Sun and snow in JiuZhaiGou

 

Chocolate box advert?

 After the stupidly long bus journey, the whole room snuggled down for a pathetically early night, the plan being to get up early and get to the park before it opened in an effort to avoid the crowds. as it turned out we needn't have bothered as it had snowed over night and this seemed to keep the crowds away leaving the park almost deserted.

The park is spread over two valleys that join to make a Y shape, we had been given maps from the hostel but they were hugely misleading. what looked fairly close on the map was a minimum of a 4km walk, so the longer looking gaps were generally more than 30km.  On the first morning my plan was to get the bus as far as i could and then walk back to the start. After a 35 minute bus journey I figured this wasn't completely doable and instead walked only half.
The was a hop on hop off bus service that ran about the park that proved to be amazing. Most of the Chinese tourists were getting off, taking pictures then getting on again and blasting to the next park of the park. In between the scenic spots of interest (their wording not mine) there were almost no people and some incredible little unknown parts. The paths wound round the other side of lakes and rivers and, on my first day at least, were covered in snow. I had Walking in a Winter Wonderland going round and round in my head for days after my trip.


 The park is incredible! We would walk a little, be blown away by the scenery, say something along the lines of "how can this get any better" and then, as if to show us up, it would get more impressive.

The water is completely clear and a fantastic bright blue or green colour, which with the snow and the mountains made for some beautiful scenery. Walking thought the park was a good idea as I kept finding waterfalls and streams that weren't marked on the map so they were completely deserted and quiet.
It is one of the most amazing places I have been and am so glad I finally made it.

The Journey to JiuZhaiGou

Just after the carpet stopped

About an hour into the journey

After finishing work nearly a month ago I have been ready to leave Kunming for a  few days. Annoyingly I couldn't leave the city while my new VISA was being processed so as soon as I got my passport back I was booking flights to somewhere, anywhere. So I consulted my "to go to list" and picked a place that was do-able in a  week.

The view from the room

I picked JiuZhaiGou in Northern SiSchuan, one of China's original UNESCO heritage sites and one of the top 10 places to visit. I flew to ChengDu, a nice 1 hour 10 minute flight, and then booked a bus to JiuZhaiGou, a not so nice 10 hour bus journey. I had a few days to kill in ChengDu before my whole day on a bus, so I stocked up on audio books and bus food and headed out.

We were crammed onto a medium sized bus and started off on an epic journey into the mountains.

Looking for the showers

The road has recently been resurfaced so it wasn't bumpy but swingy would be an understatement. The road snaked round the bottom of gorges, along the side of the river and through 10km long tunnels and all the time I was getting more and more impressed by the scenery. I managed to take over 40 photographs just on the journey.

Once in JiuZhaiGou town, if a string of hotels and restaurants can be called a town, I set off to find the hostel from hostelworld.com. I walked into a beautiful hotel lobby and was fairly certain I had messed up and booked the wrong place. However, the people at reception had me details and I was pointed to the fifth floor.

The carpet stopped on the fourth floor and the fifth turned out to be the roof and the room I was pointed to, a shed/garage looking thing on the roof. The room had concrete floors and no heating so the electric blankets were just the best thing ever! The bathrooms were across the roof and we had to clamber over pipes and cables to get to some incredible showers, then again after ten hours on a hot and crowded bus any kind of shower would have been amazing. There were six of us in the room and we were all shattered having all just done the epic journey so we were tucked up in bed with a beer by about nine in the evening. Tomorrow to the park!

My last week of work

 So, after three and a half years working for Shane I finished my fourth contract and I decided to leave. I started work when there were only three teachers and four classrooms. When I finished working we had moved schools, had over 600 students, ten classrooms and nine teachers. The school has changed so much that flicking through the pictures from nearly four years ago and it was like looking at a different job. I loved my job and taught some amazing kids and worked with some brilliant people. However I am ready for a change and really looking forward to the next part of my Kunming adventure. I am going back to school and studying Chinese full time.

My last week was a huge ego boost, kids looking all sad all over the place and telling me that I was their favourite teacher (I didn't always believe them but it was nice to hear). I was given hundreds of gifts, most of them were not amazing but I was also given some beautiful presents, including a Jade necklace, some pictures, loads of tea, jewellery, stationary and a few dinners.

 The school took us out for a dinner which was a bust but was always going to be. We ended up with a Chinese table and a foreigners table and they refused to mingle. Never mind the food was amazing and on the school.

 Next stop is Chinese class for at least the near future. I will see how i feel in a few months.

One night in JianShui

After a short break from updates, due to iffy internet connections and banned websites, I have returned with the sequel to the much anticipated New Year's week away.

Like I said YuanYang is an amazing and beautiful place but there is nothing to do once the sun goes down. A few days in the hostel bar/cafe and I was ready for a change. So I went back to the bus station and jumped on a bus to JianShui. It's a small ancient city about half way between YuanYang and Kunming and the bus was much more comfortable than the direct one.

I arrived into JianShui in the early evening and jumped on a city bus to the old part of the town, turned out it was only 3 stops (about a 10 minute walk). Next stop was finding a place to stay. After being turned away from 3 hotels I was beginning to get a little nervous,  I had forgotten New Year is also a Chinese holiday so things were busier than normal. I ended up walking down a little side street and finding a slightly seedy looking hotel. Alarm bells were ringing when they said they didn't need to see my passport and with my key I could eat and drink for free in the downstairs KTV (karaoke bar). I found my windowless room and cleared out the big bugs who were perfectly comfortable in the bathroom and settled into a noisy night in bed. Regardless, I managed to have a good night in the bar with some Chinese Lady Gaga fans. As it turns out, I am lacking in my Lady Gaga song knowledge.

JianShui is actually a really cool place, its an old city that is actually old! Most in China are built just to look old but few are more than a couple of years old. JianShui has remaining city gates and parts of the wall, cobbled streets and parks. There is a chilled out vibe throughout the whole place and the newer parts just outside the wall are equally as nice. I spent several hours just wandering about perfectly happy and causing chaos. I don't think here had been any foreigners there in a long time.

About an hour outside of the city is one of China's longest underground river. I can't remember the exact record but its about a 3km walk along the river to a wonderful, tasteful restaurant and shopping center, it was similar to trying to sit in a light show. The caves were called Swallow caves as once a year the swallows leave their nests on the cave walls and fly south. So up jump some death defying Chinese guys and they collect up the nests for Birds Nest Soup a local delicacy. There were hundreds of little market stalls selling sugar equivalents which tasted something like how i imagine eating housing insulation to taste.

After a very quick stop in JianShui I jumped back on a 4 hour bus to Kunming and back to work. Only a few weeks to go.

Rice terraces in YuanYang

As I mentioned earlier, we were given a surprise week off school. I have worked at this school for three and a half years and I remember it happening only once before. So we leaped into action and planned trips to the corners of China, or in my case the southern part of Yunnan province.

Knowing i was finishing school for good in a matter of weeks, i wasn't too concerned about making a long journey and so i decided to finally get to the terraces in the southern part of Yunnan.

I took an eight hour bus journey, which was hell, to the new town of XinJie. The bus was crowded, small, smelly and the guy next to me was a pretty heavy smoker (despite the no smoking on buses policy) so not pleasant. I managed to get through an entire harry Potter audio book so you should get a sense of the extreme boredom involved. We finally arrived and i was immediately shuffled into a smaller bus that would drop me off at the hostel i was staying in. David recommended it so i sort of knew what to look for, which helped as i had to follow a pitch black alleyway down into a valley to find the place.

The room itself was pretty nice and the electric blanket on the bed made things a little better as it was freezing cold and fairly humid. I spent many hours in bed debating the act of getting showered.

I arrived late on New Years Eve and ended up spending the evening with some enthusiastic (and drunk) Chinese grandparents. they insisted i rink with them, chatted about just about everything and then tried setting my up with their grandchildren. I refused based on the fact THEY ARE 19!

The hostel was just outside a little village and one of the main scenic spots for the area. In total I think there are 12 but i only saw a fraction of them. I went for a walk into the fields and sat with my cheese sarnie in the middle of some of the most incredible scenery I have ever eaten in. In every direction, climbing the valley walls, were steps of terraces and rice fields full of water and reflecting the sun.

I joined an existing tour to drive about the other scenic spots and spent an entire day either in car or taking pictures of amazing scenery.

After two days I had seen my fill of tereraces and made my way back in the general direction of Kunming. It's a four hour bus journey to JianShui from XinJie so I was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. There is however, only one bus a day and I turned up 3 hours early so I had some time to kill. XinJie is a brand new area that has been developed purely as a gateway arrivals place for the terrace scenic area. Nothing is more than a few years old adn they definatly dont get foreigners sticking around. so naturally me chilling on a beanch in the town square with my book caused a bit of a stir. all the locals kids kept creeping closer and closer, then I would look up and they would run away. It was fun for a while anyway, for them much longer.

Next stop JianShui.

Merry Kunming Christmas everyone.

After the chaos of the Christmas party, the rest of the Christmas season seemed relatively easy and stress free. We made Christmas cards with the kids and played musical chairs with Slade and The Pogues and they kids thought it was great. 


I planned a big meal at The Great Australian Bite, and it got out of hand very quickly. There were at last count, 36 people for dinner. I spent hours on the phone gathering names and then after that meal choices. God bless WeChat! Mostly it was Shane teachers and their various girlfriends and a few others from the random drinking scene but I believe everyone had a good time.

Dinner was amazing and food incredible, we had a few issues and confusion with some of the meal choices and a few people could have had two dinners but we got it sorted in the end. Christmas was made a  little better by the sudden announcement from school that we had a week off school for new year, we spent most of the evening planning where to go. EXCITING!

"It's the Shane Christmas party." "OH NO IT ISN'T!"

So as is the tradition in language schools, in China at least, all holidays that aren't Chinese are exploited for extra money and recruitment/publicity opportunities. Good for the school, terrible for any teacher who might actually like a certain holiday. I, for example, love Christmas but three Shane Christmas parties and I am beginning to rethink this absurd idea. Christmas means to work longer hours, to be forced to do shows for the locals entertainment and to give presents to already spoilt rotten kids right? NO? I must still be bitter from someone high jacking my Christmas.

So as not to mess with the tradition of destroying all Christmas spirit in teachers, we were told there would be a party and we were to perform a show at this party. And so the idea of the pantomime was born.

We found a copy of Cinderella on-line that was all in rhyme (yes that was intentional) and we divided up the workload. Somehow I ended up in charge of costumes, which with 5 guys in dresses was a mammoth task, and was to play the Fairy Godmother. All the guys in the office played the girls in the show (Cinderella, the ugly sisters and the step mother) while two of the Chinese girls played Prince Charming and his buddy Herald.

Rehearsals began, lines were learnt (sort off) and it occurred to us what a stupidly large task we had taken on. It took us weeks of going into the office early on a Wednesday to get to a semi decent level of confidence and to stop us panicking about not being ready.

The party was on a Friday night, so classes were cancelled for the week.

The party was at the Expo centre, which is miles away in the north of the city.

The room was massive with a huge stage and runway down the middle. When we got to the party room we were told we had to do a fashion show with some of the kids. In our school there are only two female teachers so we were told we had to go first. I spent ages stood on a runway with two terrified students clinging to me. Oodles of fun!

After the fashion show we had 7 minutes to get into costumes and get ready for the panto.

We had a minor problem with microphones, as in we didn't have any, but the kids didn't seem to notice. We had loads of kids sat on the front of the stage taking hundreds of pictures and they seemed to love all their teachers in dresses.

After the panto we had nearly 2 hours to kill before we were allowed to leave so we all got a little bored. The rest of the show was a mess of speeches and terrible dances, including one from McDonald's who sponsor the school.

Thankfully this was my last Shane Christmas party as I am to finish work in a few weeks.