Forty Days and Forty Nights

After half a year of near continuous overtime at work, I took a 40 day leave of absence to explore the faraway regions of China. I said goodbye to some friends, reunited with others, and made new ones along the way. My Irish roommate and Malaysian diplomat would both leave the country to pursue other opportunities while I was away on my trip. My friend Preston would be my travel partner for the first half of my adventure, before returning to his American homeland. We met up in Xinjiang, crossing deserts (the Taklamakan), borders (into Pakistan), streets, and anything else that we came across.

At the midpoint of my journey I would spend a few days in Chongqing with my father, who would be attending a conference there. Preston and I would continue onwards, sailing the utterly disappointing Three Gorges before going our separate ways in Wuhan. He would return to Beijing to collect his belongings before flying home to America. I would turn my gaze eastwards to Shanghai and the World Expo, before traveling south to a tiny village in Fujian province to attend a colleague's marriage.

One successful wedding and several sessions of heavy drinking later I would find myself in Xiamen, a lovely coastal town near Taiwan. Here I would reunite with my former sidekick Leo for a few days until our paths diverged again. He was headed north and I was going south. My 40 days were almost up as I reached Canton, where I divided my time between the mega-city of Guangzhou and the tiny villages of Kaiping before jetting back to Beijing. All told I traveled over 13000 kilometers during this epic journey, or approximately 1/3 of the circumference of the Earth.

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“Not all those who wander are lost.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

The Hanging Monastery

Sixty five kilometers away from the dusty city of Datong is a sight to behold. A 1400 year old monastery is perched halfway up a sheer cliff wall. Constructed fifty meters up the rock face, the monastery is shielded from flooding of the river below. As I approached it from ground level it did not look that high.

The staircase grew increasingly narrow as I ascended the precipice. The monastery is supported by pillars of wood, which act as stilts. The stairs wind their way underneath the monastery, allowing zany Chinese tourists to vigorously shake the lumber that supports the very temple atop their heads. Once I had climbed up and peered down, my attitude about its altitude changed. With narrow pathways and knee high railings, the monk hang out was quite scary from above. I stuck as close to the walls of the monastery as I could.

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"Don't push! Safty first" - an unheeded warning sign atop the Hanging Monastery

Crash Landing

I soared through the air. This time I had taken flight willingly in a hot air balloon and not because I was at the mercy of a Chinese driver. Hovering thousands of meters above the earth, I surveyed the majestic scenery of Yangshuo below. Jagged peaks dotted the landscape as far as the eye could see. I sailed up into the clouds as the wisps of air evaporated around me, just barely out of reach. But the beauty of the clouds also posed a threat. The skies were becoming overcast, an ominous portent of things to come. Soon the first drops of rain started to fall, quickly picking up strength until it transformed into a full scale shower.

It was time for us to land but we were not near our base camp, having floated away in the opposite direction. We started our descent, but there was no chair to put back into upright position or seat belt to buckle up. After soaring at high altitudes for nearly an hour, the balloon was now only several hundred feet above the earth. We hovered over paddy fields and then drifted over to a nearby town. A spotter ran through the narrow lanes until he located an opening. He beckoned us towards an apartment complex with a basketball court. My trip to the troposphere became even more memorable as the pilot gracefully guided the hot air balloon on to the court. A few bemused spectators who had come out of their homes watched me breath a sigh of relief as soon as my feet touched the ground.

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"They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one." ~ Alan Shepard 

Full of Hot Air

I staggered outside before dawn and was ushered into a van. The door slid shut and darkness enveloped me. The van started moving. About half an hour later we were outside the city limits. The vehicle came to an abrupt halt. I stepped out. A truck was parked ahead of me. Further ahead I saw a crew dressed in combat fatigues assembling several large canisters, a basket, and a massive amount of multicoloured material into something altogether extraordinary.

It was around five in the morning. I was in the outskirts of Yangshuo, surrounded by magnificent karst peaks and a crew of workers putting together my means to see them from above. I went to inspect their handiwork. Suddenly a massive flame leapt into the air. I turned away, the heat glancing of my stubble in a ferociously sexy manner. The workers eagerly motioned me towards them. I walked towards the fire and climbed into the basket beneath it. I closed my eyes and felt myself floating up into the sky.

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"Sometimes you are overwhelmed when a thing comes, and you do not realize the magnitude of the affair at that moment. When you get away from it, you wonder, did it really happen to you?" ~ Marian Anderson

Xian Shenanigans

As a capital for a thousand years and the eastern end of the Silk Road, Xian played an important role in the development of Chinese civilization. After seeing the army of terracotta warriors firsthand, I journeyed to Xian's famed Muslim Quarter for some snacking. Street vendors sold tasty items such as chuan (meat on a stick) and cold noodles, which I slurped from a plastic bag. I headed back to the hostel in a three wheeled miniature paddy wagon. Pedestrians leapt out of the way as the three wheeler careened haphazardly through alleyways and sidewalks to avoid the traffic in the main streets.

The next day was left solely to explore the city of Xian, beginning with the world's largest city walls. Rather than take the easy way, I scaled a rickety old ladder up to the top of the fortifications. Chancing upon a reenactment of an ancient court, I went down from the wall to investigate. A bevy of Hawaiian beauties had also come to the city for a visit so they were being entertained by the local officials. I watched the performance along with the rest of the foreign dignitaries. My final stops before catching an overnight train back to Beijing were the Drum Tower and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, the emblem of the city.

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“I have not told half of what I saw.” ~ Marco Polo