Spring Festival Travels: Chengdu Feb. 3
Hi!
i'm in chengdu now! it's been a great first week of traveling. the logistics have been pretty easy so far and it's been great to see different landscapes, meet new people, and just do some fresh thinking in new places.
mary and i started off our travels with what we thought was a 30 hour bus ride west to wuhan in hubei province, on the yangtze river. it was a lot of fun, reclining on an upper bunk at the front of the bus for hours. As we discovered groggily at 3 am, when the bus driver kindly asked me if this was where we wanted to get off, that we were arriving at 3 am not 3 pm that day. we got a hotel planning to stay for a day in wuhan, but that same day we took off for our yangtze river tour because that was what seemed to make sense. they said it left at 2 pm ... we assumed we'd be boarding a boat there ... but as we found out over time, we were actually getting in a van to drive to another bus for a 4 hour ride to another city, followed by another hour plus bus ride to the boat just above the three gorges dam. on the way we befriended a new chinese immigrant to america james, back to visit friends in china. he took us under his wing and we wound up sharing a cabin with him and his friends - a great experience getting to know really nice peole.
the journey upriver to chongqing was wonderful. we started off with the chinese tour group until the engine died on the third day and most of the chinese tourists abandoned ship. after that it was us, as skeleton crew, 2 other americans and four really friendly chinese people. we all bonded a lot waiting for the ship to be fixed, and then slowly making our way upriver (on one day we paused anchored in midstream or pulled up against a river bank twice for 2-3 hours because the fog was so thick). all in all it was a wonderful experience of patience, and just enjoying things at the rivers pace. i loved sitting on the deck watching the country go by. also, the three gorges dam has flooded a whole series of cities, with millions of inhabitants, so they've been entirely rebuilt on high hillsides above the water. it was great to peer up at these from the ship and watch the lights at night. i'd love to go back and explore these places.
i really liked chongqing. it's a grimy gray city crammed onto a penninsula between the yangtze and a tributary river. we climbed from the boat up through level after level of apartment buildings. it's like other modern cities in china, except the terrain and limited space make it much more varied and energetic. we stayed in a hotel near the liberation monument (a monument to 1949, but as mary's guidebook points out, really to liberation from communism, give the huge department stores and neon surrounding it) but explored great crowded alleyways with steps, and older streets teeming with everyday chinese street life. we found our way up to a mountaintop park and listened to a man playing the chinese erhu and watched old men walking their birds as you'd described grandpop. i really liked this city and hope to spend more time there later.
now we're in chengdu. we took the train here and we're staying in a hostel/hotel right near the city center. last night we ate indian food with laura age (studying abroad here) a high school classmate and running friend of mine and abby's. today we spend the whole afternoon drinking tea and reading in an outside teahouse in the people's park - a great way to spend time with fun people watching.
tomorrow we head into the mountains. we'll spend three days or so on emei shan, a buddhist holy mountain at 3100 m. then we're looking to go further west maybe to hai something glacier park, and maybe other places. i'm not sure how much cold we'll run into there, though, and how bad the roads might get. but we're hoping to see mountains and get into some smaller towns and do a lot of walking.
on feb 16 we fly east from chongqing to shanghai to spend the spring festival feb 18 with our friend xiao shen from the university in dinghai and his extended family in the countryside sw of shanghai. then mary takes off to thailand to visit her boyfriend dan and i head i'll see where. our chinese friend james from the boat invited me to visit them if jiujiang between shanghai and wuhan on the yangtze and i have thoughts of taking a train out to chongqing again and back. train rides are really nice and i like the idea of spending a few days there just exploring and relaxing ... but i'll see.
i hope you're all doing well and i'll try to send back more news when i can!
tyler
i'm in chengdu now! it's been a great first week of traveling. the logistics have been pretty easy so far and it's been great to see different landscapes, meet new people, and just do some fresh thinking in new places.
mary and i started off our travels with what we thought was a 30 hour bus ride west to wuhan in hubei province, on the yangtze river. it was a lot of fun, reclining on an upper bunk at the front of the bus for hours. As we discovered groggily at 3 am, when the bus driver kindly asked me if this was where we wanted to get off, that we were arriving at 3 am not 3 pm that day. we got a hotel planning to stay for a day in wuhan, but that same day we took off for our yangtze river tour because that was what seemed to make sense. they said it left at 2 pm ... we assumed we'd be boarding a boat there ... but as we found out over time, we were actually getting in a van to drive to another bus for a 4 hour ride to another city, followed by another hour plus bus ride to the boat just above the three gorges dam. on the way we befriended a new chinese immigrant to america james, back to visit friends in china. he took us under his wing and we wound up sharing a cabin with him and his friends - a great experience getting to know really nice peole.
the journey upriver to chongqing was wonderful. we started off with the chinese tour group until the engine died on the third day and most of the chinese tourists abandoned ship. after that it was us, as skeleton crew, 2 other americans and four really friendly chinese people. we all bonded a lot waiting for the ship to be fixed, and then slowly making our way upriver (on one day we paused anchored in midstream or pulled up against a river bank twice for 2-3 hours because the fog was so thick). all in all it was a wonderful experience of patience, and just enjoying things at the rivers pace. i loved sitting on the deck watching the country go by. also, the three gorges dam has flooded a whole series of cities, with millions of inhabitants, so they've been entirely rebuilt on high hillsides above the water. it was great to peer up at these from the ship and watch the lights at night. i'd love to go back and explore these places.
i really liked chongqing. it's a grimy gray city crammed onto a penninsula between the yangtze and a tributary river. we climbed from the boat up through level after level of apartment buildings. it's like other modern cities in china, except the terrain and limited space make it much more varied and energetic. we stayed in a hotel near the liberation monument (a monument to 1949, but as mary's guidebook points out, really to liberation from communism, give the huge department stores and neon surrounding it) but explored great crowded alleyways with steps, and older streets teeming with everyday chinese street life. we found our way up to a mountaintop park and listened to a man playing the chinese erhu and watched old men walking their birds as you'd described grandpop. i really liked this city and hope to spend more time there later.
now we're in chengdu. we took the train here and we're staying in a hostel/hotel right near the city center. last night we ate indian food with laura age (studying abroad here) a high school classmate and running friend of mine and abby's. today we spend the whole afternoon drinking tea and reading in an outside teahouse in the people's park - a great way to spend time with fun people watching.
tomorrow we head into the mountains. we'll spend three days or so on emei shan, a buddhist holy mountain at 3100 m. then we're looking to go further west maybe to hai something glacier park, and maybe other places. i'm not sure how much cold we'll run into there, though, and how bad the roads might get. but we're hoping to see mountains and get into some smaller towns and do a lot of walking.
on feb 16 we fly east from chongqing to shanghai to spend the spring festival feb 18 with our friend xiao shen from the university in dinghai and his extended family in the countryside sw of shanghai. then mary takes off to thailand to visit her boyfriend dan and i head i'll see where. our chinese friend james from the boat invited me to visit them if jiujiang between shanghai and wuhan on the yangtze and i have thoughts of taking a train out to chongqing again and back. train rides are really nice and i like the idea of spending a few days there just exploring and relaxing ... but i'll see.
i hope you're all doing well and i'll try to send back more news when i can!
tyler
posted by Tyler C-R at 7:53 PM
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