Lost

(I actually wrote this entry in its entirety over 2 hours late last night using MS Word because the hotel internet was down, then saved it in two formats before going to bed. When I came to cut and paste it online this afternoon I found it had been deleted. No hotel staff were able to offer any explanation as to why this was done. Awesome.)


For Buddhists, Emeishan is one of the four holiest mountains in all of China, but for the government, it is just another opportunity to cash in on entrance fees. To reach the summit, you must first take a two hour bus ride, followed by a cable car ride, each requiring an additional ticket. We opted, instead, to hike a trail partway up, one considered to have the most beautiful scenery on the mountain. Unlike Yellow Mountain, which is extraordinarily steep and difficult to access, Emeishan is relatively flat, and has therefore been developed to an almost unbelievable degree. With stalls and restaurants at every turn, it was sometimes hard to remember we were on a mountain at all, and not in the middle of a marketplace that just happened to have a lot of trees around. But the most appalling affront to the mountain came when we were asked to pay to enter a Buddhist temple. The amount they were charging was insignificant, but the fact they were even asking (and this, above and beyond the entrance fee everyone had already paid) was enough for us to refuse and turn away in disgust.

What Mt.Emei lacked in peace, it made up for in beauty and entertainment. Beauty, in the form of old-growth forests and lush ferns, waterfalls and intricate stone carvings, entertainment, in the form of monkeys, mischievous macaques tormenting tourists, snatching snacks straight out of their hands, and jumping on unsuspecting people's heads, much to our amusement.
An unwelcome rain forced us down the mountain and back to Chengdu to catch a train.

You know that annoying (and, let's be honest, useless) process you have to go through at airport security: x-raying your bags, emptying your pockets, walking through a metal detector, being scanned and patted down, gathering your belongings, and re-shouldering your pack? Well, in China, this is the process you have to go through before boarding every last train, subway, and long-distance bus. It's a tremendous pain in the ass, and, unsurprisingly, one that's multiplied when you're carrying three bags and in a hurry to catch a train. However, having been through the process countless times in the past few weeks, Hyangmi and I were pretty much security check masters, slinging our packs off with the effortless grace of Olympic gymnasts, before scooping them up again and gliding past an indifferent x-ray tech towards our train in a single seamless motion.

Since my ticket had already been checked, hole-punched, and checked again before boarding the train, I didn't think it particularly careless when I tossed it onto my bed before helping Hyangmi to reach her bunk. This turned out to be a mistake. Minutes later, I was looking over my sheets, in my pockets, under my bag--I couldn't find it anywhere. No big deal, I thought, maybe they wouldn't even ask to see it again. Shortly after this thought, a train worker appeared at the compartment door, asking to see everyone's ticket. I explained I couldn't find it. They just shook their head and left.
The search began: behind my mattress, under my pillow, on the bunk beneath mine, on the floor. It was nowhere to be found. The train worker returned. Hyangmi showed them a receipt, proving we had bought two tickets only half an hour before. "No good, need ticket." More people joined the hunt. Hyangmi searched high and low, and a Chinese woman began offering suggestions on where to look: under my sheets, in my pockets, on the bottom of my shoes. A man from the same compartment produced a lighter and began searching the floor, pulling out bundles of dirty blankets from beneath the beds.
By this point, word had traveled throughout the entire car about the stupid foreigner who had lost his ticket, and a small crowd had gathered in the hall to watch. The search continued, in vain, the possible places the ticket could be having long run out. The scale of the search was getting entirely out of hand, and the places we were looking becoming increasingly more absurd. People were starting to get pissed off. I was ready to give up, resign myself to paying for the ticket again (at around $40, it was among the most expensive in Asia, outside Japan), it was simply gone. The train worker returned a final time, and, perhaps feeling pity for me for becoming the laughing stock of the entire train, or perhaps satisfied by the extensiveness of our search, allowed me to ride without buying another ticket, suggesting, next time, that I put it in my pocket.