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Les Grottes de Guyaju, un Mystère Chinois
Les Grottes de Guyaju, un Mystère Chinois
Les grottes de Guyaju, également connues sous le nom de Yanqing Ancient Cliff House, sont un complexe taillé dans la roche de grottes en nid d’abeille creusées dans les pentes de la montagne Tianhuang en Chine. Le site des grottes de Guyaju a été découvert en 1984 près du village de Dongmenying lors d’une enquête menée par le Bureau de gestion des reliques culturelles du comté de…
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Mysterious ancient cave dwelling of Guyaju, with no historical records of the people who created them
Americana, a la Chinese
Today was one of those good, solid China days when I remember why packing up one day and moving to Beijing without a clear plan and a single word of Mandarin was, against all odds, the greatest possible idea.
It went well from the start. I left the house at 9 am and met with my friend Andrés. On the way to the bus station, we saw a Chihuahua wearing a medical face mask. People here wear those often as a way to protect themselves from the awful smog, but this is the first canine version I’ve seen. Please tell me this isn’t just great/insane:
Since neither of us speaks Chinese, getting to our destination, which included three English and pinyin-free bus transfers, was an act of faith. We managed to find our way, mostly thanks to locals that were fascinated with the lone Westerners in those parts of outer Beijing, and took it upon themselves to find out where we were going and make sure we got off at the right station. The bus ride itself was eventful: we drove past an unfinished and abandoned knockoff Disney World that I had already read about, we saw a couple of spectacular stretches of the Great Wall, and we even saw a camel.
Shaky picture from the bus. That would have been the Cinderella castle of “Wonderland,” now abandoned.
After over two hours of travel, we finally got off where we needed to be, which we only knew to be the right spot because the bus driver yelled at us and pointed to the door (where else could these foreigners possibly be going if not to the trogolodyte caves?). A local guy with a car harassed us until we agreed to let him drive us the 3 km to the entrance of the caves for 10 yuan, and on the way we commented on how barren and lonely the area looked, we didn’t see a single human being on the way there.
Though not one of the main tourist attractions near Beijing, the thousand-year old Guyaju caves were very interesting. Once a group of high schoolers left, we had them all to ourselves, which is an unusual and nice feeling in China.
We had lunch and a nice nap in the sun on one of the terraces in the mountain, and then started looking in the distance at the little town by the foot of the hill. I pointed out it looked very odd and non-Chinese. The houses, with pointed triangular roofs and lots of spaces between them looked too large and Western for such a small village. We could see no people at all, and oddest of all, there was a blue church right in the middle of the town, which Andres described as “very fake-looking.” I pulled out my glasses, and the more we stared at the village the stranger it seemed. Next to the church, a string of buildings made a very recognizable main street. They were painted in bold colors, something we’d never seen in gray, gray China before. “It looks like one of those old cowboy villages,” I said. Cue ominous music.
A CHURCH?!! In a Chinese village? And no people? Something strange is happening here.
On the way back, we decided to take a little detour and check out what was going on in that strange ghost town. This was the entrance to the town, which begins to explain what exactly is going on:
Please notice that everyone in the add is blonde, blue eyed. Not that that’s at all unusual in Chinese advertising.
Americana, a la Chinese
Today was one of those good, solid China days when I remember why packing up one day and moving to Beijing without a clear plan and a single word of Mandarin was, against all odds, the greatest possible idea.
It went well from the start. I left the house at 9 am and met with my friend Andrés. On the way to the bus station, we saw a Chihuahua wearing a medical face mask. People here wear those often as a way to protect themselves from the awful smog, but this is the first canine version I’ve seen. Please tell me this isn’t just great/insane:
Since neither of us speaks Chinese, getting to our destination, which included three English and pinyin-free bus transfers, was an act of faith. We managed to find our way, mostly thanks to locals that were fascinated with the lone Westerners in those parts of outer Beijing, and took it upon themselves to find out where we were going and make sure we got off at the right station. The bus ride itself was eventful: we drove past an unfinished and abandoned knockoff Disney World that I had already read about, we saw a couple of spectacular stretches of the Great Wall, and we even saw a camel.
Shaky picture from the bus. That would have been the Cinderella castle of “Wonderland,” now abandoned.
After over two hours of travel, we finally got off where we needed to be, which we only knew to be the right spot because the bus driver yelled at us and pointed to the door (where else could these foreigners possibly be going if not to the trogolodyte caves?). A local guy with a car harassed us until we agreed to let him drive us the 3 km to the entrance of the caves for 10 yuan, and on the way we commented on how barren and lonely the area looked, we didn’t see a single human being on the way there.
Though not one of the main tourist attractions near Beijing, the thousand-year old Guyaju caves were very interesting. Once a group of high schoolers left, we had them all to ourselves, which is an unusual and nice feeling in China.
We had lunch and a nice nap in the sun on one of the terraces in the mountain, and then started looking in the distance at the little town by the foot of the hill. I pointed out it looked very odd and non-Chinese. The houses, with pointed triangular roofs and lots of spaces between them looked too large and Western for such a small village. We could see no people at all, and oddest of all, there was a blue church right in the middle of the town, which Andres described as “very fake-looking.” I pulled out my glasses, and the more we stared at the village the stranger it seemed. Next to the church, a string of buildings made a very recognizable main street. They were painted in bold colors, something we’d never seen in gray, gray China before. “It looks like one of those old cowboy villages,” I said. Cue ominous music.
A CHURCH?!! In a Chinese village? And no people? Something strange is happening here.
On the way back, we decided to take a little detour and check out what was going on in that strange ghost town. This was the entrance to the town, which begins to explain what exactly is going on:
Please notice that everyone in the add is blonde, blue eyed. Not that that’s at all unusual in Chinese advertising.
