Jiu Zhai Gou
This is the continuation of my last post, with more photos and stories from my trip to Sichuan last month.
This is the hotel we stayed in, it was built like a greenhouse with manmade waterfalls and pools (but with real swans bathing in them). The buildings were made to look like Tibetan houses:
Friday morning, after the buffet breakfast, we drove straight to the gate of the Jiu Zhai Valley park. As soon as we got into the entrance, we all crowded onto a bus and headed up the valley. Periodically, we stopped to get off and walk around, and take pictures of waterfalls and lakes that look something like this:
Waterfall
Colorful Lake 1: These blue-green colors were unreal, and the photographs hardly do them justice:
Long Lake
Panda Lake: This is the site where they filmed the scene from the movie Hero, in which they flew across the water while swordfighting:
Colorful Lake 2: This lake is full of ancient fallen trees that have been calcified, and can be seen clearly through the water:
Jiu Zhai Valley was particularly interesting from an anthropological standpoint. The place was previously inhabited entirely by Qiang and Zang (aka Tibetan) communities, and wasn't discovered by the Chinese until the 1970's. Now it's a UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of the most popular tourist destinations in China. All of the marketing paraphernalia(sp?) associated with Jiu Zhai Valley glorifies Tibetan culture. On the hotel television, there's a channel devoted to advertising the different tourist spots, complete with a short film-advertisement that shows a Chinese man in hiking gear exploring the park, chasing after an beautiful but elusive young Tibetan woman dressed in full traditional get-up (although she could just be a Han girl in "ethnic" clothes). In the real park, the only Zang and Qiang people left are the women who are paid to walk along the trails and pick up the garbage that the tourists leave behind.
Here's a Tibetan-style (Or is it Qiang-style?) house inside the park:
After we left the park, our legs sore from hours of walking along its boardwalks, we went to a restaurant that specialized in yak meat. We had a gourmet meal of oxtail soup, a buttery yak tendon soup, cold slices of yak in chili oil, yak meat dumplings, yak brain, and yak penis. No, I didn't eat the brain or the penis, but everything else was fantastic. When the waitress brought the first dish, a plate of yak dick, out and set it on the table, our conversation went something like this:
Me: "What is that?"
Waitress: "Yak Whip Braised in Soy Sauce."
Han Yang: (in English) "Dick."
Me: "I'm not eating that."
Han Yang's Mom: "What, you don't eat beef?"
(Waitress brings out another dish that looks like something deep-fried)
Me: "What is that?"
Han Yang: "Brain."
Me: "Cow brains?! You eat that?! I'm not eating that. Do you have mad cow disease in China?"
Han Yang: "No, we don't have that here."
Han Yang's Mom: (to Han Yang) "He doesn't eat beef, does he?"
I'm pretty sure this kind of conversation can be filed under "only in China."
After dinner, we went over to a theater, where we saw a performance by a song-and-dance troupe called Gao Yuan Hong (高原红), which is kind of a cute name because it refers to the rosy cheeks that Tibetans get from living at high altitude. This performance was a classic example of the Chinese fetishizing traditional minority culture, and parts of it made me cringe, but it was still pretty awesome. Here are some pictures of the dancing:
This long-sleeve dance was really cool-looking
This singer came out and sang some sort of pop-ified Tibetan song that was so high-pitched it hurt my ears. Men from the audience came up one-by-one and put these white scarves around her neck.
They paraded this Tibetan guy out and had him walk around for a few minutes while they talked about how amazingly tall he is. He's 2.2 meters.
They had a tug-of-war competition, and this guy from Shanghai won, so he got to be "married" to a "Qiang bride" in a mock traditional wedding ceremony.
The next morning, we got up early for a long drive back to Chengdu.
This is the hotel we stayed in, it was built like a greenhouse with manmade waterfalls and pools (but with real swans bathing in them). The buildings were made to look like Tibetan houses:
Friday morning, after the buffet breakfast, we drove straight to the gate of the Jiu Zhai Valley park. As soon as we got into the entrance, we all crowded onto a bus and headed up the valley. Periodically, we stopped to get off and walk around, and take pictures of waterfalls and lakes that look something like this:
Waterfall
Colorful Lake 1: These blue-green colors were unreal, and the photographs hardly do them justice:
Long Lake
Panda Lake: This is the site where they filmed the scene from the movie Hero, in which they flew across the water while swordfighting:
Colorful Lake 2: This lake is full of ancient fallen trees that have been calcified, and can be seen clearly through the water:
Jiu Zhai Valley was particularly interesting from an anthropological standpoint. The place was previously inhabited entirely by Qiang and Zang (aka Tibetan) communities, and wasn't discovered by the Chinese until the 1970's. Now it's a UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of the most popular tourist destinations in China. All of the marketing paraphernalia(sp?) associated with Jiu Zhai Valley glorifies Tibetan culture. On the hotel television, there's a channel devoted to advertising the different tourist spots, complete with a short film-advertisement that shows a Chinese man in hiking gear exploring the park, chasing after an beautiful but elusive young Tibetan woman dressed in full traditional get-up (although she could just be a Han girl in "ethnic" clothes). In the real park, the only Zang and Qiang people left are the women who are paid to walk along the trails and pick up the garbage that the tourists leave behind.
Here's a Tibetan-style (Or is it Qiang-style?) house inside the park:
After we left the park, our legs sore from hours of walking along its boardwalks, we went to a restaurant that specialized in yak meat. We had a gourmet meal of oxtail soup, a buttery yak tendon soup, cold slices of yak in chili oil, yak meat dumplings, yak brain, and yak penis. No, I didn't eat the brain or the penis, but everything else was fantastic. When the waitress brought the first dish, a plate of yak dick, out and set it on the table, our conversation went something like this:
Me: "What is that?"
Waitress: "Yak Whip Braised in Soy Sauce."
Han Yang: (in English) "Dick."
Me: "I'm not eating that."
Han Yang's Mom: "What, you don't eat beef?"
(Waitress brings out another dish that looks like something deep-fried)
Me: "What is that?"
Han Yang: "Brain."
Me: "Cow brains?! You eat that?! I'm not eating that. Do you have mad cow disease in China?"
Han Yang: "No, we don't have that here."
Han Yang's Mom: (to Han Yang) "He doesn't eat beef, does he?"
I'm pretty sure this kind of conversation can be filed under "only in China."
After dinner, we went over to a theater, where we saw a performance by a song-and-dance troupe called Gao Yuan Hong (高原红), which is kind of a cute name because it refers to the rosy cheeks that Tibetans get from living at high altitude. This performance was a classic example of the Chinese fetishizing traditional minority culture, and parts of it made me cringe, but it was still pretty awesome. Here are some pictures of the dancing:
This long-sleeve dance was really cool-looking
This singer came out and sang some sort of pop-ified Tibetan song that was so high-pitched it hurt my ears. Men from the audience came up one-by-one and put these white scarves around her neck.
They paraded this Tibetan guy out and had him walk around for a few minutes while they talked about how amazingly tall he is. He's 2.2 meters.
They had a tug-of-war competition, and this guy from Shanghai won, so he got to be "married" to a "Qiang bride" in a mock traditional wedding ceremony.
The next morning, we got up early for a long drive back to Chengdu.