Chengdu & the Wild west

More to tell than time to write, so a short post today about some places I visited the last couple of days. To start with Chengdu, were I visited Bernhard, who’s studying Chinese there this year, and since the 10th of July was his birthday, my timing of visiting couldn’t be better. Apart from his birthday party he also showed me around Chengdu. Chengdu is the biggest real Chinese city in Western China. So my first impression was simple that this was just another big Chinese city. After visits to the famous teahouses, eating Sichuan hotpot outside and last but not least a look at China’s famous animal the Panda’s, I admit that the city does have its own character.

After Chengdu I took the bus more westwards to Kangding, which should be the unofficial start of Tibet. There were many Tibetans on the streets, but still a lot of Chinese as well. When I arrived, I first got a big disappointment. At the bus station I tried to buy a ticket to Litang, which is even more West and which was my purpose of going in this direction. At the bus station however the woman behind the desk simply told me that this was not possible. I could only understand that it was not possible, but my Chinese travel buddy (who I met on the bus) was kind enough to translate her words for me, “the situation in Litang is too complicated to allow foreigners”. So I just sat in a bus for about 7 hours, only to hear that I can buy a bus ticket back to Chengdu?

This disappointment aside I decided to make the best of the rest of the day and to decide at night whether to take a black minivan or not. Outside the bus station one of these cowboy looking guys already approached me, with the offer of bringing me there in his minivan. These black taxi’s are all over China, and their usually a bit annoying, but sometimes they are a good alternative. In Kangding I went to a big Buddhist temple with my new Chinese friend. This was a good idea cause it was nice to see the big temple and we even got a free diner which we could eat with some visiting monks together. Afterwards we walked through Kangding which is not really a special city in my opinion. Most Chinese know it because of the love song of Kangding, which I haven’t heard. What was interesting though was the amount of army guys on the streets. Chinese soldiers who are making sure that the situation is stable. It does make you wonder why there is a need for them. In Chengdu I also saw a couple of soldiers in front of the big Mao statue, but here there were a lot more, and at places which didn’t really seem to be that sensitive.

It did make me wonder about the situation in Litang, who was said to be too complicated for me to enter. It simply made me want to visit the place more, cause Kangding was apart from the presence of Tibetans still a Chinese city, in the sense that there are more Chinese people than Tibetans. After talking with some other foreign tourists who just came from Litang I decided to take the offer from the cowboy and to go to Litang next morning at 6.

The next day I arrived in Litang after a long bus journey on a horrible road. This place was really different than Kangding, and it felt like I had left China. Almost all the people in this place didn’t look Chinese. Their skin was darker, they were bigger, their noses were almost my size, their hair was thicker and the clothes they wore were exotic. It was also clear that Mandarin Chinese was not their first language. Most of the time they didn’t seem to understand what I said to them and the other way around I mostly failed to understand them as well. Some also seemed to dislike to speak Mandarin, so instead they used all their English to have a conversation. This was usually not more than hello, one girl who really tried looked it up in here schoolbook and managed to say goodbye. The architecture of the buildings was also very different than that of normal Chinese cities, here they had beautiful Tibetan houses. The last thing which makes this city special, is that it’s more than 4000 meters above sea level, this makes the sun very strong and the night surprisingly cold. Finally I didn’t saw that many soldiers here, only a few at a government building, but that’s quite normal, so why the official bus refuses foreigners is still a big question for me. It was easier to spot foreigners in this small city than it was in Wuhu, which is mainly cause the city center only consisted of a main street and some small streets around it, but still.

After Litang I moved on to a similar city called Daocheng, where I met another Dutch guy and an American couple, who were travelling the same direction as me to a place called Shangri-la. Quite a touristic town with a lot of Chinese and foreign tourists. This is where I’m now, tomorrow I will move onwards to visit the Tiger Leaping Gorge, and after that Dali and Kunming.