We
never head out early enough for me.
Half the day’s gone by the time we’re about to leave and someone says
they’re hungry so we may as well have lunch first. But today, as noted yesterday was going to be the day we
visited the “Tang Dynasty Caves, near Yong Ning.” Loaded with lunch, coffees, ATMs, gas we headed off on the
wrong highway, and wound up over at the airport bonded customs area. I stared up from my computer and stated that this was
completely wrong. Soon we were
speeding past our neighborhood again and many voices were raised to simply call
it a day.
http://www.beijinghikers.com/hike-in-beijing/view/267/tang-dynasty-cave-dwellings-and-yongning-town/
Across the sixth ring road, up and out the Ba Da Ling
highway passed the most touristed section of the Great Wall. The air was heavy with moisture and
let’s-not-consider what else as we drove up into the foothills and tried to
make out the more dramatic mountains in the distance. Getting off the highway we followed the road north to
Yanqing, which surprised us all by being a reasonably clean town, with a nice
waterfront on to an aqueduct. They
had a bank, which I needed, once again, and, interestingly a prominent church,
right by the roadside.
But the town that the article said I wanted was till
seventeen kilometers away in Yongning.
Traveling there the road slowed down to a two-lane affair, where people
use the road as their workshop, and their back porch, their playground. Considering this, I put my computer away
and then, with pause for dramatic affect began to berate everyone else that screen
time was over. We slowed waited
for the oncoming lane to free up so we could swerve around the maw of a
spinning gravel making machine that women and men were shoveling loose stones
into. Behind them a roadside house
was stripped down to its dark wooden skeleton. Speeding away, beneath the roadside poplar trees, the rain
finally began to fall.
“You can tell it’s going to pass soon.” I offered,
optimistically. Visions of the family at the base of a trail up to caves,
huddling beneath one umbrella presented themselves, uninvited. “So where are these caves?” My wife
asked intelligently. “The article
(written in English) suggests its near Yong Ning town. “OK, well here we are.” Up ahead was a sign for the “Old City”
and the universal sign for tourist information a lower case “i” in a circle. “Fine then, let’s head up to the right.”
Now, I’m a post-modern fellow, and my wife’s a post-modern
gal. She’s a perfectly fine
driver. But heading up the
medieval main street of Yong Ning in the rain, considering the medieval
drainage system of old Yong Ning, my wife repeatedly stopped, and meditated upon the rush of water, or the depth of a puddle. 天雨路滑[1]. Off
to the sides, the storefronts were evocative and one could imagine riding
through on a horse during the Qing Dynasty. I tried to imagine.
Really I did. But then
someone beeped their horn, and someone else cut around us and I could help but
yell “Go, already!” This was not well received.
Up at the faux pagoda at the top of the road, that was
probably rebuilt after the original was torn down in a revolutionary fever, we
paused again and considered the four roads before us. My wife stopped again, in front of a couple who were taking
a photo. We paused for what felt
like a while. I barked again. I was admonished again. We parked. It was not the best launch pad from which to begin asking
the locals where the “Tang Dynasty Caves” were. Everyone’s Chinese is native except mine. “Well, go find it.”
Fortunately the rain had stopped. My stepson took a quick trot outside and returned to say that
there were no “Tang Dynasty Caves” near here. Lovely. My wife
announced that she was off to buy fresh tofu, which was a town specialty. I considered the population for who was
the best bet for directions to local sites of interest. Most of the stores were
mercifully still serving the needs of the local community, rather than
bric-a-brac for day-trippers like us, but this also meant that they were devoid
of anything but cheap plastic goods. I considered the man in the wheel chair with the large
Buddhist-bead bracelet yelling in triumph as he slapped down a chess piece and
decided to go in to the empty restaurant behind him and the fellas instead.
Hopeful, I approached what appeared to be a reasonably
intelligent woman and asked her for the Tang Dynasty Caves near here. “You know, the Tang Dynasty Caves. . .
“ Absorbing her vacant stare, her frown and then her smirk in quick succession,
she stated with implausible confidence that they didn’t exist. Fortunately the man beside her, whom
I’d initially disregarded as an extra piped up, “you mean GuYaJu?” “Sure, yeah, caves?” “Well, you go back down, left and then
you head up right.” “Cool. How did you say that again?
GuYaJu?” “GuYaJu.” “GuYaJu. Thanks.”
Repeating this precious phrase over and over I went to
where my wife and stepson were, buying tufu from a cart in the street. I said “GuYaJu” and they laughed at
me. “Which “ya?” “Which “ju?” “I have no idea.”
My mind reached for possibilities like “old goose hut.” My stepson stated needlessly that he
had no way of looking up Romanized utterances. Fortunately though, my repeated insistence of the phrase had
drawn the attention of the neighboring tofu shoppers. Slowly at first, and then, like frogs in a spring pond,
everyone began saying “guyaju” over and over. I looked smug and said “exactly.”
Having determined that we were looking for the famous 古崖居，Gǔ yá jū, http://baike.baidu.com/view/38012.htm
we could aim ourselves and march off to see these caves. “Remember girls, there are no extant
Tang Dynasty buildings in China, this is a cool chance to see . . . What?” “It’s about an hour’s drive from here, back the way we came
from.
This blow would need to be handled carefully. It could easily prove fatal. “The lady said we wouldn’t make it.” “The tofu lady.” “It’s getting dark,” offered my son. I scowled. “OK, I have it mapped out now on Baidu maps. It’s forty kilometers.” “Good. Let’s go.”
This blow would need to be handled carefully. It could easily prove fatal. “The lady said we wouldn’t make it.” “The tofu lady.” “It’s getting dark,” offered my son. I scowled. “OK, I have it mapped out now on Baidu maps. It’s forty kilometers.” “Good. Let’s go.”
The car smelt strongly of tofu. In the back apparently it was much worse. GPS helped considerably and before long
we were driving along w dramatic cliff face, (as the "ya" might suggest) and found ourselves at GuYaJu parking lot. “It’s five kuai to park.” “What time to
you close” “what “close?””, I offered in a bit too spirited a local
brogue. Notably unappreciated. “How long does it take to get up
there?” “We’ll be fine. One
hundred and fifty kaui later on entrance fees we were all a bit hesitant,
perhaps as we trod up the path, (billed as a “level 1” - wherein “1” was the
easiest on a scale of 1-5, sort of hike,) we made our way off in the
sun-behind-mountain twilight of the day, finally cleared, the mid-autumn moon
finally out we made our way up passed wild flowers and wild crab trees to the
remarkable Tang Dynasty cliff face dwellings that must have comprised a town at
one time. Standing on the bluff
before the second of these complex with the sun going further down we
photographed ourselves a few dozen times. We were all together and we were very happy to be there.
Down below, there was something disconcerting. The valley led down to a broad
plane. At the base, before us was
an odd Potemkin Village of some sort, complete with, what I discerned must be a
fake, church. Every house was the
same, as complex look flying down into LA from the sky, neat rows of homogenous
dwellings. What is that?
It turns out to be
the Zhang Shang Ying Camp, which had an Romanized name like Keystone or
Telluride or something similarly improbable. In search of dining, we made it past the strict security suggesting we were
heading in for dinner. The
camp, was a series of private villas with a sub-Disney-esque lodge house in the
center sporting two concrete moustachioed gents looking to all the world like
Theodore Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling galloping off into the parking lot. In the center of ‘town’ there were
concrete cowboys, playing concrete guitars and saxophones behind a live woman,
singing karaoke. http://baike.baidu.com/view/477515.htm
We were all
confused. Apparently this was a
prelaunch, before the big launch.
I don’t think I’ll go back.
Down the road was a new Hilton.
It made us all wonder if this was near the location Beijing was betting
on for the two-thousand-whatever winter Olympics. We found our way back to YanQing, had reasonable local
family-style fare and later that evening found our way under pass and over highway, back home.
This morning I have
been enjoying our old friend Gilberto Gil. I have never met the Brazilian Minister of Culture but I’ve
been a fan for years. Indeed I saw
him perform here in Beijing in 1999 or so, over in Ritan Park, which was
memorable. I’ve got him on now
from his 1971 album “Nega.” The
song that happens to be on just now is the Blind Faith song “Somebody Must
Change” which he as characteristically inhabited completely, convincingly. I’ve listened to four of five albums of
his from the period and he sounds like someone I know.
In a few hours a
few family guests will begin to arrive for a Mid-Autumn Festival jiaozi-bao-ing. It is absolutely lovely
outside.
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