Number 22: China 1986

Mounting the beauty under heaven

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving" (Lao Tzu)

On good friday 1986 we arrive at the station of Emei, in Sichuan. The reason of fame of this at the time ugly, dirty town is nearby 3077 m Emei Shan, one of the sacred mountains of Chinese Buddhism. From the 2. century on the mountain was adorned with monasteries. In the 15th century there were more than one hundred. The same people who had destroyed monasteries and Buddhist statues in the cultural revolution under Mao were in 1986 cutting wood, carrying bricks to rebuild monasteries and remodel Buddha statues for the expected invasion of tourists. The mountain rises 2600 m above the plain where the town is and we wanted to climb it. Again (see number 19), there is a detailed description of the adventures of these days in the travel diary which i have kept.

"Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step." (Lao Tzu)

Tourist map of emei shan from 1986

The description of the trails and the history of the mountain on the back f the map and the official chinese and tourist money of the time

The route to the summit and back in total is 132 km. We expected to do it in 3 days. Yes, we were young and wild then. Food and lodging was available in the monasteries. To achieve the goal, we invested 1 Yuan in a walking stick and after noodle soup for breakfast in the Fuhu temple at the base we took off. The first problem turned out to be the muddy path. We were afraid that our light shoes would not survive the whole route to the top. Nevertheless we passed a lot of old people on the first 2,5 hours and 11 km to the Quingyin Pavillion, a beautiful temple which can be entered over a bridge above a water fall, These lower temples still or again had beautiful paintings, statues and were full of fruit trees and flowering plants. However, the diary is full of complaints about the masses of local tourists, souvenir shops and restaurants.

"Everything has beauty but not everybody sees it" (Confucius)

The local crowd passing souvenir shops

From the Pavillion the path turns into a staircase. That is even more exhausting, especially for the upper legs. All the material for the reconstruction of the temples had to be carried up. Some of the people climbing up carry heavy loads, either in a tray on the back or balanced on the ends of a wooden stick on their shoulder. I try to lift the load of bricks of one man…. but I would not have been able to carry it more than a few steps. Some offer to carry our backbags or even us up the mountain. Some of the locals are indeed carried up that way. We decline.

"An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox" (Lao Tzu)

Carrying load up the mountain

After another 7 km and 400 m of climbing, at 12.40 we reach the beautiful Hongchun temple. We take a break and watch some monks on a stone bench leafing through old books in the sun. There are courtyards with Zen gardens and exotic plants. Again, only the crowds of noisy locals disturb the peace.

You cannot open a book without learning something" (Confucius)

From here it is 15 km and 700 height meters more to the Xianfeng temple at 1732 m. There are few hikers left who go uphill, but crowds of people walk down. They shout chinese encouragements at us, which we answer by cursing in german. The route up the stairs is steep and exhausting, but spectacular. The path follows a gorge and crosses numerous little bridges. After 33 km we finally reach the Xianfeng temple, our destination for today.

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished"(Lao Tzu)

The Xianfeng temple where we stayed the first night

There are plenty of rooms for pilgrims in the temple and for 9 yuan we get a double room. There is a washroom. In a corner is a pile of coal dust to heat a pot with water. Everyone with the desire to clean himself gets a basin and a dipper full of boiling water, which can be diluted with cold water according to personal taste. It works wonder for the tired feet.

"Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power" (Lao Tzu)

Monks drying their books

Then we proceed to the pilgrims‘dining hall. Above a hole in the wall is a chalk board with the menu. I take it from the hook and put my head into the hole to look for somebody to order. On the other side of the hole is a smoky and greasy kitchen. Somebody in a cooks’ apron aims with chopsticks at some rats scurrying around on the ground. I order everything on the menu twice. It turns out to be pork, egg-soup and pancakes. The food is good. And since the dining hall is so dark, we can only hear the pets….

"He who knows does not speak. He who speaks, does not know" (Lao Tzu)

The diary is full of complaints about the chinese visitors. They come in bigger groups and are rowdy and loud. In contrast to us westerners, the chinese like to be in company. A place is only good for them when they have lots of people to share it with. In this temple one guy gets out a bottle of booze and then the party starts. We would have preferred a quiet temple. We get a lot of pints in the hope to be able to sleep through the noise.

"He who talks more is sooner exhausted" (Lao Tzu)

The toilets in the Xianfeng temple

Surprisingly there is electrical light in the temple all night. That is good when you have to go to the toilet. This location can be attained via a kind of wobbly wooden bridge. At the end wooden cubicles with a hole in the ground hover above the abyss. Below the shit of 600 years of Buddhism slowly slides down the flank of the mountain. But not everybody was able to aim right into the hole. My nightmare is to loose my glasses….

At night it has rained. Fortunately we had a room on the ground floor, because the roof was leaking and the beds upstairs got wet. So without breakfast we continue our hike up the sodden stairway. In addition it is cold.

"Wherever you go, go with all ;your heart" (Confucius)

Eventually we meet the famous Emei Shan monkeys. The monkeys are known to be notorious thieves and we tightly hold on to our gear. Indeed we pass a number of plundered, empty handbags and their former contents. At a point the path is plastered with banknotes. A triumphant monkey up in a tree swings another empty bag. We collect as much of the money as we can easily get and continue. Later we meet a beggar and give him what we found. He is dumbfounded.

"Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt" (Lao Tzu)

Unfortunately my only photo of the famous ferrocious monkeys

The day is foggy and gets increasingly colder. At least there is no rain. But the path gets so icy that we buy crampons from a vendor along the way. Above 2100 m there even is a lot of snow. From time to time we have a noodle soup in wretched shelters along the path. It gives some warmth. The path must be spectacular at clear weather. To the left an abyss disappears in the fog. To the right a forest of bamboo. Muffled sounds seem to come from far away.

"If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as a teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself" (Confucius)

Summit temple in the mist

The top of the mountain can also be reached on a basic road. There are busses. Therefore there is a huge, bleak and dark temple at the top. There are several buildings with dormitories and bedrooms for hundreds of visitors, but tonight only a few huddle together around a stove in the only heated room. On each bed we find one of the typical chinese down winter jackets. We gratefully wear it.

Also here, dinner is good. But it is accompanied by the smacking, sneezing, snorting and spitting sounds of the chinese guests. In China, if you don‘t make noises while you eat they think you don‘t like the food.

The night is cold even though I wear all my clothes and have brought my sleeping bag good for -10 C. Getting to sleep again is difficult. All the noise easily penetrates the thin walls. At least there is enough light to read. After we finally fall asleep we wake up from rattling and knocking on the door. We think somebody has got the room wrong in the maze of buildings, but it turns out that we share our room with a chinese girl. She comes late but like all the other chinese visitors gets up before dawn to see the famous sunrise.

Shops and food stalls on the way to the summit

The rumour goes that the sun rises on Emei shan in the center of a perfectly round rainbow. Pilgrims had been so overwhelmed that they jumped into the rainbow and ended up in the abyss. Nobody had to jump that day. Nobody had to get up early either. There was no sun and no rainbow.

"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated" (Confucius)

The icy landscape at the summit

The way down we took the bus.

 

„Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it“ (Lao Tzu)

Confucius lived from 551 – 479 BC. His philosophy defined rules for personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity. „He is widely considered as one of the most important and influential individuals in human history. His teaching and philosophy greatly impacted people around the world and remain influential today“ (Wikipedia)

„A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves“ (Lao Tzu) 

Although it was thought that Lao Tzu was a contemporary of Confucius, it is not sure that he is more than a legendary figure. If he really existed, it was after Confucius, in the 4th century BC. If you read the advice of these men, which was well known for such a long time, you are tempted to ask why their easily understandable and correct words are not followed by the leaders of the world.  

„There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is imitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest“ (Confucius)

Chinese tourists watching the western visitors

Pond at the base of the mountain

Entrance to the trail at the base of the mountain

The landscape in the lower part of the mountain

One of the bridges on the trail

The Quingyin Pavillion

The author on his way up

The stairs leading up

The beautiful Hongchun temple

Noodle soup for lunch

The stairs get worse higher up

One of the temple complexes at the top of mountain

Number 19: China 1986

“Riding the iron rooster” (Paul Theroux, 1988

In 1982 a friend of mine finished a year of travelling in Asia with a tour across China and a trip home on the transibirian railway. He must have been one of the first individual travellers allowed to enter the country. He came back with a backbag full of the strangest souvenirs and brilliant pictures. He started to cook the most elaborate chinese dishes and told all these fascinating stories. He was so enthusiastic, that he went to University again…. to study Chinese. I had to go there, but it took four years until I eventually could. And again, of this tour, I have kept a detailed, but almost undecipherable diary, maps and other printed matter. Of some maps, I cannot even retrieve which town it was because everything is in Chinese. The two of us sent home three parcels of 17 kg each (the maximum weight for surface mail) full of souvenirs, spices and books (yes, a cooking book (with excellent recipes, however I did not try the red, hot camel soles yet), and some in chinese). The following story is an abridged version of the diary.

City map of Kunming, the railroad timetable of China (abridged tourist version !!!!!), a beer bottle label and a banknote. We considered to cut out the plane of these banknotes to glue on our letters home to make clear that they had to be air mail

There would be many stories to tell from this memorable trip. I select a railway story although the photos are very bad, but it shows how friendly people are in a country which gets such bad reports recently.

The queues to buy tickets in Guiyang. Each counter is for one direction. Note the little holes where the tickets are sold.

There was a direct train from Guilin to Kunming, a distance of a bit more than 1000 km. But that train was full and so we only got tickets with changes on the way. We, that was myself and my friend Mane, two dutch girls and a swiss guy called Martin. No seat reservation and a trip of two days. The first train we had to take left Guilin at 7.30 for Liuzhou, a short trip of 2,5 hours. Against all odds we get seats.

Hard seat, not very full

In Guilin we had bought a little game of chinese chess. It looks very different from our chess and I don‘t know how to play it. An old guy next to me puts it on his suitcase and sets up the stones. Then he patiently explains how the different stones have to move. Like everywhere in China, everybody around us gets curious now and stands around us giving advice, i do not understand. Eventually the conductor comes and chases the others back to their seats. Now the old man corrects my mistakes himself. At the end he still wins.

We were never waiting alone for long. After a short while we were surrounded by curios spectators. Usually they moved away when i pointed my camera. So Martin, used as a shield, had to dive away quickly to take a picture

After we arrive in Liuzhou we go into the station hall. Maybe we can make a reservation for the next train, which runs overnight. However, we don‘t really know where to go. As we stand around a bit helpless in the huge station hall, surrounded by gawpers as everywhere, a pretty police woman approaches us. With the help of our language guide we try to explain that we want to make a seat or sleeper reservation for the train to Guiyang. She seems to understand and brings us to a board shed. The long line in front of the little openings in the wall indicates that this probably is the place where tickets are sold. But we do not have to wait. The beauty lets us enter right inside of the shed. From inside we see heads and hands of prospective travellers peaking through the holes. We get a reservation for a hard seat on train 403 at 16.30 right away. The police woman also helps us to stall our backbags so that we can have a look at the city.

Station road in Liuzhou

In the south of China my friend Mane got really fond of the chinese habit of chewing sugar cane. The cane is available at every street corner, you buy a stick a spit the chewed up remainders on the ground. So also here. But he did not take account of a little guy in a police jacket, who hardly reaches my shoulder. He grabs him at the neck and points to the ground. Indeed the streets here are surprisingly clean. Spitting is not allowed. But we get away with a reprimand.

End of dinner in Liuzhou. To order we went into the kitchen and pointed at the ingredients in the cupboards

Waiting for the train in Liuzhou...

The queues for the various trains departing soon in Liuzhou

After an excellent lunch we return to the station, get our backbags and sit down in the waiting area for our train. In china at the time, people had to wait in an area specified by a sign for their train and were led to the platform shortly before the train was about to depart. The train is indeed full. Very full. We have our seats, but we get all the attention of our local fellow travellers. No way to get any sleep in the more than 20 hours to come.

Yunnan spring countryside. Some stops seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, no station, no platform, only passengers

Suddenly a little railway man stands next to us and explains something non-comprehensible in chinese. We try the approach with the language guide again but to no avail. Meanwhile the whole coach is gathering around us. They even stand on the seats and the backrests to get a better view. At last there is a guy who speaks some french which Martin understands. The little railway man offers us tickets for a soft sleeper compartment. The problem is that these compartments only have four beds. Eventually we get the compartment for 100 yuan and one of us (guess who) is allowed to sleep on the floor.

Our soft sleeper compartment. Note the red thermos can on the floor under the window. Ht water is always available

The next problem is to get to the sleeper at the end of the full train. To get down the backbags from the luggage rack without killing somebody is already an achievement. But we make it. The compartment has best european sleeper standard, is meticulously clean (in all trains the conductors regularly sweep the floor), and we get a thermos can of hot water right away. The space on the ground easily accommodates the additional traveller. We even get away with a lower price of 70 Yuan for the five of us. The tip we offer is not accepted.

Yunnan in spring

We make ourselves comfortable and enjoy the view. Then we start to get hungry again and ask the conductor whether there is anything to eat. After some guessing we understand that the people from the restaurant car will get us when our food is ready. So we wait. After a while the train stops in a little station. Somebody knocks at our door. We are led out of the train onto the platform and they guide us to the dining car halfway down the train. The dining car is closed, but they open the door for us. We have a bit of a bad feeling because there are quite a number of other starving travellers waiting outside who are not allowed in. A table is set for 5 guests. A couple of others who managed to get in as well are kicked out right away.

“Renmin Tielu Wei Renmin” (the railway of the people is for the people” (cited in Paul Theroux, 1988)

In the dining car

The dining car is a bit rundown but nicely decorated with lamps on the tables, a bit of green decoration and almost white table clothes. Everything including beer is set ready for dinner. And then the food is carried in. Altogether we get seven freshly prepared courses. Tomatoes filled with tofu, roasted pork with vegetables, chicken, squid with vegetables and soy, pancakes, soup and rice. And a course which I cannot decipher from the scribble in my diary any more. The Liuzhou beer is excellent and flows in big quantities. The whole dinner costs us 40 Yuan, a negligible amount.

‘at mealtimes she was more reminiscent of a smith than a kitchen”, (Paul Theroux about the kitchen in the dining car on train 80 from Kunming to Guilin) “at lunch time they had dried fish, disgusting fat ham, rancid shrimp and rubber-like rice”

Passenger on a train crossing in the opposite direction

I am highly embarrassed when we walk back along the hard seat coaches to our soft sleeper. These poor people have to travel like on a slave trading ship. Later it turns out that there is only one sleeper in the long line of coaches. We probably got a compartment of the train staff.

Waiting room for first class, party functionaries and pregnant women

We arrive in Guiyang the next day at 13.10 after a trip of almost a whole day. The guard from the sleeper coach brings us into the station building and the waiting room for first class, party functionaries and pregnant women. There another friendly young lady brings us hot water for tea and somehow makes us understand that for the night train to Kunming there are only two soft sleeper and one hard sleeper bed available. Gents as we are we leave the soft sleepers to the two dutch girls and the hard sleeper to Martin, the swiss guy. A reservation for a seat is not possible since the train arrives from far away.

Shunting engine in the station of Guiyang

The friendly lady brings us to the platform shortly before the train arrives. At 15.24, exactly on time, the train rolls into the station, quite a feat since it arrives from Beijing 2000 km away. But our hope to get a seat dwindles. This train is very full. After a few people get out, there is a desperate run for the doors. The conductor tries to let us get in first, but has no chance. We are still among the first, but even the aisles are already full. We will have to stand for 15 hours.

Hard sleeper. Usually with lots of noise and music until 10 pm.

But we do not have to stand in the aisle for long. A conductor comes and examines our tickets. Then he walks along the seats and inspects the other travellers. Eventually we have to stand next to a couple of people who get out at the next station. Then the story of the train before is repeated. We are told that we can get hard sleeper beds. Under the envious looks of the whole coach we get our backbags from the luggage rack and manage to move ourselves through the train to the hard-sleeper. The plank beds there are by far not as comfortable as the soft sleeper. And there is no way to sleep before they turn down the music and turn off the light at ten. We get all the attention of our fellow travellers since there is no separation between the compartments. But it is better than standing for 15 hours.

The long line of coaches. Some trains had about 20; all full

And this train has a restaurant as well. It is closed but again we get the privilege to sit down and have a couple of beers before the kitchens opens two hours later. Then a run of the others for seats and food starts. We buy vouchers and get chicken, soup, squid, prawns and rice. Not as good as the day before but not bad.

“Chule fieji zhi wai, yangyang dou chi” (We eat everything except planes and railways), Mr. Jiang Le Song to Paul Theroux in 1988.

After a surprisingly good night‘s sleep we arrive in Kunming early in the morning. Exactly on time.

“I was the hairy, big-nosed devil from the end of the world, a foreigner that the chinese think of as the country's booby” Paul Theroux in 1988.

After he has coupled his engine QJ3130 on our train, the proud driver waits for the sign of departure. In 1986, these engines were brand new and still been built in the world's last steam engine production site in Datong. 10 years later most of them had disappeared into the blast furnaces again...

Paul Theroux published his epic book “riding the red rooster” in 1988. He must have traveled in China in the years before. He did the route from Kunming to Guilin in the opposite direction, on the direct train in a soft sleeper. It is almost conceivable that he sat on one of the trains we crossed on our way to Kunming. Or any other on the route between Beijing, Datong, Xian, Chengdu, Huangchow or Nanjing. But apparently he never got such nice food on a train.

“My trip to China took so long and asked me so much that it was no longer a trip. it had become part of my life”

Not much better than a train hard sleeper and worse than a soft sleeper.... dormitory in the Kunming hotel, Kunming