Tom: Luding (July 23)

Luding (July 23) · Jul 25, 10:01 AM

The fever passes in the night. My roommates are most of them gone. They told me there were many buses to Chengdu everyday, and no need to wake up early to book one. I slept in till seven! Half an hour later I share a cab with another guy from my room to the bus station; we are both on the 8:00 bus to Chengdu (I had to buy a ticket, but the bus is only half full).

It rained last night; this is the wet season, and half an hour down the road we pull to a stop behind a line of cars and trucks that snakes down the road and around a corner, out of view. It’s a mudslide that takes three hours to clear — no problem. Once traffic is moving again, people start driving the way they queue. The queue the way piglings queue for their mothers teats. Enough room was cleared for one lane of traffic, and our side wins the toss. This saves us an hour or two, but we stop at the Luding bus station, and go no further. The road between Luding and Chengdu is impassible.

More than a dozen buses have pulled in to join us. We wait. Passengers mill. Instant noodles meals are available for the hungry. I meet up with several English-speaking foreigners. We wait. There’s a family traveling with three small kids; they wait, too. There is talk of hiring a car or minibus to cut south and east to Emeishan — in the end four people go, but we’ll see them again tomorrow morning on the road, waiting again. We wait more, with no information except we might leave now, or in three days.

There’s more waiting and talking, and I finish off an unappetizing roll of onion crackers, but I’ll skip to the part where the drivers say we’re leaving tomorrow at six. Now, at least, I can spend the waiting time around town. They also say that we’ll have to change buses after walking for a couple kilometers over the bad stretch. In a hotel attached to the bus station we find brand new third floor doubles for 30 yuan per room. The floors are shiny, the walls are white, the sheets are fresh, and the toilet is clean. The shower doesn’t drain much — the only downside. My roommate is a young Chinese girl who knows kung fu — the kind that kills your five times before your body hits the ground. Next door is a French couple. Down the hall are two girls, one from Italy, one — a Chinese girls — from Holland. They’re both studying Mandarin in Shanghai.

Luding is famous for its bridge. Mao’s Long March was nearly Mao’s Short March. The KMT removed all the bridges planks and booby-trapped the chains with firepowder. Communist forces Gloriously Prevailed Against All Odds. Thank goodness. You have to pay ten yuan to cross the bridge and look at the strange battle tower replica surfaced with styrofaom painted black. Wood planks are attached to heavy metal chains that stretch a hundred meters across the Dadu River. My Chinese roommate dropped her camera case into the river — empty except for two full memory cards. It floated, and was caught in an eddy, but never found again. She gave up after half an hour and we went for dinner.

We sit down in a random Chinese restaurant and order friend chicken nuggets on little sticks, fried cucumber, gelatinous wheat noodles, egg fried tomato, and an expensive local mushroom dish. The bill works out to 11 yuan per person and we agree everything was delicious, especially the mushrooms.

It’s dark when we head back to the rooms. In Kangding’s public square, there’s a crowd seated below a large advertising display, which is playing a Chinese drama — public TV.

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http://tom.spacing-guild.net/2006/07/26/chengdu-july-24

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