We caught our bus back to the Dujiangyan Bus Station and quick got on the bus back to Chengdu. As expected, it was a short ride between the two cities since there are wide highways connecting the two. In no time, we were already back at the Chadianzi Bus Station in Chengdu. We still have an hour to spare before our bus to Jiuzhaigou leaves. So we went to grab some lunch first. We left our main luggage at the storage area of Sim Cozy Guesthouse, knowing that we would be coming back after a few days.
At 2pm our bus started to leave, we were so excited and we were looking forward to see the UNESCO World Heritage Listed Jiuzhaigou 九寨沟 and possibly Huanglong 黄龙 if the weather permits. Jiuzhaigou is a wonderful alpine lake studded valley in the mountains north of Sichuan with lakes with an unbelievably blue hue. Huanglong is also within the area and it is famous for its natural limestone terraces that take the form of the back of a dragon. These two sites are the primary reason why were we were here in Sichuan, or China, for that matter, in the first place.
The bus basically followed the highway connecting Chengdu and Dujiangyan passing by some small town along the way, most notably for me is the town of Pixian 郫县 which is famous for the chili bean paste which I use when attempting to cook Sichuan style dishes. The town isn’t really remarkable and it is just another run down Chinese town.
We got to Dujiangyan which is already more or less familiar to us. It went by the main highway of Dujiangyan before turning into a rough road. The road here isn’t as paved as the roads we’ve been accustomed to using here in China. This slowed down our travel considerably. Now I understand why the trip will take 9 hours to complete. The road would pass by several towns before going to a highway cut along the mountainside.
The ride along the mountainside highway was nothing short of spectacular, below the mountains are huge blue lakes which cover the entire valley below. It would have been great if we were able to get off and take photos. If the way to Jiuzhaigou is already this spectacular, what more the real thing. Long bridges would let us go from one mountain to another, truly spectacular.
Two hours into our trip, our bus came across a police checkpoint. This isn’t really something strange for me knowing how the Chinese are sticklers for security. A policeman came up with their weapon close to them and seem to be searching for something. Having found nothing, he went down and then came back up searching again. He then pointed to my friend, saying “佬外” or “foreigner”. He then asked my friend to get off the bus, and since he doesn’t speak Chinese I had to go down with him as a translator.
He told him to unload his stuff from the bus. When I inquired why, the head policemen there explained to me that there was a notice just the other day restricting the entry of non-Chinese into the Aba Prefecture area of Sichuan. He then showed me the notice itself. My mind turned to jelly upon seeing the Chinese characters and he just explained that there was a disturbance in the Tibet where rioters destroyed property. It has been all over the news in the Chengdu. As a precaution the Chinese government decided to restrict the access of these places only to Chinese folk. Aba Prefecture, which covers part of Sichuan province, has a huge Tibetan population.
It does make sense to restrict foreigners from going into these areas. Afterall, the Chinese government would not want to have more problems when some stupid foreigner gets hurt because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The policeman then asked me who I was and whether I was with my friend. I was really tempted to abandon my friend and just head on to Jiuzhaigou myself. But I confirmed my association with my friend and I too was asked to unload my stuff.
It then occurred to me that my friend didn’t look Chinese at all. I could easily pass for a local, which is why they ignored me. It was too bad that they had to do this but it is all for our safety. With a heavy heart, we unloaded our stuff with the people from the bus staring at us like we were prisoners or something. Minutes later they were on their way. The policeman even helped us get our things on the bench where they were sitting. The group of policemen were continuously apologizing to us for the inconvenience they have caused, but all of these is for our safety. I ask the head policeman whether we can go to Siguniangshan 四姑娘山 or Four Maiden Mountain, which was part of our itinerary, but he said it would be unlikely that we would be allowed there since it is still part of the Aba Prefecture.
I would have to admit that I had my own preconceptions of people of authority in China, but this incident has changed it all. They were exceedingly friendly, apologetic and professional. The head policeman gave us some money as compensation for the trouble this has caused. It is basically the money we paid to get to Jiuzhaigou. I was impressed, they even give us the bus fare. He even knows that it is actually more than we needed but he didn’t mind.
They flagged down a bus on its way to Chengdu and helped us load our things on to the bus. They even waved us good bye. Really nice people. In the bus, we snapped back to reality after what just transpired and we realized that our schedule was ruined. This incident basically wiped out four or five days from our trip. We needed to form a plan B.
On our way back to Chengdu, there was another police checkpoint. I was thinking, what now? We can’t go back to Chengdu? This time they weren’t looking for foreigners, the police were using this gadget with this straight wire protruding from it. Metal detector? I really had no idea. Whatever it is they were looking for, they didn’t find it in our bus. We were soon flagged okay and we were on our way back.
I heaved a sigh of relief knowing that we would be back in Chengdu soon. Besides, we need to plan our next moved since Jiuzhaigou, Huanglong and Siguniangshan are all off limits to us now.
[xmlgm {http://www.worldwanderings.net/kml/DujiangyanBusStation.kmz}]