On the 17th December, our group of 5 people started our journey to Sichuan for about 5 nights and 6 days’ travel.
When we arrived, it was 17th December’s night around 8:30pm at night, it had something dramatically happened that the tour guide lost few visitors at the Sichuan Chengdu Shuangliu airport. And when the tour guide met those lost people, it was about 9:00pm. So that we did not even known the Chengdu city and we must went back to the hotel to finish our first day visit.
On the second day, the tour guide informed us on the first night that we need to gather at the hotel lobby at 5:45am in the morning to start our journey to Jiuzhaigou. We were catching the bus, the distance would be long(needs to take about 10 hours bus),so that we must start to drive in the very early morning. During the winter time, the Chengdu’s weather will be under 10 celcius in the morning, but the weather is under our expectation, because we thought we could see the snow from the sky to fall down and freezing cold before the journey.
After 3 hours drive on the second day, we arrived to Wenchuan, where is the biggest earthquake place on 12th May at 2008, as the rules and policies are very strict over there, no one can drop off the bus/car without any permission, only has workers to fix the road can stay over there in the morning, because that place is still very dangerous, the rocks from the mountains are tottering, sometimes it has falling rocks happen. There also has lots of monuments that we could see over there, for example: the school, the local residence houses, the only national road…etc has already messed up, and there does not has any street lamp over that places, it was because the mud-rock flow was covered everything at the year of 2008′s earthquake. The local residence’s economy is still poor, but the China government and most of the other cities’ residences were try themselves’ best to donate the money for them, so that they have their new houses, new schools, new sport stadium and bridges…etc for the local residence at Wenchuan.
The tour guide told us many cultures about the minority of Zang and Qiang. Zang’s residence’ religious is buddha, when Zang’s people died, they has 5 differnt type of funeral culture, including Pagoda, Sky, Ground, Water and Tree. Among the Pagoda funeral only for the top of Buddhist, after their death, the professional will dig all of the organs out of the body and use gold to wrap all of the body and put it into the pagoda. And the type of sky funeral, it is a professional carry the dead body and walk to the top of the mountain, the professional needs to pray and walk along the road, when it reach to the top of the mountain, the body needs to face down the ground, and the professional will use a very special sharp knife to cut off the body’s head off. The water funeral will be used the special Zang medicines and put it all to cover the body, after it, the professional will tie up big stones to the body and throw into the water. Qiang’s culture is special, their own white house with some special pattern will has a type of ram’s horn on the top of the house with white color to stands for they belongs to Qiang minority. Qiang’s culture has their own words and language, but they cannot write their own words now, but the language can still be speak it out.
We arrived to Jiuzhaigou at about 7pm at night, we visited the Zang’s residence house to enjoy their traditional cooked ram and meat, beverage and beer. After the meal, they showed us a very beautiful traditional performance, like dancing and singing.
Jiuzhaigou’s weather is colder than Chengdu, it is about 0 to 5 degree celcius. When we waked up on the third day’s morning, we can see icing on the ground, and the mountains with full of white snowy, unfortunately, we did not see any snow fall down from the sky.
On the third day’s morning, when we arrived to the Jiuzhaigou tour place, the tour guide left us to the local sightseeing tour bus and started our one-day visit at there. At there, we can see lots of natural view about mountains and lakes, the lake’s water are blue, some is green, and the peak of the mountains are full of snow, it was amazing and beautiful, and we did enjoy it very much. And we stayed at Jiuzhaigou area for 2 nights, at night, the weather decreased to 0 or under 0 degree celcius, and there does not has heater in our stayed hotel, but it has the heated blanket for each bed, and unfortunately, because of the cold weather, the water pipe has been freezed by the icing, and we were not able to have shower on the 2 night’s stayes at Jiuzhaigou.
On the fourth day’s, we need to waked up again in the morning and started to go back to Chengdu because of the long distance drive, at that day, we did not go to any of the tourist place, but the tour guide took us to many of the local shopping area, for example: the first place we went to the local crystal factory, it has all kinds of crystal for you to choose as a souvenir for family and friend; the second place we went to the minority of Zang’s medicines shop, most of the Chinese will know that Zang medicines are famous, because they are all from natural and it comes from highland area, but the price of the Zang medicines are also expensive; the third place we went to Yak’s house, it sell Yak’s meat as the main, and it all made by the local Zang residence, Yak is the basic family needs at Zang’s or Qiang’s family, each Yak’s value is about 12 millions, so that it means if one of the Zang or Qiang’s family has as much as Yak’s they have, the family is wealthy. After we had our lunch, we also went to the comb shops, it was made from Yak’s horn, very special and cherish. The final shop that we visited on the fourth day was the bamboo shop, Sichuan province are the panda’s hometown, so that at Sichuan, it has lots of bamboo trees, and the local residence will use the bamboo, and use the highest temperature about 1000 celcius to burn it, and make it as much as normal needs, for example: towels, tooth brushes, clothes, shoe pad, medical needs…etc. On the highway at Wenchuan, we met a car crash, so that when we go back to Chengdu, it was around 9pm at night, we were thinking about we would like to visit Chengdu on the way back to try the taste of Chengdu, but we still missed the chance, but we enjoyed the meal beside the hotel that we stayed, becuase we did not have much meat to eat at Jiuzhaigou, our group meal are with lots of vegetable.
On the fifth and the sixth day, we started our trip to Leshan and Emeishan. One of the famous point is Leshan’s biggest buddha has 1208 years old, it was built in the mountain, the buddha sits in the whole mountains, it looks very stately, the whole buddha has 71 metres height, the head has 14.7 metres height, ear has 7 metres height, nose has 5.6 metres, mouth and eye has 3.3 metres, neck has 3 metres, fingers has 8.3 metres height. At Leshan, it has a temple, called: Lingyun temple, it started to build at the year of 713, it has 1298 years old. After the Leshan, we took about 30 minutes bus to Emeishan, it has many years of history and there has lots of buddha temples around it. The highest location at Emeishan has 3099 metres height. There also has the only natural monkey protection area mountain in China, over there, the monkey are not in the cages, they are free in the mountains, the local residence called them as the genius of the mountains, they can look for food from the travellers, but they can attack people as well.
Finally, we finished our journey at Sichuan, we did enjoy some part of it at Jiuzhaigou, but also we met something that we never tried before, so that our journey are with smile and mad about it.