Where In The World Is Evan?

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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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.

Sorry for the long delay in updates, however, life has been somewhat distracting these last few weeks (or should that be months?). I could offer many and varied excuses for this, but the legitimate ones alone would end up comprising the bulk of this post, so I’ll leave it at ’sorry’.

To give you all the highly abridged version of events: life is good, beer is cheap, and I have a well paying job and an apartment in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, People’s Republic of China.

To wind back in time a little, after stating my intention to remain in China I received a generous offer from a beautiful French woman (hello Anne!) to come and stay with her in the 5-star hotel where she worked and lived (in Chengdu). At the time we were in Xian, where we had meet at an Arab street market a couple of days before, along with Dave, a Canadian I had met in Beijing and had been traveling with for over a week, and Olen, an American that Anne had meet earlier that day. Nonetheless, and having no real plans for finding work to rejuvenate my now overdrawn bank account, I traveled 16 hours across China on a hardsleeper train to take up this hospitable offer (Anne told me later that the flight took about 2 hours). I suspect that if Anne had known how long I’d hang about she might not have been so quick with her generosity.
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Sorry about the delay between posts, however, my teaching schedule has been surprisingly tirering and it’s been a real struggle to make the time to go to an internet caffe. The recent St. Patrick’s day celebrations and my birthday party haven’t helped with my seemingly chronic tiredness (I’ve only had a cumulative 6.5 hours sleep in the last two days).

My birthday celebrations at my new apartment went quite well. As my birthday fell on a Tuesday, and I had to leave for work at 7:30 am the following day, I didn’t do too much on the day itself (just had a quite night in with my late-fifties flatmate and a couple of bottles of bad Chinese wine - unfortunatly the Chinese don’t make any other kind). I did, however, have a great birthday party last night, with much drunken shenannigans and enjoyment had by all - at least all those that could still remember in the morning
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The last three months for me have been an experience that I will not easily forget. I have gone from the painful lows of contracting endemic typhus in Cyprus to the euphoric highs of partying in Amsterdam. I have experienced amazing extremes of temperature, attempted to communicate in 6 languages that I cannot speak, and countless other noteworthy challenges.

Despite the hardships that I have endured during this time, and indeed in part because of the challenges successfully met, when I reflect upon the last 99 days it is clear to me that I have been happier in this time than in longer than I care to remember. As such my 9:45 am flight from Beijing to Melbourne departed this morning without me on it. The last two weeks that I have spent here in China have been so exciting and fun that I have decided to defer my studies and live here in China indefinitely. This is a country of such beauty with a people who, despite the financial poverty of their lives, have an richness and enthusiasm for life that is truly infectious. No doubt I will miss you all during this time much more than I already do, however, this is a choice that I feel compelled to make as too much of my life back home seems hollow by comparison.

My love and best wishes go out to you all, and with hope that we will meet again soon.

Check out the Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an, and Chengdu photo galleries.