blood, sweat and stone

Leshan, Sichuan Province (14/09/2013)
Location: A 2 hour bus ride south from Chengdu.
Population: 533,000.
Famed For: Having the tallest Buddha in the world.

At the weekend we meet up with the other Chengdu interns in the city. It's a chance to catch up on what's been happening, swap gossip, trade teaching tales and relax, far away from anything that smells like chalk or students.

It also makes me and G feel incredibly lucky with our placement and school. I sit, fingers pressed to my mouth in horror at some of the stories the other interns share- apartments infested with mould, peculiar neighbours, demons guised as students who spit and sleep or swear and leave, forty hour weeks, lessons observed by parents and principals, inedible canteen food- and can say that the only unfortunate incident I've had so far is that on Friday morning I woke to find myself locked inside my bedroom.

 

(No amount of handle rattling, pulling, banging or coaxing would open the door. I had to yell for G -who was fortunately in the apartment at the time- who, to cut a long story short, called Beata, who sent a workman who  hummed and hawed and twisted the handle until he eventually agreed that yes, the door was indeed stuck shut.

At which point, he downed his bag of tools and kicked the door in.

 

Whatever works.)

 

The other interns are, of course, simultaneously both annoyed and impressed with mine and G's good luck, but we all toast to our experience here in China- we all know it'll be character building, character changing one way or another- and ganbei our beer.

 

It's an early start to a long day on Saturday as we journey to Leshan to see the giant Buddha carved into the mountainside.

It's the result of the ingenuity of an 8th century monk named Haitong; he hoped creating a giant Buddha to watch over the vast river that flowed past would calm the often turbulent and sometimes dangerous currents that threatened local shipping boats. This plan had a great deal of merit- the huge amount of rock and dirt shifted by carving out the giant Maitreya would be put in the river, altering the currents and slowing the river's flow.

 

Unfortunately, part way through, government funding for the project was threatened. Haitong, to show his piety and sincerity for the project decided to take drastic action.

 

 He gouged out his own eyes.   

 

We weave our way up through the pretty wooded park, round imposing stone towers, threading through crowds of worshippers at wooden temples, their knees bent on buttercup yellow cushions as they clutch smoking sticks of incense. The air becomes still, stifling, humming with insects. Our clothes cling to our bodies, sweat makes our skin shine, and my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth.

 

And then we emerge, breathless, beside the ear of Buddha.

 

Slightly mossy and a little faded with age, this 233ft statue is still breathtakingly impressive, and we follow the crowds of people lining up to carefully pick their way down the sharply cut stairs inlaid into the side of the mountain so that we can reach the bottom of the Buddha.

It's a slightly hairy descent, the steps often narrowed or worn with age, the handrail low and slippery and I'm glad I'm wearing sensible shoes and that I don't suffer from vertigo.

 

 

 

But it's worth the trip for the view at the bottom. The statue is so spectacularly large, that a family of three can quite easily have a picnic on the nail of the Buddha's big toe, and trying to angle the camera to take pictures of ourselves and the statue requires some imaginative placing. As it is, I manage to get a picture of myself and my friends K and L with a bit of the Buddha's leg in the background.

 

The rest of the weekend is spent recovering from the slog back up the mountainside and trying not the scratch at mosquito bites. We stroll through Jinli street, a pleasant tourist trap, full of shops selling prayer beads and jade, Tibetan carvings, good luck symbols engraved on grains of rice, indian scarves and sugar spun animals. We pick at food stalls selling everything from deep fried dumplings to something called 'three times mud', intestines to melon slices on sticks. It's a lovely place, especially at night when the glow of the red lanterns lights up the dark wood panelling that the shops are built from. Still, as we sit in Starbucks drinking hot chocolate, it's hard to believe that this is an authentic recreation of ancient China (which is what the sign proclaims as you enter the street.) It's the Disney version, clean and shiny and wholesome. 

 

We leave Jinli street with the feeling of having been in a kind of Twilight Zone, an Alice in Wonderland China, except here everything is horribly neat and orderly and disconcerting.

 

Five minutes down the road, someone clears their throat by my shoes and we almost get run over by a taxi.

 

Unconsciously, we all relax.