Pagodas, Pandas and Wild E Mei Mountain Monkeys

(So I got an Asian style haircut the other week for about $2.30. They gave me two 5-10 minute hairwash headmassages and shaved for me. A pretty sweet deal eh?)


One of my recent adventures in China was hiking with five friends on a sunny afternoon to the top of Jin Yun Mountain where a giant pagoda sits. We left around 4:00pm, took a five minute taxi to the trail head (its amazing how close our campus is to the great outdoors), and began our ascent hoping to make it up and down before dark which would hit at about 6:30pm. The hike itself was great exercise and filled with beautiful scenery along old country roads and narrow dirt paths. We saw waterfalls, bamboo forests, mountainside farms with Chinese people working their land, and many of their barking dogs. The view from the top was also pretty beautiful, though unfortunately we missed the sunset and found ourselves standing on the top resting from the climb in the dark! And of course while I brought my useful headlamp all the way to China, I decided against taking it on the hike. So, our group found ourselves precariously hiking down in rather dark conditions dependent on the backlight’s of our iPods and cell phones, and the bright pictures we could find on our cameras to light our path. To make matters worse, the stone steps, and dirt paths themselves were rather slippery or muddy and there were multiple times where one of us would slip. In fact, one of the girls with us ended up slipping two or three times due to her poor quality shoes acquiring some minor scratches and mud stained pants. Yet in the end, I think while we all agreed that while hiking during the day or at night with a head lamp would have been better, we enjoyed our little escapade. (pictures below)

Another awesome opportunity I had was going to the city of Chengdu this past weekend with a big group of friends for a four day trip. In fact, nearly our entire class of 32 students ended up staying at the same hostel together in the middle of the city, though I kind of explored the city with a smaller group of 7-8. The hostel itself was very accommodating and rather eccentric. The walls were filled with hundreds of quotes, pictures, and artwork from past visitors, and the rooms themselves were well-decorated. Furthermore, the hostel even came outfitted with a western style toilet, hot showers, and two cute kittens that would cuddle up in your arms and refuse to leave!

Apart from our impressive and inexpensive lodging (about $4 a night), the city itself and the surrounding “attractions” were also exciting. Our first night there we enjoyed eating at Peter’s Tex-Mex – a western-style restaurant where many of us ate tasty burritos, enchiladas, cheeseburgers, and mouthwatering chocolate-peanut butter milkshakes or hot fudge sundaes. I enjoyed two separate meals there as well as a third trip for a mid-afternoon snack. We also found a store filled with a plethora of other western food. They had everything from bagels and crème cheese to Chex-Mix. Unfortunately, everything was overpriced even for the States, but I was stoked to find some Nature Valley Granola bars to remind me of home.

However, our primary reason for taking the four hour train ride to Chengdu was to visit the Giant Panda Reserve and stay a night at the top of 10,000 foot E Mei Mountain which is home to the bold scavenger monkeys and arguably the most beautiful sunrise in the world. First of all, seeing the pandas was a pretty neat experience. We went early in the morning when the panda’s were “most active.” Yet pandas are never really very active and we soon learned that as we would stare at one panda for five minutes and watch it barely move! Thankfully some of them were more playful and we saw a group of three of them wrestle for a tire for almost ten minutes. (see pictures below)

Finally, probably the most exciting part of our trip was our adventure on E Mei Mountain. Though getting there was rather tedious. In order to get to the mountain itself, we had to take a fifteen minute bus ride across town in order to get to the bus station, and then a three hour bus ride from Chengdu to the bus station near the base of the mountain. Then from there we had to take a taxi ride to another bus station and then a bus that took two hours to drive us up the mountain. Once we were dropped off at the end of the driven road, we realized that we were still a two hour hike away from the peak and at that time it was already dark outside. And, while all common sense said that we should have just stayed at the hotel that was available to us at that elevation, my friends and I refused to settle for staying any lower than the peak of the mountain. So, we paid the $2.50 it took to rent large black and red down jackets for a day, bought some water and a few cheap flashlights (thankfully I had my headlamp this time!), and we made the arduous 2 hour trek in the chilly 35 degree weather to the top.

Once at the top, we stayed in a relatively cheap hostel (about $7/night) and woke up at 6:15AM with high hopes to see the sunrise. But sadly we were fogged in and stood around for an hour and a half freezing our tails off! Nevertheless, the trip wasn’t ruined as we were able to see the Golden Summit Elephant Statue and some crazy wild monkeys on our way back down to the bus. Then of course we had the reverse bus commute back, but this was a good time to take a nap and rest from the hiking.

Alright that’s all I got! Enjoy the pictures below. I’ll probably post once or twice more before I head home in two weeks! I’m looking forward to seeing everybody soon!

Kyle



Tracey terrified by a monkey.



Three rather active pandas battling over a tire.



I'm not exactly sure what was going through my head here...



A semi-blurry picture of Andrew, Tracey, and I on the bus in Chengdu.



A cute kitten we found to play with.


Read the Chinglish carefully. I evidently didn't and look what happened.




Our hostel rooming situation. Just like church camp all over again!

Aboard the 4 hour train ride to Chengdu. Fairly comfortable for only costing $14 round trip.

Bamboo breakfast.

So on our way back from E Mei Mountain we needed to get to the bus station and instead of taking a normal taxi our group of 8 piled in 4 rickshaws and raced to the bus station. Josh and I happened to be losing so Josh jumped out of our and gave us a healthy push. We won!

Our Chinese friend Tracey with David in a bicycle rickshaw.

Feeding those crazy monkeys.

This monkey stole that orange right out of Josh's hand. No fear.

This lazy panda was actually sleeping like this!

People burned candles on top of this elephant statue i guess for good luck?

This statue was literally about 50 feet tall. Unfortunately the fog complicates things...

It was so cold in the hostel we stayed at that we had to wear coats during dinner! Thankfully the electric blankets in the rooms saved us.

This was at the top of the mountain close to campus with the pagoda.

Some bamboo forests and waterfalls.

One of many ferocious barking dogs that we saw on our way up to the pagoda

Some friends that hiked down in the dark with me from the pagoda.

A trip to the Terracotta Warriors, a gigantic spider, everyday life, etc.

Xi'an!

Ahh how my time has flown by here in China! It feels like I updated my blog just a week ago but it’s been nearly three! And boy have they been a fun, an exciting, and a somewhat terrifying three weeks.

I’ll start by recapping our five day excursion in Xi’an – the home of the Terracotta warriors that happened about a week and a half ago. The plane ride to this relatively small city that used to be the capital of China and the home of the Emperor’s of old, was only a mere hour long. The weather was also quite inviting as it is North of Chongqing and therefore less humid and chillier which reminded me of our typical October weather in Seattle. The food there was a bit different (a pleasant difference) then at the University, and the first night we were there we enjoyed a dumpling feast where we were able to sample 18 different dumplings. Many of the dumplings were cooked in the shape of what was inside of them. For example, the dumpling that had fish in it was shaped like a fish, and the dumpling that had duck in it was shaped like a duck. Most of these were delicious. Furthermore, the Tang Dynasty Dancing and Music Performance that we saw after we ate dinner, though a bit boring was very colorful, and the dancers and musicians were pretty impressive to watch and listen to (pictures below).

The Terracotta soldiers themselves were pretty awesome to see as well, though it was a bit different than I was expecting. I didn’t realize that so many soldiers had been found, and I was surprised to see so many of them almost fully intact. I was expecting that they would have been in more pieces since they were made thousands of years ago, but amazingly many of them did not fall apart or deteriorate over that long period of time. We also went to the Shanxi history museum while we there too, and we were able to see other artifacts as well as some Terracotta models up close. I’m not a huge fan of museums, but this was a fairly worthwhile experience. Then of course we had to go see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which is an ancient relic of the city. I really don’t know how it got its name, and after seeing so much other Chinese architecture in other cities this wasn’t anything special.

Apart from seeing the soldiers, the museum, and the Goose, we spent part of a morning on top of the city wall walking around and taking in the sights, and an afternoon shopping at an underground market where most people picked up some stylish knock-off clothing and accessories. And, while my conscience is still a little uneasy, I must say I’m pretty happy with the one Nike and two North Face dry-fit shirts I picked up and the soccer jersey and shorts I bargained for. After seeing the Chinese locals buy their clothing in the underground markets, I guess this is just a part of engaging the Chinese culture that we American’s have found acceptable. As the saying goes – “When in Rome, do as the Romans.”

Yet, as fun as bargaining for fake gear was, it almost got a friend of mine named Troy and I lost in the middle of the city after dark! I had been bargaining for a pair of soccer shorts with one of the shopkeepers for quite awhile when all of a sudden I realized it was 5:57pm and we were supposed to meet up with our group at 6pm at a restaurant that was a fifteen minute walk away. And, the hard part was that the tour guide who had brought us to the market had taken us through this underground walkway that had 6-8 different stairways leading to different streets throughout the city! So, upon realizing how late it was I quickly bought the shorts by succumbing to the lady’s price, and Troy and I hurried our way through the maze of shoppers towards where we hoped we could find our way back to the restaurant. We ran into our first problem when we realized we couldn’t even remember where we had entered the underground walkway. We walked and walked in almost all directions hoping to find it. I recognized a “China Post” building and so we ran toward that and thankfully found the entrance. Then, there was the whole problem of figuring out which exit to take. We would have had to try all of them and hope that we recognized something at the top of one of the staircases, except for the fact that Troy remembered that he had randomly taken a photo of the entrance on our way to the market. What luck (or gracious providence)! The picture happened to be extremely blurry, though thankfully we were able to make out the name of the right exit and we rolled into dinner about 25 minutes late. Next time I think I’ll just pay the extra .75 cents the woman wanted for the shorts and head back with a large group of people who hopefully know where they’re going!

Besides our trip to Xi’an, everything here on campus has been pretty low key. Again, while I don’t have a lot of class work, I am constantly finding myself doing something whether it is playing soccer or ping pong with fellow SPUer’s, hanging out and getting to know some of the Minnesota students, or working on my Chinese while exploring the campus and the city with the Chinese girls I have befriended. In fact, I have really enjoyed finally knowing enough of the language to make or at least attempt to make sentences when I’m with Chinese friends. And, while I’m still not sure if I will ever really master Chinese, I feel that it is respectful to the Chinese people to make an honest effort to learn as much as I can while I’m here.

Finally, I must tell a brief story about the scariest, most disgusting spider I have ever seen outside of a bullet proof glass case in a zoo. Over a week ago now my roommate and I had been getting ready for bed around 12:30am when all of a sudden we heard Andrew, who lives across the from us, say (after a bit of yelp) in a rather high-pitched and petrified voice, “Guys… come here quick!” Foster and I hustled to our door to see what was up and were met with the sight of a 5-6 inch in diameter spider that was running across the hall from Andrew’s room to our room! And, while I wish I could say that one of us would have shrugged our shoulders and said “Oh. Its just a spider. I’ll take care of it.”, we both started yelling and nearly peed our pants! Before we knew it the spider had ran into our room, up the side of the wall and was resting by our door jam. It was then, when it was sitting still, that we knew we had to get a picture to document the size of this thing because we knew no one would believe us otherwise. So Foster snapped some pictures (below) and I ran like a little girl down the hall to ask a Taiwanese friend from Minnesota if he had ever seen anything like it. When I told him and his roommate about the spider and mentioned that we were going to try and whack it with end of a mop, he calmly said something to the effect of, “Ah. Don’t kill it. I’ll get it out of your room for you.” He then preceded to walk into our room, chase it off of the door and into the bathroom. Once in the bathroom, he asked if we had a bigger towel because our hand towel was too small (and obviously Kleenex wasn’t going to do the trick like it usually would). Both Foster and I didn’t want a giant spider touching one of our shower towels. So Ethan, our brave friend, ran and grabbed his towel from his room and brought it back to the bathroom. Then, the situation got a little crazy. The spider somehow escaped Ethan’s grasp and ran out of the bathroom and directly toward Foster and I! We back peddled instantly practically knocking over our computer chair and damaging Foster’s $3,400 Apple Mac Book in the process! The spider took cover under our mini-fridge and Ethan was able to coax it out and catch it in a towel while Foster and I watched from the top of our beds completely terrified (Oh what chickens we were!).

Once it was caught, Andrew, Foster, and I contemplated pulling a rather cruel prank on two girls’ room by unleashing the spider there, but thought better of it once we realized how scared we were. So Ethan took the monster up a floor and tossed the him off the balcony into some bushes. Foster and I then proceeded to check every part of our room to ensure that another one wasn’t lurking somewhere waiting to end up on one of our faces while we sleep. The scary part is that these beasts can go under doors and since we are on the bottom level of the dorm, one could easily crawl into our room again. Therefore we have put a towel in front of our door almost every night since then to deter any other spiders from joining our slumber party and look for another.

Alright, that’s all for now. Thanks for reading this far if you made it!

Kyle




So that door hinge is about 5 inches long...




That beedy eye was staring right at me I swear!







The most disgusting thing I've seen yet in China!

A striking resemblence my friend Josh and I found while in the Shanxi History Museum.

A picture below the Big Wild Goose Pagoda which you can see in the background. These candles were just a few of over a hundred that were being burned outside a Buddhist temple.

Inside the underground market. See any shirts you want me to bring home for you? =)

Wild Goose Pagoda - we climbed the stairs all the way to the top. All 7 levels. It was okay but nothing magical.

A picture of the thousands of years old Terracotta - unfortunately the lighting wasn't the best in there.

Hanging out on the infamous city Wall in Xi'an

Terracotta Soldiers

More of them!

I think this guy was the Commander.

A tasty .75 cent snack.

A sketchy looking street vendor reminiscent of the one that left me sick for 3 days, in the hospital on IV's, and forced to get a shot in the butt!

There were dozens of these little clothing stores throughout the markets.

My friend Rob and I enjoying pancakes, a sausage, and a hashbrown at Mickey D's. We've been meeting one on one to talk about life, Scripture, etc. and McDonald's seemed like a fitting place to read and discuss His Word.

From the traditional Chinese performance. This was decent but a bit boring. In fact, towards the end, many of us were nearly dozing from the food coma after all those dumplings!

And again.

And a third time.

Friends in the market!