Dujiangyan and Mt Qingcheng

  Dujiangyan, China
Sunday, September 14, 2008

So today we took a bus and went to Dujiangyan and Mt Qingcheng. We as an apartment had planned to go yesterday but after a late start and failure after failure we ended up taking the 9:00AM bus this morning out of the city. Dujiangyan and Mt Qingcheng are about 1.5 hrs out of Chengdu. Dujiangyan was one of the cities affected by the earthquake and I think that is why we headed that way (that and an irrigation system from like 300 BC).

Teahouse near the irrigation system

We got to the station with time to spare which was a big deal for us, so we killed time by eating breakfast at a fastfood resturant and ended up almost missing the bus. So we had to split up and sit next to random Chinese people and I ended up getting a seat with negative leg room too.

Riverness

We get to the city and the first thing I see is pop up temporary housing. The irrigation system was on the opposite end of the city so we took a public bus to it and wow could you see the damage. The town had a feel like it used to be a big tourist town but was no just surviving.

Where they really live

The place we were trying to get to ended up being closed because of earthquake damage but we did get a cool look into certain parts of China. We decided so as not to waste a day to go to Mt. Qingcheng (which I didn't even know was close and apparently when I just did a little internet search to see what it was called, is the most famous Taoist mountain).

Fishin in the river

We hopped a bus toward the mountain and got an even more depressing look at some earthquake damage. Once we got to the top this lady accosted us and tried to get us to pay her to be a tour guide. She ended up leading us to her restaurant (which was like out of her house lol) and it was really good.

After we decided to climb the mountain though none of us had planned for it and half of us (not me) had sandals on. We get to the mountain and there is this beautiful palace covered in scaffolding. They had earthquake damage as well, but there was still some things open.

Mt Qingcheng

So we start walking up the mountain and people in vans keep offering to drive us up for unbelievable prices. And we keep saying "bu yao" which literally means "do not want". So we start walking up the car path, then we see this like path that has some people walking up it. Now when I say path I mean this in the most lose translation. Its like really a steep incline with maybe a tree or two to help pull you up.

More Mt

I keep up rather well for a little while (read 15 minutes), but then I realize that there is no way I can go on to the top. I am just not in shape for scaling mountains. So I let them know i'll meet them at the bottom and turn back. I am glad I did because I then noticed a little cut on my leg that was bleeding.

Palace again

So I enjoyed a nice scenic walk down the mountain stopping to take pictures. Then at the bottom was the palace that I had wanted to check out. It's an old palace that is now a Taoist temple. It also had some damage and was getting fixed so at first I didnt think I was allowed to enter, but I saw some people coming out so I went in.

lantern thing

I thought it was really cool. I thought it was way cooler to see people come to this place and make offerings because it has been around for ages and ages.

temple god 1

At this point I get a call from Caitlin saying that they want me to go ahead to make sure we can get bus tickets back to China because they got lost on the mountain. So I do and on the way run over all the Chinese I can think of in my head about purchasing tickets.

zoomed in

I get to the station about a half hour before everyone and go up to the window and say my butchered speech. The ticket lady understood me but I couldn't hear her responding question and was not happy. So i take out my translator and start typing what i want to say when this lady comes over and asks me in English if i need some help which i did.

i was glad she came over because she also told me that they were good for any time before 630 which was what the lady had been trying to tell me. so the rest of my people show up and we get on the bus and head home. It was so exhausting but a good time. It was good to get out of the city.

Tomorrow is the Mid-autumn festival or the Moon cake festival meaning I get a day off of school. Hopefully I will have some cool pictures. Speaking of, I just uploaded some photos from last saturday. Enjoy!

PS: Your nugget of information that I just learned recently. In lots of homes/historical places there are guard dragon statues.

Male guard dragon

Apparently one is female and one is male. The male has is pall over a ball symbolizing the work he does for the family and the female has her paw over a little dragon symbolizing the work she does in rearing the children.

Female guard dragon

There is a better picture of the female in the photo album.