Three Pinkies in Gougezhuang
Saturday, July 28th, 2007For the past week, Sasha and I have been seeking a method of Beijing escape for this weekend, our only full weekend left as for all the rest we have school on Saturday. Several of our earlier planning attempts did not work out for miscellaneous reasons, so in the end we resorted to Google Earth. We used it to follow the train lines out of Beijing in all directions and found an interesting area to the West which followed a small river through mountains. We enlisted a Chinese friend to find some information about the trains out for us on the internet, which was inconclusive, and we asked him to call the service center, which was inconclusive, and then he offered to take me directly to a small ticket booth, which concluded in me having two one-way tickets to a place called Yesanpo. We had only a rough idea of the length of the journey, and no idea at all about the return train.(To my translated question, she replied that she didn’t have that information and I would have to actually go there to find out when the train comes back!) An Italian who was with us at the time for the purposes of utilizing our Chinese’s assistance could not book the trip he wanted for the beach, so he decided to come with us.
This morning, Sasha, Fiorenzo, and myself woke up at 05:00 and got a taxi to the Beijing West Station, where we found our train without undue hardship. The train was sticky and old-looking, with 1940s General Electric desk fans glued to the ceiling, and the windows open from the bottom which was nice because you can feel the wind and lean out. I didn’t like tunnels very much because we got all full of soot. 
We were the only Pinkies travelling by train, so we received a lot of curious stares (I can’t say North Americans or Europeans because that doesn’t cover everyone, and I find white and black unrealistic, so I go with pink and various shades of brown – we are all pinkish). Our first glimpses and sniffs of greenery were very exciting. A 10 year old girl had a nosebleed nearby and so I provided the family with some tissues. After that, we asked the mother where we were (as not very many of the stops were on the map), and we started communicating them with some sign language, the odd English word, and a lot of drawing on my pad. They wanted the kids to sit on us and take pictures, and the children (plural because a few more appeared) gave us some candies.
The train ride was about 3 hours, and although the haze stayed with us the scenery got better, with the classic Chinese-looking mountains, and some valleys with streams and villages. 
We asked the family about trains back, and they said not until tomorrow! This was bad because we were supposed to have been in meetings in the late evening, and because we have a lot of work to do generally this weekend. We started talking to a young Chinese couple who could speak English a bit better, and they said there was a train at 18:something. Instead of going to Yesanpo, they suggested to go one stop further to a small town called Gougezhuang that has a natural area, where they were headed. We asked them a lot of questions, and they said they would help us to find a ticket when we got there.
The train station ticket area was a big ugly and smelly.
The ticket man said there was a train at 18:36 but that we could only buy the ticket 25 mins in advance. Getting back at 10 pm meant we would miss our meetings, but we decided to send a text message and enjoy the day, since there was no other way to get back. We said goodbye to our new friends, who kindly gave us their cell number in case of trouble, and walked around the town. It is mainly located on one side of a mostly dried up river. On the other side, we followed a road and some picture signs past rows of completely empty shops that seem to be waiting for a tourist boom that hasn’t quite materialized, at least not in the form they had planned for. There was a main gate, where they asked us for 90 kwai admission to a “Geopark”. That’s a lot of money here (about 9 euro!), so I was grumpy about that, but we didn’t have a whole lot else to do so we went in. It was a large area with a sort of trail around in between the interesting rock formations, with some caves, and a stream of running water over which you had to climb on lots of stepping stones.
I will not bore you with too many details, there were quite a few tourists when we got inside the part but they were Chinese tourists only, interestingly. Noteworthy points: a trip up a cablecar to the top of a big mountain offered a very nice view. I wanted to run up the stairs, but Fiorenzo made us take the lift (and we’d only been hiking 3 hours! Scandalous!). I saw a really confusing statue: there is a bull, and around his front legs are hoses which are attached to the “nostrils” of a big stone fish in a pond. But why? What does it mean? Not exactly the place for modern art!
Despite the lack of peace and quiet (which I am beginning to understand are things I take too much for granted as a Canadian), I would not have wanted to miss this. The pictures give you the idea. I believe I have gained a better understanding of the motivations for Chinese landscape art - I recognized leaf patterns, lighting, and forms from paintings I have seen. My conclusion was that China must have been very beautiful… once. After the park, we bargained a bit for handcrafts and went back to the town where we ignored a beggar and found a restaurant overlooking the “river”. By river it is meant a stream dammed into wider shallow lake-like pools. This town is a sort of Chinese get away holiday spot, so there are rafts you can rent and pole around on, dune buggies, horses, and big plastic water hamster balls for kids (look like fun, and a good way to get a spinal injury). The river smelled awful up close, so we decided to avoid ordering fish the men were catching!
The menu was not a picture menu and only one waiter spoke any English, so with some creativity, my phrasebook, and about 6 spectators we got almost what we wanted and had quite a nice meal! For three of us, all included was about 4 euro, so this is quite a bit cheaper even than Beijing. We then walked around the town some more and smiled and ni-haoed at everyone. Someone tried to make us some snacks from a writhing bowl of live scorpions, but we declined politely, indicating that we’d eaten quite enough food for the time being. Summary of the town: nice distant scenery, nice people, mangy animals, sheep being slaughtered and butchered on the road, barrel-improvised outdoor BBQs, ugly crap semi-modern architecture, standard hygiene conditions (ie. None).
We were first in line at the ticket booth at the train station and waited some time. I took the opportunity to learn a few new obscure Italian words and double-meanings (“farfalla” is not always referring to “butterfly”!), and to start Russian words and phrases. I can now say things like “sheep!”, “donkey!” , “Food!”, “Water!”, “I hope the train comes soon” and “bad train ticket man!” in Russian now. I also studied a horrible poster which seems to have the meaning “please don’t blow yourself up on trains because it’s messy”, expressed through 12 real colour photos of bits of blown up people! It is really quite awful. I will have to ask what the reason for exposing passengers to this imagery is to a Chinese friend, later.
Tickets for the ride back were about a euro each, but we had no assigned seats this time so there was some anxiety about not getting one. Suddenly I had an urgent dinner-induced need to use a bathroom, and so I grabbed some toilet paper (which I now carry everywhere with me!), held my breath, and ran in. This one reached new levels of horror – in a dirty concrete room, there were holes along one side. No stalls, no running water, just a sloping hole that led to a pile outside! Some people had missed, though I still don’t understand how they did hit the walls?! As I accomplished my mission with all due haste and no longer any regard for my personal privacy, I noted a quantity of semi-translucent maggots wriggling at my feet. I evacuated the area quickly, and had Sasha pour disinfectant on my hands! I then stuck my head back in to the bathroom, in order to share the experience with you. I hope you appreciate the sacrifice.
After some shuffling about and good teamwork, we got some seats near to one another. We dozed a bit, listened to Sasha’s iPod, and then started talking to passengers; mainly a young couple, though four or five older gentlemen around us did not hide their curiosity and craned their necks to see what was going on. The couple’s written English was quite good, but were not very understandable or understanding of us, so we got out my pad and had lengthy written conversations. Sasha got a lesson on advanced chopstick technique, and a couple of them played paper and pen games with us. We learned a new way to play tic-tac-toe – no board, you go wherever you want and have to make a line of 5. We were pretty tired when we finally reached Beijing West Station, but were smiling – an interesting day, and we tried some new things (like Chinese trains and going into unknown territory without information or a translator), successfully communicated with lots of people despite no mutual language (and made a few friends), and got to see something other than touristic areas of Beijing.