Stairway to Heaven

Chengdu Trip - Mt. Emei

After the panda trip, we caught a bus out to Mt. Emei (about 2 hours away), which is one of the sacred Buddhist mountains in China. We spent the night at the hostel at the base and planned to do a 2 day hike starting the next day. Our plan was to bus up 1/4 of the way and then hike to the top (according to our map, about a 10-14 hour hike) over the span of 2 days, spending the night in one of the mini hotels or monasteries on the mountain.

The next day, we woke up and took the bus to the temple about 1/4 of the way up. To get there, you go up quite a few stairs, which we thought was pretty normal for a mountain, not knowing what was ahead of us. We took a rest at the temple and then started out on the path to the top that started there. What we quickly realized was that the 10ish hour hike was going to be literally straight up stairs. There was stairway after stairway, winding all the way up the mountain. Joe and I did it for about 2 hours and then decided that we'd rather just pay to have the bus drive us the top, so we walked down to the bus and went up that way. The rest of our group actually hiked all the way up the stairs to the top - it took them about 7 hours and they said that it was literally all stairs. I think we made the right decision.

The bus to the top was about an hour and was on the most winding road I have ever driven on. Joe slept while I attempted not to get bus sick in the back. At one point, we got so high that we were driving through the cloud layer and literally could not see out of the windows - comforting when the driver is speeding up winding roads to the top! We got up to the top bus station and had to hike up to the cable car that would take us to the top. It was much colder at the top and we were still in the cloud cover. All you could see off the sides of the mountain was pure white. We had a hard time finding the cable car station because you couldn't see anything until you were standing right in front of it, but we eventually bought our tickets and got on with about 40 other people (it was a HUGE cable car). As we ascended for about 5 minutes, we finally broke through the cloud cover and everything was magically sunny and clear again. Once at the top, we walked around and saw the big Buddhist statue that is the most famous part of the mountain. We decided at that point that we didn't want to spend the night on the mountain because we were done hiking, so we went back down the mountain during the last hour of buses running and thought that we could get a room in our hostel from the night before.

When we made it down to the base, we saw a huge swarm of people that weren't there before. It was the Tomb Sweeping holiday, so they were all preparing to hike themselves. We tried at 3 different places and nowhere had any beds for us. We made the split decision to take the last bus back to Chengdu, which was where we would've been headed the next day anyway. The bus was leaving in 20 minutes, so we sped over to the bus station, cut the line and bought 2 tickets, meanwhile a guy was yelling "tourists! Chengdu! Over there!" in Chinese and rushing us to the bus. We made it on and called our hostel from Chengdu but couldn't get through. At this point, we were exhausted, and just wanted anywhere to sleep so we called one of the sister hostels that is owned by the same people and  managed to get a bed there for the night. It was a crazy experience overall and not at all what we had planned, but we think we did pretty well in dealing with it and we were happy to be done hiking and have a place to sleep that night.

Mount Emei was beautiful and amazing at the top, we just wish that we would've had a better idea of what the hike would be like from the beginning so it wouldn't have been such a surprise!

All of us at the base where we got dropped off.

Me after hiking for 2 hours.. my shirt was a different color when I started!

Compared to Joe after the same hike...

And I want to point out that he was hiking in JEANS!

A view of how steep the stairs were.

This poor guy going up didn't seem so pleased about the stairs either.

There was a pretty cool view here, but you can't really see it in this picture!

View from the hike to the cable car.

You couldn't see the crowd of people up ahead of you until you hit them!

Elephants lining the pathway to the giant Buddha

Still a little foggy from far away, but better than the cloud covered area!

The giant Buddha that we went up the mountain to see.

A temple up by the Buddha. 

It was pretty bright up there after going through the fog.. so excuse the squinting in all of our pictures!

View of the fog over the side of the mountain.

Panda-monium!!

Chengdu Trip - Day 1 Panda Breeding and Research Center

We had a long weekend this week for Tomb Sweeping day, which gave us Thursday off meaning that we had from Tuesday morning until Sunday to travel. We decided to go to a city called Chengdu in Western China to visit their famous panda center and a nearby mountain (to come in a later post) with our roommates and one other friend. We booked a trip to the panda center on our first day through our hostel, and got picked up early in the morning to make our way over there. We had an "English speaking" tour guide who took us to all the areas worth seeing. I put quotes around his English abilities because he basically new how to say "panda", "very cute" and "hold panda  - money money money", referring to an experience where you can hold a baby panda for a big donation of money. We wandered around the park and saw baby pandas, giant adult pandas and red pandas. The center was amazing, like a zoo just for pandas. They are also a breeding center so they have a lot of different aged pandas all with tons of room to spread out, run around and eat bamboo. We really enjoyed watching them all, as they were really cute and also very relaxed. We watched them hang out, "talk" to each other, and eat pounds and pounds of bamboo - living the life if you ask me! Then, 4 out of the 5 of us (Joe wasn't interested) made the big donation to spend some time holding a baby panda. We were very excited, and although it was a lot of money, we couldn't leave the park without getting the opportunity to give this 6 month old panda a big hug and a belly rub. They placed the panda on our laps one at a time and we got to cuddle and play with it while our friends and the staff took pictures on our cameras. When we were done, we were given a printed picture in a frame, a sweatshirt and a certificate thanking us for our donation. Overall it was an awesome day and an experience that I will never forget! Prepare yourselves for lots of panda pictures.....

The first panda we saw munching on his breakfast

A baby panda hanging out on a tree

A mom and her baby

Enjoying a nice butt scratch 

So relaxed

The adult pandas were huge!

The most pandas we saw in one place, all enjoying each others company and eating

One of the red pandas in a different area

A kung fu panda in its natural habitat

All of us dressed up to meet the little panda

SO CUDDLY!

A big kiss before i had to let her go

How many stops are we going? - Weekend in Beijing

Since our moms were here for two weekends, we decided to spend one of them on a trip to Beijing so that they could see the Great Wall and we could explore the other more historical areas that you don't get to see in Shanghai. We left early Friday morning and once we got to Beijing we went straight to the Forbidden City, where old emperors used to live and conduct their royal business. It was a huge area and had some amazing buildings to look at, dating back hundreds and hundreds of years ago. After you walk through some more imperial looking areas, you come out into a garden which was full of incredibly old trees and rocks. I really enjoyed the whole area and by the end of it we were exhausted from flying and then walking so far, so we went back to our hotel and got dinner at a local Chinese restaurant. 

Entrance to the Forbidden City.

Guard standing and watching the Forbidden City grounds

Huge stone carving. The stone was brought to the area by wetting grass and waiting for it to freeze so they could push it along. 

Old tree getting some help to stay up.

Us under a tree with intertwining branches.

We spent Saturday on the Great Wall (see earlier blog post) and since we got back pretty late, we went straight to dinner at a roast duck restaurant. Beijing is famous for their Peking duck, which they serve crispy with steamed pancakes, bean sprouts and cucumber which you make into a mini burrito and eat. It was by far our favorite dinner that we had with our moms and they really enjoyed it too. We were all really happy that we got to fit it in to our trip and were very impressed with the restaurant and how good the duck was. 

The next day after recovering from the wall trip, we started out by going to the Temple of Heaven which is a huge park area filled with different old monuments and old Chinese people playing hackey-sack, doing tai chi and singing and dancing. It was our moms' first glimpse of weekend life for Chinese elderly people so they really enjoyed watching them go about these different activities and thought it was a great way to spend a morning. We also saw some different historical sites including a famous taoist temple and some sites used for prayer.

One thing I know none of us were expecting was just how busy the subway system in Beijing would be. As the cheapest and somewhat most convenient way to get around, we used it to get from site to site, but were soon overwhelmed by how packed each car was. You would wait for the train to pull up and literally not think that there would be room for you to get on, but low and behold, 10 more people would squeeze in with you until you didn't even need to hold on to the bars because the people around you would just hold you up.  It always left our moms asking "how many stops are we going?" so they could count down to when they could breathe again. It was so much worse than Shanghai subways and was actually humorous by the end because it was always like a clown car spilling out at each exit.  By the end of the trip, our moms were successfully body checking people to get out and pushing the people in front of them so they would get on - they had become professional Chinese travelers, we were so proud!

Crowd of singing Chinese people.

Famous temple in Temple of Heaven park. 

All of the Chinese tourists struck this pose on the center of the mound, so we did too. 

Hugging an 800 year old tree.

After the Temple of Heaven, we rushed over to Tiananmen Square to try and fit it in before we had to check out of the hotel and get back to the airport. It was insanely crowded due to the current election and conference going on inside right now, so there were huge lines to actually get in and see inside, but we saw it from a distance and it was very impressive. The area was surrounded by various government buildings and museums, and while my mom and I headed back to the hotel (I had gotten a cold and wasn't feeling well), Joe and his mom headed to the Chinese National Museum and ran around looking at the ancient relics for as long as they could before they had to leave. They said it was huge and very cool inside so I wish we had had more time to go and see it!

Tiananmen Square

Incredible painting in the museum.

Overall, our trip to Beijing was my favorite trip we've taken so far. Not only did we get to climb the great wall, but we got to see some amazing historical sites, eat a delicious meal and above all create awesome memories with our moms. They left the next day so we said goodbye to them on the subway back from the airport. We were sad to see them go as now we go back to life as normal here at Minhang campus, with roughly 7 weeks until we return home.