Stairs, Stairs, Stairs!

                The last two weeks or so have been some of my favorite in China to date. Two weekends ago I went to fellowship again with some friends. It was so nice and refreshing!!! There were even more people that week and we met some fantastic people. There are several women who are pregnant, so after church we had a baby shower for one who is due in the next week or so. It was so fun! We went to a woman’s house and had pizza that was made on Nan bread (Indian flat bread) and homemade cupcakes with chocolate frosting and vanilla pudding in the middle, best dessert I’ve had yet! It was fun getting some girl time and I never once expected to be going to a baby shower in China! So that was really nice. J

                The rest of the week was filled with the typical homework, studying, projects, hanging out, etc. Thursday night some of us went to taco Thursday at the Lazy Pug, a pretty well-known restaurant here in town. The tacos were amazing!!!! I had been craving Mexican food for a while now so it was nice to get some tacos and fresh homemade chips and salsa. It’s amazing how you don’t realize how much you love all the varieties of food we have in the states until you’re away from it. Afterwards I went to the Shamrock, a well-known Irish bar here in town as well. Except fun fact, I thought the Irish manager I had met once was the owner of it, nope turns out its some Chinese woman that owns it which I thought was a little bit ironic. But the bar is fun, it’s always filled with football (soccer) players, rugby players, rich Chinese, foreigners, and there’s always American Football, football, or rugby on TV so it’s fun to just go and hang out. Two of my Irish friends work there so it’s fun to bug em a bit. I only stayed for about an hour or so and left early because we had to leave at a lovely 4:30 in the morning the next day, which is where the real adventure begins.

                Friday morning we were up at 4AM and left at a glorious 4:45, caught a taxi and went to the train station to catch our 6:00AM train. The train ride was the first interesting mishap of our weekend. When we got on the train we couldn’t find our car, car 1, should be simple right? Well when we got onto car 1 it was a sleeper car and the lady yelled at us that it was the wrong car, so we went looking for the right one. Turns out that was the right car, but the car was misplaced. So we sat on the beds which actually turned out to be a bit more comfortable. What we thought was a two or so hour train ride, turned out to be a four hour train ride. We slept, worked on homework, and hung out with random people who wanted to sit with the Waiguo’s (foreigners: 外国). After the four hour train ride we got off expecting to be in a tourist town, but turns out when we thought Leshan, the big Buddha was 2km away that was from the bus station not the train station. So we took a black taxi after they all argued over us and we negotiated to the cheapest price and our driver made the over 30 minute drive taking us to the Giant Buddha. 

The City in front of Leshan Buddha!

Top of the Buddha

                At Leshan you have a decision to get a general walking ticket or a boat ticket, after much debate we chose the walking ticket, thinking if we had time we would take the boat. It was absolutely beautiful when we arrived. It was a pretty nice and sunny day outside and the Buddha is along a beautiful river with the city across the way. The water was a pretty blue and the city looked beautiful gleaming in the sunlight. We found a place to grab lunch and we were off on our Leshan wandering adventure. The park was amazing as well!!! It was so green and rich in plants and culture. We walked through some caves and then went towards where the giant Buddha. When we got to the Buddha, many of us didn’t realize what it was at first. It’s so large you don’t even realize what you are seeing at first. From the distance at the very top, you can only see the ear, the hair, and part of the face until you get closer. As you get closer you still can’t see the very bottom as you’re looking over the edge. After taking our pictures we got into line where we were one of the other major attractions. There was a group of seven foreigners so we had a lot of pictures taken of us. Since being in China, most of us have gotten used to this fact, so Texie, my roommate, and I have just started embracing. When people try to take a picture of us, discreetly or obviously, we turn and pose for them making the most typical Chinese poses that we can – such as a peace sign by our face or panda paws which are also a popular one here. Everyone gets a kick out of it when we do that and we think its fun, so it works out well. The line to get down to the base of the Buddha ran along the walls surrounding ¾ of the Buddha that were all carved out of stone, so as we got further through the line we could see more and more and the stairs got more steeper. It took about 45 minutes to get to the bottom, but it was completely worth it. The Buddha was bigger than I ever could have imagined! Some fun facts:

• It’s the oldest carving from premodern times
• It was carved because the people wanted to calm the seas, so they began carving a Buddha facing the river and as soon as they did that the water was calm. Was it because the Great Buddha helped? I don’t think so. It was due to the fact that all the stone that they threw into the water as they carved it changed the course of the river and calmed it down.
• Leshan means Happy Mountain

Many people worship the Giant Buddha and even though I’m not Buddhist, it was absolutely amazing to see. Just thinking about the fact of how old it is and that it was all carved most likely by hand. Being along the river was nice as well, a refreshing feel after being in the city all this time. Just on the way up the stairs from the Buddha we found a place where someone carved “206 Seattle” into the rock, most likely students from last year or the year before which was cool! After exiting from the Buddha we went down to a tourist fishing village. Apparently it’s shaped like a fish, but we couldn’t tell. The village itself was full of locals trying to sell little tourist things and fresh water animals ready to eat. There were turtles, eels, snakes, fish, and crawdads in buckets, ready to be made fresh for any willing customers. It was gross and sad at the same time, but I guess at least you know your food is fresh! The area along the water looked like traditional China. There was a small traditional bridge, a man wearing a traditional Chinese hat fishing along the shoreline, an old fishing boat, and some canoes. It looked like what you imagine Cambodia, Vietnam or remote China would look like. After crossing the traditional bridge we went up the hill to a monastery at the top of the mountain. The smog was everywhere unfortunately, but I can only imagine what the view would have been 30 years ago before all the smog started settling in.  But I mean hey, if you’re going to have a monastery, might as well have it at the top of a mountain with a great view!!! There were flowers everywhere and though the view wasn’t extremely clear it was still a great one. After that we had to rush to the bus station. 

Stone Buddha!

Traditional Bridge and the Old Man Fishing

Group picture!

Three Amigos With Our Most Chinese Faces

                We got swarmed by people on bikes wanting to take us to the entrance and we were in a hurry so we followed. The ride was a bumpy one but necessary. We then had to take a sketchy city bus to a bus station in which we had no idea where it was! Luckily a couple on the bus spoke English so they helped us get to the right place. Once we got to the bus station we told them which station we wanted, turns out the last bus for there had left at 5:00 and it was now 5:15 so we had to take a bus to a different station in the same city. Once we got there, there were few taxis and no buses to take us to the right station so we had to take another black taxi to take us to the hostel we were staying at. The bus from Leshan to Emei was completely full and I was nervous when I had the only open seat next to me, but luckily the last person to get on was a man from Denmark so it was fun chatting away with him for a bit. He travels alone all around the world every year because he gets 5 weeks of vacation every year. I was slightly jealous I won’t lie, it sounds like a pretty good deal if you ask me. And he’s also a Boy Scout leader and works for the Danish government as an after school supervisor for kids, pretty good get up I think. The hostel was a lot nicer than any of us expected and none of us ever expected to be staying at a place called “The Teddy Bear Hotel” and having it be as nice and normal as it was. Dinner was the next adventure. There was a restaurant in the hotel but we decided to adventure around instead. The alley a few streets up was food alley and though we didn’t know quite what we were looking for, we quickly found out that almost every restaurant was the same. They were interesting to say the least… if you have a queasy stomach or love animals too much (MOM!) I suggest skipping ahead to the next paragraph. In front of many of the restaurants there were cages consisting of different animals including: chickens, a weird bird, rabbits, frogs and fish tanks full of fish. As we were about to eat we saw a chicken’s throat be cut and blood run down the sidewalk. My stomach began to get a bit queasy after that. Then while we were eating someone ordered fresh fish from the place next door. To kill the fish they take it out of the tank with their bare hands and throw it on the ground as hard as they could several times. It was gross if you ask me and not humane in any way. I know this would never pass in front of a restaurant back in the states. Other than that the food was awesome though!

The Easy Part...

Innocent Monkey

Jake Getting Attaacked by a monkey

                The next morning we woke up at 6:45 and caught a bus to a different entrance to the mountain. Then we began our hike! The beginning was a breeze several small flights of stairs, lots of temples, and people. There were a few donkeys and lots of roosters and hens running around. There were signs everywhere for monkeys but non to be found. Then we started getting into the more remote less tourist based area. It was the most remote we’ve been in China yet with the least amount of people yet. It was so green and plush, there were rivers, waterfalls and so many different shades of green we couldn’t believe it! No picture can do it justice no matter how hard we try. Maybe if we had a super fancy $10,000 camera we could, but unfortunately none of us had that. Then we got to the point called the ecological monkey zone or something along those lines and boy were we underprepared for that segment of the hike. All along the way people had been trying to sell us bamboo sticks, but we didn’t want a walking stick. Another lady had told us it was for the monkey’s but we didn’t think we needed it and thought it was just another tourist trap, boy were we wrong. The monkey’s came upon us quickly. We saw one or two and all of a sudden there were 20. We approached them with a group of people and while one of my friends was taking a picture making fun of one in the stereotypical monkey pose, the next minute the monkey jumped on his back and wouldn’t get off until an older lady fought the monkey off with a stick. After that we were all a little bit more skeptical. Then as were crossing the rope bridge to get back across to the main part, a monkey came out from underneath the bridge where it had been hiding and started chasing down a guy with food in his hand; needless to say we all sprinted the other way. There were two sizes of monkeys – smaller baby ones and giant protective mamma ones, the mom was the one who chased the guy down. So as we started down the pathway toward the peak we wanted to go to, we had to pass more monkeys. The other two girls were afraid at that point as well as the rest of us. But we learned we just have to calmly and confidently walk past the monkeys in a group. But as soon as we started to pass them one mama monkey went running straight for the other two girls and jumped on one of their backpacks. Let’s just say I’ve never seen someone throw off a backpack and runaway screaming as fast as she did. The monkey proceeded to unzip her backpack and take out all of her packaged food that it had smelled from across the bridge, meanwhile both girls were screaming. Finally a guy and his girlfriend came by and he fought the monkey off with a stick, though it took some convincing because at first the monkey grabbed the stick and started hissing at him. Finally the guy grabbed the backpack and her water bottle but her map of the mountain and all the packaged food was gone. As scary as it was for them, we got a good laugh out of it. If only we had it on America’s funniest home videos, we definitely could have made some money off of it. After that the two girls were basically in shock and about ready to have a heart attack. We continued on our hike but after the monkeys they were having a tough time. So the three amigos, Joel, Texie and I continued on our trek. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. It was ALL stairs!!!!!

Between the million stairs and my asthma it was a tough hike. It eventually panned out that Joel was in the very front and then Texie and they would wait at popular points and I would catch up. I actually began to enjoy it though, I haven’t had alone time like that the whole time I’ve been in China. I know it may surprise you but that doesn’t happen very often in a country of 1.4 billion people. It was a beautiful walk as we hiked higher into the clouds and walking next to cliff faces, it was a good reflection time and a great time to soak in the beauty and God’s creation. We were told that the place we wanted to reach was barely possible and would take at least 10 hours. Well after about 7.5 hours of hiking, I had finally caught up with Tex and Joel again and who did we run into? No other than our Danish friend once again! It was a crazy thing. He didn’t go with us that morning because he was going to spend a few days on the mountain but then he accidentally took the short way and we had taken the long way and we all met up. So we hiked with him and his new friends the last half hour to the Elephant Bathing Pool Monastery. There we encountered a monk feeding the monkeys again, but these monkeys were much nicer than the ones further down. We then got the opportunity to feed the monkeys, something I never thought I’d do in my whole life. Our friend decided to stay with us and we all stayed at the Monastery, something else I had never imagined ever doing in my life. The monastery was cool, literally. The guest rooms didn’t have heat, only heated sleeping pads. And whenever we looked out our window there was a monkey sitting there staring at us. Before dinner we were outside looking at the monkeys and I almost got peed on by one that was sitting up on the beams of the roof, it was a close call. At dinner a monkey sat outside the window watching everyone eat. Its cute little face was pressed up against the window and so was its little hand, it was sooooooo cute! We just wanted to hug it. Our friends arrived to the monastery about two hours after we had. So while we hiked 8 hours that day, it took them at least 11 including all their breaks. It was a long day for everyone. We all went to bed around 8PM, the earliest I had gone to bed in years. 

The monkey unscrewed the cap and started drinking someone's water bottle!

I fed a Monkey!

A glorious 2:45AM came way too early on Sunday morning! We had heard that the sunrise at the top of the mountain was amazing and that it took about 4.5 hours, so we had to leave bright and early.  The Three Amigos plus our Danish friend left at 2:45 while the other half of the group left at 2:00 in order to get a head start. I am extremely afraid of the dark so the idea of hiking in the dark was not ideal, but it really wasn’t bad. It was really clear and the moon was out so you could see the other peaks and we had flashlights so we could see what was in front of us. I was with the group for the first half, but then I fell back and was all by myself, not fun since I’m scared of the dark (don’t make fun of me!J) But then I was surrounded by other Chinese people making the same trek so it was nice to have other people around. The hike to the top was supposed to take 4.5 hours but only ended up taking 3 hours. It was sooooo cold at the top, a whopping 10,000 feet up or so! We all layered up as much as we could but we were still freezing and had to wait about an hour for the sunrise so we huddled inside of some restaurant and drank some strange hot chocolate but it was hot so it did the job. Around 7 we made our way to the Golden Summit, the top of the mountain and surprise surprise there was no sunrise, it was too cloudy. But after about half an hour the sky started clearing and there were beautiful blue skies right above us, some of the bluest skies I’ve seen in China yet. The Golden Buddha looked beautiful against the clear blue sky. The temple was golden as well and it was a sight. As we started to get impatient, all the Chinese people started freaking out so we looked towards the drop off where the sun would have risen and the sun was shining through the clouds. There was a thin line of pink clouds with rays peeking through and shining down onto the sea of clouds below, it was a beautiful sight! So although we missed the actual sunrise, watching it peek through the clouds was pretty dang cool! Afterwards, we made the hour or so trek down the stairs to the bus station at the top of the mountain, the whole time our legs were shaking from all the hiking from the day before. When we were almost to the bust station we saw more monkeys! These ones were probably the cutest I had seen. There were a ton of tourists feeding them. One was peeling a banana, one peeling and eating an orange, one opening a bag of peanuts and eating them, another looked guilty as it dug through a box, and a final one got a hardboiled egg and threw it on the ground but as soon as it saw that it was surrounded by people it got shy and ran away. They were so cute!!!! When we got the bus station we got some lunch, took the hour and half bus ride down the mountain and were finally back at the base. Then it was decision time – our train tickets were for 9PM that night and it was only 1PM… so we decided to take a bus home instead. It was a two hour bus ride rather than a three hour train ride. That night I was so tired I slept 11 hours and did almost nothing all day Monday, using the stairs as little as I had to, which meant leaving my room as little as possible, it was just so far down the stairs; though 6 flights was nothing after 11+ hours of hiking and over 10,000 feet elevation gain of all stairs. 

Golden Summit Buddha

Group picture!

3 Amigos!

Roommate Love!

Tuesday Texie and I went to visit our friend Allesandra in the hospital. She is the cutest little Italian girl and she had thought she had appendicitis so she went to the Chinese hospital, which is a scary place. Almost no one speaks English, they don’t clean a lot of their tools very well, and they don’t take care of you. So we went to visit and spend time with her because I know if I was in a hospital, especially in a foreign country, I wouldn’t want to be by myself. Turns out she didn’t’ have the surgery but they were still trying to run tests but had no idea what was wrong with her, so she left that night and went and stayed at a woman from church’s apartment who was a nurse so she could be watched over. Chinese hospitals are so interesting. First of all, the number of people walking around there is incredible. No matter how hard I try, I can’t comprehend the amount of people in this country, I just don’t think it’s possible and the hospital was no exception. There were people visiting friends and relatives everywhere as well as patients in beds in the hallway because there aren’t any rooms available. It was insane. The poor woman next to Allesandra was dying, so we were listening to the process of that which was really really sad and slightly disturbing. She had the condition where your liver stops working so your body can’t get rid of all the toxins and everything slowly shuts down. It was just as depressing as any other hospital in the states. Another interesting thing is they wouldn’t really tell our friend what was going on with her and couldn’t explain why they were doing what they were. But the most peculiar thing was the fact that even though she left Tuesday night, she wasn’t allowed to check out until Wednesday morning. So she left Tuesday without paying or anything and they just expected that she would come back in the morning for the rest of her tests and pay. It was just such a strange phenomenon having her leave without paying and trusting that she would come back and officially be released the next day. She went to see a Western doctor and they still don’t know why she had the pain that she did, but she is back at the dorms today. So I think she is okay, but if you could keep her in your prayers that would be awesome!

Last night was really fun! Halloween is only popular with the westerners and the people that have a lot of western influence here in China, so last night was just like any other night. However me and another friend grabbed our friend who is here from Denmark for two weeks, a different guy than we hiked with, and we went swing dancing at the Shamrock bar – the Irish bar here in town. I was absolutely terrible at it but it was fun! It was really really fun to watch especially. Some of the people were amazing, meanwhile I have two left feet and can’t dance to save my life, but I think I am going to take lessons one day when I get back home.

But I am now off to pack and go to bed. Tomorrow the Three Amigos are going to Jiuzhaigou, this beautiful valley in the northwest part of Sichuan Province. Look it up on Google, the leaves are beginning to change and there are crystal clear blue lakes and waterfalls. We’ve heard nothing but good things about it. It’s a fantastic 8-10 hour bus ride. So we are hitting the bus at 7:30 in the morning and it’s going to be a very long day!

One month until I am home. Yay! How times flies. I think I am going to make a Flickr account or something soon to put up more pictures rather than to crowd them all over the blog here.