While "random photos from around Asia" might not be the greatest blog title this is in essence what these are. I quite like the photo of the Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium and the tourist with the drone from Laos. Overall I think I am most happy with this set of photos. I guess with travel I saw new places so consequently the photos of those places are new. In Shanghai I often did just my daily life or saw the same things several times.
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On my second day in Xiamen, my group of ECNU international students was taken three hours away form Xiamen to visit the home of the Hakka People (客家民族), one of China's 56 ethnic groups. The particular Hakka community we visited, the Fujian Tulou Earthen Buildings site, is one of China's many UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We did have some delays in getting there though; one of the roads was ripped up for construction so it took us about half an hour just to pass that small stretch of street, eventually though we did make it to the site. The Tulou buildings are Earthen buildings built to protect the Hakka people from the roving bandits and wild animals that were common in the mountains of Imperial China. Each Hakka clan would have their own Tulou building that house all the essentials for relatively comfortable living at the time, such as water wells and Buddhist temples. Since most bandits just wanted to get the booty quickly and leave, they were unwilling to besiege the fortified Tulou buildings. The site was interesting I guess, I got a lot of good photos and the Fujian Tulou buildings were defiantly neat but I don't know if it was worth the six hours on the bus there and back to see them. Walking around the site, it was clear that many other people weren't willing to make the drive. While the buildings are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a China National Tourism Authority AAAAA Tourist Site, for China there were hardly any people there. It felt like Zhangjiajie got more tourists in the off season than the Fujian Tulou did in far better weather. If you compare the Fujian Tulou to the number of tourists China's really famous world heritage sites get, like the Forbidden City of Beijing or the Terracotta Army of Xi'an, the Fujian Tulou felt down right abandon. For both lunch and dinner I had Hakka food. The Hakka were traditionally an agrarian people and their salty vegetable biased foods reflect this. I wasn't super into our lunch, I guess we went to a touristy restaurant that knew none of us would ever come back there for the food. Dinner was actually really good, the local Hakka restaurant in Xiamen proper was tasty and seemed thrilled to have such a large group of foreign customers. The food served for both lunch and dinner weren't pretty, I can't picture the Great Qing Emperor digging down on a plate of the tofu we had for lunch or the eggplant we had for dinner. It was all filling though which is what you want after a long day in the field. All in all, I guess I am glad I went if for no other reason than I can say I did.
I was reading over the Wikipedia pages for the films I watched in my Contemporaneity Chinese Film class to prepare for the midterm. The Wikipedia page for the first film we saw, Monster Hunt/捉妖记, mentioned that many of the scenes were shot in Zhanghjiajie national park. What is interesting is whoever made the signs for the park didn't mention that a relatively new (released in 2015 with a squeal coming in 2018) and very popular (Monster Hunt is the highest grossing local Chinese film of all time) was shot there. The only film that had signs and locations about it in Zhangjiajie was Avatar, a foreign film. Perhaps it is because even though Monster Hunt was successful it wasn't nearly as successful as Avatar. Perhaps the foreign film, Avatar, was easier to market than the local film, Monster Hunt.
The last major site I haven't seen in Zhangjaijie was Tianmin Mountain (天门山), located a ways from my hotel in Zhangjaijie City proper. After an early morning bus ride, my met my friend of a friend from a few days ago to head on up the mountain. It seemed like the only way for tourists to get up Tianmin Mountain was by taking ether the cable car or escalator, since it was raining we took the cable car. The views of the surrounding countryside and of Zhangjiajie City were quite impressive from that hight. There is not much to say about the Mountain itself, more good hikes and impressive views. Interestingly the rain turned to snow on the Mountain and draped the surrounding mountains in a gray fog. It felt almost Kong-Fu movie esk. To amplify the Kong-Fu feel, Tianmin Mountain has a Buddhist and other Chinese deities temple. Temples in China are always a bit odd. While they have worshippers, unlike many Vietnamese temples, they don't seem to have many monks, unlike Laos and Thailand, and most of the worshippers seem to be Chinese tourists. I think a touristy thing to do in this country is go to temple. The cable car ride down was a bit freaky. The car actually stopped twice for some reason, and crawled along the rest of the time. My local friend of a friend commented that the cable cars were scarier than the glass bridge over the Zhangjaijie Grand Canyon. We then bought my bus ticket to my next stop, Fenghuang County (凤凰县), also know as Phoenix Ancient Town.
Before I start, I combined by posts from today and yesterday because I spent most of my day today dealing with logistics for tomorrow and my trip to Fenghuang County. Also, my feet still hurt from yesterday.
A friend of mine linked a Facebook post about James Cameron's 2009 hit film Avatar. "Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time" it starts "can you name two characters and a quote from Avatar?" It then asks. The answer to both questions, for me, is no. What I do remember from Avatar was how great it looked. Now why am I telling you this? You know all the cool mountain scenes from Avatar? You know where they filmed those? On top of Tianzi Mountain (天子山), Zhangjaijie National Park, P. R. China. To enhance my nerd cred, I decided to visit what the park map called the "Avatar Filming Location." I can tell you, it does look as cool as you think it does. While the rocks don't float like they do in Avatar, the towering pillars of ancient rock are almost more impressive. What took Avatar needed the peek of human animation and computing technology to complete, nature did with only two large chunks of rock pushing against one another and some rain. In order to get to this site I had to use the Bailong elevator (百龙电梯), the Guinness Book of World Records Official Tallest Outdoor Elevator on Earth. While kind of cool, the elevator was not nearly as interesting as the mountains. After exploring the mountain's top, I ended up walking down and accidentally ending up in another section of the park. Unforntually, there was no internal park bus back to the entrance by my hotel in Wulingyuan. I ended up getting a van to Zhangjaijie City where I then got a van Wulingyuan and a bowl of cheap noodles from some random lady in the bus station. The noodles were meh. About two hours later I arrived in Wulingyuan, just in time to get my self a plate of fried rice, a box of cookies, and a bottle of 26RMB wine (about 4USD). I should have went for the 46RMB wine because the 26RMB wine tastes like Manischewitz. Even though I got lost and my legs still hate me, it was still a cool day in the park. Two things. First, the text portion of this post will probably feel a bit disjointed. That is simply because there are only so many ways a man can wrote "I hiked up stuff and ate" before it gets boring. Second, the text sounds like a rant and makes it seem like I am not enjoying myself. If you look at the pictures, I can assure you I am.
\nToday I made it is to the Zhangjaijie National Forrest Park proper. For the confused, Zhangjaijie is actually two interlinked entities. Zhangjaijie City, which I have been exploring since the 19th, and the Zhangjaijie National Park which has like five different titles. Today I got into the park. After slightly confusing the staff trying to get another student discount (which I did get by the way) I entered the park. It is weird to think that the Chinese government now probably has more information on me than the American government. I had to give whatever the Chinese call the National Parks Service my fingerprints to enter the park. The US dosn't even have my fingerprints but now the Chinese do. I basically spent the whole day hiking around, taking in the scenery, and eating from moderately sketchy food vendors. The paurk has an internal bus system for anyone with a pass that I made good use of today getting from place to place. My only issue with the buses is that they are basically unlabeled and in order to get anywhere you have to ask a staff member do direct you to the right bus. \nSome time ago I read a headline on /r/NotTheOnion that was something like "National Parks Service Warns Tourists not to Take Selfies With Buffalo" and thought that it was a dumb thing to warn people about. After spending a day watching tourists interact with Zhangjaijie's many monkeys, I see why the National Parks Service needed to make that warning. Monkeys are actually viscous basterds with sharp claws. I can't tell you the number of tourists I saw really messing with the things. \nFor dinner I think I found the Sochuanese restaurant. I got some beef noodles that the lady said was "a little spicy." I don't know her definition of "a little" but they were certainly at my spice level. Furthermore I could feel the Sichuan peppercorns and see the many brightly collared chillies. The noodles were good though. Today I started form the bottom and now I'm here. With a local friend of a friend as my guide I ventured down into the Yellow Dragon Caves (黄龙洞). According to People's Daily, legend has it that a dragon actually lived in the caves at one point. From the size of the caves, I could see how the primitive man could draw this conclusion. Normally the caves are lit up with LED lights of all colors. While this was true for part of our journey, the power in the caves kept failing, forcing us to use our phones as light sources if we wanted to continue on. One old man became our caving buddy after he, somewhat rightly in my opinion, assumed the caves would be lit so didn't bring an extra light. It was interesting to see the caves as ancient humans once did, as in hardly see them at all. After a quick lunch we headed off to the Buzzfeed famous Glass Bottom Bridge that spans the Zhangjaijie Grand Canyon. Before we could enter, we had to fight with the staff to get my student discount. The normal reason for rejecting foreign students for the student discount is they don't have a student ID from a Chinese university. Much to their surprise, I actually have a Chinese student ID so they gave me the discount. While Buzzfeed liked to show images of terrified young Chinese women grasping to the steel for dear life, that wasn't the case. The Israeli engineers and architects who made the Glass Bottom Bridge made it feel super secure. Other than me, the Bridge consisted of entirely happy Chinese people of all ages taking fun photos. The large number of people on the bridge helped add to the sense of security. Finally, there is also less glass on the world's longest glass bottom bridge than you would think. After getting back to Wulingyuan, where my hotel is, and parting ways I had some not bad duck noodles. They only cost 13RMB, or about 2USD, so almost anything would have been not bad. But the noodles I got were actually pretty good.
From Changsha I spent most of my day on a bus to Zhangjiajie. Zhangjiajie is basically Chinese Yellowstone. It is China's oldest and best preserved national park. I will be spending some time in Zhangjiajie park, Wuyingyuan (where my hotel is) and Pheonix Ancient Town (凤凰县). I will be spending Chinese New Year here so look foward to some great photo to come.
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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