Chengdu and around: blissful relaxation and Emei Shan

Having made the arduous journey down almost to sea level from the heights of eastern Tibet, we needed a rest. As luck would have it, the hostel we stayed in in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, was a candidate for the best of our trip so far and was almost certainly the most relaxing. So apart from a three-day excursion south to a couple of Sichuan's 'must-sees', we contrived to spend two whole weeks in Sim's Cozy Guesthouse eating bacon sandwiches, tickling piglets (often simultaneously - I know, dodgy) and not really doing a lot else. Of course there was the small matter of my 31st birthday, and a three-day quest to get our hands on a posh new camera for much less than it would cost at home, but still I'm not sure where most of the time went.

A nearby temple had a teahouse in its grounds. Teahouses are common in Sichuan (apparently the Sichuanese are considered lazy by other Chinese) and are a perfect place to spend a relaxing afternoon of people-watching.


The Sichuanese's reputation seems unfair


You can even have tender parts of your anatomy cleaned with risky-looking sharp tools. After this man's ear treatment he had his eyes done. The Sichuanese must also be quite a trusting bunch.



However, the side trip south from Chengdu was anything but relaxing. In China there are perhaps five or six holy mountains, covered in Buddhist temples, one or more of which all Chinese people hope to climb at some stage in their lives. Instead of rocky, uneven paths to the summit, there are steps all the way up, sometimes hewn out of the rock, but often actually made of imported concrete, making these pilgrimages all the easier for your average city-dwelling Chinese person. Or so runs the theory. In reality, climbing almost 2000 vertical metres step by step is both incredibly tedious and excruciatingly painful. At the hostel we stayed in at the bottom of Emei Shan, one of the more famous and popular of these holy mountains, someone (who claimed he might be autistic) had written on the wall that he'd counted 66,000-odd steps from bottom to top. I don't know how true that is; we only climbed about two-thirds of the mountain, but I'm pretty sure the number of steps we climbed each day was well into four figures and quite possibly five. On the first day of climbing, we finally reached the temple we would stay at after four hours solid of lifting one leg painfully and wearily above the other onto the next just-too-narrow step, with perhaps a 10-metre flat section every fifteen minutes to ease the agony in our calves and stem the torrent of sweat from every pore. On the second day we got to within 500 vertical metres of the summit just after lunchtime. We were hoping to make it to the summit that afternoon, stay in another temple, and get up to see the sun rise over the sea of clouds, apparently a beautiful sight. However, we came upon a bus station at the end of the road up the mountain and made probably the quickest decision of our trip yet, to knock the summit on the head and get back down to comfort and the pork with green chilli peppers we'd eaten the night before starting the climb. Of course many of the more sensible Chinese tourists had taken the bus up the mountain to that bus stop and just climbed the last 500 metres. Anyway, I think we can say we've done our pilgrimage now - no need for any more holy mountains and their hellish staircases.

The lower parts of Emei Shan were undeniably picturesque




But as with any major tourist sight in China, escaping the crowds was almost impossible.


A little further along we came across a colony of macaques. Such was the scrum of Chinese trying to get pictures with the monkeys that it was sometimes hard to tell which species could boast 5000 years of civilisation.


I pushed and shoved with the best of them to get near this nipper


After escaping Emei Shan, we took a bus to a nearby town where there is a giant Buddha statue facing the river. According to our guide book the Leshan Buddha is the tallest in the world, at 71 metres. To get to it, you had to pay through the nose and walk through a series of atmospheric caves.


We came here mostly out of a sense of duty, as it was nearby, and our expectations had been lowered both by other backpackers who'd not been that enthralled, and by the Emei Shan experience. But in the end the Leshan Buddha was pretty impressive, and as it was a Monday and raining, the place wasn't completely overrun by Chinese tourists. The light-coloured specks to the left of his face are umbrellas, so you can get some idea of the size of it.


Happily installed back at Sim's in Chengdu, we managed to get up early enough one morning to visit the nearby giant panda research centre before the pandas went to sleep for the day. Chengdu, our city of inactivity, seems a perfect home for these great lazy lumps.


The youngsters were a bit more energetic


Finally, a sign at Emei Shan just to prove who are the experts on civilisation.