Day 23 - Thursday, Nov. 7 - On to Chengdu

We leave our longest home on this tour - four nights.  Habits have been formed.  Friends made - Teddy Garcia, the hotel manager, who felt bad about not being able to find me another room farther away from the noise and vibrations of the ship’s machinery one floor below, and especially Ezz, the Executive Housekeeper who offered me his friendship when he learned I’d been to his hometown of Luxor, Egypt.  I tried to give him a tip for all he’d done - the jasmine tea, the little hanging toy panda, and especially the smile - but he refused, even when I said it was for his children.  “It will break our friendship”, he protested.  Both Ezz and Teddy hugged me as I left the ship.

A long day by bus awaits.  From Chongqing - the largest city in China (in area) - to Chengdu via the Dazu Grottos.  Our local guide is Ken (Lan Lee, one of 95 million Lees in China).  He gives us a few examples of how Chongqing (Chungking until the Republic was founded in 1949) has changed.  Things are crowded.  And it might get worse before it gets better.  With a population of 33 million today, public transport had to step up to the plate.  The monorail high above our bus actually goes through a building, taking up its sixth and seventh floors... and that’s only one of its 18 stations.  Elsewhere in the city, a new bridge is to be built and yet another highway; there are already two or three ring roads, but only limited parking.  And the city is constructing its tallest building:  99 floors to house even more citizens in this megalopolis.
  Chongqing is an industrial city:  textiles, shipbuilding, computers, motorcycle and car manufacturing (two Chinese makes, two joint ventures with Peugeot and another foreign firm).  Unemployment is low:  2.8% compared to over 5% elsewhere in China.  But until recently, foreigners working in any of these joint ventures could only use a special currency and buy in “friendship stores”, like today in Cuba.
       (A bit of Chongqing’s past.  Evidence of human settlement dates back to the Stone Age. Three thousand years ago, the Ba were great warriors and created the Ba Kingdom.  The illustrious Yu the Great of the Xia Kingdom also brought fame to Chongqing, and made great efforts in flood control.  In World War II, Chongqing became the capital of free China, the Japanese occupying the rest up to Yichang.)
  It’s 9:30 in the morning, but there’s still fog.  Actually smog.  After a checkpoint where an officer boards the bus to check we have our seatbelts on and are not overloaded weight-wise, we exit the city through a looooong tunnel of several kilometers - three lanes in our direction, three lanes into town in a second tunnel (China has great building expertise, both vertical and horizontal) but the pedestrian escape passages all have roll-down gates that appear closed.  In case of an emergency, such as any of the recent 1,600 earthquakes, I’d think you might well be buried alive.  But I’m sure they planned for that, as far as one can.

Dazu Grottos

Along the road, crews are trimming hedges on the median strip and tending to trees that Stanley says are hibiscus.  Then he tells us some stories about the region.  It takes quite a while to get to our destination:  the Dazu Grottos in the Baodingshan Hills.  En route, Ken sets the stage.  Most Chinese who follow a religion are Buddhists and go to temple two times a month.  So this is a holy site for them, like Lourdes for Catholics or Mecca for Muslims.  All the rock sculptures were designed by one person 800 years ago and carved directly into the limestone/sandstone rock face, then painted.  The grottos took 90 craftsmen from three families 70 years to complete.

Godddess of Mercy

Once there, Ken explains the carvings as we go.  He
explains there are 18 different hells you can be sent to.  And look!  There’s a hippo torturing a man in boiling oil!  There are also nine heavens with three zones:  east, central and west (which is the best).   It all reminds me of the hell and heaven sides of French cathedral façades.  A more Chinese touch are the lotus babies... heads popping out of lotus blossoms.  Also sections telling the life of Sakyamuni (aka Buddha):  one where he carries his parents, one where he’s leaving home for the capital... In other part is a masterpiece:  a lady playing a flute-like instrument that no longer exists, so no one knows what it might have sounded like.
  Then Ken takes us to the cavern of the Goddess of Mercy, with so many hands to bestow blessings on humans.  She’s totally gilded, which makes her stand out against the dark rock.  That and a few of her hands that stick out toward us, making it 3-D.  Although Ken said his mother is a Buddhist, he said nothing about himself, but as the group moves on, he stays behind to bow three times and leave something on the altar.
  After a last part with seven-meter tall statues and some morals about the three burning fires (greed, hatred and ignorance), we go to have lunch nearby, assuaging our evil of gluttony.

We say good-bye to Ken, and then Kari takes over, telling us about her city, Chengdu, where we’re headed.  On the way we drop Justin and his family off at the Chongqing People’s Hospital.  He’s been sick and really needs IV rehydration.  Steve, his doctor brother, fears pancreatitis, but it’s not.  Kari stays with them to interpret and Stanley takes over for her.  (The hospital ends up not keeping him; it’s not an in-patient facility.  Steve says later that you have to pay for everything first and that IV bags are only 100 cc, not 1,000 as they are at home.  His conclusion:  don’t get sick in China.  They take the fast train after treatment and reach our hotel by 9 p.m.)
  The bus rolls westward through the hills, covered with trees and small farms and villages, even some rice paddies as we get closer to Chengdu.  Many of the two-story farmhouses have a third floor which is roofed but open on the sides.  That’s used to store and dry crops.  There are a few billboards with political messages but lots of slogans on the overpasses.

  Finally, with the sun trying unsuccessfully to come out from the smog, we leave the hills behind and enter the Chengdu Basin, a rich agricultural area forming the east/west gateway through the mountains.  The capital city of the region is at the western edge of a plateau that has an altitude of 1,480 to 2,360 feet (450-720 m).  Chengdu isn’t as big as Chongqing, whose metropolitan area would cover all of Austria, but it nonetheless has a population of 14 million in the city proper.  Unlike most Chinese cities, it has never changed its name, and UNESCO has named it a city of gastronomy.  In addition to its cultural importance, it’s a financial and industrial center for cars, textiles and small manufacturing, and has one of the world’s 30 busiest airports.  Although I see more bikes and motorcycles here than anywhere else so far, it has a metro (subway) system that was opened in only 2010 but already has 20 lines with 350 stations.  When they do things in China, they do them big!
  Our hotel is sumptuous, the rooms humongous, and after a private dinner of spicy Szechuan food we fall asleep dreaming of tomorrow’s pandas.