Tuesday, May 16, 2006
May 14-16: Leshan Dafu & Emei Shan
The morning of the 14th, four intrepid travellers (J and Kirsten from Holland, Michal from Israel and myself) set out on a long-distance journey to check out the biggest Buddha in the world, the 71m Leshan Dafo. Then, the plan was for Michal and I to continue to the nearby town of Emei and climb the illustrious Emei Shan. Muhahahah. The plan... was successful.
First things first: The Great Buddha at Leshan is really, really big. I can't stress this enough. It's huge and massive and must be respected. Leshan Dafo is also located in a pretty nice park where admission is expensive, the grounds are well-kept, and Chinese tour groups go wild like angry monkeys. I love tour groups. More on monkeys later.
There's not much more to say about Leshan Dafo other than the fact that the scale of the thing impresses me. It's a 71m statue of a sitting Buddha, carved into the sido of a mountain. All around it are little temples with more carvings of various things. Pretty cool. Worth 120 kuai? No. Worth the 60 kuai price I paid? Sure.
Emei Shan is one of four super-holy Buddhist mountains in China. They say that Emei Shan is the highest (3099m) but I think that's a crock because they are forgetting Kailash, which is way holier and is 6700m or so. The signifiance is that apparently some dude called Puxian came up the mountain by elephant. Whenver the elephant farted, they built a temple. I don't get it. The mountain itself is located in southern Sichuan, about 2 hrs away from Chengdu and maybe half an hour away from Leshan. Visiting the Buddha and continuing to Emei is a popular route. Not surprising.
My original and highly ambitious plan was to make it to Emei by early afternoon, climb for a solid 5 or 6 hours until we get pretty high, and have a summit day the following day. Back to Chengdu after one overnight stay on the mountain. This plan was... unrealistic. Leshan Dafo took a bunch of time. Eating lunch there took a while (and included a demonstration of how the Chinese kill fish - by throwing them on the concrete steps!). The travel took a while. We didn't get to Emei Shan until about 4 pm. Fine.
A 9 kuai bus up the mountain to Qinyin Ge (about a third of the way up, and bypassing the boring lower parts) and we were off. I was told there were lots of stairs. I had no idea. I've never seen this many bloody stone steps anywhere. At around 6 pm we made it to Wannian Si ("Wannian Temple") and decided to call it quits for the day. It was clear that there was no way we'd be able to do this climb in two days. That's okay, since there's lots of accomodations on the mountain.
I should also say that I was at a huge unfair advantage on this climb over poor Michal. I just came back from Tibet and my lungs are used to having way less oxygen. I could pretend to be fit, when in fact I think I'm pretty average. But it's nice to know that I can run up stairs after I subject myself to altitude!
Next day: 25km of walking, more uphill, more bloody steps, and an exciting monkey incident, too. Emei Shan is crawling with monkeys that look like a cross between a chimp and an orangutan and a rabid dog. Some are friendly (like those at Xixing Chi, a monastery near the top). Some, like the rascal we met, were not. This little guy decided that the empty bag of snackage on the side of Michal's bag was, in fact, food. The monkey decided to get hostile, start hissing and otherwise act like a total prick. I threw a rock at it and missed. Michal handed me my trekking pole (aka "Monkey Stick") and positioned me such that I was a human shield against the monkey.
How do you tell a hungry, angry monkey that you'd really rather be left alone? "Nice monkey, please piss off and harass someone else" won't work because they don't speak English - it's a Chinese monkey and I don't know how to say it in Mandarin. No, what seems to work is taking the trekking pole, pretending it's a baseball bat, waving it around ominously and roaring like a tiger. The monkey hissed back. I waved and roared some more. The monkey turned tail and ran. Michal stood behind me amused in the extreme. I felt like a total king of the jungle. Alex, the Monkey-Frightening Alpha Male. Yeah!
Anyway, the day ended with more stairs (many, many bloody stairs) and a hotel room near the touristy top of the mountain. Apparently mid-May is the "low season" around here and rooms that are listed at 460 kuai go for 100 kuai without so much as a blink of an eye. Good enough for me.
May 16th, Summit Day. More stairs, except this time with tourists. Everyone seems to want to go to the so-called Golden Summit (3077m), which consists of a golden statue of Puxian, a big golden-roofed pagoda that looks like it was built last year, and a lot of concrete and construction. Oh, and there' s a huge, ugly metal antenna structure right next to the statue. Add to this some loud obnoxious Chinese tour groups. The result: horror. I have no idea why anyone would want to spend more than about 20 minutes up here, but the Chinese seem to love it. They pose in front of the antenna and try to look cool with their permed hair and their V for Victory hand gestures. Oh yes, and to make this morre touristy there is a cable car that takes you to the top, a number of posh hotels, a restaurant, shopping, and construction of every imaginable variety. I want to puke.
The nicest place to visit at the top of Emei Shan is the true summit, Wanfo Peak (3099m) which requires a 60 kuai ride on an ugly monorail and a quick climb. You are rewareded with a bit of solitude (not many tourists go here), amazing views, and a very nice isolated pagoda at the peak. It's well worth the trip just to have relief from the carnival around the Golden Summit.
Other observations about Emei Shan:
First things first: The Great Buddha at Leshan is really, really big. I can't stress this enough. It's huge and massive and must be respected. Leshan Dafo is also located in a pretty nice park where admission is expensive, the grounds are well-kept, and Chinese tour groups go wild like angry monkeys. I love tour groups. More on monkeys later.
There's not much more to say about Leshan Dafo other than the fact that the scale of the thing impresses me. It's a 71m statue of a sitting Buddha, carved into the sido of a mountain. All around it are little temples with more carvings of various things. Pretty cool. Worth 120 kuai? No. Worth the 60 kuai price I paid? Sure.
Emei Shan is one of four super-holy Buddhist mountains in China. They say that Emei Shan is the highest (3099m) but I think that's a crock because they are forgetting Kailash, which is way holier and is 6700m or so. The signifiance is that apparently some dude called Puxian came up the mountain by elephant. Whenver the elephant farted, they built a temple. I don't get it. The mountain itself is located in southern Sichuan, about 2 hrs away from Chengdu and maybe half an hour away from Leshan. Visiting the Buddha and continuing to Emei is a popular route. Not surprising.
My original and highly ambitious plan was to make it to Emei by early afternoon, climb for a solid 5 or 6 hours until we get pretty high, and have a summit day the following day. Back to Chengdu after one overnight stay on the mountain. This plan was... unrealistic. Leshan Dafo took a bunch of time. Eating lunch there took a while (and included a demonstration of how the Chinese kill fish - by throwing them on the concrete steps!). The travel took a while. We didn't get to Emei Shan until about 4 pm. Fine.
A 9 kuai bus up the mountain to Qinyin Ge (about a third of the way up, and bypassing the boring lower parts) and we were off. I was told there were lots of stairs. I had no idea. I've never seen this many bloody stone steps anywhere. At around 6 pm we made it to Wannian Si ("Wannian Temple") and decided to call it quits for the day. It was clear that there was no way we'd be able to do this climb in two days. That's okay, since there's lots of accomodations on the mountain.
I should also say that I was at a huge unfair advantage on this climb over poor Michal. I just came back from Tibet and my lungs are used to having way less oxygen. I could pretend to be fit, when in fact I think I'm pretty average. But it's nice to know that I can run up stairs after I subject myself to altitude!
Next day: 25km of walking, more uphill, more bloody steps, and an exciting monkey incident, too. Emei Shan is crawling with monkeys that look like a cross between a chimp and an orangutan and a rabid dog. Some are friendly (like those at Xixing Chi, a monastery near the top). Some, like the rascal we met, were not. This little guy decided that the empty bag of snackage on the side of Michal's bag was, in fact, food. The monkey decided to get hostile, start hissing and otherwise act like a total prick. I threw a rock at it and missed. Michal handed me my trekking pole (aka "Monkey Stick") and positioned me such that I was a human shield against the monkey.
How do you tell a hungry, angry monkey that you'd really rather be left alone? "Nice monkey, please piss off and harass someone else" won't work because they don't speak English - it's a Chinese monkey and I don't know how to say it in Mandarin. No, what seems to work is taking the trekking pole, pretending it's a baseball bat, waving it around ominously and roaring like a tiger. The monkey hissed back. I waved and roared some more. The monkey turned tail and ran. Michal stood behind me amused in the extreme. I felt like a total king of the jungle. Alex, the Monkey-Frightening Alpha Male. Yeah!
Anyway, the day ended with more stairs (many, many bloody stairs) and a hotel room near the touristy top of the mountain. Apparently mid-May is the "low season" around here and rooms that are listed at 460 kuai go for 100 kuai without so much as a blink of an eye. Good enough for me.
May 16th, Summit Day. More stairs, except this time with tourists. Everyone seems to want to go to the so-called Golden Summit (3077m), which consists of a golden statue of Puxian, a big golden-roofed pagoda that looks like it was built last year, and a lot of concrete and construction. Oh, and there' s a huge, ugly metal antenna structure right next to the statue. Add to this some loud obnoxious Chinese tour groups. The result: horror. I have no idea why anyone would want to spend more than about 20 minutes up here, but the Chinese seem to love it. They pose in front of the antenna and try to look cool with their permed hair and their V for Victory hand gestures. Oh yes, and to make this morre touristy there is a cable car that takes you to the top, a number of posh hotels, a restaurant, shopping, and construction of every imaginable variety. I want to puke.
The nicest place to visit at the top of Emei Shan is the true summit, Wanfo Peak (3099m) which requires a 60 kuai ride on an ugly monorail and a quick climb. You are rewareded with a bit of solitude (not many tourists go here), amazing views, and a very nice isolated pagoda at the peak. It's well worth the trip just to have relief from the carnival around the Golden Summit.
Other observations about Emei Shan:
- I hear that the monkeys normally come marauding in packs and not as individuals. Maybe I got lucky.
- If you are weak but rich, you can actually pay to have a pair of Chinese dudes carry you up the stairs from place to place. The whole mountain could probably be covered for 1000 kuai. However, the sedan chairs they use to carry you look about as comfortable as an enema administered by the Marquis de Sade. There's no way I was going to be carried up.
- The existence of the cablecar and a road is actually very helpful for those of us trying to get back to Chengdu quickly. We rode the cable car down (and discovered that the Chinese don't know how to build gondola doors big enough for a Western Alpha Male with a backpack) and took a bus to the main tourist hangout at the base of the mountain. It saved a day or more of painful walking down stairs.
- The view from the top is one of haze. It could be clouds, but I don't think clouds are supposed to be this brown. You really don't notice how disgusting industrial China is until you get above the layers of pollution and realize that when you should be able to see 100km in every direction, you can only see.... 100m.
- There are way too many people trying to sell you things on Emei Shan. For a holy mountain, it's awefully like a shopping mall for trinkets, most of which are necklaces and jade bracelets. It's more of a Buddhist souvenier mountain than a holy mountain if you ask me. I think Kailash might be spared this fate only because it's so bloody remote (although I imagine there are vendors selling things there, too - the Tibetans are very industrious when it comes to commerce).
Anyway, I'm back in Chengdu. I'll be leaving for Lijiang on Friday morning and getting there Friday night. I hope to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge on the weekend, maybe as early as Saturday. From everything I hear about the Tiger Leaping Gorge, I think I have a lot to look forward to.
# posted by Alex Perel @ 11:24 AM 
