The Long Road Home

I’m in the Springs and Autumns Temple in the town of Xuyong, in Southern Sichuan province, having a green tea, with a huge flask of boiling water by me. It’s pouring with rain, again. There are men on bamboo chairs at bamboo tables chatting, and some people playing mahjong. This temple is one of those places with coutyards and lotus ponds and bonsai trees and carved wooden windows. It was apparently built by Shaanxi salt merchants in 1900. There’s a stage where they watched plays and an open hall with birds painted on the ceiling where they’d meet to chat and discuss affairs. There’s a stone sign saying "officials and soldiers, get off your horses here".  I was actaully looking for an internet cafe, and then found this. In fact I just noticed there’s a sign for an internet cafe in a dark doorway in the temple front courtyard.  So that’s rather convenient.

Yesterday it was also pouring all day. I rode from Shuangsha,the little Switzerland place, further uphill for about 3 hours in the rain to the top of the pass and then sloshed down a couple of enormous descents with blank white cloud where probably there were fabulous views. I was wet the whole day and got really cold. The descents made me shake with cold. I thought something was wrong with the bike then realised it was me. There was not much on the road, the odd truck and bus splashing along.  I saw a flock of about 20 white egrets in a boggy field. People had got out their ultra-large straw hats with enormous brims. Like an umbrella on your head. A few bent old men were walking along the road in these hats looking like people out of ink wash paintings. People were nipping out of their big clay and thatch houses to do little things under the dripping eaves, then nipping back in. My feet got so cold I couldn’t feel my legs below the knees. I stopped and ate a whole pack of buns like dry madeleines you get in France. I sat in the shop at its coal stove with an old lady and the shopkeeper. The coals burn in a cylinder in the middle of a heavy square metal table. A big kettle sits in the middle on top. Underneath, there is a step for cats to lie on and a footrail. People sit round warming themsleves. It’s very nice. When it’s really cold you move the kettle and warm your hands directly over the coals. This is what we were doing. We watched a costume drama about Sino-Japanese war on the TV behind the shop counter.

Close to Xuyong town there were small quarries and coal mines with lorries pulling in and out, and I got covered in black from the coal and also a strange sort of blue grey from the quarries. I was very happy to get to a hotel with HOT water to warm up and wash everything. I had three bowls of crispy fried guotie dumplings which are one of my favourite things. It was at a stall owned by a man who’d lost his job when a saw mill owned by the county goverment stopped working. They have a very weird type of chocolate in the local shop.

I wanted to ride the last 100km to the Yangtze today but as it’s pouring, I am instead catching a bus this afternoon, hopefully, to get to Chengdu. That’s a bit disappointing, but yesterday’s wet cold ink wash experience was enough. Actually it’s very nice to be dry and warm and drinking hot tea in a temple.

Note to Puk if you are reading this: please explain where the merchants bought the salt and how the system worked again. Sorry I know you already explained but I forgot.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 13th, 2006 at 4:23 am and is filed under On the Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.