Where In The World Is Evan?

Last night saw Olen, Jon and I enjoying the local club scene here in Chengdu. Chinese dance clubs, or discos as they insist on calling them, are an interesting phenomenon. Hugely popular with young, rich Chinese, they play a combination of inane Chinese pop and outdated Western music–most of which was popular three to five years ago. Despite this, they can be hugely good fun. You rarely need to pay for more than your first drink, as the complicated social hierarchy of Chinese face will soon see you fighting off offers of free drinks.

As these clubs are exclusively frequented by rich Chinese–who else can afford 30 yuan drinks?–the general Chinese obsession with face and social standing is heightened. All of the tables are pre-booked, some weeks in advance, and the bigger and better placed your table the more face you gain. This also applies to drinks; more face is to be gained by being seen drinking expensive drinks than cheap ones. Presumably as a product of huge overpopulation one of the most desirable things in China is to be noticed in social settings. For a fortunate foreigner who stumbles into such a situation this can be quite beneficial, as what better way to gain the attention of your peers than to be seen drinking and dancing with massively tall, pale skinned, foreigners?
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Today began like any other day, without a hint of the turmoil that was to come…

The local Irish pub, the Shamrock, had for some time been advertising a rugby game between a group of Chengdu locals and a visiting team from Guangzhou. Jon, being a former semi-professional rugby player, was of course keen to put up his hand. After our close 4th quarter loss to the visiting team everyone started making arrangements to head across town to the after party–held on the roof top of a 6 story apartment building.

Having arrived at the party late, I found Lisa already pissed with me, for spending most of the rugby match chatting to Anne. As Anne and I hadn’t properly spoken in a long time–we’d had a falling out almost two months earlier–I tried to explain to Lisa that she had nothing to be jealous about. Nonetheless she was mad, and being in no mood to spend all evening placating her, I sat down with some friends and had a drink.
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Waking up just in time to grab some take-away breakfast at a local café, we legged it back to the station and jumped on our bus. Luckily the incredibly cramped Chinese seats I had dreaded sitting on turned out better than I expected. Thankfully someone had ripped the seat in front on me out of the floor, so I was able to stretch my legs out for the journey. Nothing quite as memorable as our trip to Songpan happened on our way back, mostly because Jon was feeling quite healthy. Olen, however, spied a small plastic bottle of baijiu at the first rest stop and everything started to go downhill. A 60% alcohol, hard liquor served in a convenient sport’s bottle with a hands free pop-up lid! The Chinese truly are an inventive people. This made the hours pass a little quicker at first, and then a whole lot slower, when the driver didn’t stop for a toilet break for over four hours.
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In accordance with the deal we’d struck with Sergio, he returned to Chengdu, while the three of us went out on a day trip to visit a Tibetan monastery. By the time we’d woken, Sergio’s bus had already departed, so we grabbed some breakfast and walked down to meet the guides. As our trip today did not involve an overnight stay we weren’t carrying much luggage and were able to actually ride the horses, as opposed to the luggage. Before we could leave, however, Olen and I made a quick dash down the street to buy cowboy hats, as neither of us wanted our sunburn to get worse.

After a couple of hours of riding we came upon the beautiful Tibetan monastery that was our destination for the day. Dismounting the horses at the entrance to the grounds, we left the guides to set up lunch and wandered about. As we circled the buildings in a clock-wise fashion–that being the only appropriate way to circumnavigate Buddhist temples–we encountered several gnarled old women, doing their prayer rounds. Climbing to the top of hill on which sat the temple’s stupa, we surveyed the region around us and marveled at its beauty.
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The wind that had plagued us throughout the night had not abated by morning. We hurriedly ate breakfast, while huddling in the log cabin, before packing up camp and heading off in the direction of Songpan—having finally ceded to Sergio’s increasingly desperate entreaties to return. As we rode further up the mountain, in the same direction we had been heading the previous day, it became apparent that we were going to ride across a shoulder of snow and ice-capped land that joined the two adjacent mountains.

As the ground turned icy the horses started to lose their footing, repeatedly stumbling and sliding on the inhospitable ground—particularly my horse, which seemed to have lost its surefootedness after its fall the previous day. Jon, who through the natural pecking order of the horses, was behind me had the delightful sight of watching my horse repeatedly slip on the ice-covered ground and teeter precariously upon the edge of undoubtedly fatal drops. I on the other hand could only speculate as to how close I was to danger, due to the inordinate amount of luggage that obscured my view for about one meter in all directions around me. Jon became so nervous at the constant threat of danger that he dismounted and refused to ride any further. The guides found this immensely amusing and explained to Jon that yesterday he was a man, but today his is a woman. To give Jon his dues, however, he openly owned his cowardice and agreed with them, in Mandarin, that he was in fact a woman.
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Day three began well, as we all woke in good moods, having had a much better night’s sleep than the day before–the lack of snow and rain helped. Over breakfast the issue of Sergio’s health resurfaced. Having promised him that we’d return after visiting the hot-springs we were a little put out that he now wanted us to make good on that promise. Impervious to our logical arguments about his spontaneous recovery the day before, he obstinately insisted on returning to Songpan. After discussing our predicament with the other trekking group, who were heading back into town themselves, the idea was floated that we could ditch Sergio with them and continue as a group of three. Unfortunately this was not to be–for safety reasons there needed to be one guide to each two trekkers, thus necessitating that one of the girls switch with Sergio, or one of us head back with him. Not being able to find any takers, we convinced Sergio to tough it out for another day. As we back-tracked down the asphalt road, the one we had come up the previous day, Sergio’s illness reared its hypochondriac head. He noticeably worsened as the girls disappeared into the distance, so much so that our guides–who could not understand a word of his incessant complaining–commented on the coincidence of his remarkable decline in health and the girls’ departure.
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We woke on day two, sore and cold from a fitful night’s sleep, to the delightful view of snow capped mountains in the distance. The snow during the night had left a thin layer across the open field where we were camped, but had dumped down on the peaks of the surrounding mountains. To ward off the cold we headed over to the the cooking fire to watch as breakfast was being prepared. Finding the warmth of the fire to be insufficient to shake our night-time chills we busted open a bottle of baijiu and passed it around while the food sizzled appetisingly before us.

Sergio, however, wasn’t going to let anything like hot food, a stiff drink, or a warm fire get in the way of his misery. Complaining loudly about how the cold and humidity out here was doing terrible things to his respiritory infection, Jon, Olen and I took turns to reassure Sergio that he was going to be fine once we reached the promised hot springs later that day. Still insisting that we return, I managed to convince Sergio firstly, that it couldn’t feasibly rain as we were inside low lying cloud cover, and secondly that he should start dosing himself up on western medicine (which Olen, thankfully, had plenty of). To further cement our collective resolve to head for the hot springs we started an increasingly embellished fantasy about the Chinese volleyball team that was going to be skinny dipping at the hot springs when we arrived.
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In the morning Jon had recovered adequately, however, Sergio (an alleged hypochondriac) had started to have second thoughts. Claiming that he needed to recover from his recurring cold before having to return to work–personally his priorities seemed a little backward–he announced he wasn’t going to come. After a little persuasion he was back on board with the promise that if his health deteriorated further we’d all head back together.

After a leisurely Western breakfast we met up with our two local guides. Spying the horses from afar Olen and I noted to each other how the overloaded ponies we could see were obviously our pack horses and that the riding horses must be stabled elsewhere. Unfortunately this was not so. It soon became clear that to cut costs we were expected to ride the pack-ponies while the guides were to walk alongside–a significant undertaking as we were to be climbing up and down mountains for five days.
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In China the first three days of May are one of the most busy public holidays of the year. Unlike the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) this holiday is not of the stay-at-home variety. As such, some fellow teachers and I set off for a week in what we anticipated to be the idyllic mountain community of Songpan (near the northern border of Sichuan province).

As we left my apartment for the taxi ride across town, to to catch our long distance bus, we were five–Olen (USA), Jon (UK), Sergio (ESP), Richard (AUS) and I–but this fortuitous start was not to last. Due to a still unresolved mix up with one of the bus tickets, we found ourselves at the station short one ticket as the bus was ready to leave. This setback saw Richard, who has an infrequent yet volatile temper, storm out of the station cursing my name as Jon and I stood around in bewilderment. Not to be disparaged from our much anticipated holiday, however, we set off forthwith.
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