Day 46: Leshan
Trip Start
Jun 09, 2009
1
39
40
Trip End
Aug 09, 2009
Chengdu, Sichuan, China
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Five of the fourth years were already there with their teacher, Shao laoshi. She’d also never gone to Leshan before, so decided to come along. While we were waiting for the last person to join us I ate my breakfast, and was teased for eating cake for breakfast. Okay, I guess it is kind of cake, but it’s a sponge cake and not very sweet. I think it makes a very good, though not particularly nutritious, breakfast.
At about 8:00 we walked to the tourism center where we could buy bus tickets
Garden
. The line there was fairly long, so we stood in three different lines and the first person to get to the counter paid for all of us, and then we paid them back. After that we headed out to a large waiting area that had lines for the busses to several different tourist locations. We were in the one at the very end. It took a little while to sort out exactly what bus we were getting on to make sure that there was room for all eight of us. Getting on the bus itself was an adventure in itself, as everyone crowded and pushed and shoved to get in first. All of us made it on just fine and were able to sit next to each other. It was a pretty nice bus, certainly nicer than the one the school gets us, clean with comfortable seats and plenty of leg room. They even gave us a bottle of water.The ride to the mountain was extremely interesting. They had a television on in the front of the bus, and while we were still driving through the more urban area that I’d seen before I watched it. What especially caught my attention was when it started playing music videos, and had both a Fish and a Fahrenheit video. As we were leaving Chengdu there was a billboard board advertising a car with a badminton player on it. That amused me a lot. I wish we had badminton players in the US famous enough to be on a car ad… There are billboards all along the freeway here, sometimes the same one multiple times along the trip
Writing on Hillside
. When we came out of the expressway tollbooth there was a very odd traffic jam on the far side, it rather looked as if fifty or so people had just suddenly decided to park their cars in the middle of the expressway. I really don’t know what was going on with that. The bus had to swing way around through a gas station in order to get past. As always the quiet of the bus made it really hard to stay awake, not that I’m complaining because I definitely prefer a quiet bus. I’m glad that I did manage to stay awake, though, because about an hour and a half into the trip the countryside began to get really interesting. It was definitely the most rural area that I’ve seen so far. There were a couple of small villages, and we passed through an area with a lot of rice paddies. Most of the buildings we passed were actual houses instead of apartments, ranging from shacks to traditional looking buildings with a courtyard in the middle. Despite a mist so dense that it was practically raining – sometimes it really did rain a bit – that made it hard to see very far, the entire area was very beautiful.
When we arrived at Leshan city we immediately got on a second bus to take us to the park. It was nowhere near as nice as the first bus, dirty with hard seats and none too new looking, but at least I did get a seat in the very back
Sleeping Buddha
. I love going places with the fourth years because of the awesome looks they get when they either ask somebody a question in Chinese, or ever better, start talking to each other in Chinese. The bus ride took us all the way through town, which was bigger than I was expecting, and eventually stopped at a row of restaurants outside the park gates. We were told there was no food of meal proportions inside the park, so we were best off eating now. I followed along as they decided on a place a little ways from where the bus stopped. I ordered a bowl of noodles, which was pretty good but not as good as the noodle place next to campus. After lunch we went to buy our tickets at the park entrance. At first there was a guy who was trying very hard to sell us what I think was some kind of package maybe with a tour guide, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying so I don’t know for sure. He managed to confuse us for a few minutes before David finally got him to leave us alone. Talk about aggressive, though, we held up a growing line as we tried to get rid of him. It was still a bit strange after that because we had to buy our tickets in pairs; I didn’t follow why that was either. At any rate at least we got our student discount, so it was about $9 US to get in.
By this time the weather was on the hot side though thankfully not boiling, because if it had been we would truly have boiled in all that humidity
River
. Even as we stood sorting out who owed who what for the entrance fees we were sweating. And we were about to climb a mountain… excellent.The entrance to the park was very beautiful, with some gardens and a small river with a bridge that we crossed to get to the main part of the park. The first thing we saw was a giant sleeping Buddha carved into the cliffs way above our heads. Next we went up some stairs to find a cave filled with figures carved into the rock. Outside the cave were five large figures carved into the cliff face. There was also a long wall with the story of the beginning of Buddhism carved into it. I’m not sure how old any of that was, but I think a lot of it was added recently to add to the appeal of the site. The signs didn’t have any dates that I could find and I haven’t been able to find anything on that part of the park on the internet, which contributes to my suspicion that they are all fairly new additions.
Farther along the path we came to the first stairs, which led through a couple more very pretty gardens. Then some steeper stairs, and we came to a large plaza half surrounded by a cliff face. There were several Buddhas carved into the cliff face, copies of Buddhas from other places in China. Directly across the plaza was a long flight of stairs leading up to a temple at the top
Cave
. They were pretty scary stairs to go up, since they were really steep, there were no landings, and the handhold was a chain absolutely covered in padlocks put there by couples for good luck. But reaching the top was totally worth it, because we had an awesome view back down the stairs and toward the hills and water in the distance. On each side of the main temple was a series of caves with more carvings in them, again mostly copies of famous statues from elsewhere in China. Thankfully we did not have to go back down the stairs, since we could instead walk through the cave to the right and begin our real ascent. But actually overall it wasn’t as bad of a walk as Qingshengshan. There were periods of long ascents, but they were more broken up by areas on the flat and even some areas of decent. It was more like we were winding through hills than actually climbing a mountain, which made a lot of sense when we finally got to the main object of interest, the giant Buddha. He is carved into a cliff face that overlooks the convergence of the rivers below to oversee the safety of the boats passing by below. On the side of his head we approached from there was a fairly large plaza, mostly taken up by amusement park style queuing gates.
What we couldn’t see from that point was just how long the line actually was. In fact, it was a while before I realized we were actually in the same line that was descending the cliff face across from us. When we came around the back of the head and were able to see the plaza beyond it was a real "oh" moment. We were going to be stuck there for quite a while. It was possibly even muggier than it had been at the start of our trip, and as we were waiting it periodically started sprinkling
Cave
. I almost wished it would rain a little bit harder, maybe it would have helped with the heat a little, and we were already soaked from the humidity anyway. I pointedly didn’t keep track of how long we stood there, in reality I really didn’t want to know. I was there to see the giant Buddha, and I was going to wait in line no matter how long it took, so what was the point in worry about the time? We had some trouble with people behind us trying to push their way up to a better position, but they were no match for us big Americans, haha. Two of us side by side could block the entire aisle. Enough to make me feel fat even after walking several miles in the humidity. Finally we made it out of the queuing area and down onto the descending path itself. This didn’t move any faster, but at least we got periodic views of either the city or the Buddha. The path was very much the reason for the slow going. When you first got out of the line there was an area with a very good view of the Buddha’s head. This turned into a complete bottleneck as fifty or more people crammed onto it vying desperately to get the best picture. To get out of it there was only a tiny passageway, big enough for only one person at a time, assuming that the line below was moving fast enough for that person to have room on the other side. But eventually we managed to get out, and down onto the path on the other side
Buddha
. After that we started down the real path down the cliff face. It was stairs just wide enough for one person at a time. Along it were shrines carved into the cliff. I’m not sure how old those were, but I think fairly old if not as old as the Buddha itself because they were quite worn away, and didn’t necessarily follow the modern path down the cliff. At every switchback there was time to snap a couple of pictures of the Buddha, and sometimes in between because it was really slow going. It made for a very interesting sequence of pictures as we gradually got lower.
Thankfully, though there were a lot of people at the bottom, it wasn’t crushingly crowded. We were able to get pretty good pictures, including a group picture. If is pretty much impossible to get a picture of the entire Buddha with a person next to it from the bottom, it’s that big. You have to angle your camera higher than the person’s head in order to get it all. There was a stand there selling incense for the shrine, but the usual crowd of souvenir vendors was notably absent.
Now satisfied that we had seen the giant Buddha and taken plenty of pictures, we had to face the fact that there was still a long walk back. And since the path went up and over a hill, not just up it, we had plenty of stairs to climb as well as descend. The path ran along the river and had great views, and the caves it went through were pretty cool, but I would have been a lot happier if I hadn’t been so out of breath. Fortunately the initial ascent was the worst, and after that the path mostly leveled out.
It took us a completely different route from how we had entered the park
Buddha
. We ended up walking through a row of souvenir vendors, typically all selling the exact same things, which were almost identical to the things at Wuhouci and Qingchengshan. Beyond that there was a path that went past a bridge going across the river. If it hadn’t been getting late and we hadn’t been so tired that would have been interesting to walk across. We ended up at another set of vendors. There was a lady there who kept after us to try to convince us to take her company’s bus back to Chengdu, plus a free ride from where we were out to the bus. Since it was the same price as taking the first company’s bus back, we decided to go ahead and do it. We were some of the last people on the bus this time, so I ended up sitting next to a Chinese guy. He slept most of the way, so it really didn’t matter. There was a European couple sitting in the seats across from me. There were also at least two babies, one in the back and one in the front. They were mostly quiet, except for about a twenty minute or so stretch. It was dinner time during the bus ride, so I ate the food I’d brought along since I wasn’t sure what the lunch situation would be like. I had some bread that was called “apple bread,” it was basically a loaf of bread 10” or so long with apple jelly inside. It was some of the best tasting bread that I’ve eaten here, though once again I’m sure my hunger skewed my opinion
Wall
. We weren’t too sure where the bus would take us in Chengdu, and it ended up not being anywhere near the school. The lot where it stopped was full of people trying to convince us to take their bus or their car or stay at their hotel, which meant that we switched awkwardly between English and Chinese to try to throw them off. The European couple on the bus turned out to be Belgian, and they were heading to a place fairly near Huaxi, so we told them they could follow us back. Shao laoshi ended up talking to one of the guards at the entrance, who directed us to the city bus lot that was next door. We pretty much walked onto a bus, it was a nice new looking one, better than many King Transit busses, and it took us to within a couple of blocks of Huaxi. Even a couple of blocks is a long way when you’re as tired as we were, but we made it.
By now it was well after seven, so we headed to the noodle shop for dinner. Since I’d already had half a dinner with my sandwich and had eaten noodles for lunch anyway, I order a plate of jiaozi, which are kind of like pot stickers but at least in this case were steamed, not fried. They were totally awesome, and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to eat American ones anymore, haha. After all the humidity of the day we went to baobing afterwards, and I got some strawberry ice. Then it was home and to the shower, then to bed.
