Thursday, January 7, 2016

Yi Ge Ren For The Day, Part II

I was feeling all kinds of bold after my zombie hide-out climbing adventure.  I struck off for the Buddha with wide-open eyes, ready to notice all of the things. 

There were not very many people at this place at all. Lots of stanchions were set up to guide lines in long winding paths, but the few of us that were there got to bypass them all.  On the path up to the Buddha itself, I saw some hilariously translated signs:

The one on the left means don't throw stuff off the cliff and the one on the right
says "no scribblings" but means "don't carve stuff on the rocks".  More or less.
There was a little pool of water with a carved dragon curved around it:
And then a jade tiger.  The dragon and the tiger are supposedly guardians.  Some Chinese boys (one of whom totally took several surreptitious pictures of me) took some pics for me *of* me on the tiger:



(I like the first two, but my hair looks cool in the last two...)
They and I kinda kept pace as we walked up the mountain (while the camera happy one engineered his selfies to capture me in the background ((I know I sound vain, but I'm not making this up))).  The other guy was the only one to say anything to me and all he said was, "Yi ge ren?"  That means "alone?"  And I knew that!!!  So I said, "Uh huh", in true non-Chinese fashion. 

The Buddha was cool, but I was a bit underwhelmed.  Maybe because I had been reading hyperbolic accounts of what an amazing feat it had been to build.  It took 80 years, back in the year 1000 or so.  A hundred people can fit on one of his feet!!  Turns out that a hundred people just don't take up that much space.  I mean, he was big, don't get me wrong.  He just didn't seem very...colossal. 

That's okay, it was still really cool.  You start up by his head and then there is a very narrow very steep stair case that zigzags down the cliff beside him.  There are little grottos with other Buddhist figures carved into the cliff face on the way down.  I wonder if the workers made those on their breaks from carving the big guy.  Maybe they finished his head and carved up some mini vignettes on the side before cutting further down into the rock and freeing his shoulders. 

There was a Chinese girl in a yellow coat in front of me who was evidently afraid of heights.  She went slowly, with a bit of squealing and holding onto the girl in front of her. 

Once at the bottom, the Buddha loomed quite impressively.  They say his toenails are big enough for someone to sit on them.  I might even say that someone could dance upon them.  There was a cute fluffy pigeon parked in front of one of them:
purple sticks of incense
 Once you've seen the Buddha, you can leave or you can keep going towards the "Cave Tomb Museum".  Who can pass up that kind of invitation!?  I kept going.  It was quite a climb, with interesting vistas.


Another girl very definitely took my picture.  It was a little awkward because she stopped in the middle of the path and was taking a picture back the way she had come.  I was trying to get past her quickly to get out of her way so she could take her picture in peace.  Turns out I was her subject.  I was probably all blurry.  She should have just asked and I would've stayed put and maybe even smiled for her!

At one spot you walk down some stairs and end up in a gaggle of women in aprons and sleeve-cover things.  Obviously trying to sell stuff.  I breezed right on by until one woman came up to me and said--in English!--"Did you eat lunch?"  I was super surprised, so my default defense of brushing off any and all hawkers was overridden, and I answered her truthfully: "Not yet."  Turns out *her* restaurant has an English menu, and I ended up following her through the gauntlet of dingy food joints to her place. 
(On the way, I noticed all of this buckets of live fish swimming around.  Lunch on parade for the buyer, I presume.  Some of the fish had twine tied through their back fins, and as I watched a women reached in and pulled one of these fish out by the twine.  It writhed and wriggled in the air and I pulled out my phone to capture it's out-of-water-beauty, when suddenly the woman lifts it into the air and SLAMS that fish down onto the sidewalk!  One, two, three times and the last time she lets go of it and that's when my phone actually captured an image.
Poor fish.  Stunned, if not dead, it didn't flop around anymore as it was hung on one end of a scale.  Fascinating.

The place I ate also had buckets of fish.  There was one HUGE fish and I inspected it.  Poked it.  I think it was already dead.  Anyway, ever since our hotpot tastes-like-dirt fish fiasco, I haven't really wanted to eat fish around here, so my lunch was roasted eggplant!  Quite tasty, though I ate it wondering if it would end up making me violently ill.  I watched the woman who led me down and took my order "wash" her hands in one of the fish buckets.  Granted, the water was pouring in and running through.  Granted, she may not have been the one to cook for me.  But that bucket did have a dead fish in it...



After I saw the cool cave tomb museum, I spotted a really cool- looking covered bridge from afar, but when I got there and tried to cross it, some guy cut me off and chattered at me in Chinese.  I caught "Chengdu" a couple times, but I was otherwise completely confused.  I breathed deep, ready to immerse myself in the figure-out-what-the-heck-this-guy-wants mode, but then, heaven-sent, some friendly faces popped into view and asked, in English, "Do you need any help?" 
Turns out they were a Chinese who have been living in Australia and they were super nice.  Told me that guy was trying to sell me tickets for a bus back to Chengdu.  Um, no thanks.  But they were headed in the direction of the train station, would I like to tag along?  Yes Please!  I longingly looked over my shoulder at that tantalizing covered bridge and whatever mysteries lay beyond it, but fate had brought me some English speakers and I was not about to look that fate-gift-horse in the mouth.  They helped me out, getting me a little rickshaw to the bus stop, and then commandeering a quiet young man at the bus stop to be my guide.  Thank you!!


Now, before I get bored with telling this story...
sigh. It may be too late. 
There were some adorable old old ladies on the bus.  I gave my seat to one of them and then my young chaperone gave me his seat.  ^^ so cute.
There was a flushie toilet with toilet paper at the train station!
And I read the Wheel of Time all the way home!  Tah dah!


(it was a really fun adventure)




Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Yi Ge Ren For The Day

Yesterday I went out into the wide wide incomprehensible Chinese world all. by. my. self.
I am so brave.



There's a huge Buddha statue carved out of a cliff face in a place called LeShan.  It is one of the must-sees around here, so I decided that I might as well check it out.  Joel was going to get me a driver (i'm such a vip) to make the trip easier, but the finding of a reputable driver that didn't cost a million dollars was taking days (we just weren't very motivated about it), and in the end it was decided that I'd just take the high-speed train to LeShan and then the bus to the Buddha.  Plus, during our driver search, someone said, "a driver shouldn't be hard to find, but if you are adventurous, it's not a difficult trip with the public transport".  Am I adventurous...  As if I even need to ask myself that!  Pride alone ("See World!? I am Adventurous!!") might be enough to account for my lack of motivation in finding a driver. 

In the end, I went on public transit, and I lived to tell the tale, though at times it seemed like a near thing*.  It was hard enough just getting out of Chengdu!  The East train station was so weird...  There's an East Departure sign and a West Departure sign.  No clue on my ticket (at least, no clue in English) which one I needed, but someone pointed me to the East, so East I went.  You have to make your way all the way outside and then stand in line to get back in!  Someone has to check your ticket against your ID and then you have to put your bags through a scanner.  It was like the airport!  I managed to figure out which 'gate' to stand at until they scanned my ticket again and let us all onto the platform where the train was waiting and we got on.  They super regulate who goes where around here.  I looked around for a sign that this train would stop in LeShan--an itinerary, an announcement of all the stops, anything--but I just had to trust in the Chinese bureaucracy this time.  They wouldn't have let me through if I was in the wrong place, right? 
Right.
I made it to LeShan.

The LeShan train station is smallish and looks like it's in the middle of an industrial park (like all of the other train stations we stopped at, as far as I could see).  Everyone getting off the train seemed to be locals or people visiting locals... No apparent tourists...  No white people either.  With my red hair, I really do stand out.  I got on the right bus, but without any clue how to know when to get off.  I tried to look like I belonged, since that is what I always want to do in a foreign country, but in China its a hopeless case.  There wasn't even a Chinese tourist crowd to gawk with and follow around!  Tuesday mornings in January are apparently not when most tourists think to check out this super cool spot.
Oh well.  I found a seat, ignored the stares, and tried to look cool and not anxious at all.

My anxiety about being in foreign places has changed a lot over the years.  Uncertainty in a new place used to feel like any misstep would mean death.  Or maybe taking a wrong turn would mean never being seen again.  Not only that, but I would look stupid and out of place and everyone would know I didn't belong.  Which would be even worse. 
This time around, though, I already looked out of place and there was nothing to be done about that.  And I've learned that almost any misstep can be fixed.  Don't know where to get off?  Ride to the end of the line, turn around and try again.  Miss your train?  Buy a new ticket.  And if ALL ELSE FAILS, walk.  I'm good at walking.

I got off the bus at a likely looking stop.  It was likely looking because it had signs with "Tourist Year 2015" on them.  Turns out it was a long, empty, pedestrian path with Chinese-y buildings on either side that supposedly would house souvenir shops and food stalls in the tourist season.  At this time of year, it was a ghost town.  Random lone people wandering along.  One mother with a baby playing with bubbles.  Happily there were a couple food stalls to serve the oddball tourists like me. 

I stopped at one with a lady running it alone.  Less indimidating to talk to than a cluster of Chinese ladies..  And this particular Chinese lady turned out to be the easiest Chinese person to try to speak Chinese to that I've found so far!!  She didn't get louder when I didn't understand her.  She helped me figure out how much more money I owed her by miming things and counting on her fingers and pointing to which bills.  And when I decided to tell her everything about my life that I knew how to say in Chinese (I'm from Boston, my boyfriend works in Chengdu, I'm learning Chinese, and that's about it), she asked me questions about myself that I understood and ANSWERED!!  She made me feel so good.  Hats off to you, Friendly Lady.  Thank you for making me feel like Chinese is not impossible!  Plus she had good wanton soup which I devoured, however spicy the skewered bread-puffs-stuffed-with-carrot-slivers were.


I wandered all the way through this deserted ChineseWorld street and along the basically empty parking lot.  There were signs in English pointing towards the Buddha, so I knew if I kept walking (Trust In Your Feet!) I'd make it eventually. 

At that moment, I happened to glance across the street and saw a cave mouth half-way up the bluff that abuts the road.  Lo and behold, there was also a stair. 
stair to the left, cave about at the top of the lamppost.  See!?

This was right next to a closed parking lot, but the stairs weren't blocked off, so I darted across the road and started climbing.  Turns out the cave I saw was only a tunnel that lead to MORE stairs!  How mysterious!!  I climbed up and up, turning corners and always finding more steps, with greenness growing all around, dead leaves carpeting the stairs, and the mist (smog?) obscuring any view. 


And then suddenly there was a cluster of abandoned houses with a Chinese gate (two posts and a roofed lintel) out front. 


I *really really* wanted to explore, but as I stared at that gate, I couldn't bring myself to cross under it.  What if it was a portal to another dimension?  What if it would change me--or possess me--as I walked through it?  What if it would set off alarms that only the Gate Keepers could hear, and then they'd come and tear me apart?  What. If.  A big spider dropped on my head? 
All of these possibilities and more crossed my mind.  So I walked around the gate instead.

The place was thoroughly abandoned.  Rotting leopard-upholstered chair.  Abandoned bowls coated in dirt.  Strange holes in the ground. 

I called out as I walked closer, hoping that if a violent hobo lived in the ruins, he would be able to keep quiet and hide (instead of attack) if I warned him of my approach.  Once I got right up around the buildings, though, I started stepping very quietly.  The place looked like zombies could be holed up around any corner, just waiting for a warm-blooded human to make too much noise and rouse them from their starving stupor.

And once that lovely thought entered my mind, I tiptoed my way around the gate and back to the stairway.  And then headed upwards once more.  There were a couple unpaved paths veering off to the left and the right, but I wanted to go to the very top.  So up and up and up..  There was one more abandoned building on the way, and then the sky!  Which, of course, was white like the sky always is here.  But the top of the hill/cliff/bluff thing was cultivated!  Little patches of garden with growing things recently tended!  I took a picture, but there was no view to speak of (silly fog/smog) and I didn't want to intrude where people clearly came, so I headed back down pretty quickly. 

Cool, huh?  I'm super intrepid, am I not?  Adventurous, one might even say?  Haha, take that, World!

(This part is secret:  on the way down, I stopped at that first cluster of abandoned buildings and took a bowl that was sitting, all dirty, in the doorway of one of the houses.  No one wanted it!  It was abandoned!  It has pink flowers around the rim!  Maybe it is covered in zombie virus, but it is coming home with me as a souvenir of how daring I can be when I am wandering all alone in foreign lands.  And to remind me to take the stairs if I'm ever curious.)


Here ends Part I of Yi Ge Ren For The Day





*The nearest near things were in the squatter toilets that don't provide toilet paper.  And there are some times of the month when that is a worse thing than others.  Yeah.  Free advice for you: when traveling in China, BYOTP.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

A Positive Chinese 'Speaking' Experience

The other day I saw an adorable cat. 
She was on a leash in one of the sidewalk-side one-room shops.  See her in the middle?  Standing on all the packages on the counter?  I couldn't resist that craning little head.  I went up and let her smell my fingers and she was friendly so I petted her--she was so little with HUGE yellow-gold eyes! So cute!!  Her owner was sitting out of sight behind the counter.  What followed then was what I would call a successful conversation!  I called his cat "hen piaoliang" (very pretty) and *even* asked him if it was a male or female ("nu-de, nan-de?").  And he told me she was a she.  That was it.  She nibbled on my fingers a bit, he scolded her, I shrugged because I figured that meant she liked me.  Then I said thanks and left. 

Tah dah!  My language attempts have not been entirely futile! 
^^

Chinese Old People Doing Cool Things, Plus Bottle-Fed Goldfish

On one of my walks last week, I wandered through a park and came across Chinese people doing all kinds of outdoor activities.  I learned that the Chinese yo-yo is not just for street artists and that dancing in the street actually happens in China and no one gets embarrassed.  I think my favorite were the guys writing Chinese characters in water on the slate sidewalks with giant brush-shaped sponges.  Look!

And now for the amazing gravity-defying top-spinner man!!

I saw a group of old ladies in matching velour suits doing tai chi.  One of these days, I'm going to join a group like that.  It looks wonderfully centering and refreshing.
A group of old guys surrounded a cluster of benches, where some of their number were playing games.  Maybe Mahjong?  Or Chinese Chess?  The group was scattered with parked scooters and even one guy getting a hair cut on a barber chair!

Then there was a really dirty sign for what looked like feeding goldfish in a pond with a baby bottle.
Joel was skeptical but read the Chinese and confirmed that that's what it said.  And youtube turns up some supporting evidence! 
Surprise surprise!  Fish like drinking out of bottles!






Food Here Is Different (Duh)

Grocery stores are the weirdest here.  I went in this time with the simple task of finding baking soda and salt.  Just table salt.  Just baking soda.  I wandered around the store for half an hour looking for them on my own.  I found aisles full of soy sauce:
and shelves upon shelves of MSG:
all msg's
but no table salt.  Eventually someone led me to it, after correcting my pronounciation.  (I pronounced the vowel wrong, I have no idea what I said.  I pronounced the tone wrong and I said "salted" the adjective rather than "salt" the noun.  sigh.)  Salt was on the very bottom shelf in the very far corner of the soy sauce aisle.  There was only one type, one brand.  Some generic bagged rock salt--but it seems normal enough to me so now it's in Joel's salt shaker.

The baking soda... I asked someone to help me find it, but they led me to dried yeast.  Not the same.  I even had my Chinese app open with the six different possible ways to say it.  Finally the store person brought me to another store person who works in the "Imported Foods" section and she found it for me.  Joel told me that Chinese people don't bake much, but that's just crazy!

There were lots of other oddities at the grocery store...  Tanks full of live fish (some of the fish were swimming upsidedown, I'm not sure what that means), bins full of unpackaged raw ground meat (you scoop it out yourself).  Of course all of the odd bird things.  Piles of chicken feet.  Piles of chicken feet mixed with chopped raw onions and peppers.  Whole bird bodies, defeathered, flopped in mounds.  Hardly anything pre-packaged.  I'm not a germ freak, but I could've sneezed onto every single one of those meat heaps.  Strangely large fruit things.  And strangely small mangos.  Oo!  They have egg cartons, but they also *bag* eggs.  Which seems like an unnecessary risk to me..  Then they had bins full of tea ingredients, like chamomile flowers or rose buds or...other flowery tea-like things.  And TANG!  They have lots of Tang! 

I bought two tubes of stuff, one strawberry and one original flavored.  The picture on the tubes says this stuff goes on toast.  Or on fruit.  Or...to make popsicles?  It's Nestle, "Eagle Brand", and it was near the cans of sweetened condensed milk.  I'm wondering if it is sweetened condensed milk spread.
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I just tasted it, and I'm so right!  Well, now I have two tubes of it. 
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It's pretty tasty.
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I wonder why Americans don't eat sweetened condensed milk as a dessert-y thing.  According to Huffington Post, sweetened condensed milk "can completely transform a dish, and might even transform you".  High praise.
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Oo!  Apparently you *can* use it to make popsicles!!  Huh:  one can of sweetened condensed milk plus 2.5 cups of liquid like pureed fruit.  Sounds like a winner!  It pays to be food-adventurous!!!!

Sometimes it doesn't, though.  On my way out of the store, there was a guy with a stand selling some candy/dried fruit-like things.  I almost passed him, but then I was like, "I want to know what that is!  I want to taste it!  So the next time I pass him, I'll know what it is I'm not buying!".  So I stopped and asked for "yi ge" (one of) each.  Could it be simpler than that?  NEXT TIME COULD IT ACTUALLY BE THAT SIMPLE!?!?  He, of course, asked me a clarifying question.  In Chinese.  Because even though I'm pretty sure I asked something really simple, it can never be that simple.  In the end, I got a whole bag full of these two candy things.  Sigh.  At least it just cost a dollar.  Guess what my office-mates are getting from me when I get home...  ^^



Here follows a small photo gallery of all the weird things I have seen in Carrefour today.

 That last picture...I can't be sure, but I have a feeling that they are duck embryos.  Delicious?  :(