Crashcourse In China - My First 24 Hours

Chinese are obsessed with cleanliness. Everywhere you look somebody is sweeping the street or the floor.
All basic necessities are being taken good care of in China. There's plenty of food available anywhere you go and, no worries, there's a toilet much more frequently than you'd ever expect. If that doesn't cover them all, rest assured China Mobile is everywhere.



I arrived in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan, with a detour through Lhasa. Yes, Chengdu was my stop on the way to Lhasa, but life is always full of surprises.
I did not know upfront, but the flight Kathmandu - Chengdu stops in Lhasa. Here you get a free tour of the Lhasa airport. That is, you have to get off the plane, wait in one line at the immigration office with a set of forms then go down some stairs and wait in another line to get a new boarding pass and check in again, go up the stairs and finally board your flight, ie the same plane. It's all included in the price.
There's a very bright side to this: you fly over and around the Himalaya. And that's something you don't want to miss, if possible: to see Everest this close and the whole rest - including Makalu, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse - which, unfortunately, you cannot identify unless you were prepared for this feast. And, perhaps, if the Chinese passenger next to you is not all over you to take pictures :-)

In Chengdu on the airport there was nobody waiting for me. A brief moment of panic. But whom does panic help? I realized all of a sudden that I had no idea how to get in touch with the agent who arranged everything for me. A scam? I quickly went through all the arguments and all the information items I knew. Did I miss anything in the email? Was there a detail about where to meet? What was the name of the place I was going to stay overnight?
Stupidly enough I did neither print nor write down any details.
Any internet cafe around? I need to get to that information NOW!

Shock number 1. The airport is big and looks spick and span. Cool cafes and gift shops, all stores have cool English names. Most signs have an English translation beneath as well. The facade is perfect.
Shock number 2. Nobody understands or speaks a word English. Why need that in the gift shops or at the money exchange counter ? Is that just here or is that the rule? I'll have to find out...

I found the ATM even before getting my checked-in luggage. One problem solved. Running around from the international to the domestic arrival area and back I discover an internet cafe. It's hard even to find out how much it costs. The waitress is very pretty, but the facade doesn't help me.
Inside there are coffee tables and comfortable armchairs with coloured pillows. All interior is nicely designed. There are a bunch of computers with flat screens where you can sit and watch movies on DVDs if you need to kill time. The look is cool, the waitresses all pretty, the only 2 customers watching movies.
Eventually, I find out from a flyer on the table that internet costs 38 yuan and you also get a free drink. The beauty I had tried talking to earlier comes to my table asking me something. I'm choosing the orange juice and she goes away only to return in a minute with a big jar halfway full with a white powder. There's a teaspoon inside and she basically shows me that that's the orange juice. By now I have forgotten all rules of politeness and I just wink her away. Keep it, I'll pay anyways. And I pay right away so she can leave me in peace.

From my email I get the name of the hostel where I was supposed to be taken to tonight and a quick search takes me to the directions to get there. At least it's not a ghost place.

Having obtained the necessary information I am ready to go. I do not want to take any taxi and wave away all the taxi drivers approaching me. In front of the building seems to be the bus station but, of course, there is a barrier. The language barrier. Showing the address where I'm trying to get to I'm being told to hop on the waiting bus and then take a taxi. It's more guesswork the whole conversation, but I'm fine. I pay the fare and hop on the bus. I have no idea where it will take me. Nobody can answer the simplest question, but everybody is looking at me as if I were a ghost. It is dark by now, past 7 pm local time.
As I'm sitting there quite cool in the back of the bus by now a man comes and asks me - in English! - where I want to go. He looks at the address on the paper and tells me that he goes that way, too. He lives in that area and he will help me. I should follow him. Now, this is progress!
About 20 minutes later of driving to the city and then on large brightly lit boulevards lined up with expensive looking hotels and more expensive looking shops (Gucci & co) we reach the terminal bus stop. It was interesting to see that the Starbucks Coffee sign was as big and as brightly lit as Gucci's. I have to remember that...

I get off the bus like everybody else and follow the man. He is very nice and his English is quite good. When I make an observation about the size and first impression of the city he replies "Chengdu is the capital city of Sichuan". "Is it always this foggy?", I ask. "Yes, foggy and warm".
It is indeed warm and I'm steaming under my heavy backpack. I'm following the man across the street where we stop for a cab. Eventually a cab picks us up and drives us some 5 minutes away or so. This is a big intersection where the street begins on which the hostel is supposed to be, quite close to the Wuhou temple.

The man is asking around but nobody knows anything about the hostel. We keep going along the street watching the street numbers. We pass the temple and then cross the street. A little farther in a gloomy courtyard on the left I can see the sign: "Holly's Hostel". "Holy hostel" by now, as I'm breaking down under my backpack and my mind only goes like this "I'm going to throw away this backpack."
I thank the man very warmly. He was extremely nice. He tells me that once, when he was abroad, he was lost and someone helped him. Therefore, he remembered that incident and helped me, too. Conclusion: be nice to helpless strangers. You never know when you'll end up in the same situation :-)

When I enter the hostel and tell them that I think I have a reservation the girl looks suprised and then it dawns on her. But somebody, the driver, was waiting for me at the airport. "Sorry, I was there for a while. I checked the whole area, there was nobody."
I get a room which is clean and suprisingly nice. It also has a TV, something I'll learn is apparently a must for every room in China.
Although there's no hot water I decide to take a shower. Then I make an attempt to go to the third floor where there's a cafe. I am hungry.
The woman there speaks no English and doesn't seem to be willing to do anything. So I limit myself to buying a Sprite and I return to my room. I still have some yak cheese and a bun I saved on the plane. And then I have Snickers, which I have become a fan of in the meantime. It never freezes or melts completely. It has sugar and nuts and it works well as a calories boost. It's a life saver sometimes :-)

I got a weird assignment from my sister when I told her I'm going to China. As usual she only wants something (small). "I only want a picture of a panda". Where would I get a panda ? Should I go to the zoo? But, as it usually happens with her requests, things worked out. Behind the counter at reception there are lots of postings sticking on the wall. The hostel offers half-day tours to the panda breeding center.

I had no idea there was such a thing in Chengdu. I admit, I am a total ignorant. I was so focused on Tibet that I didn't really check what Chengdu has to offer. But will I have time?
Sure, the train to Lhasa only leaves in the evening and so I can book the tour for next morning.

Next morning I'm ready at 7:20 to get on the tour. We are 3 people: me and 2 Italian guys who are chatting incessantly. The driver takes us to the breeding center. A 50 minutes drive in the foggy morning over major roads (highway) where rickshaws and bikes alike ride on the side without any lights. The street lights are more of a guideline than an enforced rule. There are many road maintenance people sweeping the roads in the morning.
We reach the center around 8am and the driver hands us the tickets and shows us on the watch that we should be back here at the entrance by 10am. And off we go to see the pandas.
A few words about the breeding center. It is laid out as a big park with the panda enclosures and the different buildings surrounded by bamboo forest. It is extremely clean and well designed and there are information panels and maps all over with English "subtitles" as well. The Chinese wanted to make this facility into a world class research institute and they most likely succeeded.
The giant pandas look like huge teddybears. They are so lazy that they make perfect targets for the pouchers. On top of that they are solitary animals and, again, too lazy even to look for a mate and breed. Hence, their own nature is their doom. In captivity the animals are grouped to try to make them more used to each other and, hopefully, simplify the breeding. In the end, though, breeding is not easier (it's still only through artificial insemination that pandas reproduce) but the show for the visitors is better. You can watch for example 4 panda bears sitting next to each other and eating unperturbed for hours. They ignore each other, they ignore the people and flashes. They just sit there and eat.
In contrast to these the red pandas are hyperactive creatures. They look rather like big rust-red coloured cats with a long fluffy tail. And they run around chasing each other and playing continuously. Out of some 40 pictures maybe 2 are not blurred. No ISO setting or exposure time helped - that might say something about how hyper they are.


After the tour I still had the afternoon to explore the city. I decided to only go to the nearby Wuhou temple. It seemed to be old and very interesting with a huge garden.
It is not just a temple but a complex of temples from and celebrating the period of the Three Kingdoms between 222-280 AD. The garden is beautiful with lots of trees and shrubs, some blossoming camelias and azaleas and a special area with beautiful bonsai trees and little pavilions to rest and relax. The cleanliness again was impressive and there were workers again sweeping all over the place. Even the toilets here receive more attention. However, here too I was surprised to not encounter anybody speaking/understanding any English, not even at the ticket booth or the gift shops.
The complex houses not only a bunch of temples but also some oversized statues of the kings and personalities of that era. Some date back to the 17th century, others to the mid 19th century. There were lots of Chinese visitors. But the most interesting parts I liked were a little museum hall with extremely beautiful and well organized artifacts and a collection of paintings on porcelain.
With the artefacts grouped by domain - warship, agriculture, art, etc - labeled and with brief descriptions provided even in English, the exhibition was absolutely wonderful. What I liked most were the almost 2000 years old terracotta statues. None bigger than maybe 3 feet tall they depicted peasants, singers or dancers marvelously. The expressions on their faces are astonishing. I noticed that they all smiled, something I had not noticed so far in their contemporary successors. Actually, when I saw these statues I realized suddenly why I had this bad defensive feeling since yesterday. Nobody had smiled, everybody seemed grumpy.
The paintings on porcelain were also extremely beautiful. The level of detail, the vividness of the colours were astonishing. They illustrated historic scenes, maybe making up a whole story, but I couldn't figure out as these had no labels. What I also liked about these was the style of the drawings. It almost reminded me of some cartoons strips. The expressions on the faces, the expressions of the horses they all resembled present-day comic strips. Unfortunately there was no additional information about these other than the "Collection of Porcelain Paintings" sign at the entrance.

Next to the temple complex was a so-called traditional "snack street". A narrow alley lined with food stalls selling all sorts of edible stuff. Meat snacks on a skewer but also cakes and other Sichuan specific snacks presented in different shapes. Some looked like little works of art. All were spicy, for sure. And people added more spice to them. Someone had thought about the foreigners and provided English translations to most of the labels. But they sounded so funny that you couldn't really figure out what they were. Intestines or noodles ? Rice or worms ? Testicles or dumplings? They all certainly looked interesting.

I had to be back at the hostel by 6:30pm to be picked up by a driver and taken to the train station. When I returned to the hostel the driver was there sitting quite cool in the lobby. I had to repack my stuff a little bit and also preferred waiting here than in the train station. But the drive apparently took about 50 minutes and so we left on time.
There seemed to be something wrong with the car from the beginning. Nobody helped me with the luggage and the driver and another guy were checking lights and fiddling around with switches. But we left and soon I noticed that we were getting stuck in traffic and the engine would die in intersections. Next thing I noticed was the guy taking some obscure roads and alleys not meant for cars. Twice we did U-turns and I could sense the confusion in this guy's head. I was wondering whether he knew how to get to the train station. When we got stuck in a big intersection facing 6 lanes of stopped oncoming cars I thought it was time to start praying. It was a one way major road, but he was determined to enter it. Fortunately, the honking of the cars now getting in motion forced us to turn. We almost ran over a couple of cyclists. A few times when changing lanes we almost caused accidents. We were really lucky that the other dricers were paying attention. What an idiot! I kept thinking. Was there somethig I could do? I was watching the road and signs with much attention. When we passed by the train station crossing a wide intersection we were both equally surprised. Oh well, now we need to turn back again.
But the road continued and was becoming a freeway apparently. I thought we were going to tour the city tonight at snail's speed. Luckily enough we reached an intersection where the signs and lights clearly indicated that the leftmost lane was for U-turns. The idiot stayed on the second-left lane. "Hey, we need to do a U-turn." And when he turned to me - as he didn't understand any English - I explained to him using signs that we had to turn. He nodded. And then, when the lights finally turned green he decided to turn left almost hitting the car coming from behind. But we managed and a couple of other cars managed to avoid us in the intersection and a few minutes later he pulled out in a dark back alley. As I didn't make any attempt to move he opened the door for me. "You're taking me to the train station!" I said. Unperturbed he kind of waved showing me the direction in which the train station was, about a block away. I felt like killing the guy instantaneously with a smile on my face, but I didn't do it. Given the huge population even a small percentage of idiots wouldn't have made any difference. Hence, I just took my packs and left.

The train station was indeed only 2 blocks away. In front a big crowd with something like an alignment of lineups distinguishable. You could only enter the station with a ticket. Next followed another lineup where you had to pass all your belongings through an X-ray machine. Security check. Then, finally, I could go to the waiting area which was packed and where there were already line-ups waiting for the gates to open. You could not get onto the platform until they opened the gates. Most people were having big bags and luggage. Everyone looked tired and used to this. No cheerful faces, no smiles.
I stopped in line not knowing how soon the gate would open. It was quarter to 8pm and the train was leaving around 8:36pm. It was past 8pm when the gates finally opened and the race on the platform began. But then I reached my car and my compartment and all was well again. For the next 45 hours I knew I was going to sleep, eat, rest, read and write and enjoy the scenery.

Thanks God this country is big enough to make train rides into a relaxing event.