Zhangjiajie, Part IV

I did a quick inventory of my pictures and have come to the conclusion that I will need to write three more entries for Zhangjiajie. Any more and any less would be either too bulky or stretched out too thin.

I was reading an email from Jason that he sent me several weeks ago, and one sentence that really leapt out at me was, “Let’s all go out and get pissed.” I need this, more than anything else - I need to go out and get well and truly drunk and pissed, to drown my sorrows and frustrations and everything else I’m not wholly happy with, in the sweet, momentary oblivion of cheap alcohol. I need this and that to happen.

Maybe it’s the fact that I only got about 4 hours sleep last night, but I am in a shitty mood today. Can’t get my dander up to do anything At All. I regret being a fool and I regret saying a load of shit and accidentally revealing too much of myself to someone whom I don’t even know that well. Am I cursed to wear my mask forever? Though it’s not so much of a curse as it is.. defensive mechanism. I don't like getting too close to people, letting people get too close to me. Most people wear me out.
I’m sick of the pretentiousness, the preening, the stupid, vapid, fake valley girl accents - look at me, look at me! I yearn for Europe. When I was younger, if I wanted something hard enough, I got it. I probably need to visualize myself in Europe again. In Europe, no one would even think that your life was boring for reading and attending international events. Completely the opposite, in fact. Nadia shared a sentence with me not so long ago - “if you’re the smartest person in a room, then you’re in the wrong room.” I miss my year in Europe, when I could properly articulate my thoughts and feelings, and those of others, into eloquent words and tangible arrangements. The ventriloquist’d, I once said; we are all plugged into the  Matrix, forced to conform to its stifling uniformity. Everyone was much simpler when we were younger, when we had less to lose. I feel that I have less to lose now than I did when I was younger. Every day I live in fear of aging; now I understand it, this obsession with mortality and staying young. Ask yourself truly; would you do as Elisabeth Bathory did, if that was what had to be done to retain everlasting youth? I probably would. The battle against time starts now, and we must fight the long defeat.

I am not entirely sure what I’m doing with my life and where I want this to go. I need a plan B. I can’t wing it like Rowling. Of course it’s easy to say that when you’ve achieved her degree of success. I, I’m only mortal, and bound by my worldly constraints. Boundaries that you’ve set down for yourself, say the self-help articles; the only person stopping you from achieving what you want is yourself. The sky’s the limit, they say. And yet I hate flying, with a deep and burning passion.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that people do and will have an opinion about you, whatever you do, whenever and wherever you are. And I’ve come to find that I would much rather be opined on and criticized by smart people, than by dumb people.

Things I need to do: I need to properly reread Mrs. Dalloway and rediscover that which has been all but lost. I’ve lost my eloquence of old; I flounder in mediocre, internet writing. I live in perpetual terror of losing what I have left, and cling desperately to the vestiges of my old identity.

Another look at the vendors, and their delleeeecious fried potatoes. YUM, I could eat those all day.

Did a bit of - well, actually a lot of walking, but most of it was downhill, so.

We then went on this truly terrifying cable car ride down to the bottom of the mountains. It wasn't rollercoaster scary, but more along the lines of flight phobia and a little bit of claustrophobia. It's very unnerving to think that you're being dangled several thousand metres above ground and that those ropes and machinery and steel are all that's preventing you from plummeting to a messy death. Pris and I were both on edge and barely had the heart to appreciate the wonderful scenery. Nevertheless, I still managed to get a fair number of pictures in - rather good pictures too, now that I look at them.

Out from the cable car now, and here's one last look at Zhangjiajie. For reasons I will expound upon in later entries, we only went for this one day.

And a hilariously misspelt sign.

Zhangjiajie, Part III

I meant to finish this today, and for a moment there I really thought I could, but then nostalgia caught up with me and I spent the better half of the evening watching Kpop and Jpop music videos from 2005-2009. That was really the golden era of KJ, in my opinion at least. When I was watching the Tokyo live performance given by TVXQ - their swan song, their own "last live" - it was very emotional, seeing all five of them up there. As always, I enjoy the fact that three of the 5 TVXQs are Aquariui, and that my favourite Yongwoon JJ and I literally share the same birthday. Isn't that nice!

But yes, that. They don't make them like they used to. I wondered whilst I was watching those music videos, what makes the things from our youth so beautiful, so time capsuled; and again, it's the fact that those days will never come again, and that everything seemed simpler when we were younger. Back then it felt like the days stretched on endlessly (sometimes in a bad way, sometimes good), and that we would never grow old or run out of time. The ventriloquist'd, I once said; things seemed much simpler then. Finding these fragments from the past, reclaiming, even if only for short while, what once was.

This is mainly going to be a picture entry, but I will annotate this by saying that this is the part where we went to see the Avatar valley - the Qian kun pillars, as they were called. Loads of people, as always.

Below, a seemingly endess oasis.

There was a little metal bridge, rather similar to the Marienbrucke in Neuschwanstein, where we could view the Pillar.

A giant metal bird commemorating the Avatar scene.

And a weathered plaque calling the pillar by its rightful name: 乾坤住.

A resting area that had vendors and food stalls and benches. We got our hot potatoes here, and can I just say YUM.

More food stalls, though now we come to a different part of the park.

A blissfully tourist - free area.

And an adorable little monkey. The park was full of these little critters.

Moar pictures - yes, I don't think I'll be able to finish this series tonight, it's already past midnight and I have to work tomorrow.

To be continued..

Zhangjiajie, Part II

At this rate I think I probably will be able to finish all the Zhangjiajie entries by the end of today.

We didn't do anything on our first day there, as we didn't get to Wulingyuan till about 4, and we mostly just lazed about, settled in a bit, talked with the landlord and pored over our maps. We ate lots of food, and went to look around Wulingyuan a bit. The prices here are slightly cheaper than TWN, but the food comes in huge servings. In the evening we got some food to eat - all of them fried with spices: fried tomato and egg, fried potatoes, fried pork, and stir-fry green veg. We then watched White Vengeance - one of the things that Pris and I really liked about this hostel was that the landlord put on a film every night, and we were allowed to pick which film we wanted to watch. He had all the newest films, too.

We met a group of Norwegian students who were backpacking throughout China: Jacob, Turjus and Christian, who were about the same age as us. We spent the entire night talking, and speaking with them transported me back to Europe and 2014 and hostelling; Europe, always Europe, always the hours, the airports, the waiting, finding serendipitous strangers, talking to them and feeling that connection, and talking books away. It brought so many memories and feelings back: the feeling of leaving my life behind, of hastily drunk coffees in the wee hours of the morning, of my rucksack on my back, our lives, everyone's lives, hostel couches, and trains and buses and that feeling, that heady sensation of not knowing what the morrow held in store for us.

Pris and I washed and went to bed, and woke up the next morning feeling reasonably refreshed. Pris got up early and had breakfast, whilst I slept in a bit. We went out at about 9, and got our tickets at the ticket booths. I was a bit unnerved when I had to give them my fingerprint, but I'm not a criminal and I've done nothing wrong, and everything's in the name of safety. I suppose.

Our first taste of Zhangjiajie's majesty..

Zhangjiajie National Park was simply vast. We had to catch buses from one destination to another, and each bus ride was about half an hour long. The first place we went to was the famous elevator, Bailong Tienti - 佰龍天梯 - which is the tallest open-space elevator in the world.

The ticket booth.

The view outside of the ticket booth was breathtaking, too.

Once we'd gotten our tickets, we had to walk along this rather damp corridor to get to the lift, and then take another lift from there.

It dropped several more degrees as we went up, and the view was wonderful. Another UNESCO world heritage site for the record, then.

Less amusing were the crowds and the people, who were simply everywhere.

And another glimpse of dem cliffs.

There were vendors and stalls all over the national park, and the food they sold looked quite nice, especially the baked potatoes, some of which we actually bought. They also sold cucumbers, which they ate like ice lollies, but we didn't buy those.

Yes! To be continued.