Train to Xi’an, Shanxi Province, China
Sometimes you’re the bomb; sometimes you’re the bum. Our three days in Chongqing Province have come to an end and the journaler has tasted both sides of that equation here.
A few scenes to remember. First, we arrive in Dazu on Saturday afternoon (19 July). Dau is a little city 90 minutes outside Chongqing. I haven’t found any hotels online so I’m relying on the guidebooks suggestion of a hotel a few feet from the dusty bus station where our ride has just ended. But when we finally find it (thanks to the help of 3 to 6 helpful passersby who took an interest in our case), they deny having a hotel and send us on our way. Except we have no way to go. There is no back-up plan. I’m acutely aware of three children with their little backpacks relying who have been traveling the past two nights in on trains. They need decent food, showers, and a place to recharge their batteries. Literally, because their iThings have been out of charge for hours. I leave Carrie and Liam with all our bags under a tree next to some hawkers beside a river and Gracie and I begin the search on foot, guidebook in hand with a few handy phrases that we cannot pronounce but at least we can show the characters. It was entirely old school – asking, pointing, following, asking again. Within 20 minutes the trail leads to a communist-era monstrosity: a hotel run by the post office. The carpet is stained. The walls are stained. The windows are grimy. The deepest cut of all, though, is that there is no wifi. This is how the post office gets its digs against the electrogentsia.
We’ve sought out this region to see the rock carvings made by Buddhist monks during the Tang and Song dynasties. The kids are interested because then they don’t have to risk being stuck on a boat being underwhelmed by the Three Gorges. I’m interested because I’m wondering if there is a sense that rock carving was an alternative form of meditation during that era. What we don’t count on is a sign at the end that points toward a hilltop pagoda. It which turns out to be a boring pagoda (see Carrie’s blog about the sad dog caged behind its locked door), but as we’re leaving a hawker tells us we can’t leave until we’ve seen Shakyamuni down this other stair to the right. Shakyamuni down the stair to the right? Well, alright. Gracie protests – she doesn’t want to go up or down another stair. And it’s true it doesn’t look like much more than a construction site until we stumble around the last corner and turn back to look at the hill we’ve just descended. There, in a huge niche directly beneath the pagoda, sit two giant Buddhas confortable on their thrones. No one is around. No sign marks their presence. Several sticks of incense smoke lazily in a trough between them and workers’ piles of sand, gravel and boards. Full marks for discovery.
Again and again Chinese people have stepped up to help this benighted Western father. The guidebook says you can catch a local bus from Yongchuan to Songli, so the next day we sought a Yongchuan-bound bus from to deliver us from Dazu. (These events occurred after Gracie and I spent an enchanting morning peering at an even more remarkable collection of carvings which, amid the droves of domestic tourists, made up for in wonder what it entirely lacked in discovery.) What you don’t know is that Yongchuan is an entirely adequate to host at least two bus stations. This possibility is entirely lost on us, though, until a friendly stranger walks us out of the station, hails a cab, tells the cabbie where to take us, tells us how much it will cost and then goes back about his business. A few minutes later we’ve made our last connection of the day and Daddy’s plan doesn’t look so crazy after all anymore. Others have helped us find hotels, get to train stations, chased us down with left cell phones. When I first visited China in 1989, there was a terrible reputation for surly, unhelpful service. I recall then that kindly strangers would still emerge at key moments to help or practice conversation. Perhaps that kernel of kindliness has spread? Or the incentives have shifted.
I don’t know if I was the bomb or the bum at Songli – a little Ming dynasty riparian village upstream from Chongqing. Zoning has managed to preserve a series of cobbled ways and alleys between a fine collection of half-timbered and pseudo-half-timbered structures. There were no other tourists in sight despite the village elder’s best effort to post signs and maps in Chinese and English: the Chen family household here, the Mouth of Supernatural Beings there. We tried to make it out to see another Buddha statue carved into a bluff overlooking the river, but in the end we didn’t have the hutzpah and the Buddha went unseen that day. Instead we turned from our path to a stairwell that went straight down to the Yantze. The kids didn’t stop – it was hot and sweaty and they waded right in. Liam grinned. Gracie said it was the best feeling ever. So Songli brought a top score for quaint and authentic (no western restaurants to be found, not even English menus), but, again and alas, no wifi in the hotel. How can anyone be expected to play Minecraft in another’s world if there is no wifi?
Here’s an anecdote with a surprising lesson. Ninety minutes before our 5 pm (17:00) train we were in a small tea house eating dumplings and playing Chinese checkers and were about to learn that we would not be able to get a cab back to our hotel. This stage led to one of the most wonderful family crises we’ve had in China, if not the whole trip. I relayed the news in clipped tones. The children immediately got it. We dashed down garbage-strewn byways, up foot-eroded stairs, failed to flag a taxi again and again. Then, when we decided to hoof it the whole way to our hotel, we carried forward up hills and around traffic, unified by the mission of catching our train. There is fatigue, there is exhaustion – the temperature here is 102° in the sun -- but desperation provides a clarity of purpose and a joyous cohesion. Here we are in a strange city on the far side of the world. The traffic swirls around us. We know where we need to go and how and when to get there. We have only been thwarted in that we have less time than expected because cabs aren’t going to do the taking. Hands joined we step quickly. Gracie is the first to double over. Carrie takes my backpack and I put Gracie on my back as I climb the dingy Chongqing stairs, up, up, up. Later its Liam’s turn on my back. Neither of them need to ride for long, just long enough to catch their breaths. No one is worried about what is fair. Everyone just does what they can without drama or reprimand. It was the team play I’ve longed for since the beginning of the trip. We covered in 15 minutes going uphill what has required over an hour going down. Did we make the train in time? Indeed. There were high fives all around when we finally reached our compartment, victorious. I only regret we had neither camera nor voice recoding to use for “quality improvement purposes.”
In terms of progress toward the tundra, Chongqing is 29° N, or about as far north as Houston. We’ve arrived in latitudes equivalent to the United States!
Sometimes you’re the bomb; sometimes you’re the bum. Our three days in Chongqing Province have come to an end and the journaler has tasted both sides of that equation here.
A few scenes to remember. First, we arrive in Dazu on Saturday afternoon (19 July). Dau is a little city 90 minutes outside Chongqing. I haven’t found any hotels online so I’m relying on the guidebooks suggestion of a hotel a few feet from the dusty bus station where our ride has just ended. But when we finally find it (thanks to the help of 3 to 6 helpful passersby who took an interest in our case), they deny having a hotel and send us on our way. Except we have no way to go. There is no back-up plan. I’m acutely aware of three children with their little backpacks relying who have been traveling the past two nights in on trains. They need decent food, showers, and a place to recharge their batteries. Literally, because their iThings have been out of charge for hours. I leave Carrie and Liam with all our bags under a tree next to some hawkers beside a river and Gracie and I begin the search on foot, guidebook in hand with a few handy phrases that we cannot pronounce but at least we can show the characters. It was entirely old school – asking, pointing, following, asking again. Within 20 minutes the trail leads to a communist-era monstrosity: a hotel run by the post office. The carpet is stained. The walls are stained. The windows are grimy. The deepest cut of all, though, is that there is no wifi. This is how the post office gets its digs against the electrogentsia.
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| Songli: Ming Dynasty-era village along the Yangtze River |
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Surprise! Buddha and Bob
in their unlikely niche. 
|
Again and again Chinese people have stepped up to help this benighted Western father. The guidebook says you can catch a local bus from Yongchuan to Songli, so the next day we sought a Yongchuan-bound bus from to deliver us from Dazu. (These events occurred after Gracie and I spent an enchanting morning peering at an even more remarkable collection of carvings which, amid the droves of domestic tourists, made up for in wonder what it entirely lacked in discovery.) What you don’t know is that Yongchuan is an entirely adequate to host at least two bus stations. This possibility is entirely lost on us, though, until a friendly stranger walks us out of the station, hails a cab, tells the cabbie where to take us, tells us how much it will cost and then goes back about his business. A few minutes later we’ve made our last connection of the day and Daddy’s plan doesn’t look so crazy after all anymore. Others have helped us find hotels, get to train stations, chased us down with left cell phones. When I first visited China in 1989, there was a terrible reputation for surly, unhelpful service. I recall then that kindly strangers would still emerge at key moments to help or practice conversation. Perhaps that kernel of kindliness has spread? Or the incentives have shifted.
I don’t know if I was the bomb or the bum at Songli – a little Ming dynasty riparian village upstream from Chongqing. Zoning has managed to preserve a series of cobbled ways and alleys between a fine collection of half-timbered and pseudo-half-timbered structures. There were no other tourists in sight despite the village elder’s best effort to post signs and maps in Chinese and English: the Chen family household here, the Mouth of Supernatural Beings there. We tried to make it out to see another Buddha statue carved into a bluff overlooking the river, but in the end we didn’t have the hutzpah and the Buddha went unseen that day. Instead we turned from our path to a stairwell that went straight down to the Yantze. The kids didn’t stop – it was hot and sweaty and they waded right in. Liam grinned. Gracie said it was the best feeling ever. So Songli brought a top score for quaint and authentic (no western restaurants to be found, not even English menus), but, again and alas, no wifi in the hotel. How can anyone be expected to play Minecraft in another’s world if there is no wifi?
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Carvings at Dazu: Gracie contemplates the punishments of a variety of sumptuous hells
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In terms of progress toward the tundra, Chongqing is 29° N, or about as far north as Houston. We’ve arrived in latitudes equivalent to the United States!
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