Emei Shan

2009-03-12
Arrived at Emei Shan and her temples.

From Chengdu we took the bus to Emei Shan, or in English Mount Emei, and booked into the Teddy bear Hostel. The mountain has loads of Buddhist temples, monasteries, pagodas and some rather aggressive monkeys. Although temples follow the same sort of layout as all Buddhist temples seem to, they are all different. Emei Shan is supposed to be China’s number one mountain, or so the signs I read said, probably because of the temples as the Chinese are a very superstitious race.

The weather we left in Chengdu was warmish and sunny but the closer we got to the mountain the darker the sky got and when we arrived in Emei it was a heavy drizzle. Across the bus from Paul was a young Chinese guy who had a very good command of the English language and he chatted to Paul for most of the 2 hour drive. He almost seemed to adopt us, he offered to come with us from the bus station to the hostel, very kind if a little over the top, but there was someone at the station holding up a ‘Teddy bear’ card who told us to go for a taxi which would be paid for by the hostel (?). At this point our new friend gave us his mobile number and said if we ever needed help with interpretation or anything else to give him a ring – the Chinese are a truly kind people and it is them that has made China so special. Anyway, we finally arrive at the hostel, the driver follows us in and the receptionist tells us to pay him 15 Yuan (?) which seemed far more realistic and very reasonable to.

The hostel is built in traditional style, the only problem was – they were still building it! We had to step over building materials and tools, banisters, planks of wood and wood shavings to get to our room. On opening the door we basically had a brand new room. Decorated with a mixture of wallpaper and wood with a window that looked out over rooftops and onto the countryside. The only problem with that was the window had to be open to see out of it as the casement was a wood lattice work covered on the outside with opaque glass. The window could only be closed by ‘throwing’ a bolt which unfortunately didn’t quite meet with housing and meant that we had to wedge it with some cardboard, as it was far too chilly to have the window open all the time. The en-suite wet room was the best looking wet room we had rented so far with black and white tiles. The only problems there were that the tilt of the floor was into the middle of the wet room and the drain was over by the wall, there were no hooks or frames to hang the towels after use and the towels were certainly not the most luxurious I have ever encountered.

Most of the en-suites have been wet rooms which I have to say has definitely turned me off of them. The ones we have used have all had tiled floors which are very, almost painfully, cold on the feet and everything gets wet, including the toilet, and then there is the wet floor which either makes your feet wet again or you have to wear something on your feet if you then wish to visit the loo. Most of the hostels we have stayed in have furnished their double/twin en-suite rooms with 4 pairs of flip flops – that’s one pair each for use in the room and one pair each for use in the wet room but Teddy bear didn’t which all added up to a very pretty room but uncomfortable space to use, however, the staff were friendly and helpful and there was a common/ internet room come cafe where it was nice to meet and talk to fellow travellers.

After settling in and despite the rain we decided to go and look at the immediate area and the first temple, which were well within walking distance. A very busy place and not just with tourists. There was something going on with the local female congregation and one of these women grabbed my hand and put her other arm around my back, hugged me and said something in Chinese which I interpreted as ‘welcome’. In another part of the temple one of the monks was opening a packet of crackers, a gift left by a Chinese person trying to buy themselves some good karma, and came over and gave half the packet to the two of us – the first time a monk in any temple has spoken to us or even acknowledged us before one of us has said ‘hello’ to them.

These temples seem to follow a pattern of: temple followed by courtyard followed by steps up, followed by temple, courtyard and steps up – the repeats of this will depend on the size of the temple and whether there is a monastery attached. So after a good look round, taking in the statues, various wall art, decorations and offerings as well as ‘people watching’ all the other visitors and residents, we decided to walk up to the next temple. In this second temple we found the Arhats Hall (Arhats/Luohans are equivalent, I believe, to saints) which contains 500 life-size statues of famous monks, emperors, folk hero’s and even the occasional foreigner arranged in a ‘mandala’ pattern with a huge statue (about 5 meters) of ‘Guanyin’ in the centre (Guanyin is a female deity in the Indian, Tibetan and Chinese belief systems and is depicted with up to 11 heads and 1000 arms (?), has different names in different regions and is the Goddess of mercy. Guanyin is a ‘bodhisattva’ which is ‘one who has attained enlightenment but has chosen to stay on earth to teach rather than take their place in Nirvana’). The statues were very impressive and no matter where we stood there were at least three looking at you. The light was beginning to fade and it was really quite eerie in there – I almost expected them to start moving or telling me off! The building itself was every bit as impressive as the treasure it housed but I respected the request not to take photos in case it invoked the telling off! (Seen too many Dr Who’s).
Paul read that if you choose a Luohan then, moving clockwise for females and anticlockwise for males, you count off the number of years you have attained – note the number of the Luohan - take this number to the front desk and you will be told how to make the most of the coming year (?) although we didn’t see that this particular service was on offer here but, at the right price, it might have been a bit of fun.
The next day we took a bus up to the next bus station and bought a two day pass to the mountain. Then we walked up and down thousands, or was it millions, of steps. We started by climbing steps, up to yet another temple, this one dedicated to someone who rode an elephant with six tusks or that may have been the second temple we saw that day. We foolishly decided to go and see a third temple which meant climbing many, many more steps and going though a troop of very aggressive monkeys who have learned to steal any edible thing they can get their hands on. While we walked to this part we were offered a bamboo cane by many hawkers all of which we refused to buy. Then as we walked through the area where the troop ‘hunt tourist rations’ a guy in front of us who had purchased a bamboo cane had it taken away from him by one of the adult monkeys. There were locals all around paid to protect the tourists but I had two large adults jump onto the back of my rucksack (not at the same time) and one of them stole a bottle containing some sweet liquid then ran off with it. They haven’t learned how to unscrew these bottles; they just bite through them and drink what they can. Still, the way they toss aside their rubbish is very Chinese.
Anyway, having got through with only the loss of a bottle we continued on our ‘temple pilgrimage’. I came very close to giving up at several times but we just had to see if it was round the next bend. When we finally came across it, it was the only temple where we didn’t have to pay an entrance fee but we were asked for our passports. They only really wanted one of our passports and he wrote down name, passport number and number of people in the group (in our case 2). Whilst the guy was taking this information Paul noticed that the last person to register was the day before so we reckoned that this monastery doesn’t get too many visitors – and I’m not bloody surprised. Then, just as we were leaving, another couple, this time Chinese, arrived carrying incense. Just before descending we noticed another troop of the same type of monkey moving through the trees. They looked at us and us at them but they weren’t really interested in us, they just carried on with their business which was both a relief and refreshing after our previous experience. Then began the endless down and up and down and up and, eight hours after leaving the hostel, the final down and home for the night.
The next day we took it easy. We took the bus all the way up as far as it would take us. There was a fair amount of snow up there and so I used a pair of ‘snow shoes’ basically straw soles that tie onto the bottom of my trainers and Paul had to go for the ‘snow socks’ ‘cos they don’t seem to have ‘snow shoes’ large enough for an English size 10 boot, but they did the job very efficiently and luckily neither of us slipped in the snow. We then climbed the steps and onto the cable car which took us up to the Golden Summit 3077Mts where there was a giant gilded statue of the mutli-faced Puxian (a sixth century bodhisattva) on four, six tusked, elephants. Impressive, if a little tacky, as this is, it doesn’t compare with the natural surroundings. The summit is above the clouds in warm sunshine with only the tops of other mountains visible. We decided to park our bums on a rock and rest a while and I don’t think I have ever had my photo taken so much in my life. Up until now, every now and then we get a Chinese person asking to have their photo taken with us, but sitting there for that half hour we must have been asked twenty times. Sometimes one person from a group would come over, then another from the same party and so on until everyone in the party had had their photo taken with us – it’s really quite bizarre and very amusing – perhaps we ought to start charging! We walked around for a while and then walked down the snow covered steps to the bus station, another hour and a half’s walk, to catch the bus home. We came across lots of people who had decided to walk up, some from the bottom who were on their second day of climbing (mad impetuous fools). We could have stayed in one of the monasteries and got up early to watch the sun rise but it was very cold up there and I can’t see a monastery having ‘central heating’, not that anywhere else did either, and there was no guarantee that the weather would be good enough to see the sun rise so we passed on that opportunity, but someone told us afterwards that ‘it had been kind of cool to hang with the monks’!
The next day was our moving on day. We wanted to catch the sleeper train at 7.30pm to Panzhihua arriving about 5.30am next morning then catch the local bus to Lijiang but it didn’t work out like that. When we got the train station and there was no room on the train we wanted so we settled for an earlier train which not only threw all our plans out of the window, the unhelpful cow put us in different cabins. We arrived at 2am and had to wait 5 hours for the bus to take us to the bus that would take us to Lijiang. We thought we were just waiting for the one bus, it wasn’t until she charged us a ridiculously small amount that we realized we were going to have to change which if we had realized we would have made a different decision on transport. Not only that but just as we were due to disembark a local told us that the road from Panzhihua to Lijiang was really very poor, and he wasn’t wrong either, and what we should have done was continue on the train to Kunming and get the bus from there - isn’t hindsight always 20:20? I have to say that this was our worst transfer to date and hopefully for the entire adventure although the plane journey to Chengdu comes a close second.