Where In The World Is Evan?

Today I got a bus down to Leshan, with my friends Jon and Olen, to see the world’s largest Buddha—71 meters tall, and carved into the side of a cliff. The giant Buddha itself was a little disappointing, however, the surrounding gardens, temples, and caves were quite interesting. Olen, being himself, had to pose beside the sign at the Pond of Vanquishing Demons that said “No Sprinkling’, doing just that of course!

Early on we found a seemingly abandoned staircase leading up through heavy undergrowth towards the top of a small mountain. Following the stairs as high as they would go we found what appeared to be a wall of nipples carved into the mountain. It wasn’t until we started to descend that we realised that we had climbed out onto the head of a giant reclining Buddha—the nipples were in fact stylized hair.
On our way out of the park we came upon a disused temple, where a Chinese maintenance woman was sleeping on the job. Surprisingly she didn’t see the humor in us taking a photo, and in true Chinese entrepreneurial style, demanding money to delete it. In the end, Olen accidentally deleted the photo, in an attempt to mollify the enraged woman, however, this had little effect and Olen had to flee down the mountain with her in hot pursuit.
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Do you remember that wednesday two weeks ago when it was sunny? That was a nice day…

When the sun shines in Chengdu people speak about it for weeks, like back in February when they spoke for weeks about the first snow in about 5 years.

I spent most of my two hour lunch break today sitting on a bench seat in the beautifully landscaped gardens of the Chengdu Number 7 Development School, in Wenjiang, enjoying the weather. As I sat there intermittently basking in the sun and retreating to the shade, afforded by the climbing roses that covered a nearby pergola, countless students and teachers passed by and paused with a quizzical expression across their faces.

Hello Evan… what are you doing?

They would invariably ask.

Fine weather is so rare in this part of China (in most parts for that matter) that there seems to be no real cultural impetus to get out and enjoy it. They seem to genuinely not understand why I would want to be sitting outside, doing nothing, beneath a clear blue sky. The basketball courts, the soccer pitch, the running tract all lie empty as the students are corralled back into their dorms and the teachers retreat to their cold spartan offices to sip from jars of hot water or green tea.