I’d never understood the appeal of solo traveling until last summer when I ended up in Hawaii for a couple of days staying with friends of friends but on my own as far as sightseeing was concerned. Since I was in Hawaii for a friend’s wedding, I spent most of the time with her and her family and friends, people that I knew a bit but not well. After several weeks of following their plan and driving around four other people that I didn’t know at all, I was ready for some time alone.
That trip showed me that it is possible to enjoy traveling alone even though I still prefer to have someone to share the memories with. But sometimes there are things that I want to do that may not fit with the plan that everyone else has. In Hawaii, that included lots of hiking. I thoroughly enjoyed all of my hikes in Hawaii, and I met some interesting people along the way.
In Chongqing, I thought about resting during my days between friends. But I also really wanted to go to Fuling, a small town in Chongqing that I first learned about in Peter Hessler’s book, River Town. Hessler lived in Fuling in the late ‘90s before the Three Gorges Dam was built. He wrote about life there, and in many ways, the official dinners and the funny things that happened reminded me of my time in Hainan. I really enjoyed this book, and I like to recommend it to people so that they can have a better understanding of my life. Although China changes so quickly and so drastically that this book only represents a short period of my life in China.
Guangzhou is almost nothing like my time in Hainan. I never go to official dinners anymore, and I’m very thankful for that. In Guangzhou, I have access to lots of Western food and people stare at me and take subtle pictures (or not-so-subtle pictures) of me much less than they did in Hainan. I don’t stand out as much in Guangzhou since there are quite a few more foreigners. But I still enjoy the book.
When I heard that Peter Hessler returned to China in 2019 and stayed for a couple of years and wrote another book about the experience, I was really excited to read it. Other Rivers follows the story of some of the same students that Hessler taught when he lived in Fuling. That’s another similarity between his time in Fuling and my time in Hainan. He was almost the same age as most of his students, so he became friends with them. I still stay in touch with many of my students that I had in Hainan because they were also some of my best friends. Many of the people that I met on this trip were originally students in Hainan.
In Other Rivers, Hessler also talked about how teaching at Sichuan University in Chengdu in 2019 was different from teaching in Fuling in the late ‘90s. I loved reading about the difference in the students and their thinking. Hessler also talked about his experiences of Covid-19 in Sichuan. I could identify with many of the things that he talked about, and his description of teaching online and getting nucleic acid tests brought back lots of memories.
Before Hessler left China, he returned to Fuling and visited several of the places that he used to frequent when he lived and taught there. He went back to 北山 （Beishan; North Mountain）. He also visited the White Crane Ridge （白鹤梁 Bai He Liang）. In River Town, Hessler used to go out to the White Crane Ridge when the tide went down and the ridge appeared above the water. For centuries, people would use the ridge to judge the level of the water according to the fish drawings that were engraved into the rock. Calligraphers and poets (the area abounded in both over the ages) would also engrave poetry or famous words into the rock. It seemed like a gathering place for poets and calligraphers. But Hessler talked about how the Three Gorges Dam would cover parts of Fuling, and it would also mean that the White Crane Ridge would be covered in water forever. There would be no more annual revealing of the ridge. It would just disappear.
However, in Other Rivers, when Hessler returned to Fuling, he went back to the site of the White Crane Ridge. Even though the ridge was now covered in water, the government had built an underwater museum so people could still see the calligraphy. The designers also took out some of the stones and displayed them in the museum above the water, but they left many underwater and built a museum for people to go down and look at the stone carvings.
As I read about this underwater museum, I really wanted to visit. When I found out that I would be in the area, my friend, Brandon helped me to look up trains from Chongqing to Fuling. I originally thought that it would be better to go from Chengdu, but Brandon pointed out that Chongqing was closer, so I stayed in Chongqing for a bit longer rather than heading to Chengdu. I booked my train ticket the night before, and since there didn’t seem to be a shortage of tickets, I waited to book my return ticket since I had no idea how long everything would take.
I had passed the museum when I went back to the boat after our adventure in Wuling mountain, so I knew there were some restaurants near the museum. This knowledge gave me great peace of mind because finding food is very important—don’t want to have a blood sugar crash when I’m alone in a new city!
I had three goals for going to Fuling. I wanted to visit the White Crane Ridge Museum, I wanted to climb North Mountain, and I wanted to explore the city and get a feel for the city that Hessler described in his book.
First, I decided to head to the White Crane Ridge Museum. On the way there, I realized that I couldn’t book the ticket ahead of time because they were sold out. Oh no! I thought. Would there still be tickets available? When I texted Brandon about it, he said that they probably had tickets at the door, so I decided to risk it. When I arrived, thankfully there were tickets still available, so I bought one and headed inside.
Once inside, we were encouraged to follow a tour guide. The guide spoke only in Chinese, so I followed along and half listened, but I was having a hard time following. So I hung toward the back and read all of the English descriptions of things. The descriptions talked about some of the calligraphy and the meanings. There were also some pictures of the fish and descriptions of how people would use the fish drawings to measure the water levels. I enjoyed learning about everything, but the most exciting part was when we went down the escalators that took us underwater.
The elevator ride down was quite long, several minutes at least, and then we had to walk through a long tunnel with pictures and descriptions of different types of fish in the Yangtze River, out to the cite of the calligraphy. Once we got to the location, I gazed through little submarine style windows into the murky depths of the Yangtze River. The windows had to be cleaned regularly with special equipment by scuba divers so that we would be able to see through them.
Before coming to the museum, I had seen some pictures of this part, so I knew a little bit of what to expect. The tunnel was dark, and the water outside was a bit greenish. So the pictures aren’t the most beautiful, but I still really enjoyed standing there under 28 meters of water, looking at calligraphy and art that people had put there centuries before. I enjoyed the experience quite a lot.
As we got ready to leave, we walked through another long tunnel that had pictures and descriptions of different types of boats. Right before I got on the escalator to go back up to the museum, I noticed a worker.
“How deep is the water above us right now?” I asked.
“Today it’s about 28 meters,” she replied.
“Today? What’s the highest and lowest levels?”
“The highest is around 40 meters, and the lowest is around 18 meters.”
What a big difference! And that’s a lot of water above us right now.
After some dumplings and a break for lunch, I decided to walk to the bus station so that I could get a feel for the city. The map warned me that there were some stairs on the route that I had chosen, but that didn’t worry me. In fact, I barely noticed. In Guangzhou, if there were stairs on the map, there weren’t very many.
I started walking through the city, and even though I carried an umbrella (portable shade), it was still quite hot. It was around 1 p.m., and the sun was beating down on me. I tried to get a feel for the city, but mostly it just felt like a normal Chinese city and very hot. Most of the shops that I passed seemed to be restaurants that weren’t open yet. They were probably more popular at night. Everyone else seemed to be inside hiding from the heat, and I didn’t blame them. I could manage, but it was hot.
That’s when I got to the stairs that my map had warned me about. Only, this wasn’t just one little set of stairs. This was climbing to the top of a five or six-floor building. The stairs loomed above me without a tree in sight for shade. I didn’t see any way to get out of the stairs, so I started up them. As I climbed, I noticed that the stairs were on the side of a building, and inside the building there were shops—it looked like a warehouse. About half way up the mountain staircase, I decided to pop inside and escape the heat for a few minutes.
Unfortunately, I chose my level poorly. It seemed to be the bedding section. I had no use for bedding and people were giving me funny looks (at least the people that weren’t napping were giving me funny looks). Also, the area didn’t seem to be air conditioned, so I headed back to my stairs and kept climbing. Another section had toys and stationary supplies, so I looked around a bit, but I didn’t see anything I needed to buy.
I kept following the map until I noticed a clothing section. Since I wanted to explore the city, I decided to go inside and look around. The clothing section reminded me of places that I’ve seen in Guangzhou and Hainan. Little shops stuffed with dresses, skirts, pants, and shirts crowded close to each other. The aisle between the stores was narrow, maybe big enough for two people to walk side by side. Since I was hot by this point, I kind of wanted a cold drink, but since I was in the clothing section, no drinks were in sight.
My map was confused about where I was at this point since I was underground, and I was also a bit confused. So I headed back out to the heat and toward my bus stop. I looked for a drink shop on the way, but no drink shops were in sight. I found my bus stop and waited for my bus. In Guangzhou, my app can tell me when the next bus will arrive, but that feature seemed to be missing in Fuling. So I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Usually buses come every 20 minutes at most, but 20 minutes came and went.
I stood in the heat waiting for my bus, wondering if it would ever come. Lots of other buses came, but my bus didn’t come. Finally I decided that if my bus didn’t come in the next 5 minutes, I would just call a taxi. Perhaps the bus was no longer running. I didn’t mind waiting for a while because I was hoping to get to the mountain a bit later in the day since it was so hot. But I also didn’t want to spend the entire day waiting at that lonely bus stop.
I think waiting for buses is a special kind of activity. If you’ve never waited for buses, it’s hard to describe what it feels like. I don’t take buses often in Guangzhou because we have a metro, and I have a bike. But in Hainan we relied on buses quite a bit more, especially before we got our e-bikes. I remember standing at the bus stop for so much time, wondering when the bus would come. Would it be 5 minutes or 30 minutes? You never knew. The hot days when we were dripping with sweat and carrying huge bags of groceries or things for our apartments were the worst. Those were days before Taobao and Waimai when we can get almost anything delivered to our door.
Looking down the road, hoping that every bus is the bus that we need is a special kind of waiting. Waiting is always hard, and buses force me to recognize how little control I have over anything. I can do nothing but wait (patiently or impatiently doesn’t change how fast the bus will come). I don’t like waiting, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a part of life, and waiting for buses is a very clear reminder of how hard it is to wait. Aside from buses, I have lots of other things that I have to wait for in life, and it’s always hard. When will it happen? Will it ever happen? Is this thing that I’m waiting for something that God wants for me, or am I looking toward something that will never happen? Waiting is hard.
I didn’t have any of these thoughts as I was waiting for my bus. My only thoughts were, Is that my bus? Is that my bus? When is my bus coming? Why isn’t it here yet? Is that my bus? Is that my bus? Ok, fine. Not that one. How about that one? Still no? Why not? Where is my bus? Why is it taking so long? Should I give up? Is my bus still running? Is that my bus? No. How about that one?
I should probably think of something else to think about while waiting for my bus, but when every bus could be the one, and you want every bus to be the one, it tends to take over my thinking.
Finally, my bus came and stopped in front of me. The bus didn’t seem to be very popular, but there were a few other people. I was thankful to finally have air conditioning, and I was thankful to finally be on the way to the mountain. We crossed the river a couple of times, and I enjoyed looking out as we crossed the bridge.
The bus stops didn’t exactly match my version of the map, so when everyone else got off the bus, I asked if that was the stop I needed. The other passengers and the bus driver said I should wait until the next stop.
When I got off the bus stop at the next station, I finally saw a place to buy my cold drink! So I stopped for a Gatorade, and since I was a bit confused about where the park was, I asked for directions. The nice owners of the little shop directed me to climb up the dirt path on the other side of the road. “It’s cooler up on the mountain!” They assured me, and I breathed a sigh of relief and thanked them before heading out.
After climbing up the dirt path, I was still unsure where to go. To the left looked like a dead end in a parking lot with some construction equipment, so I went right. I followed the road along the side of the mountain (that was more like a big hill). There were some gardens, but almost no one was out in the heat in the middle of the day. I tried to smile at the one lady I saw, but she didn’t seem interested in talking.
After walking for a while, I realized that this path didn’t seem quite right. The one staircase that I came to was completely overgrown with cucumbers or pumpkins or possibly weeds. So I turned around and went back. After walking through the parking lot, I finally did find a path that went up the mountain.
This path was beautiful. There were still no other people, but I didn’t mind. After days of visiting beautiful places with lots and lots of people, I was enjoying my time in nature to myself. But it was also quite hot and after about 30 minutes, my cold Gatorade was lukewarm.
At the top of the mountain, I had a lovely view of the river and the city of Fuling. I could see the dirty brown of the Yangtze, although I learned that it’s brown because of the clay on the bottom, not because it’s particularly dirty. That made it better, and it also reminded me of a red river I had seen near Shangri-la in Yunnan several years ago that was also red because of the clay.
But I could also see clear blue water flowing into the Yangtze River, and it was interesting to see the blue water mix with the brown where they met. I enjoyed sitting and enjoying the scenery in the shade of a large tree. The cicadas screamed their noisy song, but I didn’t mind. I enjoyed listening to the crescendo and decrescendos of their music.
I continued walking along the path, and I enjoyed this path quite a lot. Most of it was pretty sunny, but I had my umbrella, and I had also put on quite a bit of sunscreen (although I had probably sweated most of that off). The path followed the ridge of the mountain. I could see the river and the city on one side and the mountains and farms on the other side. Everything was wonderful. I had seen some interesting looking buildings further on down the path, and I could also see them on my map, so I decided to follow the path and see where it would lead.
I wish that section of the path could have gone on forever, I loved looking around and enjoying all of the beautiful scenery. Plus, I forgot to mention that this path was stone, so I wasn’t afraid that I was walking somewhere that I wasn’t supposed to be.
I came to a point where the path divided. Both turns went down. One side headed toward a temple that I kind of wanted to look at, and the other side seemed to go down the other side of the mountain. I decided to check out the temple since that was one of the cool buildings that I had seen from the other side. I told myself that I could always come back and check the other path later.
The path was actually a huge staircase that followed the outer wall of the temple. I was pretty disappointed about this because I wanted to go inside and look at it (I could see a giant Buddha statue just over the wall), but I couldn’t get in. The stairs kept going down and down and down until I realized that there would be no going back. I did not want to climb all the way back up those stairs. I still wonder where the path on the other side led, but one thing I have learned is that it’s impossible to see everything and that’s ok. I will probably never know what I missed by not going down that other path, but that’s part of life. We have to make decisions, and we have to stick with our decisions because if we spend our whole lives wondering “what if” then we will have a much harder time enjoying “right now.”
So I walked down all of those stairs and when I got to the entrance of the temple, it seemed more like a temple that people used and less like a tourist attraction. I didn’t see any other people, and I didn’t feel like wandering through someone’s house if that’s what this temple was, so I started walking back in the direction of town and my bus stop. I thought about getting a taxi, but first I wanted to see if this road was nice.
The road was less nice than my original path, but I couldn’t get back to that path without going back up all those stairs. So I walked along the road. Thankfully, there weren’t many cars. I thought again about getting a taxi, but at about this time, I realized that my phone had no more money. What a time to run out of money! I was on a mountain, in a city I didn’t know, without a phone. This didn’t look good.
I knew how to get back to the bus station, so I decided I would just walk back there and just take the bus. But I couldn’t take the bus without money because I needed signal to get the QR code to scan to ride the bus. What a mess. I tried to call my friend, but there were no mercy calls for me at this point. And I had just put money on my phone! Maybe the data ran out faster since I was in another province. I tried to enjoy the walk back, and it was still nice, but I was also pretty hot by this point. Thankfully I still had water even though my Gatorade was long gone.
After a little while of walking on the road, I found a spot where I could return to the ridge and my original path, so I went back up there. When I got back to the park entrance, I decided to go back to the shop where I had bought the Gatorade and ask if they had wifi.
“No, we don’t have wifi here,” the owner said.
“Oh, hmm, my phone ran out of money, and I was hoping to use wifi to pay for the bill.”
“Oh, well, then you can use my hotspot!”
“Really? That would be so nice!” She kindly helped me to connect to her hotspot, and I put more money on my phone, thankful to finally have signal again. I was also glad that I hadn’t seen a bus go by yet. Maybe there was hope for me to get a bus.
I looked up the taxis to either of the train stations. I hadn’t bought a ticket yet, so I could decide which one I wanted to use. But the taxi was a little expensive—around 50 kuai (or about $8). I wasn’t in a hurry so I decided to wait for the bus.
A taxi slowed down next to me, and I decided to ask him how much it would be.
“Seventy kuai to go to the train station.”
“What about the other train station?” I asked.
“Oh, that one’s further, 80 kuai.”
“That’s quite a lot.” I hesitated—that was a lot, but I might have to wait quite a while for the bus because this place didn’t seem likely to get many didis. “It’s ok, I’ll wait for the bus.”
“Alright,” the taxi driver drove off.
The bus station had a little covering, but it was still pretty hot, and there was no place to sit. So I stood and waited, looking in the direction that my bus would hopefully be coming any minute. Would I need to wait 5 minutes? 20 minutes? An hour? The road seemed completely deserted. An apartment complex on the other side of the road seemed new. I was pretty sure the apartments were full of people who had been relocated when the river flooded the lower sections of the city with the Three Gorges Dam.
After just a minute or two, the taxi driver drove back up. “If you want, I’ll take you and we can just do the price according to the meter.”
I looked back up the road. Still no bus. “Alright, that sounds nice.” I got into the car and finally enjoyed the air conditioning. The taxi driver was nice and we chatted a bit on our way to the train station after I bought my ticket. He was a local, and when he found out that I had only been to the White Crane Ridge Museum and North Mountain, he said, “But you’ve barely explored the area at all!” I asked him what else he would recommend, but then I realized that the other places he recommended were places that Ruby and I had visited on our cruise. So I felt satisfied with my choices.
At the train station, my train was delayed for a few minutes, so I settled in with my book about conflict. As I sat there, a young boy came up to me, “Where are you from?” He asked.
“Guess!”
“Russia? England? America?”
“Yep!”
The boy ran off, and I heard him tell someone what he had discovered. I went back to my book. A few minutes later, he was back. “Are you really a foreigner?” he asked this time.
“Yes,” I said with a smile. I am actually a real live foreigner.
He ran off to assure his traveling companion that I was in fact a foreigner. I’m not sure what prompted the confusion. I was hoping that I spoke Chinese well enough to confuse them, but I really have no idea. He didn’t stick around long enough for me to ask any of my questions.
The train ride went smoothly and then I had Burger King for dinner. Sometimes, it’s nice to just have something easy and familiar—like a hamburger!
