kaspar könig

this time in the freshimpress:

leaving CAFA for a travel to Chengdu (Sichuan, central china)
bus, train, cab and riksja travelling
Mount emei , mushrooms
& the recycled mob

This time no pictures in the mail, forgot the connectorcable. Also my mobile phone rests in beijing so it’ll be a read-only- fresh impress.

Maja arrived at beijing 10 days ago and we’ve been planning to travel around a little. Chengdu about 32 houres by “hard sleeper” direction south-east from beijing. Capital of the good food provence Sichuan. A city that has been capital in early days and is kind of “the little brother/sister” of beijng. There is a more friendly and playfull vibe in the chengdu. There is more attention to the historical part of the city. We’re staying in the dragon hostel now and there is a major contstruction site in the whole block that is aiming on rebuilding in the original way, the original houses(hutongs). The woodworkers wake us up and the fresh smell of wood is welcoming you in the street. It’s very divers this street especially now. Imagine a mudd street with a new drainage system in the middle that is leeking water and suprisingly it doen’s smell! It must be clear water.. Pavements are missing but the bricks are delivered. All stadia of the lifecircle of a house are represented in the street. A new “old” one, just across the street, a scaffolding next door, a ripped off one next to that, an empty space behind the hostal. The rest of the street is just like that in a big transition and in all different stades in between. incredibe. Workers sleep on the site, and restaurants use the wood of the site to burn the fire for the meat, that is hanging on the scaffolding of the site to dry. The foremen are playing cards under the only bulb, and the dark street is like a perfect BMX cross-circuit. Would love to be a child with such a bike now, but wonder how the elder people (mostly represented in this neighbourhood) get along with this extra dark and trickfull street.

Back to the hardsleeper. The hardsleeper sleeps quiet hard. Though the train is very comfortable. The mixture of people is curious but foreigners are rare. That makes the travel very adventures because our mandarin is still very poor and no help from outside. Communication is still depending on good will to understand and trying to speak, show, gesture and look. To get off at the right station was no problem. The tickets are taken in the beginning of the travel and you get a kind of waitingnumber instead. The tickets dissappear in a big book with the corresponding bed numbers and the waggon-stewardess folds the tickets exactly with the destination still visible. Every stop she opens the book to look for the travellers to get off at the next stop. She returns your ticket and we returned the number. There was a great waiting in between. Many beautiful sceneries, and sometimes a shaking shock due to some old tracks.

Our idea was visiting the mount Emei (shan) with a top of 3099 meter. Many buddhist tempels and monastaries, monkeys and even pandas are said to be lifely represented in this aerea. Well probably it could, would, should be, though we didn’t see any of it due to a blinding fogg that was overtaking our sight. To two houres climbing ride was in this thicky fogg and even at the top we could hardly see more then ten meters, so no wonder that we couldn’t shiver at the cliffs, where very fanatic monks have commited suicide after seeing a mysterical aura around their heads. It is occuring phenomenon in the mountains and there is a physilogical explaination for it. Nevertheless our promised wide-sight/view stayed undiscovered. Unfortunatly the whole setup of the mountain is like an attractionparc with a hugh amount of merchandise, cable cars, panoramamonorail and extra attractions , we also couldnn’t see, so again an advantage next to the bad luck weather!

We ate one of the breadiest mushrooms, we’ll ever eat. Imagine a toasted toast in a simple waterbased-sauce. Make slices like frecnch fries and add a little salt, put bitter bamboo to it and add someother very small red mushroom in it. et voila, you got the three specialities of mount emei.

The bus is taking us to our utmost of traffic tolerance. two lanes are three. Three are four and the loudest horn takes the privilige. Sometimes the bus tries to do what I did with the bike 3 weeks ago. Getting a second price in the slow-overtaking contest! Glad we rely on the jin an yan from time to time! Riksja nevertheless is my favourite sofar. Not for long distances but the best medicine for transportation during rush-hours, when bus, taxi and everything is stuck!

I’ll end this fresh impress with the catagory very interesting & upcoming products: the recycled mob! Although I couldn’t try the comfort of using it yet…it seems to work even in the muddy street of the dragon hostel. yes, a bamboo stick, (we don’t know if that was recycled or not, it is plastified and we cannot see its origine anymore), anyway on the end of the broomstick a collection of slices of old cotton clothes. All the collours/patterns qualities you can imagine coton clothes in. I even saw my piyama look-a-like mob! I bring that one home!

Thank you for your reactions and you’re welcome to forward this fresh impress as you like!

look forward to the NEXT fresh impress, with chuongqing and shanghai- stories and it also might be THE LAST FRESH IMPRESS!

take care, best regards