The Road to Pipaxi

It had already been a long day of touring in Xian, topped off with quite a late flight out. So when we arrived at the airport of Zhangjiajie in complete darkness, we were a bit surprised to be told, as we boarded the bus, that we would have a ride of an hour and a half before reaching our hotel. There was a little construction on the airport road, we were told. Imagine our further surprise when we started out by not moving. That is right. The bus just sat there at the end of the airport parking lot and did not move. After awhile we did manage to inch into the construction zone and then we did not move at all.

When I stood up to take a look, it appeared that we were not able to proceed because we were stuck behind other buses, which, you guessed it, were not moving. And we waited . And we waited. It seemed there was a line of buses coming from the other direction. They could not move past us and we could not move past them. So we all waited . One oncoming bus seemed to be attempting to get around the back up, but was not making much progress. Why? The major difficulty was that that bus was behind a car which was stuck in some pretty deep mud. The entire road was nothing but mud.

After a good twenty minutes or so of this stand off, all the passengers of that bus got off and starting walking through the mire, past our vehicle, and towards the airport. They after all, must have been heading to the airport for the purpose of catching a plane, and that plane was not about to wait just because their bus was stuck in the mud. So off they went, every one of them, moms holding babies, and dads holding the hands of toddlers and clutching duffel bags and suitcases as they scurried through those muddy depths, gingerly trying to maintain their balance so as to get to the plane all in one piece. Thank goodness for our headlights, or they would have been navigating that nasty path in complete darkness.

I have no idea how we finally got past the problem, but our bus driver did a phenomenal job squeezing through an incredibly tight spot and moving on down that road of black. This night, as it turned out, would be the most memorable one of the trip.

Yes, the powers that be had decided it would be a smashing idea to replace the only road to the airport. And the best way of doing so, apparently, was to tear up the entire thing, all at once, all five miles or so of it, and just let all the airport-bound traffic do the very best they could with what was left of the road.

Just add to the picture, a line of three-foot high brick lined sewer openings right down the middle of that very narrow thoroughfare. Any vehicle traveling through had to navigate around these crazy things. Could the engineers might have decided to place these three foot high obstacles over to one side of the road? Sure. But they did not. No.......they placed them right down the middle, leaving scant space for a car, let alone a large vehicle such as a tour bus to pass. It seemed clear that the Chinese government, which is working hard to get tourists to come to this phenomenal region, had somehow forgotten that tourbuses are big and wide and need a good solid road, and that they carry the people bringing the money.

It took us forever to inch through this interminable maze of hazards. I could not keep my eyes open the entire time as it was just a little bit too scary. But we did at long last get to the end. And though it was night there was plenty to see when we got to the paved portion of the road.

My daughter, who had been studying environmental science this year, could see in the dark, small patches of corn growing up the steep slopes of the road sides. Subsistence farming, she said this must be, and explained that when you see crops planted on marginal lands such as these hillsides, you know this is not a corporation planting for profit. This kind of farming is done only by those who need to plant in every nook and cranny in order to have enough food to eat.

On the way, we drove through about the longest tunnel I have ever been in. It was deja vu all over again. First I had thought that muddy construction route would never end and now I was wondering if this tunnel would ever end. I read later that this two mile long tunnel was constructed last year at a cost of two hundred million dollars. This is all part of a plan to bring more and more tourists to the region.

We saw an accident along the road. A large truck pulling a canvas covered trailer had hit a motorcycle,which lay mangled under the front left tire of the truck. We did not see the driver of the motorcycle. Hopefully he had not been badly hurt, but we did see a crowd of people gathered around talking with the driver of the truck. We had read that accidents are settled up on the spot in China. The parties are expected to get out of their vehicles, discuss the situation, make some kind of financial arrangement, exchange money and move along. Perhaps that is what was going on here in this discussion we witnessed.

As we drove along I tried very hard not to look at the side of the road. Rather than having a shoulder of any kind, the road was bordered by a sharply cut out gutter......these gutters looked to be about two feet wide and about 18 inches deep. Between the road and the gutter, there was nothing. And yet we sped down the road, around curves, close to the edge. Had we veered just a few inches off course, we would surely have had trouble. It did not seem like a very safe road design to me, and it probably is not terribly environmentally friendly either, as run off water would collect and move quickly through these gutters, gaining velocity, which would be detrimental to the non concrete stream beds it would inevitably join downstream.

Twice along this dark road we saw men sitting in chairs on the side of the road. As we approached, we saw that they were seated next to a pile of watermelons. Watermelons were in season for the entire duration of our China trip and these fruits were being guarded in the middle of the night, on the side of the road. But who would buy at this time and in the darkness? Potential customers could be seen. Even though it was dark we could see people walking along the road, presumably on their way home from work. Could the men seated on the side of the road been waiting to sell melons to shift workers headed home at night? It seems incredible. I have never seen anything of the kind before, but I have no other explanation.


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