Travels with Charley

I know what you're asking yourself; is this the start of some sort of Steinbeckian exercise? The answer is no. I haven't been out in a camper with a French poodle of any name much less Charley. But, coincidentally, I have been traveling and I have been with a Charlie.

Normally my Charlie traveling companion of choice is my brother Charlie. He and I have had some good journeys together, from backpacking on the Appalachian Trail to bicycling across the U.S.A. (Yes, it's official, he made it.) to wandering around Costa Rica and Nicaragua to celebrating his 50^th with a road trip to Phoenix, AZ.

This time however the Charlie in question was a retired Chinese jack of all trades named Charlie. He has worked in industry here in China. He has connections and experience with the local political powers. He knows a much-in-demand massage therapist and has arranged for her to give massages to many of the teachers here at school. He applied for a job at SPA (our school). He lived and worked, mostly as a restauranteur, in various places in the U.S. That latter experience left him with good English skills and those were the skills I relied on when we went traveling.

The trip arose somewhat suddenly. A bit less than a week before our one-day mid-autumn holiday the school director let us know that the one day was going to be five days. Apparently he had just learned that students would miss three days of school. Those three days plus the following weekend added up to a five-day weekend. Given this opportunity we started looking around for out-of-town travel options. Jackie and I linked up with fellow teachers Amos and Kristine and got out the Lonely Planet guidebook to plan. Amos and Kristine have become good friends with Charlie so they consulted him as well. Previously he had offered to help find drivers who could take us on extended forays in the region.

Initially our interest was in a town called Anshan. There, we read, we could find a national park called Qianshan (Thousand Mountains), the world's largest Buddha carved from a single block of jade, and hot springs. Amos and Kristine had enjoyed many pleasurable moments in Taiwanese hot springs and raved about how much fun this could be. Amos in particular really had his heart set on the Anshan hot springs. The fact that one of the Qing emperors used to soak in these exact springs with his favorite concubine added a touch of elegance that appealed to me. (Cue Mick Jagger cooing about Chinese girls and their “silky sleeves”.)

But Charlie had other ideas. I would find that Charlie often has other ideas and it is usually futile to resist them. Like the CATS, all our base were belong to him.

So plan B became a multi-day trip to Benxi where we would find, yes, mountains and yes, hot springs. There was no known giant jade Buddha in Benxi, but there were water caves—grottoes hollowed out by a river and accessible by boat. Charlie knew a man with a 12-passenger van who would drive us and our gear there and back. If we wanted we could even invite some more people. Best of all, Charlie himself was curious about Benxi and he decided to join us. He would serve as guide and interpreter. WooHoo.

We did ask around, but found no others who were interested in joining us. Good thing. As it turned out we pretty much packed the 12-passenger van with the six of us plus our bags, plus our folding bicycles, plus some fresh fruit, a case of water, and a case of beer. The first bit of wisdom Charlie imparted on us was that prices in Benxi would be much higher so we should shop for some essentials (i.e. beer) locally. This attention to detail when it came to price and finding the best deal would become somewhat of a theme.

The trip began on Wednesday morning, September 22. This was the actual mid-autumn festival day. We had moon cakes and fruit as gifts from our boss. The whole country was on holiday and we loaded into the van and headed south toward Benxi. The first thing we noticed was that the road to Benxi goes right by the airport. It was a super modern tollroad and the traffic was light. We made mental notes to make sure that the next time we came or went to the airport we'd request our taxi drivers to use the tollroad. We gladly pay the toll to get such a smooth ride.

Next we noticed that our driver was not the normal Oh-my-God-I've-got-to-drive-as-crazily-as-possible kind of driver so we were not the normal Oh-my-God-I'm-going-to-die kinds of Western passengers. Our driver was even so laid back that he went so far as to kill the van's engine on long descents, thus saving gas and making us possibly the slowest vehicle on the road as we coasted gently down hill and dale.

All this attention to driving details must have been fatiguing because after a couple of hours we pulled over. Charlie informed us that the driver was tired and was going to take a break. We got out and wandered a bit near where it turned out was the entrance to the water caves. We didn't go in just then. That experience we saved for the trip back home.

Reinvigorated our driver continued on. The countryside had gotten hillier, but it was mostly uphill so we didn't get much more coasting. We did stop in one more small town. While there I noticed that most of the local transportation was in pedal cabs. Here's a photo of one of the drivers.

At one point we noticed some rocks piled up on a distant hillside. They spelled out something in Chinese characters. Kristine made a joke about Chairman Mao and Charlie told us that yes, they said “Long Live Chairman Mao.” They must have been holdovers from the Cultural Revolution. Amos noticed that they were pretty well maintained for 50-year-old holdovers.

As we approached out first stop—Guan Men Shan (Yellow Stone Mountain)--Charlie points out what he calls farm hotels. They looked nice so we told Charlie that we'd love to stay in one of them. He heard us but we continued on to the park entrance where Charlie told the gate guard we should be let in because we were foreigners. It must have worked because we got waved in.

What followed was our first real experience with Charlie's knack for negotiation. This would become a repeated motif during the next three days and at times it seemed that negotiation became a goal in its own right. Today though the negotiations were mild. We went to three different hotels, got three different prices, alternately laid low in the van so that prices wouldn't be inflated because we were foreigners or made ourselves visible inspecting rooms to make sure that the quality was suitable for us. At one place we promised to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant in exchange for a good room rate. The owner of the third hotel somehow was politically connected. He managed to bring down the price of the first hotel, so we went back there and accepted the new, lower rate.

After unpacking it was back in the van and off to hotel number three, again. This time we had lunch in the hotel's restaurant. I never found out if that played a part in our negotiations for accommodations. The lunch was good though. Best of all, our waitress was a sassy 17-year-old who took no guff from Charlie or our driver. I think even Charlie took a shine to her although he pointed out that she was a high school dropout with few prospects for the future other than early marriage and motherhood.

So Day One ended with us managing to squeeze in a few hours of hiking on the Guan Men Shan trails. It was a beautiful day and the place was not crowded at all. The deciduous forest promised to provide beautiful foliage displays in a couple of weeks. We were here a bit too early for that. Instead we satisfied ourselves with some knee-punishing climbs and descents.

The next day we moved on to a small town where there was something Charlie called the “Forest Park.” Here we planned to stay two nights and maybe because of that Charlie put his all into hotel negotiations. We checked out so many places that we began to refer to them as place 1 or place 4. We looked at rooms and bathrooms and, since this is the place with hot springs, the bathing facilities. We looked at places only to be told that they couldn't accept foreign guests. We got escorted by the proprietors of one place to a family member's or in-law's place just a short bushwhack away. We considered the benefits of western beds compared to some of the smaller places' heated brick beds. We selected one place only to be told that the rooms were now no longer available. Finally we ended up in a small, family-run place on the river, but not on a very scenic stretch of said river. As a matter of fact the view from the front of the hotel was of a decaying bigger hotel and its weed-choked back lot.

We were in though and now Forest Park beckoned. We spent the rest of the afternoon on our bikes going steadily up a dirt road into the park's hills. We felt somewhat like rock stars because every group of Chinese people we passed, and we passed a lot, gaped at us in wonderment. Here were four, count 'em, four, foreigners on bicycles no less. “Hallos” echoed out. At some point the dirt road gave way to rocky foot path. We walked out bikes up the trail to the first river crossing. There we locked the bikes to a tree and continued hiking. The trail eventually disappeared but we kept going. Why? Because Charlie had told us that we'd come to Yellow Stone Valley or some such. We don't know we never made it. After 30 minutes of ducking under branches and scrambling over rocks we stopped and turned back.

The ride down the mountain was fast and exhilarating. We had to dodge rocks and debris as well as other people who were hiking. The only thing to besmirch the trip was the fresh oil that was laid on the last 2 kilometers. We all ended up with sticky, oily spots on our bikes and up our backs. The hotel proprietor washed the clothes in a solvent (Jackie thought it was acetone because it smelled like nail polish remover), but wouldn't accept payment because she didn't get it all out.

Amos got some cleaning supplies and we tried washing our bikes in the river. That didn't work either. While he was gone getting the cleansers, Kristine and Jackie got roped into a big drink-fest some local firefighters had going on next to the hotel. I was with them originally, but after one gambay with that nasty Commie booze and a look at the garlic clove floating in Kristine's glass of wine, I decided to make myself scarce and trust that the women could hold their own. Later I found out that the firefighters were so interested because they had never met a foreigner before. I also learned that one of them got sloppily close enough to Kristine that Charlie had to threaten to report him to the mayor.

That evening we got to soak in scalding hot spring water piped into a huge private tub. Jackie and I used one and Amos and Kristine used another.

On Day Three we decide to just head out on our bikes into the countryside. We packed a picnic lunch and rode for a couple of hours. Then we found a streamside spot where we could eat and relax before turning back and pedaling the return trip. It was a fine day. The traffic was light and the scenery was pleasant.

We decided to try the municipal, hot-spring-fed pool that afternoon which sparked the most extreme of Charlie's negotiations. He wanted us to take the van the one block to the pool because we'd need it, not to get to the pool, but to drive around to find the best price on beer. Since we thought we'd have a beer at the pool, Charlie was sure the prices there would be exorbitant. We finally said no to the negotiation mania and walked to the pool where we paid the full five rmb (80 cent) price for beer.

Our last day found us packing up and driving toward home with a planned stop at the water caves. All went as smoothly as the outward trip. Since we had the stop at the water cave, the driver didn't get too exhausted. We added an extra stop in the city of Benxi where we ate a nice meal in a local place. Charlie couldn't help but point out the the food we were eating in Benxi would've cost much more if we'd stopped to eat at one of the roadside places near the water caves.