The Wild, Wild West

September 5, 2009

I entered the People’s Republic on August 24th and was immediately greeted by a whole new level of culture shock. China is a truly foreign country. I love it here.

I arrived in Guangzhou by train and had planned to immediately catch a train to Kunming, which is the largest city in the Yunnan province. In Guangzhou I was greeted by a train station where written English was non-existent and spoken English was rare at best. After quite an interesting exchange, I found that the train I had hoped to take was fully booked and that I would have to catch a later one. This ended up being a blessing in disguise, as it gave me a day to explore Guangzhou. As I was walking out of the train station, I met a girl named Vivian who spoke excellent English and offered to tour me around the city for the day. We had a lot of fun checking out some of Guangzhou’s best, such as the Sun-Yat Sen Memorial Hall and the beautiful Yuexiu Park. At dinner, I had an unfortunate “cultural” experience. I ordered a dish off the menu, which I thought was noodles, and Vivian giggled but didn’t say anything. When it came out Vivian eagerly explained that the dish I had chosen was not noodles, but pig intestine! To be polite, I ate the dish and it turned out to be much tastier than it sounded. I resolved to be more careful with my photo-based ordering in the future.

From Guangzhou, I boarded the 26 hour train to Kunming. To save some money, I decided to travel in hard seat, which is the cheapest class available. It seems strange to call 26 hours in a train seat a “great experience”, but I can describe the train ride in no other way. Basically, as a foreigner in hard seat, I spent 26 hours as a celebrity, as all the locals were fascinated to learn about where I came from and what I was doing in China. Naturally, this is difficult without English. Fortunately, I met a man who spoke fairly good English. We talked for a long time and he also acted as “the interpreter” so I could converse with the other people on the train. It was fascinating learning about the local people’s jobs, education, aspirations, and way of life. I had a chance to tell them a lot about life in Canada, and they found the comparison between the two countries very interesting. We also shared a lot of laughs and before I knew it we had arrived in Kunming. I need to thank my cousin Trevor for recommending the hard seat experience. I think it will be one of my best memories of my trip in China.

In Kunming, I met up with the one and only Jeffrey Wong! On our first day we rented some shotty bikes (the pedals kept falling off) and ventured out of town and up a mountain to visit the Bamboo Temple. The temple is an active monastery, and was quite nice, but the definitive highlight of the day was the breakneck speed bike ride back down the mountain. That night, we took a “sleeper” bus to Lijiang. Unfortunately, for anybody taller than 5’4”, sleeping is more of a hope than a reality.

Lijiang is a really nice old-style town with narrow and winding cobblestone streets that are lined with shops selling local crafts, scarves and food. Also, Lijiang marked the first time I had encountered cool air since leaving Canada, which was a refreshing change. We explored the Mu family mansion, which is Lijiang’s version of the Forbidden City. We also went to the Black Dragon Pool Park, where we climbed Elephant Hill and enjoyed a spectacular view of Lijiang and the surrounding mountainous area. From Lijiang we took a trip to the Tiger Leaping Gorge, which, without a doubt, was my favourite part of Yunnan.

Tiger Leaping Gorge is the world’s (disputably) deepest and narrowest gorge. It was formed from the erosion of the Yangtze River, as it snaked through the mountains of Northern Yunnan. Jeff and I spent two days hiking along the gorge and the experience was absolutely unforgettable. The hiking trail at TLG is right along the mountainside, meaning that for the entire hike we had spectacular views looking down into the gorge and at the surrounding mountains. The hiking is pretty strenuous, but your heart also gets a workout from the fact that at any given point you are only a few feet from a 500 meter fall into the gorge. The mountains we stunning and were easily the largest that I have ever seen. We spent a night at a guesthouse along the trail, which had a great view of the mountains. In the picture below, we are eating dinner with a group of friends we made and enjoying the surreal view. We also had this view from our room!

On the second day, we hiked down into the gorge, and went out to a rock in the middle of the river. The rock is called Tiger Leaping Stone, and it is where the gorge gets its name. As legend has it, a tiger once leapt across the gorge from this stone. It’s a nice story, but I must say that the physics just isn’t there. Standing on that stone was an incredible feeling. The river was roaring so loudly that you had to shout to be heard and all around us were giant cliff faces, one of which had a waterfall running down it. I really got an appreciation for how miniscule man is in comparison to nature.

After a great two days of trekking, we went to visit the town of Shangri-la. Shangri-la, at an elevation of 3280m, was the highest altitude that I had ever experienced. I was slightly disappointed when I did not have any physical difficulties with the altitude. Jeff and I spent a day biking around the town and the surrounding area. Once you get North of the town, the biking gets quite interesting, as you are just as likely to encounter a pig, chicken or cow on the road as a car. Shangri-la was a really nice, laid back town.

Our final stop in Yunnan was the city of Dali. Like Lijiang, Dali is an ancient Chinese city and is a hotspot for tourists. We biked through some of the agricultural areas surrounding the city, which was really interesting. Jeff and I also visited the Erhai Hu Lake, where I ended up taking an impromptu swim with some local kids.

On our next day in Dali, we went up the Zhonghe Mountain and walked the 11km path along the mountaintop. To make our hike more interesting we decided to walk along the rocks in the stream, rather than along the path beside. After we each took a sobering spill into the stream, we decided to put our pride away and walk the rest of the day on the path. At least we provided entertainment for some Chinese tourists!

After Dali, we headed back to Kunming, where Jeff headed back to Hong Kong and I will carry on to Xi’an. Western China was full of adventures and I can only hope that the rest of China is this exciting!

-M