Great Firewall of China Part 13: Jewels flowing in the mountains

9/19 Went out for a fancy dinner of spicy sichuan hot pot with Sally
and Richard. Sichuan is famous for it's hot pots (boiling, spicy oil
in which you cook meat and vegetables like a fondue) and it's SPICE.
And it didn't let us down. So tasty, and so spicy. We were sweating
like we had been playing a hard game of b-ball. We wondered why we
had been given napkins for the first time since we were in china...to
wipe the sweat off. Richard asked me if I had seen all the graffiti
on the toilet about how people were feeling the day (and two and
three) after the hot pot. Made me wonder if I should be hopping on a
12 hour bus ride the next day!

9/20 Took the bus from Chengdu to Juizhaigou in the very northern
part of Sichuan right up against the tibetan plateau. The drive of
course was beautiful. Over mountain passes, through deep canyons,
along raging rivers, some massive reservoirs, and tiny villages full
of life. Basically drove the whole south north of Sichuan in one day.
Of course just like in the rest of Asia, chinese driving is crazy.
And sure enough, about 50km's from our destination, we were in an
accident. A minivan was trying to overtake our bus around a blind
curve when a big dump trunk was coming the other way. The bus driver
tried honking reapeatedly, but apparently the minivan thought it could
still overtake us. It tried to squeeze between the two big vehicles,
but got smashed between the two. Both large vehicles just had
scratches, but the minivan was squished. The driver was ok though.
An interesting note. As soon as the accident happened, everyone piled
out of the bus. I was in the back, so I came out at the end. The
first thought of all the chinese on the tour bus was to take photos of
the accident as if it was a tourist site as opposed to check if the
guy was hurt. Luckily he wasn't, and by the time I got out he was
crawling out through the smashed windshield. Strange though...my
first thought would have been to run and see if he was ok as opposed
to take my photo in front of the accident while giving the peace sign.

9/21 Visited Jiuzhaigou national park, a world biosphere reserve and
one of the premier national parks in Asia. It's a large park
incorporating several mountains just under 15,000 feet, many valleys
and canyons and even some rare wildlife such as the giant panda and
red panda. The crown jewel of the park, and pretty much the only
part open to visitors is two glacial canyons that have a multitude of
shimmering and multi-hued lakes separated by sweeping waterfalls.
Typical of chinese national parks I have been to so far, it's not some
alone in the wilds of nature experience, but one that is full of
chinese tourists and very easily accessible. Visiting national parks
in Asia always makes me proud of our own national parks back in the
States. With as much problems as I realize they have (from working in
one and with people that dealt with more of the beauracracy), our
parks are really great. Our parks our there for protection,
education, and for the average American to enjoy and get in touch with
nature. Sometimes I feel like the parks here are set up to appease
those around the globe putting pressure on a country to protect
something and then using it as a money making enterprise for the
government. For example with this park, it costs an unbelievable 35
bucks to enter (valid for only 1 day 7am-6pm) plus a mandatory 15
dollar shuttle bus fee. This may not seem like a lot but consider the
price of entering say RMNP or Zion. I can't quite remember the
current prices, but it's something like 25 bucks for the day, 50 bucks
for the annual pass and 90 bucks for an annual pass good for all
national parks in the country (and these prices are per vehicle so
split between everyone in the car). And keep in mind the difference
in cost for things between American and China (average salary in china
is still 400 bucks a month...a good meal costs 1.50, a beer less than
50 cents, and a good hotel 5-15 bucks). And both RMNP and Zion
include the visitor shuttle for free. And then on top of all this, I
feel as though our parks are WAY better at actually protecting than
these. Like I said, these always feel sort of like amusement parks
shuttling in the chinese tourists. And in our parks we have so many
ammenities and services (drinking water, nice toilets, miles and miles
and miles of trails, informative signs, free ranger talks, helpful
visitor centers, rescue services, fire protection, research, law
enforcement, etc. Here the majority of employees of the parks are
selling souvenirs, food, or even working at the fancy hotels in some
of the parks (thank goodness not this one as it a world biosphere
reserve so it has stricter international rules). Perhaps one of the
best things about our parks back home is the freedom we have to really
explore. In parks in Asia you usually have to stict to a few very
strict paths (if they even let you alone without a guide) whereas back
home you are free to explore to your hearts content and there are
always dozens and dozens of options of well marked trails or excellent
maps. So just wanted to put in a blurb about how great I have noticed
our national parks are in comparison to the majority of Asian parks.

With that said...this park was absolutely gorgeous...and I was here on
a cloudy morning and rainy afternoon. I can really only imagine (or
see the pictures of the israelis who were in the park the day before
when the sun was out) how gorgeous it must be with a big bright sun.
It is really hard to describe how cool the colors of the lakes are. I
suppose it would be best to just google image the national park.

I started out the day by taking the shuttle to the end of the first
canyon at an elevation of about 10,000 feet. You could walk on a
boardwalk trail through "virgin" forest. Apparently one of the few
big tracts of forests that was left untouched by the massive logging
exploitation of the 70's and 80's in China. The University of
Washington and UC-Berkley both have research teams up here studying
the unique geology as well as the ecology (and pandas) and they had an
informative sign in the forest that showed their research on this
dense forest and how their data shows how much more oxygen this area
of sichuan has, how much cooler in temperature it is, and how much
more stable it is in moisture...go figure. All things China is
suffering with: pollution, heat waves, and unusual moisture cycles
(drought, desertification, and flooding). Hmmm...tack on another one
for the enviro wackos as my dad calls them.

After taking a stroll through the forest I walked the 12 or so km's
down the canyon where you come across one sparkling lake after
another. The lakes and rivers are as clear as they get. As clear as
the alpine lakes in rocky...though they differ in that they have
unique blue, emerald, turqoise, and other blue/green spectra colors.
Similar to the colors you would see on a gorgeous island surrounded by
a reef. In fact, there are often dark spots in the lakes here from
some sort of calcium build up and so from above it almost looks like
what it looks like when you are flying over a shallow turqoise sea
that is full of darker coral areas. Truly sublime. The lakes (I
counted over 37 for the whole day) are separate by these giant
waterfalls...tall but more massive in their widths (they are known as
shoals here). The rivers/streams here are unique as well in that they
just flow right through the forest and bushes. There isn't always a
defined path, but it just flows right down through all the trees.
Another unique thing is that there are lots of fallen trees at the
bottom of these gorgeous blue lakes. The trees, which now have algae
growths on them, glow a light green and make for an interesting
spectacle.

The canyon eventually interesected another canyon and I took the bus
up to the top of this one where there were a couple lakes. One called
5-coloured lake, was especially gorgeous. The blues and green in that
one were just simply stunning. I took the bus back down to the
intersection and then walked several more km's back to the entrance
walking by many more lakes and shoal waterfalls. Something so amazing
about this park is not just the beauty, but how packed the sights are
together. In RMNP some of the more "packed" with scenic lake areas
like the stuff out of glacier gorge trailhead or bear lake have
several lakes in a row, but they are usually at the very least 1 mile
apart. These ones had lakes and waterfalls just stacked right up on
each other, which of course is great for the bus hopping chinese
tourists, but also a feast for the eyes for someone like me.

I don't know if it was b/c I was feeling a bit frustrated by the
weather or bc I had been hanging out with a fair amount of japanese
(the japanese have to be my favorite people and culture have visited
so far and there are a fair amount here. The japanese are
disliked...even hated in china so they don't travel much, but here in
western china where there is more minority tribes and tibetans they
feel more comfortable to travel) and remembering how cool they are,
but I was a bit annoyed by the Chinese today. I kept having lots of
them try and take photos of me. They were doing it without asking as
they usually do and they were trying to do it secretly, and would act
like they weren't when I would turn. I guess I would rather have them
just ask. And then as we are in a highly tibetan area (most of the
chinese tourists are the ethnic majority Han) the chinese tourists
will pay to dress up in their outfits to get their picture taken. But
they seem to do it in a very disrespectful manner, like the Tibetans
are some disney character or less people. And of course this gets my
ire as it is these same Han chinese who are moving in at great numbers
to out-populate the tibetans in tibet and thus take over tibet in that
manner.


One of the japanese gals I was hanging out with had michael bolton's
Said I loved you but I lied song stuck in her head and was singing it
a lot of this evening in the dorm, so I thought this would be a good
time to repost our infamous utah trip said I loved you but I lied

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsL-J524hL0


Tomorrow I am going to Hualong national park with 3 malaysians and we
are sharing a taxi which is actually cheaper than taking the bus and
much quicker.