Today’s adventure: Go and see some Buddha!
And it went all right. I met 3 Chinese students who were also going to visit the stuff, and I kind of got stucked with them all day long. The girl in the group came to me asking if I wanted to walk together to the grottoes, so I said ok, so nice I am. And then the photo sessions started, they all wanted pictures with me, especially her. So every 5 min we were stopping to take pictures. Very tiring. But it was ok until we reached a platform with lots of Chinese girls… One asked the one accompanying me if she could have a picture with me, and suddenly a crowd was around me and I was flashed at least 500 times (I may slightly exaggerate).
But then came lunch time and I was relieved that we found a abandoned table away from the crowds, and even more relieved when she insisted to share their picnic with me (they even had a fried duck!).
So I finally was able to turn off my constant vigilance against Chinese weirdness; to the point when she offered me the head of the damn duck, with its beak wide open and its eyes staring at me.
And she insisted, as apparently it was 很好吃 (very good).
So I had to eat the damn thing. Lessons to learn: “always stay vigilant by all means”.
Apart from that the Buddha and his cousin Bodhisattva were quite truly impressive. It was all carved (or it started) around 550 AD! And the biggest one (25 meters high) stands in the middle of a cliff which is already high enough to give me an impressive vertigo. These Buddhist monks had it! Also it is said to have been funded by rich merchants on the Silk Road who had a permanent residency in Tianshui. Cool eh?
I also got a present from the girl: a Buddha bronze medal with my name engraved on it. It was still a nice day after all.
And now I am exhausted because I had to get up early again this morning, so tomorrow I shall finally relax.
And tomorrow I’ll go to Zhangye, continuing my Silk Road experience…
Greatly great, with spices and everything. So today I took the train from Xi’an to Tianshui; a 6hours ride on the hard seats packed with people. But this may not sound as tiring as it really was. In front of me were 3 kids of about 4 years old with their indulgent father, and they did not stop one second fighting each other and jumping everywhere and yelling… and bring attention on me, to my great sadness. Indeed one of them suddenly observed that I had hairs on my legs and this was the excuse for the whole wagon to wonder about me, so here is what the discussion looked like:
- “where is he from?” (as they usually discuss my case between in front of me, but then they all turn to me at once to know the answer)
- France!
- Aaaaah!
“travelling alone???”
- yep!
- Aaaaaaah!
“strange hairs!”
- indeed
“aaaaah”
And then more aaaaaah and ooooooh and blabla for half an hour, and the above dialogue is about all I understood. Great.
But then a girl who wanted to improve her English came to me so we talked for some time a bit in English and a bit in Chinese, so that helped to pass the time.
And then I finally arrived at Tianshui, which is not a beautiful town as I expected. But it’s so nice! I can’t believe how nice everyone is! In the shops, restaurants, everywhere! So it was a pleasure to wander alone in the streets to find a place to eat still open. People still smile and laugh at me but it’s different, because as soon as you (me, in fact) talk to them they are really nice and helpful and joyful and etc… So I tried a sort of soup with noodles, tofu, seaweed and a sort of green salad/cabbage, the whole thing in a red super hot oily mix and served in a clay pot with the stuff still boiling (or frying, I don’t know which term applies best). Very nice!
And then I had an ice cream, and I bought a Chinese CD with very-Chinese music. And now I am tired of all these emotions (and still haven’t had time to recover from the train ride to Xi’an in which I slept little).
Ciao, 再见。Tomorrow I’ll go and see the Buddha stuff.
Xi'an City Wall with crowds waiting in front of the train station
Xi’an! That’s it.
I flopped a bit my plans as I decided to go away again to Tianshui tomorrow morning. Tianshui is half way from Lanzhou, another big and polluted city on my way. But Tianshui should be nice, according to Lonely Planet. And there is some big Buddha stuff to look around. I also was disappointed with Xi’an; I wanted to take some nice pictures of the buildings and small streets in the Muslim neighborhood, but everything is under-re-construction. So everything is pretty nice, you just have to ignore the dust and machines and stuff that’s in your face.
Here, for example, is the wonderful and amazing Bell Tower (or the Drum one, I never know) of Xi’an, were awful musical show are held for the tourists all day long. But you can’t even see the damn tower because of the constructions! Well, it’s for the good cause since it’s for a subway line, which is going to be great because Xi’an traffic is terrible.
But still! What about me? And the air is really swampy. It’s actually so humid and polluted in the same time that my camera’s auto-focus doesn’t work! There ain’t no focus!
So I go around, totally unfocused. But at least that have helped me refocus on my itinerary (which I will soon have to post…): no more flopping around! I realized there is so much to see and do in Xinjiang that if I start being slow in the beginning it’s never gonna end.
So now I just have to keep caution from the hanging (see on the right…) and it all should be good. In the meantime I have to learn again to go around by myself. It always takes a couple of days to get used to, specially at meal time. But it’s good. Today I shopped for some street food, so I asked people what things were and etc… makes me discover and practice my Chinese.
I also went to see the big mosque, the biggest one in Chine supposedly. It’s quite interesting that this construction started in the 8th century, under the Tang dynasty. That means that Muslims (usually Hui people) and Han Chinese have lived together for over a thousand years. And then we hear about the threat of the growing Islam population around the world (special American fear, as they often see Europe as having been conquered by Islam). Ah. It was also quite funny to see a mosque with Chinese style architecture! It looked like the Forbidden City, except for the praying hall with the lined carpets… Even the minaret is disguised as a Chinese Bell tower or whatever.
I know it’s quite disappointing but I did not go to my private dance lessons last night! When I thought about it that would have been way too embarrassing as everyone would have stopped dancing to look at me dancing with an old grandma and being stupid (because I don’t know these dances!). Well, maybe I could have managed but I didn’t find the courage at the given time.
But many others (thousands and maybe even billions) opportunities to have strange experiences are on the way; because, as the old and wise saying goes: “the one who travel on the remnants of the Silk Road is bound to do cool stuff”. Ha.
To come back to our mouton, I am now in Xi’an, for the second time in history (I do not count my previous reincarnations). Xi’an, capital of the Chinese Empire for 13 dynasties and which 8 meters tall walls are 1400 years old. I had a non fruitful conversation on the train in Chinese with… a Chinese guy. But my Chinese is terrible, so it didn’t go that far. He had allergy from something, so his eyes looked like a raccoon. So he was going back home to study something. Yep, fruitful.
But I’ve changed my mind and I will try to get a ticket for Lanzhou for tomorrow night, so I can really get started with this Silk Road business of mine…
I was writing not so long ago (see “The Art of Baguette”) about the fact that I find amazing the lunches in Provence, with barbecue all the time and fresh salads and baguette of course. I had also praised for a long time what I call “the Art of Leisure” in most of the Mediterranean Europe which consists of drinking a good coffee and chatting with friends all day long; something that I haven’t found in North America and that I miss very much.
Well I found it very much in China. The cliché of Chinese people hurrying all the time to “work more to earn more” (as our dear president Sarkozy loves to say) is really just a cliché. People are just hanging around, chilling, having nice time, drinking beer and having street barbecues everynights! It is absolutely wonderfull! And it’s great food for almost nothing (ok sometimes it can be a bit weird, but still)!
I feel absolutely respectful toward their ability of enjoying… life! That’s something that is too often forgotten in our mighty and so developed Occidental World!
And that’s without even mentionning the dancing! But this is for tomorrow (I have been invited to dance lessons by a Chinese grandma…).
Yes, I though myself prepared but it was a blast. People are just crazy here, as the above picture shows fairly well… But the fact is that I had really forgotten about Beijing since last year. Yet I could not stop thinking that there was something else; and I remembered a phrase that I heard many times last summer: “because of the Olympics!” Yes, because of the Olympics Beijing was sleeping last year, probably because everyone had been kicked out for the summer holidays.
This times the Wudakou neighborhood is bustling with life and street vendors of all kind and food smelling all sorts of… flavors, for the best and the worst. But it is amazing how the sidewalks are crowded with T-shirts racks and handicrafts and weights and pots and toys and all what you could ever think about.
So the usual unthinkable mix of a high tech Wudakou (Google and Microsoft have their offices here) and Bangkok style mess is quite funny. And Chinese people have a particular custom to be strange, so the result is brilliant. For example the guy on the photo just above wearing his Cowboy hat with all the assurance of a Cowboy, in Wudakou… I really love it.
And as I was taking my little pictures as a good tourist I met my new Uighur friend, from Kashgar. When he told me he was from there I jumped on the discussion telling that I was going there in a couple of weeks. We then talked for about half an hour; he offered me a cigarette, of course, and he told me that he was soon coming back because he couldn’t find a proper place to stay since people here refuse to rent a room to Uighurs… I feel I’ll have a lot to talk about in there! Anyways, he taught me a couple of sentences in Uighur, such Assalai Alaikum (same as Arabic for ‘Peace upon You’).
I am in China! Yesterday was a long day but it finally ended up with me being in China; quite extraordinary isn’t it?
To sum up: it all started with Ryanair that I love so much. It’s interesting how the flight attendants seem to be raking up the passengers, trying to extract as much money as possible in the allocated time of the short flight from Nimes to London. They must have passed at least 100 times, each time with something new to offer: sandwich, drinks, duty free crap, and even donations for charity in the end. Charity for Ryanair? Ah…
But I survived these back killer seats quite well. Arriving London I was welcomed by the famous British rain. So I ran to catch the bus to Heathrow, trying to avoid the drops of water (I failed). The bus ride was longer than the flight itself, but at least I got to the Air China check in counter.
But then I hear that I cannot enter without a flight out of China! So they made me buy a refundable ticket from Beijing to Hong Kong, which I will cancel as soon as possible. As I was doing all of this I was starting to realize that I would soon be in China for the second time, with a little apprehension. Anyways, the flight was horrible. I was stuck between 2 big Chinese guys, which made me feel like I had a big panda on each side. So I was stick between 2 giant pandas for 10h. One started to sleep on the little tablet in front of me, so almost on my lap. The other panda was so big that he was spilling everywhere on me. So that was an interesting flight.
But then, then, when we finally arrive in Beijing, as I was walking by the “anti-pig-flu” infrared thermometers the machine start beeping like if I was a terrorist. So the quarantine people start redirecting me toward a tent in the middle of the airport where they could further check my temperature… Of course I am slightly hot as the terminal is like a furnace and I haven’t slept for 24 hours almost! Luckily enough the second check was apparently satisfying so they had to let me go, quite unwillingly.
And then I was in Beijing! It’s hot like hell, just the way I like it! I will soon write more on Beijing…
But then came lunch time and I was relieved that we found a abandoned table away from the crowds, and even more relieved when she insisted to share their picnic with me (they even had a fried duck!).
Apart from that the Buddha and his cousin Bodhisattva were quite truly impressive. It was all carved (or it started) around 550 AD! And the biggest one (25 meters high) stands in the middle of a cliff which is already high enough to give me an impressive vertigo. These Buddhist monks had it! Also it is said to have been funded by rich merchants on the Silk Road who had a permanent residency in Tianshui. Cool eh?
This times the Wudakou neighborhood is bustling with life and street vendors of all kind and food smelling all sorts of… flavors, for the best and the worst. But it is amazing how the sidewalks are crowded with T-shirts racks and handicrafts and weights and pots and toys and all what you could ever think about.
And as I was taking my little pictures as a good tourist I met my new Uighur friend, from Kashgar. When he told me he was from there I jumped on the discussion telling that I was going there in a couple of weeks. We then talked for about half an hour; he offered me a cigarette, of course, and he told me that he was soon coming back because he couldn’t find a proper place to stay since people here refuse to rent a room to Uighurs… I feel I’ll have a lot to talk about in there! Anyways, he taught me a couple of sentences in Uighur, such Assalai Alaikum (same as Arabic for ‘Peace upon You’).
