Chinese New Year Travels (Chengdu, Kunming)

Well, now that we've established the adventure that was my train ride to Chengdu, we can get on with my actual experience in Chengdu.

Literally 10 minutes after checking into the hostel that Mandy and Luke told me they would be staying at, the both of them walk in with a few other people that I recognized from our hostel in Xi'an. Jack (a woman) from England, Kim from Scotland, Lee from America, and Regis (aka Reggae, Frenchy) from France/Belgium. Kim and Jack are both teachers in South Korea. Kim is about 33 and is as obnoxious as a Scottish woman can get (she dubbed me "Dorothy" after telling her I was from Kansas). Jack was about 39 and kept Kim under control. Frenchy was a slightly slimy Frenchman with a hilarious, but maniacal laugh. Lee was my age and is actually teaching in a city very close to me. Jack and Kim were regular troublemakers. The most hilarious story they told us was when they got kicked out of their school in Korea. I guess on New Year's Eve Kim had stayed out very late and arrived back at their school around eight in the morning with a bottle of whiskey in her hand. Basically, she sat and drank the whiskey as students were eating breakfast. Awesome.

Anyway, after talking with Luke and Mandy at our hostel, we all concurred that Kunming should be the next stop in our travels. So after getting some Chinese scribbled down by a hostel employee, I set out to buy tickets to Kunming. I went to one ticket booth and there was a substantial line. After standing in line for a few minutes, I realized that the line was not moving AT ALL. I looked to the very front of the line and noticed that people were actually playing cards, seemingly having no interest in buying tickets. I left my spot to inquire about this bizarre state of affairs. From the way that printer parts and sheets were tangled around an employee, it appeared at first that the printer was broken. So I went to another booth.

At the second ticket booth, people were also standing in line and not moving. Except at this line there looked as if there were two police officers handing out numbers to people, so that everyone knew their place in line (FOR ONCE!). As I was leaving this line, some guy grabbed my arm. I have no idea why he did or what he said, but I pulled my arm away, yelled at him with a number of English expletives, and walked away. Not wanting to deal with this, I made my way back to the first booth. Keep in mind, this was at least half an hour later. The line HAD STILL NOT MOVED. It was at this point that I thought, "To hell with this" and went right up to the front and gave the employee my piece of scrap paper with train information on it. I ended up getting the ticket right then and there. I still have no idea to this day why I was able to get a ticket while a line full of Chinese people had been waiting for at least 30-45 minutes. I asked the hostel owner and he said, "They think that foreigners are helpless" which could possibly be part of it but I don't think that was the entire story since people were standing in line forever. I think they were just waiting for specific trains that go on sale exactly 3-10 days in advance...I don't know.

By this time it was 3:00 p.m. and not having much else to do, we elected to drink a few bottles of wine in the hostel. Having completed this task, we set out to eat Chengdu's famous hot pot. Hot pot is a really popular dish in China. It basically consists of a huge boiling pot split into two sides. One side is a kind of milky broth (actually made with bone, from what I've been told) and a spicier, darker side. After the pot boils, you can throw a bunch of food into it. Tofu, potatoes, pork slices, beef slices, cabbage, etc. and it cooks right there in front of you. Although this dish is widely available in China, it's notorious in Chengdu because of how spicy the spicy side is. Chengdu, actually the Sichuan province in general, is infamous for their spicy food. The spicy side of the hot pot was indeed tongue numbing. We all started sweating, but you could just see bead after bead of sweat rolling down Luke's face. Needless to say, our digestive systems didn't treat us too well the next day.

That night I met up with Drake pal, Sabel, and our Korean friend Seong (aka The Korean King). They happened to run into each other at the hostel they were staying at. Seong, having spent an extensive amount of time in Chengdu, was the right man to show us around. We went out to a couple of clubs, but it was in the middle of the week so not too much was happening. Afterwards, Seong took us to a great 24 hour noodle restaurant. At this point, Seong told us some crazy stories from when he was younger. Like most East Asian people, Seong looks a lot younger than he is. I wouldn't have guessed he was a day over 26 or 27 but he is actually 37. Anyway, Seong is one of the nicest, soft spoken people I have ever met, but he told us that he used to be in a biker gang. He said that he got into a lot of fights but never carried a knife or anything. Then he held up his hand to us which was noticeably scarred but one could tell it had had time to heal, and said, "There were too many times that the other person had a knife." I said something to the extent of "WHHHOOOOOOOA!" It doesn't even matter if he was lying or not, his stories were just intense.

Most of my troupe decided to go to see Pandas the next day. It is one of the only Panda reserves in China. The big thing there is that you can sit and hold a baby panda or put your arm around a grown panda. Not being very interested in doing that, I elected to opt out of the Panda excursion. Since they had left very early the morning they were also back very early in the afternoon. Luke, Mandy, and I had heard of this Mao Museum that was supposed to be an interesting find in Chengdu. After looking around quite a while for it, we realized it was just some guy's little apartment. Not only were there piles and piles of Mao junk all around (statues, posters, badges, etc.) but there was also piles and piles of other random junk. I mean, it was just this dude's apartment. The couple who owned the place were both very old. It cost five yuan to come in, and another five yuan to take pictures. We had a good laugh about that.

We got back a little later than planned so we almost just grabbed some street food. Lee had gotten us hooked up with a guy who did tourist trips and whatnot around Chengdu. We talked to this guy and scheduled a trip to see the largest sitting Buddha IN THE WORLD!!! Since Lee and Kim did not want to go we needed a sixth person to make it cheaper for all of us so we talked this Finnish guy in our hostel named Johannes and he was down with the excursion. He had a wonderfully sarcastic personality so it was great having him around. The Giant Buddha ended up being a part of a larger area filled with touristy things. A lot of the surroundings were beautiful but not that interesting. Later that night we went to see the Sichuan Opera. Besides Beijing Opera, Sichuan Opera is the most well known style of opera in China. The main thing we wanted to see were the face changers. These actors have several masks which they can change at any time in less than a second. The do it in such a way that the masks seem to disappear into thin air, because it's not like you can see them holding any of the masks in their hands. It's kind of like how magicians don't give away their secrets, the face changers don't give away their secret to changing masks so quickly. There were several shorter performances before the actual face changing: a boy balancing a candle on his head, hand shadows, music performance, etc. The face changers ended up being fairly impressive but their performance was only 15 minutes or so.

I had a sleeper train to Kunming, and luckily it was very uneventful. Our hostel was called Hump Hostel which made it that more awesome. When I first arrived, I saw that there were people in the bar downstairs (granted, this is 9:30 in the morning or so). While I was waiting for my room to open up, two of the guys I saw came upstairs to the hostel and demanded more drinks. Clearly, they were drunk out of their minds and they were scaring the Chinese employees (I think they were Australian). Eventually one of them disappeared and the other wondered to the outdoor patio. The one that ended on the patio ended up laying out in the sun ALL DAY LONG. We called him Mr. Tan. He was quite burnt afterwards.

We didn't up doing too much in Kunming, as most of the places of interest are outside of Kunming. Additionally, Kunming was a stopping point before we went to Lijiang. We did, however, eat dinner with some Drake people who are teaching in China. Kelli, Doug, and Nate all came to our hostel to bring out to a great restaurant. Fried goat cheese is a standard dish of the region so we pigged out on that since cheese is usually next to impossible to get in China. Kunming looked like a really cool city to live (and teach in!) and I wish we had had more time there. The weather was beautiful!