To the Panda Sanctuary

The increasing anxiety for travel to Lasha was overwhelming. To answer the persistent urge, and after packing bare necessities, I left the gracious haven of Cheshire and Stanley’s home to check into Sim’s Cosy Garden Guest House.

Sim’s Cozy Garden is a five-star guest house! For the adventurous traveler it’s better than home away from home… Sim’s International Garden is a meeting place for travelers where language and nationality have no borders. Trivial talk, or travel tips are freely exchanged in the bar-cafe, on the roof gardens, in the internet room, or laundry area…

At the reception, English-speaking staff provide all manners of assistance… anytime! On a sleepless night or rainy day one can choose from an international selection of DVDs, (TV and DVD player in every room.) Rent-free!

For my part, confusing and conflicting reports as to the necessity of a TTB (Tibet Tourist Bureau) permit were unraveled by Sim’s expert travel agents:

YES I needed one… NO it was not free… The TTB permit, limited to Lhasa travel, would cost half the 660 yuan quoted by some other agencies… NO... for reasons beyond my comprehension though explained in proper English, the permit would not remain in my possession… YES, Other TTB permits could be obtained in Lhasa . Ask local travel agencies…

This permit would suffice to get me a boarding pass and pass through airport security… Most important, the mystifying TTB permit would be issued in time for an available flight in two days time…

NO... railway bookings not available for next two weeks or more. YES... fly to Lhasa, return by railway… When? Anytime… No problem…

I understood… I booked the flight which included a ride with a driver capable of taking care of all airport procedures… Treated like a VIP, I would be on my way to Lhasa with enough time for a visit to the Panda Sanctuary

...and an evening at the Sichuan Opera

Remembering Sichuan's Earthquake Victims

In spite of yesterday’s horrific earthquake in Sichuan I will not postpone my postings. Instead I dedicate my memories of a journey in China to the victims, to the survivors, to those who give aid and to the people of China.

Chengdu:

Della, Everybody's ok here, at present, though we had to spend last night outside for the most part, until the rain started, and tonight we're scheduled to go downstairs to the first floor apartments. No real tremors of any consequence today, though the initial one was a biggy. Lasted a MINUTE or so, which is an eternity for earthquakes. No visible local damage. Cheshire has phoned a couple of times, she went over to her mother's and they all spent the night together, outside too. I'll keep you posted, and we hope as always for the best! Allen

The Great Buddha of LeShan

It was speedy traveling with Stanley. He knew precisely when and where to catch a variety of busses, the exact ticket price for our destination and would negotiate a ride on a rickshaw with barely a nod… So before I could say abracadabra, we arrived in LeShan.

Because my initial plan only involved Allen, the Sichuan University and the Bookworm I was not prepared for the sightseeing I had embarked upon. Yet, had I been more informed, the magnificent Buddha carved into the red sandstone face of a cliff, would not have been a less astonishing sight.

A Great Buddha sitting for centuries guarding the confluence of two rivers below was the staggering concept of Haitong, a monk who lived during early 8 century AD.
The Buddha is 71-m. high, each ear drops 7-m. Nose measures 5.6-m. Shoulders span 28-m. He is restored every 10 years to prevent damage from plant invasion and pollution.
To get a close view of his 8-m. feet and famous toes we descended a twisting, steep and narrow staircase, anticipating the descent would prove much easier that the inevitable ascent to the exit…

During construction the sculptor-monk lived in a cave behind the Buddha’s head. Funds for the work were raised trough public donations and regional government contributions, generated by salt mining revenues.
Haitong gouged out his own eyes when a local official threatened to blind him if prevented from taking a cut of the funds. The Great Buddha was completed in 1803, some time after Haitong’s death

Journey to EmeiShan

What luck… Stanley opened the way for me suggesting I accompany him to his native home of Emei Town, 143 Km SW of Chengdu. The bus en route to Emei, traveled through a series of industrial villages, past a giant factory named “MILANO CERAMIC TILE.” Brief bus stops permitted a quick glance at colorful displays of earthenware and stoneware ornaments…

In Emei-Town Stanley visited his aunt, a Doctor of Chinese Medicine, and introduced me to some friends, among who were 99 years old grandma and her 3 times great- grandson. Instinctively aware of communication trouble, Grandma showed me how to warm my cold hands on the small electric heater beside her. Grandson, perhaps 12 years old was indeed energetic, appearing simultaneously protective and dictatorial towards his mom and dad…

Proud of speaking English he showed me his achievements in Chinese painting and calligraphy, and a substantial photo collection of basketball stars. Eagerly dominating the conversation he pounded me with sports questions, (fortunately) with little time left for my improvised answers…
After delays caused by invitations to a variety of eateries Stanley guided me to EmeiShan. A persistent urgency to travel to Lhasa denied me the extra three days required to reach the summit (3009 m.) and descend. Even so, in one of the many monasteries we enterd I experienced Emei Mountain’s spirituality.

The mist surrounding the Mountain was not the smog of Chengdu, Steep paths and endless stairs reached terraced gardens. I was aware of a scent of forest, of strange woods. Devotees lit candles in monastery courtyards and whether the monasteries were Daoist or Buddhist, did not seem a matter of great importance, they were holy places…

In one inspirational courtyard we linked with a winding single-filed cortege, a cortege at intervals escorted by a Buddhist monk. From time to time small bells rang and incense smoke reached the nostrils. Everyone was chanting. Before long I too repeated the mantra… “ AmiToFo…, AamiTooFo… AmiiToFo… AaamiToFo… AaamiiToFo… Follow me… Follow me… Follow me… Follow me…

Chanting in compelling unison the cortege stepped over the Temple’s threshold and continued winding through rows of golden-silk cushions placed on the floor… After awhile I began to feel as one with the devotees, we were as one facing each other on the meandering circuit, as one chanting… as one with the surroundings… with the mountain… with the Buddha…

Bookworm Chengdu

Truly my chief objective for a voyage to Chengdu was to visit Allen, to spend quality time together in the interest of shared poetic pursuits, all our correspondence eagerly point that way too. But that was before the mood changed…

Allen had enrolled me in Chengdu’s BOOKWORM LITERARY FESTIVAL as a contributing author!

“Bring the three volumes of your “ACTS” trilogy, plan to read and talk about it.” He wrote to me, “You'll be listed along with me and other writer guys 'n gals! We've got to get "our works" out there in the public eye, Della, and this is the year for doing it…Time to step out into some part of the literary world…”

And more: “Della, send a bio/blurb, a digital photo, and a description of your trilogy to Ben at Chendu’s BOOKWORM so that you may be included in the brochure/events. You're scheduled for March 19, for the “Workshop Open Mike” and some other activity… “

And again: Della, very busy here PROMOTING poetry and poets, both of us included… …I’m pondering on the possibility of inviting several workshop members to join you and me in reading some part or parts of FIELDS OF SNOW. Or you can go solo, or with me, or we can do all three! Prior to the 19 you'll have a chance to attend 3 workshop sessions, so everybody will be familiar with each other.


GRENDEL'S POND” Allen’s new chapbook, and “THE BOXES,” Allen’s -packaged poetry– were “launched” at THE BOOKWORM on March 5th and I was there for the event…

With Cheshire’s invaluable guidance I took Bus 76, got off the bus when I reached the AMERICAN CONSULATE, walked a few hundred yards (on the wrong side of the street) peering into shop windows, after asking a couple of people who could not understand my alien gibberish, I stumbled upon a small front street office with a huge English sign: FOREIGN STUDENT TRAVEL… My destination was a block away across the Sun Jin Hotel…

The BOOKWORM, located on Section 4 Renmin Nanlu, No.28 is a bar with a lending library, a restaurant with western and oriental food, a great meeting place for English speaking expatriates with laptops and where you can sit on western-style toilets…

While in the library area Allen arranged his display of visual poetry, I sat at the bar, drinking a Tsingtao beer, soon after I attended Allen’s launch of GRENDEL’S POND. Always awed by Allen’s masterly manipulation of words, I paid keen attention to his reading, to the comments and questions from the audience, answers from Allen.

I took some photos and returned to the bar. Ordered another beer and gazed at the bottles on the shelves behind the counter… One Smirnoff Vodka, 3 kinds of Absolute, one Finlandia, Martini Rossi Vermouths, 2 Jose Cuervo, one Gordon’s Gin, two Bacardi, and Stolishnaya Vodka. Tall Galliano in the middle, Johnny Walker - Red and Black on one side, Glenn Fiddich, Chivas Regal on the other… All manners of liqueurs and

…halfway through the next beer it happened… I was assailed by travel fever!

Sichuan Food and Family

For 4 days I was a guest of Cheshire and Stanley, a Chinese couple personal friends of Allen. 40 days before, Cheshire had given birth to a beautiful baby boy. Both were discovering the intricacies of new parenthood and it was evident the child would receive the excessive attentions due to an only child, as prescribed by China’s – One Child Policy –

One Child Policy may seem contrary to human rights, yet 1.3 billion citizens if free to multiply indiscriminately, may result in a future of inconceivable disadvantages. Meanwhile, dangerously, and to their own dismay, doting Chinese parents may be raising ego-centric generations of One Child Policy mini-monsters…

Confucius’ wisdom and the yin-yang balance of the I Ching may be the inspirational guides for an ethical stability between parents and their one-child. Perhaps arouse in the limited family the philosophical harmony characteristic of Chinese culture...

To meet other family members I was invited for a home-cooked dinner by Cheshire’s mom and dad. As we walked through a dimly-lit and damp street market of meats, fruit and vegetables, available as ready to eat, take home and eat, or take home and cook it yourself, I asked Cheshire what gift would be appropriate for mom. Thinking in western mode, I suggested a bottle of whisky or a box of Chocolate, to my surprise she opted for a 4 liter container of cooking oil.

So I discovered the real Sichuan cuisine, which uses plenty of oil along with massive amounts of chili peppers for enormous quantities and varieties of food... Sometimes consumed with a generous supply of SNOW beer…

I was lucky… in a restaurant for a HOT POT, at home or a street barbeque, my new found friends kept my rice bowl topped up, perhaps noticing my shy and clumsy long-distance chopstick maneuverings into shared dishes. I ate everything even with tears in my eye and running nose…

On 1st Ring Road

I met bachelor and passionate traveler, Miguel from Majorca, in the lobby of THE LOFT guest house and youth hostel. We had noodle soup together and for a couple of hours after that we romanced over the map of China. He had been on a 3 month journey from Beijing to Lhasa, and south to Kunmin in Yunan, and now in this restaurant-with-no- name, his baritone voice described the places on the map with the perceptive enthusiasm of a modern Marco Polo.


Traveling only for spiritual fulfillment he made no purchases, took no photographs, kept no diary. His bible was a - Lonely Planet - "China". He carried maps and sleeping bag, toothbrush and toothpaste, essentials: 1 change of clothes... He loved China only a silk strand less than Africa…


While waiting for the green light at an intersection of West Section 2, 1st Ring Road, Miguel said that the relatively low level of traffic noise in Chengdu was because the myriad motor-scooters dashing through city streets as silently as the equal number of bicycles and tricycles was because the motor-scooters ran on electrical power, NOT on petrol.


It was peak hour, the side street we turned into was totally blocked with everything and everybody, nose to nose, bumper to bumper, going both ways, in and out, without any visible order.


On the edge of a patchy sidewalk beside the fruit and vegetable display of a you-name- it, we-have-it shop, we waited for a chance to cross the street; then walked the distance to the next stop light as crossing was possible only at great peril to everything and everybody… I remarked that only a miracle could prevent such chaos from turning into massive accidents, but Miguel again explained that in China it was not divine intervention but the skillful defensive driving of those behind the steering wheel that prevailed…


I discovered the opportunity to get correct change for the bus by buying grilled snacks, or thirst-quenching pineapple wedges from the vendors who daily, set up their bicycle or tricycle business on the sidewalk behind most bus stops…


Actually the uses of un-motorized vehicles are countless…

We exchange a kiss but before we lost sight of each other Miguel repeated: “If you can, don’t miss Lhasa, Tibet is like no other place in the world…"

Pics of Chengdu

Taxis were not expensive, the taxi-drivers I encountered, though not English-speaking were gracious, honest and helpful… like using their mobile phones to find out where I was going when all I had to communicate with was a telephone number...

There is no better way to get acquainted with a city than traveling on its public transport. You would never know Chengdu is a city of 13 million people until you ride the city buses…


Don’t worry about being left behind at the bus stop, no matter how full the bus, there is always room for more passengers. No need to shove and push either, just place yourself somewhere in among the waiting commuters and when the bus door opens, you will instantaneously be thrust forward by the crowd’s simultaneous impetus to get on… or off…



At first it was indeed challenging trying to avoid walking around in circles, boarding buses traveling in the opposite direction AND recognizing the bus stop of my destination by designated landmarks. Chairman’s Mao statue in down town Chengdu is unmistakable…




But useless attempting to remember the street with the “Bank of China”, a particularly large buildings, a tunnel, or counting bus stops, Bank of China branches and huge buildings are everywhere, cities in China are metropolis even when they are small. Actually during my wonderings of discovery through Chengdu’s city center I thought of Vancouver or Brisbane’s claustrophobic down town malls as pimples on a Sumo-wrestler backside by comparison



As street names in major Chinese cities are indicated in Chinese characters and English alphabet, on my third day I coveted a city map. I searched and found a book shop where I exhibited a talented charade-performance, and with the uncanny intuition peculiar of a bookseller of substance, the vendor promptly produced a map for my inspection.



Regrettably any grand elation generated by our successful communication was of short duration, “CHENGDU” was the only English word on the map among 5000 street names in Chinese characters… After trading the indecipherable map for two illustrated art books I resumed walking the unfamiliar streets… I was lost again… going around in circles in the vicinity of Wenshu Temple…

Past crowded food stalls and vendors of new antiques, past un-refridgerated butcher shops and shopkeepers sitting at sidewalk tables eating noodle-soup, past shops with incense sticks of many colors, stacks of paper money, alabaster urns for ashes and all manners of unfamiliar funeral paraphernalia…


I crossed a street and stepped into a Buddhist nun’s monastery. The monastery was a complex of shrines and courtyards crowded with women prostrating, lighting candles or offerings aromatic incense. Inside a spacious hall furnished with tables and chairs nuns served food to a full house. I had seen Buddhist monks with begging bowls in the early hours of the day, and here were nuns very busy managing an evidently humming and profitable restaurant…

"Women hold up half the world!"

..so said Chairman Mao

Exiting the nunnery I walked towards an intersection busy with buses, pedestrians, bicycles stop lights… I turned the corner, raised my eyes to inspect the hazy sky and… lo and behold… the golden arches of MacDonald’s restaurant were right there winking down at me.

I knew THAT sign… And knew where I was going…MY bus No.5 ran right past it… What luck! “I am really lucky…” I said to myself, “To what avail is a taxi when I’m unable communicate or show the driver the written Chinese address I left behind? And who needed maps anyway…? MacDonald’s here… “

Chengdu

Chendu, city of 13 million people seemed without end. In Chengdu buses cost 1 or 2 yuan (15 or 20 cents) a ride, long or short, so I spent a couple of days riding on buses, getting off at various locations of interest and getting lost... Truly the words --Lost in China -- kept me amused when I wished for a pocket compass or the ball of Ariadnes thread...

If Chengdu is a reflection of China I would ay this is truly a nation of contrasts... Everything seems side by side, rich and poor, humble or proud, The Gucci/Armani shop or the vendor with the street-stall. It amazed me to see how orderly the maddening traffic circulates. Vehicles of every sort are everywhere, buses, cars, taxis, motorscooters, bicycles... J-walking penalties must be non-existent there... simply because a pedestrian crossing the street needs as much skill as any driver on the road...

I liked China the land, and I liked the Chinese, their subttle vigor, stamina, perseverance of daily pursuits, whether crossing the road or playing cards on the sidewalk, making noodles or eating hotpot in a noisy restaurant, driving a luxury car or loading a mountain of recycled cardboard on a bikecycle... Returning to the western-mode of this planet I returned renewed, I finally understood that something abstract that always eluded me, just now I don't know exactly how to relate it, let me say that I gained some inner wisdom by way of which I have graduated... As for the Chinese... for me they will have a new face as see them with wiser eye...

Call to Chengdu

Allen was the catalyst, the chief inspiration for my travel to Chengdu,

I met Allen in the mid-nineties in Vancouver B.C. by answering an ad posted on a notice board at the VPL offering editorial advice and guidance to poets and aspiring writers. I instantly liked Allen, who with his wife Jong-nan was staying at the May Wah hotel in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Events in one’s life may happen by mere chance yet I suspect the May Wah was the interlude that carved his path to China...

We met after I climbed the stairs to his secont floor room past a smoke-filled first floor where a noisy group of Chinese appeared too busy playing Mahjongg to be distracted by someone who wished to be invisible anyway… I knocked and the door was opened, though I was a stranger arriving unannounced I was welcomed as an old friend and I soon perceived Allen as the word-genie who would effortlessly manipulate my fumbled writings into masterpieces.

Even after Allen left Vancouver, he stood (still stands) unique among my friends and acquaintances. Realizing how much I missed the many layers of his friendship, the bottomless well of his intellect, his wit, his understanding of emotional levels however peculiar or bizarre, his sympathetic, considerate willingness to teach, guide, share knowledge... and experiencing an undeniable need to see him again, I found myself at his doorstep him in Toronto, two years later in Guelph Ontario, and now it seemed natural to follow the trend to Chengdu…