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.