Wednesday
was the last day of the holiday (and the official holiday). I checked out of
the hotel, leaving my things in an extra bag so I could go out for the morning
without carrying everything, and headed for Fuhu Monastery, which is a half
hour walk from town. When I passed a restaurant near the monastery, a young man
asked if I wanted to eat and I said I had eaten. He started to walk with me,
chatting in Chinese. I told him I didn’t understand Chinese, but he kept on
talking like people sometimes do. When we arrived at the monastery, he paid for
my entrance ticket while I was getting my money out. A couple minutes later, he
said he wanted 20 yuan ($3.50). I wasn’t going to give him any money for
walking me to a place I didn’t need help getting to and when I hadn’t agreed to
have him accompany me. But he kept telling me he wanted the money. Then he left
me and returned with a young woman who speaks English. She explained that he
wanted money to be my tour guide. I certainly didn’t want a tour guide who
speaks a language I don’t understand. When he finally understood that I didn’t
want his services, he wanted me to pay for the ticket. I was fine with that but
didn’t have proper change. He was able to get my 100 yuan note changed but only
to 10s, and the ticket was 6. I had the young woman tell him I was not happy
and eventually told him to keep the 10. The money wasn’t a big deal, but I
wanted him to understand that he shouldn’t approach people the way he did. He
was happy to have the money. When I told Diao Min about this encounter, she
didn’t understand his behavior. I was told later that people purchase tickets for
a friend to be polite. This obviously was not the case with him. I think he was
just ignorant about how to deal with people and saw the foreigner—me—as an
opportunity to make some money. He obviously wasn’t practicing his English.
So my
entrance to the monastery was a little unpleasant. But, because of that, I met Jin, the young woman who had translated. After the young man left, she offered
to be my guide for free. I wasn’t comfortable with this at first but ended out
really enjoying her and learning a lot. Zhong is 25 years old and is a former
English teacher. She’s not sure what she wants to do. She was at the monastery
studying Buddhism for several days. She studied on her own and could ask the
nuns for help if she had questions.
The
monastery is actually a nunnery, as it is nuns who live there. We saw two
people practicing tai chi in courtyards. Zhong said the man seems to live
there, as he practices every day. But, since most people stay in their rooms,
it’s hard to know who lives there.
The
monastery includes the Ararat Hall, which was one of my favorites. The way to
it is marked with a small sign that I might have missed without Zhong. It contains
statues of 500 gods. Each one is different, and each one is for a different
purpose, which is sometimes evident by the image. For example, some hold
musical instruments and one has children sitting on its lap, which reminded me
of Hopi Storytellers. (No photos allowed.) A few people were praying to
different gods.
Next I
headed for Leiyin Temple, which is up the mountain a bit. I followed a couple
up the road until I caught up with them after five minutes and asked, pointing
at my map, if the road went there. It didn’t. But a woman coming down the road
was excited to see an American and walked me back to the steep stairs I had
seen and hoped to avoid by walking on the road.
Up the stairs I went, thankful for my bamboo walking stick.
Leiye in
Temple wasn’t noteworthy, which was disappointing since I’d walked up all those
stairs to get there. My map indicated that I could walk from there to Qingyin
Pavilion in two hours, and a sign at the bottom had mentioned it; so I decided
to do that, as it would still get me back to town in time to get a bus back to
Chengdu. I kept climbing up more stairs than I thought I should be going up.
Eventually, I asked two young men where we were on the map. One pointed to
about where I thought I should be.
Later I came to the Chunyang Palace, which I
didn’t think I was going to. Not far after that, there was a sign pointing the
direction to a temple the name of which I didn’t recognize. Two men came along
and I asked them where we were. We were indeed a lot higher than the path I
thought I was on, and we were not on the one the other man had indicated that I
thought I was on. (Perhaps they, too, weren’t where they thought they were.) They
agreed that my best option for getting to town quickly was back the way I’d
come. So down all the steps—thousands, I’m sure—I went. A woman selling meat on
sticks had some with tofu; so I stopped to buy some. It looked good until she
fried it in way too much oil. It tasted more like oil than tofu, but I figured
the fat would give me energy.
I arrived back in town at 2:30, having had a longer day of walking than
I’d planned. But I enjoyed having more time out in nature. I quickly picked up my things, and went to the tourist bus
station. They had no more tickets to Chengdu. (Should have purchased a ticket
the day I arrived, but I didn’t think of it then, and it wasn’t a problem in
Leshan.) So I had to go to the bus station in Emei city. When I walked in, I
knew that the long line was the one for Chengdu. I purchased my ticket and
joined it. Within ten minutes, it was considerably longer. The young man in
front of me said we’d be in line for an hour. Fortunately, he was wrong; it was
only half an hour until we were on a bus that left at 4:30. As we approached
Chengdu, traffic was bumper to bumper in a couple places with everyone
returning from their holiday travels. We arrived at 7:00, and I immediately
went to the bus stop to get a bus to Baihua, where I get the bus home. Usually
the last bus is at 7:30; so I was a little concerned about making it but hoped
that there would be later buses because of the holiday. While waiting for half
an hour, only one available taxi came, and someone grabbed it before it got to
where I was standing. There was a young couple that I thought was probably also
going to Wenjiang, and I was right. When the bus arrived at the station, they
got off and ran to the place where the Wenjiang bus waits. So did I. We were
lucky. There was a bus. There were no seats left, but that was OK. I was just
happy to be on a bus. I was even happier when a student got up and gave me his
seat. I arrived home at 9:30, tired but glad to be home.
My legs
were very stiff for the next two days. I’d done a lot of up and down walking
and been up and down thousands of stairs. I knew they’d be stiff, but that’s
usually been for one day. Going to classes on the fourth and third floors was
challenging. I guess the old body takes longer to recover than it used to.
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