The Last Hike/Run

Slowly waking from another brief sleep. Grey skies, mild temp. Indistinct phone conversations in a totally unintelligible yet familiar-sounding language, the one spoken in almost every place that I have visited in this travel craze. In this too brief of a visit and too long of a layover, I'm seeing and hearing them in their natural habitat. Chinese, the most populous of all.

Sleeping in an airport bench helped a whole lot more than expected (especially with Dan Dan Mien sitting in my stomach) but I'm aware that I've been pushing my old system. I'm just dumb like that. Even dumber might be the idea to skip the pandas, teahouses and Chinese Opera that Chendgu has to offer, taking this magnetically-levitating bullet train to Leshan for an hour to see the biggest Buddha in the world. I'll be dangerously cutting it close to my flight home, but I'm dumb like that. 

Buying this train ticket was a minor chaos; the automated kiosk scans your government-issued ID before dispensing a ticket, so as a non-citizen I had to go to the teller which means waiting in lines along with loud phone convos and constant cutting. A near disorder. Survival of the loudest and the rudest. As my stress level slowly rises, wishing that I had my earplugs, I thought about pre-buying the return ticket. Then again, I'm not sure how long it'll take to go thru this Giant Buddha National Park. The big screen above our heads shows, in 16-bit MS-DOS style, the number of available seats for each train and they are still in hundreds. Kay, I'm not gonna worry. Let's be like water, and go see this Giant Buddha. 

The decent-sized park houses a handful of temples, a modest museum and a "fishing village" that serves as a souvenir stop and restaurants. It welcomes you with a pretty steep set of stairs and a nice view of Leshan City across the water as an encouragement. By the time your ass muscle screams and trembles, a series of gorgeous temples that hold gold sculptures of the familiar faces. Nothing to be dismissed but I'm keeping my eyes on the prize.

Then without much fanfare, you find yourself looking at the big man's right visage. Kind of a long, almost childish depiction of Maitreya, looking out to the muddy confluence of three rivers (Min, Qingyi and Dadu) and beyond. Measured at 71m (233ft), neither Buddha of Nara nor Kuan Yin of Penang even compares. And it's 1200 years old, took them monks 90 years to finish. Nara one is older, but this mofo is carved out of a cliff. Speaking of which, to appreciate and pray to this mega-icon, you have to take some of the narrowest and steepest of the staircases you've ever seen with hundreds of Chinese tourists snapping shots and holding up the line. Think of Grand Canyon path but 300% more density and annoyance. Just think of the monk and what they had to go through to make this happen. Channel your inner Bodhisattva. I tried.

Worth a visit. Glad I got to make this my last hike of the trip. I just didn't know that I'd be in for a run. 

The paranoia became reality; when I came back to the station from the Buddha park, the train option back to Chengdu that I was eyeing on was sold out. The next available doesn't get there till 17:20, a mere 90min prior to departure. If this was LAX I'd be in a real tight spot. Once I get to CTU, I still have to get from T2 (where the train drops me off) to T1 via shuttle, check in (Sichuan doesn't offer online check-in), pick up my luggage at their manned version of coin locker where they give you a handwritten receipt, go through the security and immigration (the entry took me about 45 to an hour). And I am 100 miles away, eating a pretty bland wonton soup and awaiting my train.

The biggest challenge of the trip presented itself at the very last minute. As if the Giant Buddha is asking questions;

​What have you attained, after all the places you visited?
All the things you saw, heard and ate?
All the pictures you have taken?
All the things you've come to love and hate?
About human behavior, YOUR own behavior?
All your thoughts and dreams you had?
All the texts you've scribbled on your iPad?
After all the time and money you spent,
All the people that made it possible for you just to be a good friend,
Or family,
then at the end,
What was it that you wanted? 

The train arrives at Shuangliu Airport, terminal 2. Run up to 2F then wait for the inter-terminal shuttle. Consider running those 750 meters for a split second, then see the vehicle approaching. Hop on, get off and run to the nearest counter. The lady tells me the international check-in is at No.1, all the goddamn way across this massive hall. 17:45 now. Run to the only counter that's wo-manned. Got the boarding pass, now to retrieve my luggage. (Yes I flipped the order cause I didn't want them to think I was a no-show.) I run to the counter where 2 backpackers are patiently waiting for a female clerk to finish her phone convo which seems to be upsetting her increasingly. Ten minutes go by, she gets off the phone, mumbles something with a pout. The backpackers offered to wait since my case is more time-sensitive, but of course she doesn't catch that and slowly starts to manually process them first. She has to write down everything she is trying to tell them in English, like the latest pickup is 11:45pm and it costs then 34 Yuan etc. They hand her a 100 then she realizes, after handwriting them the receipt, that she doesn't have enough 1s. YOU ARE KILLING ME WITH THIS SHIT ALREADY. Then her comrade drops by, pulls out 6 Yuan and gives it to them. 18:20. All I had to do was hand her the ticket and grab my bag. She was all "what's the hurry?" WOMAN I NEED TO FLY ACROSS THE OCEAN.

Lucky for me the security check was empty and there was no immigration check. The gate 16 was on the runway level, the seats sporadically filled and no music. THE most quiet environment I found in my brief stay in China. In the quiet of the waiting area, I almost heard Buddha asking;

Was this what you wanted?

Once they started boarding I noticed that the flight is to Jinan, another minor airport very well still in mainland China. I see a fine print in my itinerary mentioning this place, but the flight number is still the same. Are they picking up more passenger? Once there, they have us go through the immigration check that was missing in CTU. oh so NOW we're flying back to the US. Then we get to the gate and sat there for an HOUR, without them giving us any explanation. Fellow Americans stared to gather and wonder WTF the deal is, so I volunteered to ask. (White people be like "hey You Asian, right?") The only English I could squeeze out of one lady was "Everything fine." We collectively throw our hands in the air and go OKAY THEN?

The conclusion I came to was that it was their way of selling 2-stop tickets as 1-stop. Nice move, Sichuan. Almost as nice as the chili paste you throw on our in-flight meal. A nice kicker certainly.