Black Bamboo Valley Abduction Delayed

Since we were unable to make it to the Hei Zhu Gou the previous week, we thought we would take advantage of the "Sports' Day" celebrations on Friday and make our way to the "mysterious" Black Bamboo Valley.

According to our internet research, this area is called the "Bermuda Triangle of China." All the students and teachers we talked to immediately used the word "mysterious" to describe it.

The scenic spot of Black bamboo valley located in Yi race Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan, its area is 180 square kilometers.The Black Bamboo Gouge has grand and dangerous topography, fantastic landscapes, primitive ecology, rare species, marvelous environment, abundant forest landscapes, unique natural landscapes, thick national flavor and all sorts of wonderful legends. Hence, it enjoys a great reputation in the world. (www.chinahotel.com.cn)

All week long we made jokes about how we were going to get abducted by aliens when we spent the night at Black Bamboo Valley. Disappear from the face of the planet we would. We also gloated over the stories about those 30 Kuomintang soldiers who disappeared in 1950; the two Chinese People's Liberation Army soldiers who went missing: the 1964 Forest Resources Investigation Team incident; and other great an wonderful events to make us feel a little worried about our trip.

Hey, what the heck! We are in China to have an adventure and what better adventure could there be than to disappear in the Black Bamboo Valley. We may even make it in some of those mystery articles or tourist books.

To Ebian On The Way to The Black Bamboo Valley

We hired a van to deliver us to the Emei Main Bus Station. It cost us 15 Yuan (the guy was not interested in bargaining) so we arrived early enough to catch the 0750 bus to Ebian. Coordination with Charles, the teacher at the Leshan Vocational and Technology College, was made and he would catch the 0820 bus out of Leshan and meet us around 1100 or so in Ebian. We were underway.

It was 0740 and time to get aboard. Nice bus. Very comfortable.

Tom is relaxed and feeling good about the trip to Abduction Two!

Notice the fear on the faces of these two travelers. Do they believe the stories about all those abductions at Black Bamboo Valley? I began to think so as we approached Ebian.

We arrived at Ebian at 1005. Don't believe me? Check the clock. We had to wait another hour for Charles to arrive.

As us guys hung around outside kibbitzing and generally making fools of ourselves, a police car pulled up and two police persons got out. They both looked very young. We began to make jokes about the local department sending out their forces to confront the aliens (us). As we watched these two call back to headquarters the jokes flowed like water from all the scifi movies we had watched.

Police lady: We have contact with the aliens. Request further orders.

HQ: Approach cautiously and do not make any false moves. Try to communicate with the aliens.

Police Lady: Roger, will do. Do I need backup?

HQ: Backup is on its way. Are you comfortable in communicating with the aliens? Do they appear to be hostile?

And so the movies go with various constructs on the communication angle.

As we joked about the scenario, these two young police people walked up to us and introduced themselves. They had been sent to communicate with the visiting aliens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunee came out and it turned out that the road to Black Bamboo Valley had been washed out from the previous night's heavy rains. The police and come to inform us of this situation.

ABDUCTION DELAYED!

Another week, another disappointment! What to do? Charles was due to arrive in the next thirty minutes. We asked the police lady for a place to go visit. She suggested Luo Mu street about half way back to Emei City. Great! We decided to go check it out.

Charles arrived at around 1120 and we immediately reboarded the return bus to Emei, getting off at the crossroad that led us to Luo Mu Street.

Back to Luo Mu Street

We caught a bus to Luo Mu Street (one Yuan) and began our journey once more looking for ancient China.

We were all hungry so we stopped at this place that had fried potatoes. Looked and they were very good.

Our potatoes! Welcome to another Sichuan snack.

Welcome to Luo Mu Street. The buildings all looked to be well over 100 years old. Just what we were hoping for.

Sunee tries her hand at bargaining for some of those jiaodz steamers. The lady was not interested in selling just one so we left.

My first attempt at an art photo on the old street of Luo Mu. I call this one - Chairs

Oh, no! Not another pose from Dave. Me thinks he works to hard on posing, What do you think?

Great view of the old streets in Luo Mu. There were three or four such streets and we only walked down one of them.

Art Photo- ASLEEP

Art Photo - Yellow Door

This girl with her friend visited with us and ended up going down the street with us talking with us and just having a good time. Their skateboarding was impressive.

Art Photo - Brown Doors

Beautiful Sichuan countryside complete with water and mountains. This creek ran along the side of the ancient street we were enjoying.

Art Photo - Working Hard

Art Photo - Inside

None Art Photo - Detective Tom sluicing the great serial rape seed case.

We took a break at this farm house. Charles and Dave hang out a bit and enjoy being in ancient China.

Dave and Tom give free English lesson to our two hanger ons. The two girls were really sweet and acted like they had as much fun as we did.

We were taken to this Chinese coutyard. It was great with the open area surrounded by old buildings still being used. The owners of this house invited us in to relax and visit.

Dave checks out the drying leaves that Sunee identifies as flowers for some kind of tea.

Visiting with the owners of the courtyard who were very hospitable.

Visiting with the owners and the neighbors.

Art Photo - Chinese Setting

Our two friends had to return to their homes so I took this picture to say goodbye.

Tom continues to try his hand at Art Photography. Wonder if he was successful?

As we were walking along, we saw this guy coming up behind us. He was a unique ancient looking guy.

Art Photo - Chinese Gentleman

Art Photo - Brick House

As we walked along we came upon a house with lots of incense parts outside. We looked in and were immediately invited here. Husband and wife were both working diligently making incense sticks to sell. Hey, this could be one of my Art Photos.

Husband working hard!

When asked if we wanted to go inside and visit the incense makers, Dave kept whispering, "let's go in, let's go in, let's go in!" Experiencing the REAL CHINA.

Humm-V, Chinese-style.

Another view of the creek looking back at the cement factory we passed earlier.

We found this ancient Yi monument at a middle school just before the end of the street. Supposedly there were a lot of buddhas buried under the school grounds. This occurred over thirty years ago. Sounds very much like the Cultural Revolution hit here pretty hard. This place was supposed to be one of the big sites of the local Yi people. Guess I will do some research to see if anything happened here thirty years ago.

This bridge was called Gao Chao or high bridge and is pretty well the major landmark in the area. It is an ancient bridge that is over 500 years old or so the locals say.

After this bridge we walked to the main highway and to the bus stop just down the road. The trip back to the Emei area took only twenty minutes. We walked down only one of the streets at Luo Mu. The other streets are still there and are only twenty minutes away.

A Disappointment Turns Into Another Adventure - Ebian

Today we were scheduled to go on a Foreigners' Cultural Trip sponsored by the university. The university tries to send us to culturally appropriate places at least once each semester. Unfortunately the weather threatened rain in the morning so we got a call from Ms. Enliven to inform us that the trip was postponed. So we are all dressed up and no place to go.

Let's go to Hei Zhu Gou, Sunee suggested. Great idea. The disappointment suddenly had turned into another China adventure!

We all got on the local bus (all six of us) to downtown Emei City. From there we caught another bus to the Emei main bus station.

The bus let us off across the street from the main bus station. Notice the clouds are still threatening us with rain. The monument you see is the typical monument found in most tourist cities - the Wuwei flying horse.

The bus station is what I call Late Russian Socialist Architecture. Massive, large and absolutely ugly. Seems this style can be found all over China, proving to any casual observer how much the Russians influenced China during the 50's and 60's.

Sunee finds out that our bus for the first leg of our journey (Ebian) leaves at 1120. That gives us about 45 minutes or so to get something to eat. Here John discusses the schedule with Tom. Neither had a clue as to what the Chinese meant. Made for a great picture, though.

The dining room in the bus terminal was not bad and it was clean. We decided to get a quick Chinese lunch before we left.

Sunee orders each of us the dining room specialty. Actually they had nothing else so we really did not get a choice. Three items plus rice for ten Yuan. Cheap even if it turned out bad.

The lunch was very good with the three items being quite tasty (not delicious) and filling. A nice start to our upcoming adventure.

The time is 1111 and we are about to board our bus to Ebian. Can you see the excitement on the faces of young adventurers?

Our bus leaves the Emei Mountain area and passes through some beautiful scenery and small mountain villages. Here is a quick look at one of those small villages.

Streams and mountains and lots of trees help pass the two hour trip to Ebian. The scenery alone is well worth the trip.

Small villages and tea plantations dot the mountain sides as we make our way to our destination.

A river below in the distance adds even more beauty to the clouds that hang over the mountains.

The trip was scenic from start to finish. The air was clear and crisp with visions of our adventure.

As we approached Ebian we began to see the beginnings of a small but active industrial base. Factories both small and large put up smoke that distracted from the scenery.

Here a small farm is nestled between the river and our road. Sichuan! Home of the ever growing vegetable plants.

We arrived at the Ebian bus station two hours into our journey. The bridge across the river stood out as soon as we got off the bus. Ebian is located on both sides of the river and is bounded by mountains all around.

Another view of the bridge, this time with some beautiful flowers adding interest to the photo.

"What a very friendly young lady," I commented to Sunee after taking this picture. "She is a tourist tout who is trying to get people to go to a hotel where she can get a commission," Sunee replied. Hey, she was cute and friendly for whatever reason. We figured out that we were a bit late to be traveling on to Hei Zhu Gou which was our original intent. We will make a return trip next weekend and travel on toe Hei Zhu Gou, a place of great mystery.

Monument of some kind with Yi writing. This was located in front of the bridge as we crossed the river. I recognized the Yi writing from the Yi museum we had visited in Chuxiong a couple of weeks ago,


Same monument with Chinese characters. The trike was the mode of transportation in Ebian.

There was a train coming on the right as I took this picture. The bridge is to my immediate left as I face the river.

Here is the panorama of the same scene above. The scenery was beautiful and the air was filled with mountain aromas of moist wood, rock and foggy trees fluttering in the breeze. After taking this photo we walked across the bridge and made a right down the only street available. On the left was the river and on the right was the mountain.

Dave and I thought this was a terrific picture so we both took it.

I stepped back a few feet and got both of the trikes with the same background.

A few hundred meters down the street, Tom scrambled down a cement embankment to the river's edge. The water, he declared, was cold and moving swiftly along.

As we walked down the road, we saw several of these fishing poles laying unattended on the cement fence overlooking the water. John picked one up just for me to take a picture of.

What were these invisible fishermen using for bate. Grubworms or maybe some kind of maggots. The pan stunk like maggots.

I took a picture of these rice buckets before we decided to eat at this restaurant. Loved the looks of these two buckets of rice covered with the rattan looking tops.

We decided to eat at this restaurant because the pork looked really good. We were not disappointed. In fact, we all felt this was the best pork (ham) we had eaten in a long time. It was beautifully smoked and lean.

Tom picks up some Harbin beer to try. He had heard of it before and wanted to see what it tasted like. In addition the Chinese guys across from our table were anxious to toast our arrival and we needed something to toast with.

The first toast was for our arrival. The two Chinese guys were more than friendly and toasted each of us then offered cigarettes to us. I neither drank any beer nor did I smoke any cigarettes.

As the Chinese guys finished their lunch, they once again came and toasted us as they left the restaurant. Who says the Chinese are not friendly?

On further into the downtown area we ran into a tea shop with this little girl acting as the proprietor. Later she got her mother to come out to visit with us. Of course, I was interested in their local tea.

We bought 500 grams of the locally produced tea. It looked good and it was not expensive. Actually, Tom bought 250 gram and we bought 250 gram. I will be giving it a taste and writing up the results at my chinateatravels.blogspot.com website.

A Yi symbol. We often saw these while visiting Chuxiong in Yunnan earlier this month.

Around the corner and into an open area we meet all of these kids just hanging out on a Saturday afternoon.

This movies gives you a feel for our interaction with all these great kids. We had a really good time visiting with them.

Two kids anxious to visit with the laowai who just happened to show up in their town.

I finally get someone to take my picture with the kids. All the other guys were busy asking and answering questions.

The girl in the middle on your left turned out to be a really great help. She pretty much took charge of our visit and explained what was going on in the little town. Later she arranged a couple of trikes to take us back to the bus station. She was a very impressive young lady!

TWINS!

These guys kept jumping in front of my camera so I got them together for a picture of buddies. Most of the guys were too shy to interact with us which was totally opposite the little girls. In fact, these guys showed a healthy respect for the little girls who were interacting with us. Almost as if they feared for their well-being if they messed with the girls.

The guys were just goofing around and showed little interest in interacting with us foreigners except when we pointed a camera their way. I call this photo: two nuts.

Sunee discusses possible English names for these girls after a request from the little girl in the yellow who took charge of our well-being. Thus began the English name process which involved about an hour of our time. Tom took out his notepad and began writing English names down based on the Chinese names he heard. The little girls worked him to death, almost.

A great portrait of one of the kids in line to get an English name.

Another really young girl waiting in line for an English name.

Here Sunee writes down a possible English name for one of the girls.

Marilyn, the little girl in the yellow, takes us back to the transportation to get a trike back to the bus station.
Here Marilyn makes sure we all get transportation back to the bus station. She told us it was too far to walk.

Sunee on the way back to the bus station in a covered trike. Our adventure in Ebian was coming to an end.

On the way back to Emei, I took a couple of pictures of this waterfall. Missed it coming in.

Dave had the misfortune of falling asleep on the bus headed back to Emei. Of course, Tom took advantage of the situation for this shot.

AS we got off the bus, it occurred to us that we were hungry, so we decided to eat some jaodz. We never turn down these Chinese dumplings, NEVER!

Hungry was Tom as this picture more than proves.

Also Dave did his share of dumplings.

As did John.

It is now down to one dumpling. Who will get it? Who will get it? This closes out another fantastic adventure in China. BTW, I got the last dumpling.