<A> A Glimpse of the real Jiuzhaigou…

Start with journeys

Journeys are to be savoured. Yes, now you can take an aeroplane to Jiuzhaigou but are you sure you want to ? Some places deserve to be a little difficult to get to. Jiuzhaigou is one of them. Give me a wet, muggy day in midsummer, a bus and 11 hours on the road and I’m not complaining. I didn’t come to China to leap from tourist Mecca to tourist Mecca in a single Economy-class bound. I came here for the journeys.

11 hours on a bus sounds like Heaven to me. Call me crazy, but I can’t help it. I’m much more about journeys than arrivals. 11 hours of brand new China, the unseen and the unknown. You’d better be prepared for the time though, getting to Jiuzhaigou will wipe out a whole day of your life/itinerary (and then there’s getting back!) It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it.

Hazards

Not long into the journey and my bus was held up for an hour due to a landslide that left big boulders and an even bigger traffic jam spread along the road. This was due to the recent heavy rains and the fact that the road is pretty much cut into the edge of mountains! After this, apart from the huge sections that don’t really resemble road so much as pothole and the edge-of-cliff bends from time to time, it was straightforward enough. Plenty of time to sit back and absorb the incredible scenery that this drive throws at you.

Getting there

The majority of the journey finds the road curling like a flung piece of concrete peel through a huge gorge. Everything is vast. Villages and trees alike cling to the edge of the mountains and the near vertical slopes are terraced with fields of sweet corn and sunflowers. Mountain after mountain steps out and rises whilst beneath a river winds flat and muddy blue.

Regular stops allow you to stretch your legs. There are the ubiquitous grimy toilets and cheap eateries. Time to ride on a camel, eyeball a bright white Yak or take in some of the stunning scenery. Stock up on snacks, wander the market stalls and notice the locals’ gently-round faces and darker skins that are reminiscent of a Tibetan or Mongolian physiognomy. The one-house thick towns that spring up along the road seem like film sets, empty frontages, but they aren’t. Life is lived here beyond the brief bus-stop interludes: from the cooking smoke and workers bobbing in the fields to the shouts over a frantic game of cards.

Arrival at Jiuzhaigou

I arrived at Jiuzhaigou town at 7pm feeling surprisingly tired, but suitably impressed with the journey. I was too knackered to argue with the taxi driver who took me to a completely different hotel than the one I had asked for (and obviously run by a friend of his!) It is all part of a widespread mentality that visitors (foreign & Chinese) can be ripped off or cheated. To deny this would be to deny a truth of travelling this country. I’ve discovered the ability to speak Chinese is no defence, but the ability to withhold money is an excellent weapon ;)

The town that continues to develop around the park is an unattractive collection of hotels and restaurants. My hotel being a prime example. After seeing the twin room I haggled them down to 100RMB and still felt I was ripped off. No hot water and I slept in my sleeping bag, but not before I’d wandered around the town and stocked up on food for my stay ‘inside’ Jiuzhaigou. There are a few small supermarkets and one especially nice ‘bakery’ selling sweet and savoury bread products. The main road is a conveyor belt of tour buses and taxis with horns permanently pressed from morning till night. If you didn’t know it, you’d easily miss the silent Jiuzhaigou beyond this façade, but even here there are moments of it on show. The wide stream that tumbles through the town and the mountains that huddle protectively overhead portend the park itself.

Into Jiuzhaigou

It was about 7.30am the next morning when I arrived at the gates of Jiuzhaigou, a 20 minute walk from my hotel. I was surprised to find, with not a hint of exaggeration, thousands of people already there. I located the ticket office and bought my ticket (complete with my photograph) explaining that I wanted to stay in the park for 2 days. Not a problem, I was advised, but I would have to return to the entrance that evening to renew my ticket for the following day. Not likely!! I was planning on walking Jiuzhaigou and was not about to walk the 14km back to the entrance. I stood my ground and insisted I didn’t want to come back for my ticket. Perhaps the lady took pity on me, but she eventually gave me both tickets. I was free to wander.

The entrance to Jiuzhiagou is a queue as thousands of tourists cram onto hundreds of park-run tour buses to see the main sights and leave in a one-day whirlwind tour. Feeling deviant, my rucksack and I jumped over the barriers, skipped the queues and found a deserted footpath. I had soon left all but the occasional person behind and was alone with the peace of forests, pools and those ponderous mountains.

Zaru Si

I was the only visitor at the Zaru Si, a Tibetan Monastery. A monk kindly showed me around the inside of one of the temples and chattered to me in Chinese. I could only understand a little but appreciated his company amidst the candle-lit statues and flowers. Another monk eager to imbue me with much good luck insisted I spin all the prayer wheels 3 times. This involved 20 minutes worth of wandering the monastery and spinning the wheels following the sweeping robes and encouraging smiles of the monk. When I left an old monk walked me back to the path and bid me farewell.

14 spectacular kilometers

It was a 14km walk to the village (or stockade) of Shuzheng. This took me through forests and out onto boardwalks across marshes rich with reeds in gold and burgundy. I walked along the edges of deep blue lakes and valleys of wild-flower meadows unfolded beneath my feet. Always the mountains, decked with pine trees kept watch over my path and I was alone with the spirit of Jiuzhaigou, its soft sweep of breeze in my hair, its chattering steams and its beautiful silences.

Shuzheng Village/Stockade

The climbing aspect of Shuzheng’s wooden houses looked gaudy against the green and I resented for a moment its reminder of civilisation. Yet, it suited Jiuzhaigou with its Tibetan influences and dusty prayer flags hung faded and ragged. To get to the village required crossing the Zechawa He River and a boardwalk thick with flags spans the water. At the far side are ingenious water-powered prayer wheels. Steps lead up from the river to the road and stockade whose buildings are a warm brown with brightly decorated doors and windows. Women in traditional dress seemed to float through the streets with their deep-black hair falling down to their feet. The streets were paved and labyrinthine, meandering through courtyards and under stone archways and zigzagging the steep slope on which they rest.

I enquired about a room for the night and saw a few different places. Eventually I settled on a Tibetan-style hut in a courtyard towards the back of the village, and thus quite high, with views from the balcony of Tiger Lake. It was 30RMB. In the courtyard an old man sat cross-legged rhythmically beating a huge pile of clay with a flat wooden implement, the thwacking echoed the slow heartbeat of this place. The room itself was tiny with 2 wooden beds and a single square window. The bathroom was a concrete block downstairs with a cold-water tap. I was the only foreigner in the village this night.

An evening in Jiuzhaigou

As evening fell, I made my way to nearby Tiger Lake. All the tourists had gone and I was left alone to glimpse, for 2 fading hours, the real Jiuzhaigou. It drifted into darkness, still and silent, only watched by myself and a few stray locals. A couple of monks moved by like red ghosts and a group of small children sat in a circle playing with muted giggles. A reluctant moon and stars darted in and out of the sharp mountains. The forest shades deepened and the babbling, rushing streams grew louder. Fish disturbed the glassy lake, grey skies faded to black and I just sat, watching, listening, being…

Dinner that evening was to be at the only ‘restaurant’ I could find. This was a large tent with a small barbeque of hot coals in the middle and tiny wooden tables and benches. A quirky enough place with a menu consisting of 3 different flavours of pot noodle and that staple of every diet, beer. It was, I must admit at this stage in my travels, the most delicious pot noodle I had eaten, and the only one ever to come served on a tray complete with plastic fork. At around 9pm, the rest of the village having long since melted away, I made my way to bed.

Chang Hai (Long Lake)

The second day I would not be able to escape the crowds, nor would I be blessed with good weather. It dawned misty and damp and was only to get wetter. I caught an almost empty bus at 8am to Chang Hai (Long Lake). The 20 minute journey had me watching the rain streaming down the windows and imagining the park that must lie beyond the rain. Arriving at Chang Hai I found myself back in the English Lake District… or so it seemed. Deep green hills, heavy mists swamping the view and a vast lake of murky blue reaching as far as my eyes could see. Enterprising hawkers swelled in the car parks selling umbrellas and plastic raincoats.

Five-Coloured Pool

I walked from here to the most spectacular pool I saw in Jiuzhaigou, Five-Coloured Pool. Despite the slackening rain there were a steady stream of visitors making this journey with me. A long, steep walk down steps through a coniferous forest and out of the thick green comes an icy blast of blue. It’s a small pool but transparent, every twig and the sandy bed beneath the water is visible. It’s so crisp and intensely blue that it seems almost glacial. I paid my respects by making the most of this photo-opportunity along with countless others, this was not to be a private homage.

Following the path and crowds, I made my way back to the main road and took another bus from here to Arrow Bamboo Lake, equally far from Shuzheng village, from where I would walk back.

From Arrow Bamboo Lake to Shuzheng

This journey sprung pools like rainbows at me. Each one a liquid mirror for the trees and skies to admire themselves in, in breathtaking symmetry. Some lakes held swathes of colour in bands across their surface, fat strokes of turquoise and green. Others were like windows onto the fallen trees and branches that remain eerily visible beneath their waters. This is a place to contemplate the uncomplicated power of nature, its instinctive blend of shapes and colours. Its clean simplicity the perfect antidote to a country whose cities are booming; overloaded with people, neon and traffic.

Naturally, in the most beautiful places I found myself in nose-to-tail convoys with the crowds who had come to see the most scenic of the park’s sites and shared their wide-eyed appreciation. Spectacular waterfalls, Nuorilang Pubu (Promising Bay) and Zhenzhutan Pubu (Pearl Shoal) particularly deserve a mention as do the glades of peeling white birches that unfurled along the path. I picnicked by a lake where the trunks of fallen trees lay as dark shadows under the water and shoals of fish shimmered in the shallows.

Goodbye Jiuzhaigou

The mountains might have been caught in a photograph, vast and unmoving against the low cloud but time moved as swiftly as water for me. I had to leave Jiuzhaigou. It had been an inspiring meeting I felt with nature in all her incarnations, and I sat on the bus ride back to the entrance feeling glad I had not kept my distance from the safety of a cool, air-conditioned seat. My feet had trodden Jiuzhaigou’s paths, my ears had listened to Jiuzhaigou’s songs and I will never forget that evening when I was lucky enough to know, for just a short time, the real Jiuzhaigou.

Information (as of July 2005)

Jiuzhaigou is a beautiful national park situated in Northern Sichuan. Its 2500m elevation makes it a welcome respite in summer from scorching Chengdu but don’t expect to escape from the crowds.

Getting there:
From Chengdu takes 11hours
Bus leaves from Xinnanmen Bus Station at 8am.
Cost: 96RMB

Jiuzhaigou:
Entrance fee: 310RMB per person (discounts for students/seniors)
This fee allows entrance into the park for 2 days!