Mt. Emei

  Emeishan, China
Friday, August 17, 2007

On the way up Emeishan

Speed Entry

Arrived by bus in Leshan from Kangding. Caught 3 more buses from Leshan to Baguo village in Emei town.  Checked into highly relaxing and friendly Teddy Bear Hotel.  Split a double room with a Polish dude, Vitec.

Walked around Baguo, got terribly lost.  Indulged in delicious fried bananas with chocolate (plus pi jiu) before retiring to bed

Awoke in the morning, headed up Emei from Wuxiangang.  Only crazy people hike all the way to the top.  It's supposed to take at least 10 hours.  Sounds perfect.  I arrived at summit in 7 hours. 

Just about to tug my leg hair

Highlight along the walk: at the Elephant Wading Pool temple (where, to my disappointment there were neither elephants nor pools large enough for elephant wading), I found a throng of Chinese feeding monkeys.  I sat and watched for 20 minutes until the Chinese all left.  Then I had the pavilion to myself.  Two adolescent monkeys caught sight of me, jumped off the railing and slowly made their way over.  They were obviously curious about the hair on my legs.  After a minute or two of hesitation, one finally reached out and tugged my leg hairs a bit.  By their genuine laughter, I could tell that the sedan chair porters at the edge of the pavilion really loved it as much as I did.

I looked for cheap lodging at the summit...on a Saturday night of the last week before every Chinese university's summer ends.  Dumb.  So I hiked back down an hour or so and got the last bed in the attic of the Jieyin Temple for 30 yuan.  

Emei

Now I know how super stars feel.  Just about every worker and guest at the temple wanted to talk with me, take my picture, listen to my iPod, touch me, fondle my book or its bookmark (I have a ticket from a Mongolian national park as the bookmark.  The Chinese all think that it's a $3000 bill because its green and has 3000 togrog written on it.  I've developed a decent explanation as to what it is and have even had to look up how to say Mongolia in Chinese because of this bookmark).  I finally had to yawn to get the last fan to leave my room last night.  Flattering, I suppose, but really it's only because I'm white, tall, and alone.  So it feels a little bit hollow after awhile.

Before sunrise all my fellow Chinese guests at the Temple headed to the summit to see the sunrise.  I knew that there was too much fog to see the sunrise, so I slept in another hour and had the whole temple to myself as dawn broke.  It felt quite spiritual.  Just me and one monk praying as the night turned to day.  Incredible.  Back here at the cafe others who just came from the summit said there was no way to see the sun and that all they saw where thousands of Chinese. 

On the way up Emeishan

I decided I'd had enough of cutting down steps through throngs of tourists and smiling and saying, "hello" or "ni hao" every 2 minutes, so I caught the bus down from near Jieyin Hall to the village at the base.  I had a fascinating conversation with a Chinese pilot who volunteered all kinds of frank information about raising his daughter, about the difficulties of trying to leave one job for another, about the differences in language and culture throughout China, about flying, about US air traffic controllers, about mandatory English exams for international pilots, and his criticism of the Cultural Revolution.  It was by far the most interesting conversation I have had with a Chinese national.  That, combined with the relaxing breakfast I had back at the Teddy Bear Cafe with an Israeli software engineer and his girlfriend, made me quite happy I chose to take the bus back.

Off to Chengdu...