Zhangye Part 2 (10-22)

The hostel in Zhangye was a welcome site. It has a lovely sitting area and a lovely area outside the rooms with tables. It is nicely decorated and has lots of natural light through a plastic dome over the courtyard. 

There’s a pet hedgehog in the courtyard. I’d never seen a hedgehog before. It’s cute. I was in a dorm room for 6, but, since this was not the tourist season and only a few other people were there, they put us in different rooms. So I had the room to myself, which was nice. I don’t usually stay in dorm rooms, but this place had caught my eye and I really wanted to stay there. In addition, other hotels were twice the price and I didn’t feel like paying that much. I was very happy to have a hot shower.

After checking in, I went to the Giant Buddha Temple, which is near enough to the hostel to walk. Although the woman doesn’t speak English, she is very friendly and tried hard to help me. She told me how to walk there and gave me a map—in Chinese, but there’s a circle where the hostel is and I could follow her directions on the map.

On the way, I came across the Shanxi Guild house, a lovely, old building with magnificent carved wood.

The Big Buddha in the temple is the largest indoor, clay sculptured sleeping Buddha with a wood core in Asia—34 meters long, 7.5 high at shoulders. This made me wonder how it compares to the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok. I looked it up and that Buddha is 15 meters high and 43 meters long. The Zhangye Buddha is in a dimly lit building—to protect it from light, I suppose. 

I took a few photos before a man told me it’s not allowed, as I hadn’t seen the sign. (I thought it interesting that the guide with his group had walked past me and hadn’t said anything.) But later I found one in a tourist magazine. 

Other buildings in the complex have Buddhist art, sutras, painted Buddhas, and old Buddhas. 

I especially enjoyed the building with painted Buddhas because most of the wall paintings feature women, which is unusual. I learned later that such paintings are probably of family members of donors. 

The halos around the Buddhas are fire, which I hadn’t seen before. Later I was told that that is influence from India.

After walking around for a few hours and walking in the park for 3.5 hours in the morning, I was tired and ready to return to the lovely hostel. I stopped at a supermarket to buy water and yogurt and purchased a very small cooked chicken to take back with me. That solved the problem of what to have for dinner. I enjoyed eating it in the courtyard before my hot shower.

Tuesday turned out to be a day of minor disappointments. First, I had planned to go to Mata Si, as I’d read that buses leave every half hour. When I told the hostel managers, they opened a notebook and showed me the message that buses leave three times a day, the last being at 9:15. It was 9:40; so I missed that. No problem, as I could go there on Wednesday.

The new plan was to go to Black Water State and Tombs Complex from the Han dynasty (around 200-250), which I’d read about on a couple China tour sites online. The managers didn’t understand and called the person who speaks English. I learned that he is their son, and he came to assist as he speaks OK English. Once he understood, he looked up the site online and told me it would cost 10 RMB to enter and I would need a taxi because there are no buses to the site. They contacted a driver and we agreed on a price that seemed reasonable for a half day trip. After half an hour we arrived at a place in the desert where there were remnants of walls. We walked around for about 40 minutes. The driver was very nice and helped me to up the hills and up the inside of a corner building. I enjoyed watching a herd of goats run toward the structure and then move on. There was no admission or place where tickets could be sold and there was nothing that made it look like a cultural site. So I thought this was outside the main site which we would go to next. But when we left, he turned back toward the city. So I was confused. At the hostel, I told Eric that I wasn’t sure I had been taken to the right place. He showed me a photo on the Internet site he had looked at, and it did look like the corner building we had climbed through. And the walls looked like the ones we had stood on. So I finally accepted that we had gone where he had told the driver to take me. With our limited communication, it took about twenty minutes to discuss why I was confused so that he could understand. I was ready to move on, but he wanted to understand. I was also a little disappointed, as the site was interesting but wasn’t really worth the 150 yuan/$25 I had paid to be taken there. And since the trip took a total of two hours, not half a day, I felt like I had paid too much, as I have paid that much for several hours. But that happens sometimes. Fortunately, not often.

Later I looked up the information I had read again and realized that one site’s information had been written 40 years ago; so I’m sure it was outdated in terms of the appearance of the site. Eric had mentioned that things change in the desert as the wind blows the sand. That explained that information. But the other currently offered tour describes seeing decorations on the walls of the tombs. We didn’t see any tombs. It was interesting to see and stand on remnants of walls built in 200 AD. And it was pretty cool to be standing on walls that are about 1800 years old. So, all in all, it was an interesting outing even though I was initially a little disappointed.

Since the outing was much shorter than I’d anticipated, I had the whole afternoon free. I decided to go to the Wooden Pagoda, which I hadn’t planned to visit as I’d read that it wasn’t really special. Eric walked me there, as it’s on his way home. 

The pieces that stick out of the pagoda, giving it the pagoda shape, are wood. I wasn’t sure I wanted to pay the entrance fee to walk to the top, as I knew the city view wouldn’t be great. Since it was a lovely afternoon, I sat on a bench in the square and read for a couple hours. Then I decided to go into the pagoda because they usually have nice altars on each level and sometimes have paintings. 

The first floor has several Buddha images and lovely paintings. The rest have nothing. So that was another small disappointment.

On the way back to the hostel, I passed a place selling cooked food. The broccoli and cauliflower looked good and not spicy. Wrong. They must have been cooked in spicy water that didn’t affect their appearance but permeated them. I washed the pieces, but the spiciness was still there; so I gave it to the managers. The final disappointment of the day.

Some days are like that. When traveling, I can’t always be certain what I’ll see or experience, but I do it anyway. Some are amazingly wonderful; others aren’t. But, fortunately, I have more of the former than the latter. It comes with the territory of traveling.

My adventure Wednesday exceeded anything I had anticipated, balancing the disappointments of Tuesday. At the bus station I was told in English to take the bus and then take a taxi to Mati Si. I’d read that that was the way to get there. The ride went through farm country—corn and potatoes. I saw fields where potatoes had been harvested and put into sacks that were waiting to be picked up. 

For the second half of the trip, we could see the high mountains, some of which were snowcapped. With the blue sky, it was beautiful. When we arrived in the town, the bus attendant told me that for 30 RMB/$5, I could join the four other people going to Mati Si on the bus and then go back to Zhangye. Sounded like a deal to me, as I could stay on the same bus and not have to deal with getting a taxi and then a bus back. So the day was going well.

Mati Si is Tibetan Buddhist cave temples carved into a mountain. We went to two of the main sites. The bluffs have caves at ground level, but most of them are above ground and are connected with tunnels. 

From outside, the upper grottoes look like they are hanging on the side of the bluff. They reminded me of the nunnery we visited in Bhutan that had rooms in the caves in a cliff. 

The main site has grottoes in the form of a pagoda on the side of the bluff. There are five levels, 

and you can walk through the tunnels up to the top one. I met some women from Hong Kong who commented on the fact that because this was not tourist season, it was nice to be able to walk slowly and really look at things because the tunnels were not packed with mainland Chinese tourists. That’s so true.

On the side of the main grottoes there is a huge cave room that has a standing Buddha. 

Another smaller cave has many Buddha statues.

As we walked to the site, the views of the snowcapped mountains and of the grassland hills in the other direction were spectacular. Having some yellow leaves on trees added to the beauty. 

After visiting the grottoes, I walked up to the observation platform, not realizing how far up it was. But the views along the way and the 360 degree view from the top made the walk up worthwhile. 

It was a beautiful day.

I arrived back at the hostel at 3:30, a bit tired and ready to rest. Later I went out to buy vegetables on skewers for dinner. So I enjoyed my non-spicy meal.

I liked Zhangye. It’s not too big, and there aren’t too many cars. Thus it is quiet. The city is clean. The air is good. The sky is blue and the sun shines. People were friendly.