If you have ever lived in a large Chinese Metropolis you probably know the feeling. I was surrounded by towering apartment buildings which seemed to have no end, just becoming more sparse the further from the center you got. Theoretically they should have become so sparse at some point they would just run out. But that point never came, there was always just a new center, and it was impossible to traverse the vast territory of abandoned factories and humungous building sites expanding the city ever further.
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| The endless smoggy metropolis that is Zhengzhou. In this photo is the Henan TV tower, believe it or not, this is the very edge of Zhengzhou. |
The city was expanding so quickly and was already so vast and smoggy that it felt to me like a universe in its own right. (Zhengzhou is considered a small city in China).
I needed escape, work (Teaching English as a foreign language at Zhengzhou New Dynamic Institute) was breaking me down. It wasn't hard and it's semi-enjoyable but after 6 months with no break the natural erosion of the soul caused by the 9-5 (in my case the 2-8) was taking its toll on me. I asked for more days off, maybe some holiday time, fat chance, I was the only European teacher my school had, they weren't going to lose their poster boy (yes, many Chinese people are that shallow (and yes I'm aware that I'm making a sweeping generalization about the Chinese tendency to generalize)).
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| The Side of the Da Shanghai shopping Mall in Zhengzhou |
I then asked for consecutive days off.
"No".
So I had a 24hr window to get out of this hideous city.
The day after my revelation I dragged myself out of bed at 6am and with my girlfriend, got the first bus to Dengfeng (1hr to the west of Zhengzhou).
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| Nested in the Song Shan Mountains, the Beautiful city of Dengfeng. |
The bus was crowded, like most transport in China but it wasn't dirty. The on board television was playing Henan Opera, a favorite in Zhengzhou. From the window of the bus Zhengzhou looked smaller, more penetrable and eventually it gave way to a gravelly wasteland, comprised of rubble, scrap metal fences and lonely looking derelict towers. This then gave way to trees, then hills, the trees turned to forests and the hills to mountains. Soon enough the bus was driving towards the Song Shan range of mountains, at the foot of which was the city of Dengfeng.
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| Henan Opera |
On a Chinese scale Dengfeng isn't much of a city at all. More of a village, population maybe 300,000. At the bus station, the usual hordes of chancers and opportunists were trying to sell their illegal services to vulnerable tourists and hardy travelers.
"Shaolin Si! Shaolin Si!", they screamed excitedly at seeing the obvious foreigner.
"Bu yao, xie xie ni",
"Shaolin Si! Shaolin Su! Shaolin Si!!!", They insisted,
"I said no, aren't you listening to me?"
"Shaolin Si",
"NOOOOOO!",
"Shaolin Si", they whimpered disappointingly.
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| The Shaolin Temple (Shaolin Si), birthplace of Zen Buddhism and top tourist attraction. Here it is with some monks outside posing for the camera. |
We exited the terminal post haste and quickly soliceted the help of a local man with a Mian Bao Che (Bread Car). He said it was 50RMB a person to get up Mt Song. Apparently it was one of the five sacred Taoist mountains in China. Not only that, Song Shan is considered to greatest. I was skeptical, I was convinced he was just trying to rip us off, get a bit of dosh at the expense of some foreigners. Despite my skepticism of the dodgy man near the bus station (every terminal in the world seems to attract the same type of people) my girlfriend was convinced of his honesty, so we climbed into the funny little truck and were on our way.
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| An overcooked Mian Bao Che, our little bread van was much less on fire than this one. |
The truck climbed high above Dengfeng and into the forested mountains. Eventually we came to a dried up old riverbed along witch was a bridge and a checkpoint. The man told us to get out and cross the riverbed, we climbed down and ran across as fast as we could without being spotted by the guards, eager to charge us 50 yuan for entry. We scrambled up the other side and hopped back into our ride. Our diver had convinced the checkpoint that he was just bringing some much needed supplies to the monks who lived in the temples dotted around the mountains. We drove along more precarious mountain roads, first tarmac, then dirt before we being dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Just us, a path into the forest and a Taoist Temple.
End of Part 1
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