing, and spent Friday organising some stuff in the morning, and studying in the afternoon. That was part of the reason I came back, originally I'd planned to tell my teachers "I'm sick, can I have until next week?" But that would have been pretty week. Only caught up with one friend on that weekend, but knocked off most of my study, which was great. On the whole, I probably should have stayed in Beijing, but there really isn't long now until semester finishes, so at least now I have even more drive to make the most of it!
