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.

Foreign Teachers' Cultural Trip (April 19)

Today we make up for Saturday's postponement of our Foreign Teachers' Cultural Trip. We have two vehicles to travel to our sites.

Jia Jiang Thousand Buddha Carving Cliffs

Ms. Enliven showed up at 0900 with the cars and gathered her foreigners quickly and efficiently. We were on our way within minutes of her arrival. Sunee suggested that we go to the Jia Jiang Thousand Buddhas site first and then the Ten Fu Tea Museum. Good idea!

Here is the bridge across the river which flows past our destination. From this point we had about another thirty minutes or so before our destination.

Along the way and especially across the river, scenes like this were everywhere. Sichuan is considered to be the "breadbasket" of China. Everywhere there is land, the Chinese in Sichuan makes use of it. What veggies they produce!

Our destination had two entrances. After going through the first, one walks through a fairly older street with some neat old Chinese houses. Along the way, I snapped this picture of Chinese chess match. Who is winning? Not a clue!

A beautiful old red door worth a picture.

This is the second entrance to the actual carved buddhas and where one must buy a 7 Yuan ticket to get in.

Here Sunee looks over some paper for Chinese calligraphy and watercolor

This is the history of these carved buddhas, carved on a rock surface at the entrance.

In we go to see the thousand carved buddhas.

One of the four lion guards at the entrance. One on each side times both sides. Beautifully carved and very picturesque.

I snuck this picture in while Dave was not watching. We have been doing a lot of poses to get exactly this effect. Good job, Dave, of not posing.

Here is the gang of eleven marching to the gates of the tourist site. Impressive lot, aren't we?

Zoe buys the tickets so we can go see our buddhas.

An impressive photo of the redness all over this place. It is a beautiful site.

Map of the Thousand Carved Buddha site.

A beautiful view across the river from the site. We decided not to go over there because there is nothing to see. Good plan!

A couple of foreign photographers trying to get the most from their visit.

Since this was the second time Sunee and I had visited, I only took a few pictures of the actual buddhas. I had most of them on my hard drive. You can pretty much get the idea from this picture what the buddhas look like.

Beautiful view of the paper museum in the middle of the site. I love taking this picture as it reminds me that I am truly in China.

Zoe explains the meaning of these sculptures. It says "five old men."

Zoe could not quite make out who these buddhas represented. Great shot, isn't it?

I just can never take enough pictures of the paper museum. Here is one with a small creek running beside it. Love the red amongst the green.

And this is the guy who is supposed to have invented paper. I will have to go do some research as to what his name is. Somewhere I read that the Arabs actually invented paper. Who knows? This is a good picture of the Chinese inventor anyway.

Got John to pose by my favorite red Chinese wall. Always a good place for pictures.

I tracked this guy for about ten minutes before he finally arrived in an area that would make a good picture. Such hard work it takes to get pictures for this blog. Worth it, though, don't you think?

Here are our three hostesses, all fellow teachers in the Foreign Language Department. No wait, Mia, the one in the center is in the Computer Department. She is one of my students in the teachers' training course I am teaching on Monday and Wednesday night. She is truly a joy to be around - cute as a button.

Now there are "SIX OLD MEN."

Let me assure you that his picture of John was not posed. He had no idea I was taking the picture. Notice the very Sichuan veggies being grown everywhere. 'Tis a great picture, isn't it? John was totally focused on the beauty of the area. Can you blame him?

We followed a path up the mountain and came to an old Buddhist Temple. It was obviously very old as Tom points out the construction that proves it.

Lots of Buddhas around. Unfortunately some had been damaged by humans and other by the weather.

Sunee, Zoe and Enliven discuss the merits of the tourist sites and they walk along the carved buddha images.

Posed! Nice try, Dave.

Zoe and Mia take a break from herding the foreigners around the site.

Posed again! Dave never gives up trying to match my great unposed picture above.

At a little past 1300 we shared a lunch inside the area, along the first street we walked through. Not bad with plenty of good solid Sichuan food to eat. We now head to the Ten Fu Tea Museum which is about half an hour or so away.

Panorama view of the Thousand Buddha Cliff area.

Ten Fu Tea Museum

We took a one lane back road to get to the Tea Museum and got stuck for about twenty minutes until the oncoming cars could squeeze by. As we waited I found this water buffalo relaxing in the shade next to his "mud pond."

Welcome to Ten Fu Tea Museum. We start our visit off with a tea tasting around a hug beautiful wooden table. Our sales ladies looked after our tea needs professionally.

This is one of their puerh teas we tasted. Actually, this puerh was the only one we tasted and we tasted it several times as we tasted some of the snacks for sale in their tea market place. Relaxing and fun but . . . Sunee and I had been here before.

Tasting tea, our three hostesses continued to have a good time. Notice the expression on Zoe's face. She automatically knows when a camera is pointed in her direction. Please, Zoe, never change. You are an absolute doll.

More tasting and snacking. Pleasant but only the one puerh was served.

Here Ivan tries out his newly acquired professional sniffing technique. Wonder what he smells?

Obviously the puerh is filling Ms. Mia with a lot of "qi." We all knew how she felt - dreaming.

Here Tom toasts the puerh to our health.

Sunee tastes the puerh. She thinks puerh tastes like Chinese medicine.

It is time to shop and so . . . Sunee shops.

Entrance to the Ten Fu Tea Museum.

We all go check out the "show" tea plantation in the back. A bit boring but we felt we should since we had tasted a lot of their puerh. Here Ms. Mia does a "downward bunny" to show her appreciation to the tea.

Friends.

Sunee and Zoe decide not to got into the museum again, so that left the rest of us. Here we look over are planned visit to the museum, devising the best options to see all the stuff in the museum. Actually, this is just a model of the Ten Fu Tea grounds. Dave thought it looked more like a war map, prepping for another operation on the enemy.

Ten Fu Tea Museum information.

Now how do I go about getting my face on this manikin. Should I give it a try?

Ms. Enliven acts as our translator and tries to explain all the exhibits. Nevermind that all of them were also in English. Good practice for her, though.

Any one for some tea?

Doesn't this hat make Ms. Enliven look sooo cute?

Here Ms. Enlive points out where the Gap Guys are from. Here translations were really accurate as we could check them against the supplied English.

Tea Map of the World. I liked it a lot.

A beautiful Russian samovar. I am the only one who knew what it was called. Are you impressed?

Sometimes I think John can actually read the Chinese he seems to be focused on all the time. Here he focuses on some of the Chinese displays of teapots.

As we made our way through the museum, Sunee and Zoe relax in the Tea Horse room and enjoy some tea. It was another good day and we all had a great time. Sunee even bought a few tea snacks from the sales area.