frank's big adventure » China

China in my rear-view mirror

frank0 — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:30:36 +0000

I know that it has been a long time since this page has gotten any updates, chalk it up to the Great Firewall of China blocking my access or to weary travel bones unwilling to sit in front of a computer, but the fact remains that I´ve barely made mention of my month in China. Rather than attempt to recreate the whole trip I´ve decided to leave little picture postcards from each stop along the way…

Xián

In the ancient epicenter of China´s government we found ourselves atop the unexcavated mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang who unified the country and ruled with an iron fist. The is nothing more than a large mound with (at the time) snow covered steps up to the top. Archaeologists are hoping the tomb is still intact and full of regal wonders from over 200 years before the common era. Xián is also home of the Terracotta Warriors, which were also a part of Emperor Qin´s post life protection plan along with the rivers of mercury purported to flow inside the massive mound. When we were back within the ancient city walls around the old part of the city, we spent much of our time in the Muslim Quarter. It was a cozy little town, but soon we were on our way to Beijing.

Beijing

I feel bad for the poor athletes in this year´s Olympic Games. Even if they make major strides in thinning out the smog in the city, it will still be dirty air. I often found myself out of breath at the top of the stairs and upon arriving in the city I fell ill and tossed and turned in my little hostel bed for an entire day. Unfortunately Mao was under repairs while we were in town as were some of the major sites of the city. I doubt there has ever been such a large scale renovation of a city as the one that the Chinese are attempting to pull off in these last few months. The highlight of the city for me was cruising the small side streets called hutongs and watching the assemblage of faces flowing past.

The Great Wall

We made our way 2 hours outside of Beijing to walk along an unrenovated section known as the ¨secret wall¨. The smog was still thick in the air, but we were able to get an idea of how massive the fortification is. The Mongol hordes were able to get through without any problems by bribing the lonely and unloved guards watching over remote sections, but what a wall. Our guide was a little old Chinese woman who hobbled along with surprising speed up and down the hills while regaling us with stories and history in Mandarin. We just smiled and nodded, making up our own translations and continuing along.

Shanghai

Beijing is the cultural center of China and Shanghai is the economic one. Perched along a major waterway dividing the city in two, the place reeks of capitalism. We cruised along the waterfront walkway (the Bund) to the old town. It is one giant shopping extravaganza. At dusk on our last night in town we found ourselves on the top floor of the Hyatt in a swanky bar sipping on over-sized and overpriced glasses of Hennessy V.S.O.P. watching the lights come on. Along the water the sightseeing ferries made lazy loops while deftly avoiding the massive cargo ships. I felt like a god.

Huangshan

The next few weeks were spent moving inland through more rural terrain beginning with Huangshan, the famous Yellow Mountain. We arrived in the evening after a long bus adventure and prepared ourselves for a day of climbing. Our plan was to climb to the summit of the mountain, stay the night, and then get up early for the sunrise. Unfortunately we found ourselves inside of a cloud for the entire 7 hours of climbing up stairs. Occasionally the clouds would part long enough to see the jagged and amazing peaks, but it was only a tease. This was the first real weather disappointment on the whole trip, but the images I´ve seen of the mountain and especially the sunrise from the top in clear weather, only make me upset. I was there but could only see about 20 feet ahead of me, but my legs are bulging muscles.

Three Gorges

The damming of the Yangtze river by the 3 Gorges Dam has caused the water levels to rise considerably and will ultimately force the displacement of around 4 million people, but the energy yield will be equivalent to about 18 nuclear power plants. Even though the dam has flooded the reservoir to within 30 meters of the final depth the gorges are still a breathtaking sight. We cruised along upstream for a little over 2 days and made side journeys through the Little Three Gorges and the Mini Three Gorges in increasingly smaller boats. It was a time of slow reflection and was the relaxing breath of fresh air I needed after the bustle of the cities and the rigorous climb at Huangshan.

Fenghuang

One of the places that I was most looking forward to visiting was Fenghuang along the quiet Tuojiang River. It is supposed to be one of the last vestiges of pre-modern China with little buildings hovering precariously over the water. The Fenghuang that we found, though, was in the midst of a major makeover. The river itself still has the amazing views and picturesque look, but the place is becoming a Chinese yuppie paradise. Chinese yuppification is yuppification in perhaps its most depressing form. The whole place is practically being rebuilt with cheap looking imitations to house the throngs of tourists that flood the town and every shop along every road is filled with the exact same useless and expensive shit that its neighbors are pushing. For now, though, the illusion of the past has been able to survive along the waterfront and that is where we spent most of our time.

Wulingyuan

We were not sure what to expect from Wulingyuan but decided to give it a try. I had never even heard of the place before randomly stumbling across the name and a brief allusion to the amazing scenery in our guide book. It is perhaps the most beautiful place I have ever been. The landscape is straight from a Dr. Seuss acid trip and walking in the shadows of 1000 foot tall sandstone chopsticks I felt like I was in a dream. The fog lifted towards the end of the afternoon and we decided to take a ride up the theme-park lift to take in the views from above. Looking down some several hundred feet through a forest of rock towers I tried to soak in everything before the sun crept out of site and we were left nearly stranded in the park.

Yangshuo

Yangshuo was a continuation of the natural wonders of the karst land. We took a bike ride several miles through the rice fields stopping often to turn circles and gawk at the landscape. I expected a dinosaur to emerge from behind the hills at any moment and the light rain kept the roads virtually empty. We got turned around several times in little outcrops of houses with narrow winding alley-ways but eventually made it safely back to town with sore asses and covered in mud. Yangshuo was one of the few places in China I could actually see myself living in for any amount of time, but my time was quickly coming to an end in Asia.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong made Shanghai look like the boonies. Never have I spent so much time in shopping malls trying to navigate the city on foot. The only way to get from point a to point b is through malls c, d, e and f. The building we were staying in was a constant source of interesting sights, though. It is called the Chung King Mansion, but it is really an 18 story dilapidated building filled with several thousand people occupying rooms barely large enough to fit beds. The first two floors look like the distopian amusement park from A.I. with flashing lights and cheap electronic gizmos for sale in every little nook and cranny. Every nation in the world must have a representative in the building and if an extraterrestrial being wanted to hide out in anonymity this would be their place. Jacob left for Southeast Asia and I had a few days left before my flight so I took in a number of movies at the Hong Kong Film Festival which happened to coincide with my visit perfectly. Then it was off to the airport and back to the U.S. of A. for a couple days.

China in my rear-view mirror

I was glad to have visited China and glad to leave it. It has a long way to go before it can become the country of the 21st Century. I was amazing that Mao, the man responsible for more human deaths than any other person in human history, still graces every note of currency. There is still a mess of poverty hiding under the rug and the slick gloss being put on everything in preparation for the Olympics cannot hide the reality of the place. The Tibetan protest and the subsequent military clampdown are only the precursors for more conflicts and continuing and increasingly more violent protests. It is not in such dire straits as India, which has a population bursting at the seams and no money to spare, but it China does not begin to loosen its stranglehold on its people, something is bound to give way. Buildings now being built in earthquake prone areas are made to sway and flex as the ground moves so they can absorb the energy and remain standing while the rigid structures all buckle and collapse.

The Lhasa Express

frank0 — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:41:49 +0000

I spent 36 hours and over 3000 kilometers in a train from Lhasa to Xi’an. It was a good time to pull my head together and to read, but the views really stole the show…

High up on the Tibetan Plateau, Part 2

frank0 — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:37:14 +0000

Our second day in Tibet was to be the longest drive. It took a good 8 hours to get to Lhatse and from the start I was not feeling up to the drive. I had my first real bout of home-sickness and thought about all the people that have filled my life with joy back home in the states. I closed my eyes and thought about Austin and then opened them back up to watch the Tibetan mountains slowly crawling past us. It does not look like I expected it would up here and one could easily mistake this place for the desert mountains of Arizona or New Mexico. It is very dry and there are not the fields of snow I expected. The landscape is rugged, but in an arid sort of way. I thought that there would be lush mountainous terrain with glacial rivers and foliage and an abundance of wildlife, but this place feels more like Mars than Colorado. There are several places I have seen in the world that remind me I am on a rocky bubble of a planet amongst other, less hospitable bubbles in the solar system, and now Tibet is one of them.

Once we finally reached Lhatse and poured out of the Land Cruisers, I felt the altitude hit me. My breathing was not nearly as effective and I felt slow and lethargic. If we had not climbed up to the Everest Base Camp, I would have some trouble with the radical elevation changes that were taking place, and sure enough, the rest of our group began to get sick one by one. By the time we left the next morning, over half of the group looked like they had barely slept and a handful of people were throwing up regularly.

Our next destination was Shigatse, the second largest city in Tibet. It is home of the Shigatse Fort and the Tashilhunpo Monastery, which used to be the home of the Panchen Lama. As we pulled into town I borrowed Jacob’s iPod and listened to Strangers, a song that has been one of my favorites for several years now. I decided not to bring along any music to Asia, which is like Keith Richards opting to lay off the drugs for 6 months and the first few weeks in India I was going through a serious withdrawal, but now I find that I listen with new ears whenever I do get the chance. I am excited to get back to all my musical gems but I do not regret my decision at all. I found myself using music to escape in the states and that’s the last thing that I want to do with my brief time abroad.

We toured the monastery in Shigatse as a group, wandering amongst massive Buddhas and weaving through the monks. I was in awe of the devotion that they felt for their faith, but couldn’t help wondering what it must have been like before the Chinese hit the scene. There were about 5 times as many monks in each monastery then and the religion infiltrated every aspect of every Tibetan’s life. The highlight of the monastery was a 26 meter tall statue of the Future Buddha sitting benevolently, waiting for the Earth to need his presence. Once we finished our tour the group broke up and Jacob and I decided to go see the old town and the fort. We met a little old man who, in broken English, tried to explain the history of the city and the fort. He made us smoke a cigarette with him and we all stood looking up at the massive, rebuilt facade gasping for air through the harsh smoke.

The next stop on our tour was Gyantse where another monastery was waiting for us. The main hall had been damaged by a fire some years back, but fortunately most of the ancient documents had been spared and were stacked 20 feet high around all the walls in all the little rooms. My favorite chamber was the one which housed the protector god and had a number of terrifying masks along the walls. A lone monk was in the room playing a drum and some cymbals while reciting prayers in Tibetan. In the dim light the effect was hypnotic.

The next building over was the Kumbum Stupa which has 100,000 images of the Buddha. 100,000! I walked around the first floor stepping into each chapel and marveling at the intricate drawings on the walls and the statue of the Buddha in each one. With my limited knowledge of the tenets of Tibetan Buddhism I had always assumed there was only one Buddha, but apparently there are many, and each one warranted a good long look. But soon the bitter cold and the shear scale of the place got to me and I skipped the next floors to go straight to the top. The view was quite breathtaking of the little city huddled next to the hills with a fort perched above in the distance.

It was here that our guide told us about the Tibetan sky funerals which are held for all Tibetans. The body is taken to a mountain-top where the family watches a monk cut it up into little pieces and feed it to the vultures. I thought about it as we drove down the dangerous looking icy road and the image has not left me yet.

We went to the little tea house that we were staying at for the night and the lot of us began to enjoy the company and the beer. We played some group card games and a raucous drinking game that involved clapping hands and remembering everyone’s nicknames. If you’ve ever seen Shanghai Noon with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, think back to that scene in the bathtubs and you’ll know how ridiculous we must have looked. Just when we thought things were winding down for the evening, the woman who owned the tea house drunkenly came into the bar and began to dance with us. She beckoned us into the other room and we joined up with the rest of the Tibetans who worked there to sing and cheer and dance and celebrate the end of the New Year’s festivities. The night was getting very late (or the morning early) and the owner, now very drunk, requested our silence so she could sing us a song. He voice warbled, but never wavered, and the melody was both tragic and wistful. Our guide translated the lyrics for us after she finished:

The fields of Tibet were green,

But then they became red

And now I long to be free

But I’m trapped by the white mountains.

The people of Tibet are an oppressed people, but also unflinchingly optimistic. Our guide, who is 26, got into some trouble for openly opposing the occupation of his homeland and was put into prison along with his friends where both his arms were broken. His parents had to pay substantial bribes to get him out and he has never seen his friends since.

The next morning was again a slow one and once we got moving again we made our way into Lhasa. The landscape had changed dramatically and now we were passing big beautiful lakes and forcing our driver to stop frequently so we could stop and take pictures.

Upon hitting Lhasa we were all amazed by the amount of sprawl. There has been an influx of Han Chinese in the city since the completion of the railroad from the rest of the country (it is scheduled to continue on to Shigatse in the next year or two). Our hotel was a five star affair and we were all amazed at our new, luxurious amenities. The showers, for example, had two heads and little sideways jets too. We were all beyond clean the next morning.

Of course the main sight to see in the city is the the Potala Palace, and it is an impressive hulking mass presiding over the city. We were all in awe of its scale as we climbed the stairs to get inside and once we did we were again in awe of each and every room. There were past Dalai Lama’s tombs made of gold and inlaid with precious stones, there were priceless works of art, there were cozy little sitting rooms, and there were many many pilgrims paying their respects. During the Cultural Revolution, one of the Chinese generals even had his troops defend the place from would-be defacers to preserve its beauty.

Next we went north to the Sera Monastery and watched the monks debating out front. It is a form of examination and the monk being questioned would pace back and forth in front of the teacher punctuating his statements with dramatic claps of his hands. The assembled monks were a hodgepodge of faces and I spent a long time looking from one to the next, watching some listening intently and others barely able to keep their eyes open. School is always school, I guess.

Another place that we visited was the Jokang Temple, which had more beautiful artwork and the most precious statue in the whole of Tibet, the Jowo Sakyamuni. Up on the rooftop I looked out over the Barkhor circuit, a throng of people walking continuously in a big loop around the temple through a marketplace. I would soon join them and feel the energy of the hawkers and barkers surging through me but just then I was content to look across to the Potala Palace on the hill. The view was spectacular and I knew I would miss Tibet.

High up on the Tibetan Plateau, Part 1

frank0 — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 22:50:56 +0000

Hello all, Jesse here. I’m posting this on Frank’s behalf as he is inside China at the moment. Not every day you get to help defy a major Communist nation (other than by purchasing Beastie Boys music, of course).

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Hello everyone, I’m writing from behind the Great Firewall of China so I cannot actually access this site myself, but I wanted to let everyone know that I have safely arrived in Lhasa and will be taking a train into mainland China today. It is a 36 hour journey to Xi’an.
Tibet has been amazing. I was not sure what to expect from this trip beyond cold nights and high altitude, but it has turned out to be a wonderful experience. We travelled the first day in a microbus up to the Chinese border climbing higher and higher and winding through river valleys and past tiny Nepali towns. We stopped at a tourist hotspot where paying customers could bungee jump off a narrow suspension bridge several hundred feet above the rocks and water below.

Our group, assembled from various different countries and backgrounds, is about 25 strong. Most everyone is in their 20’s and we’ve become quite the crew. Every night at dinner I marvel that we’ve only known each other for a few days as the conversation flows as smooth as the Lhasa beer, which has been consumed en masse (and would you believe that Pabst Blue Ribbon has made it’s way into Tibet?). As we all stood on the bridge at the border waiting to get into China, Jacob and I thought about the implications of entering a communist country and the whole idea of a nation clicked into focus in my mind.

I was humbled by the landscape. The river along the border is fresh and quick, cutting sharply down from the mountains, and there is a marked difference between China and Nepal. The stoic soldiers and construction of massive new buildings made the Nepali side look a bit like a cozy little shanty town. My paper visa passed the test and we were across. From the border we all poured into five Land Cruisers and begin to make our way over the rough, unpaved road to Zhangmu.

The Chinese government began to pave the Friendship Highway last year and already they have almost completed the entire 700 or so kilometers to Lhasa. The road itself is an amazing feat, but to think of how quickly it has been completed baffles the mind. There is no doubt that once it is done, more and more goods and people are going to be cruising through this previously remote part of the world. We got caught in some traffic due to construction and once we got into Zhangmu a wedding procession stopped us again. Our group got out and watched as the bride and groom, looking rather glum, waded through the throngs of drunken revelers.

The first night into Tibet, I went out drinking with some of the guys and as we walked from bar to bar the cultural differences between a night out in Austin and a night out in Tibet became very apparent. Climbing the steps up to one of the bars, the booming folksy-sounding Tibetan music that had drawn us in from the street became louder and louder and pulling aside the drape of a door revealed a nearly empty room. It was very dark and there was a little dance floor occupied by 4 or 5 kids that looked to be no more than 16 years old performing some archaic looking circle dance.

With a few beers in my system I was quick to try out my dancing feet and I tried to follow the pattern of steps and kicks as we spun in lethargic circles. My eager attempts to introduce new steps into the fold were met with looks that seemed to say “Who do you think you are?” so I spun and hopped and jumped my way back to the guys laughing at my failure. The song hadn’t changed in what felt like years so we pressed on to the next bar, which was just like the previous one.

The next day I was moving slow and we had a long ride ahead of us to Lhatse. Our driver had decked out his Land Cruiser with fancy seat covers and a fuzzy rear-view mirror dog slip and he insisted on playing his cassette of modern Tibetan dance music. The incessant beats were driving my brain into a wall and the frequent English samples of lines like “Whys it gotta be so damn hot in here?” or “C’mon party people, get sexy!” were not funny enough to make up for the endless 30 minute loop of music. I vowed there and then that I would buy another tape at the first opportunity, no matter what it might be.