The trip to the Bingling Temple Buddha Caves in Gansu Province began at the West Bus Station in Lanzhou where the woman who sold me a ticket waved me toward a ticket taker with laugh lines so deep they looked as if they were etched in with an eyebrow pencil. She in turn shooed me toward a line of buses, and every subsequent person I encountered looked at my ticket and waved me further down the line, till the last one looked, nodded, and allowed me to board a beat up bus that smelled vaguely like an old couch. It was 9:45 a.m. and my ticket read 9:40, which means they held up the bus for me. Gladdened by this bit of blundering good fortune, I looked around for someone to thank, but the bus door abruptly closed with a compressing crunch and we lurched forward across pavement shiny with rain. We headed west along the Yellow River, paralleling a green belt, and out the window I saw a giant teapot suspended in midair, pouring a yellowed spout of plastic tea into a cup, an oversized statue of a badminton shuttlecock, a gray unoccupied ghost town of newly built residential skyscrapers, and a platoon of soldiers in dress uniforms marching in the rain. Turning away from the river, we bumped through a junk-spanse of industrial petro-chemical Don Quixote windmill monstrosities that is West Lanzhou, then mercifully began climbing up through crumbling brown hills, the bus driver honking the horn and swerving around stubborn lines of slow-moving, rusty dump trucks carrying even more brown dirt off to a place where maybe brown dirt is appreciated. At the top we leveled off and crossed cultivated bench lands with new corn as high as high as a red panda’s eye and squat flat-roofed towns seen through steamy condensation-clouded windows. Then, in the middle of nowhere, two soggy men wearing black Mao caps flagged down the bus. There was nothing out there, no farm, no dwelling, no cave, only wild trees offering the merest suggestion of shelter from the rain, and I wondered where they came from, what they were carrying in their rice bags, where they were going and what prompted them to go. One of them sat in front of me and I was fascinated by the lines on the back of his neck that resembled an alluvial fan. I was thinking that reading the back of a neck would probably reveal more than reading palms, but his partner caught me staring, so I smiled and turned away. In two hours we were in the city of Liu Jia Xia. I got off the bus wondering how I would find my way to the boats that took you to the Bingling Grotto when I heard, “Bingling, go to Bingling?” I turned and there was a man offering me a soaked pamphlet in English featuring the Buddha caves. I asked how much, and he replied 100 RMB (roughly $16.00 USD). It was raining, he had no customers, so I was in a strong position to barter, but sixteen dollars to take me 45 minutes by car to the boat that would then take 30 minutes to travel to the Bingling Temple, where the boatman would wait for me for an hour and a half while I explored the Caves, then transport me back to the dock, where the driver would then drive another 45 minutes back to the bus station, man, I just didn’t have the heart. A car pulled up ejecting a passenger and suddenly he had another customer, a giggly Chinese woman carrying a backpack. As we walked to his car, I told him I needed some food. He waved his hand in a no problem manner and we were off. As we were driving, he showed me a picture of the boat, and it had a cover to keep out the sun and the rain and looked very seaworthy. Swerving to the right, he parked illegally on a busy corner and disappeared, leaving the car running. I was used to this in China and so was unfazed. Then he was back, offering a long, square, dense bread-like offering that he smiled and said was ‘Chinese Pizza.’ Apparently, to him, this would be all that I would need to sustain me through the day. He was so proud of himself that I just went along with it, saying “ting hao,” which I understood to mean very good. I turned to the backseat and tried to communicate with the woman passenger, but she didn’t appear to understand anything I said, in any language. We rose up, spiraling more brown dirt hills, then raced through more farm country, the woman in the back seat bludgeoning the driver with her incessant yakking, until we were driving along the shores of a huge lake. Suddenly, the driver perked up—he was very proud of this lake—created by damming the Yellow River, and kept saying to me, “See, see!” I did see; it was beautiful. Lakeshore living and the living was easy. The crops were riotous in their growth and surging. The people we passed seemed to walk easier, instantly willing to smile and wave at the laowai (foreigner) in the red car. All too soon, we were at the docks. Seven boats were tied up and rocking gently in the lake current. At a nearby ferry landing, orange rain-jacketed workers loaded trucks to be ferried across the lake to I didn’t know where. A van had been waiting for us and the passengers sprang out of the open door like paratroopers. Now we had a boatload and were led down to a waiting boat. But I was still hungry. I had seen a square ringed with the kind of large umbrellas food sellers usually gathered under, and while we waited for women in our group to use the bathroom, I bolted in search of food. I bought two hardboiled eggs for 2 kwai (approx. 32 cents USD) but the imported potato chips, stacked and packed in tubes, cost 8 kwai (about $1.29 USD). No matter, the provisions were meager but at least I had food, and as I turned to rush back to the boat, six of my fellow passengers were coming up the hill also in search of food. The guides looked perturbed; it seems I had started a movement. Soon we boarded the boat, eight passengers and our driver consisting of Me—the pale faced laowai, a mom and dad and their two daughters, the woman I rode in the taxi with, and a young couple who seemed to be spending their first outing without chaperones. As we set out in the fast speedboat, I had no idea the trouble this young couple would cause later in the day, after the Buddha caves worked their magic, raindrops made lazy expanding circles in the blue-green lake, and everyone just wanted to head back home, eat dinner and absorb the miracle of the journey. Instead, patience had come and gone, nerves were frayed and in the end, everyone was shouting. But that came later. Right now we were zipping across the lake, over the ghosts of rural villages drowned when they built the dam, each of us trying to be the first to spot the Buddha caves, as the boat swerved into delight and historical religious mystery.
3 Comments
Mary
6/27/2013 08:28:30 am
Oh no a cliffhanger!!!! Can't wait for Part 2. I so enjoy reading your adventures I was there with you but not as daring as you. What a mystery it looks like a mystery lake hope you spot the Budda Caves first. Just have to wait for Part 2!!!
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Erika MarĂa
6/28/2013 01:43:55 pm
Revelation Tour... the spot I would like to vistit tonight! to isolate myself from the world... The sculpture is a principle of revelation to me.. dear Elvis, please tell me more details about him! I also love the picture where there are tremendous dark brown rocky mountains beetling over tiny looking trees! & Dear I´m sure the quiet lady was thinking that you were a pleasant fellow with unique hair & sweet eyes! ups sorry that´s me! :) thank you for the blog.
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