Before I set out for the Sichuan trip with my husband and our two daughters last fall, I had done my homework. My research told me that visitors who wanted to go to Huanglong from Jiuzhaigou had to go to the county seat of Songpan first, where they could find a hotel to spend the night and catch a bus to Huanglong in early morning the next day. But on our tourist bus from Chengdu to Jiuzhaigou, the guide said we could stay in a hotel she recommended at Huanglong with a discounted rate. It was great news for us.

We spent one and a half days visiting Jiuzhaigou. After having lunch at a restaurant situated at the park’s entrance, we hired a taxi at the parking lot. The driver agreed to take us to Huanglong for 200 yuan (US$21.45). It was a smooth journey on the newly built highway, which winds through two ridges of 3,000-4,000 meters above sea level. On one side of the road, there were gray, rugged peaks; on the other side, a torrential river ran below the steep cliffs. On the smooth slopes in some sections, cows were grazing and plots of irregular shapes displayed different colors of green, yellow and purple. Two and half hours slipped away before we realized it. When the driver announced “daole,” meaning “here we are,” I was still immersed in the wild beauty of the highland scenery.

Running Against the Trend

It was around 4:30 p.m. The square in front of the Huanglong Scenic Area was crowded and noisy. Peddlers selling food and souvenirs were shouting for their last sales in the day while tourists, mostly in organized groups, were hurriedly following their guides in search of their buses. We were among the very few new arrivers who were walking against the main stream of the human flow.

There were several hotels built outside Huanglong. We opened our eyes wide to look for the name our former tour guide once mentioned, but could find it nowhere. Most of the existing hotels were marked “full;” the very few exceptions were very expensive. One of them, for example, had the rate written in big characters on a blackboard established at its front door – 150 yuan (US$18.11) for a bed in a big, shared room, with a public bathroom in the doorway. It meant that even if the four of us were to pay 600 yuan (US$72.46), we still could not have a standard room. It sounded not right to me, but there seemed no other choice.

While I was hesitating, someone patted me on the shoulder from behind. I turned round and saw a woman smiling to me. She was in her 30s, holding a small basket in one of her arms and her face deeply tanned. She did not look different from the dozens of country women who were hawking their homemade qingke pancakes there.

“Are you looking for a place to stay?”

I was shocked by this simple question because my mind was only ready for “yes” if she asked if I wanted some pancakes.

“You can stay at my home,” she continued. “It is only three li away.”

Seeing our interest, she dragged us to the roadside and said, “You wait here and our vehicle will pick you up.” Before anyone of us could say a word, or ask a question, or talk about the price, she disappeared in the crowd.

Since we had nowhere to go, we waited by the roadside. Three li means 1.5 km (0.93 miles). It should not be far. About 20 minutes later, she approached us. Her smile was even brighter. She then led us to a nearby open ground where all kinds of vehicles, broken cars, tractors and horse-drawn carts, were parked. I was wondering what kind of car we were going to ride on when one of the small tractors got started and drove towards us, setting off a thick pall of smoke and loud noises. Obviously, we would have no other “car” than this bumper. My heart sank. A thin and short man of the woman’s age jumped down from the driver’s seat and shook hands with my husband.

“My wife and I run a family hotel and we charge only 15 yuan (US$1.81) per person for a night,” he introduced himself and the woman automatically, sounding very business-like. We climbed onto the tractor, each finding a corner to squat or sit in the empty, open trunk. Two men, each of whom carried a big bamboo basket on their backs, also mounted the tractor. The woman, who brought us to the tractor, announced, “You go ahead. I have to wait until I sell all my pancakes.”

I glanced at her basket and found it still half-filled. “Is she selling us too?” I could not help asking myself.

A few minutes after the tractor set off, a middle-aged woman waved her hand, and the driver stopped to let her and a girl on. The new riders did not bother to get into the trunk, but simply stood on the bridge between the driver and the trunk. As the construction of a new highway was underway on the mountain slope, sending down earth and stones, the narrow country road had become even more bumpy. I worried if it was safe enough for those standing outside the trunk. But the woman rider took it very easy and obviously she enjoyed the journey very much. She told us her nine-year-old girl daughter went to her school daily, walking six kilometers (3.72 miles) each way. She herself was selling medicinal herbals … and it was nice to get a ride home.

The two men got down at the camp of the road builders. The tractor bumped on. We had driven much longer than three li, or 1.5 km but the trail seemed endless and there was no sign of human settlers yet. It was getting dark and the clouds of doubts again rose in my mind. The woman rider began talking again. She told us she and the driver lived in the same village.

“I know his family well – they are trustworthy people and their family inn is clean and safe,” she said. Pointing at the mountains by the roadside, she added, “The place offers you wonderful environment with fresh air and sweet water. That is why I married here from Songpan.”

Only then did I notice that she spoke better Mandarin than our host and hostess. If I had not been riding on a stranger’s tractor running along a country road like this in the darkness, I would have enjoyed the conversation with her and found more about her personal life which, might very possibly, have a romance involved in it. But now, all I was concerned about was -- where we were going?

Finally, we saw a cluster of houses with dim lights on, from where noises of children’s cries and dogs’ barks were sent out. After crossing a small bridge spanning a stream, the tractor stopped at one of the village houses. I asked the driver why it took us so long to travel 1.5 kilometers, intending to protest for their not telling the truth, he laughed dryly and said in an even tone, “My wife is illiterate. She must have made a mistake by mixing up a km and a li.” So her three li should have been taken as three kilometers or six li! True or false, what can you do with a mistake made by an illiterate woman farmer? At this moment to have arrived safe at a farmhouse was a great celebration for us.

A Family Inn Hidden in the Mountain

After helping us unload our luggage, the host, who now introduced himself as Zhang Hongqin, warmly welcomed us into the house. He turned on the TV in the living room and said we could choose to stay in one of the three guestrooms downstairs. All three rooms were neatly arranged with new beds and very thick blankets. We chose the one with five beds so that we could have an extra bed for our luggage.

I asked where their own bedroom was, Zhang took us to the second floor of the two-story house. Following a wooden staircase built outside the house, we reached upstairs, where there were two rooms, a smaller one for the family and a very big one for guests with about a dozen beds. He told us he would eventually replace those old beds with new ones, too. Furthermore, he had just spent 5,000 yuan on a piece of land beside his house, on which he planned to expand his hotel to include standard rooms with modern facilities.

When we returned to the living room, we found a little girl around six or seven was sitting on a bench watching TV. She was Zhang’s daughter, a first-grade student. She was curious about us and liked to talk to my two grown-up daughters. But there was not much time for her to sit still either to watch TV or talk to us as her father kept giving her various orders – to feed the pigs, to pick up vegetables from the garden, or to clean the lavatory. Every time, she stood up and left immediately without a single word. I praised the girl in front of her father. Zhang, however, seemed not interested in such a topic.

“A girl should learn how to work in the house when she is young, or she’ll become lazy, ” he said, showing no sign of pride in his daughter. I asked about her studies, he said, “She is stupid and I’m not sure how many years I’m going to support her schooling.” Before I could find the right words to help him understand the importance of education for a girl’s future, he changed the subject. “We have a son, who is very smart,” he said.

Zhang then explained that because his family needed a man’s labor force to help with farming in the mountainous area, he and his wife gave birth to their second child, and thank God, it was a boy. Though the one-child policy remains a national guideline for family planning, in recent years, the local governments have adopted flexible regulations in practice. In many places, a second child is allowed if the first one is a girl. Zhang told me that his one-year-old son was staying with his parents-in-law because he and his wife were too busy to take care of him. He assured me that he would pay whatever the cost to support his son to receive as much education as possible.

Seeing his brightened face and the sparks of hope in his eyes, I forgot my argument about the equality between girls and boys. I wished both his children might grow up well and help realize their parents’ dreams.

A Delicious Supper

At about 7 p.m., when Zhang re-entered the living room, he had a folder in his hand. He opened the folder and showed the menu. Now, like a waiter, he asked us to order our dishes. There were more than a dozen dishes listed in the menu. With his recommendation, we chose three dishes, wild mushrooms, preserved meat cooked with bamboo shoots and stir-fried vegetable, and a soup with vegetable and eggs. While asking how much it cost, Zhang laughed, saying, “Since my wife did not tell you the real distance between Huanglong and my house, I pay you back with a discount.” A meal for four cost us only 30 yuan (US$3.62).

Within half an hour, Zhang announced that soup was on the table. We sat around a roughly made wooden table set by the cooking stove in the kitchen. We invited Zhang and his daughter to join us, but he declined, “You eat first, we’ll wait for her mother.” The mushrooms were so fresh and the preserved pork was so tasty that we all ate until we were stuffed. Zhang told us that the mushrooms were collected from the mountain standing behind his house. He climbed the mountain every three or five days to collect wild mushrooms and medicinal herbals. From the top of the mountain, he said, he could see the beautiful scenes of Huanglong.

“I never bother to buy an entry ticket to see Huanglong,” he said, “and the waters look much more beautiful when viewed from above.”

While we were eating, the hostess returned, happily telling us that she had sold all her 200 pancakes. I wondered how she came home. Did she walk through the mountain trail in darkness or, like her fellow villager, find herself a lift? When we finished eating, Zhang showed us the two buckets filled with fresh water. “This is clean water I just carried back from the spring, with which you can wash yourselves with the hot water in the basins.” Turning round, he pointed at a shelter with a huge black bucket set on its roof. “I have built a bathroom with water heated by the sun,” he said. “In this season, however, the water is not warm enough and I’m afraid it is too cold to take a bath there.” Despite the rusty conditions, we felt very much refreshed after washing away the dust and the tiredness of the day.

More Guests Arrived at Night

The temperature dropped dramatically in the evening. We retreated early to our warm beds with thick quilts and fell asleep soon. The next morning, we heard noises from upstairs and more people than the host’s family speaking in the courtyard. We hurriedly got up and found the inn had received more visitors during the night. A group of four, including two men and two women, had come from Foshan of Guangdong Province; a man who described himself as a “professional super-natural power practitioner,” was from Jiangxi and a couple, a fire-fighting engineer and his wife, were from Beijing. It would be interesting if we had met earlier and talked to each other. Remembering how we had been picked up, I asked Zhang how his new guests found his place. “I have my network,” he answered slyly. “My younger brother waited at Huanglong and drove them here.” I guessed it must be even more thrilling for them to take such a ride at night.

While chatting with one another in the courtyard, we enjoyed the beautiful surroundings. The sun’s rays penetrated through the floating mists and spread a golden hue over the mountain and the farmhouses nestled at its foot. I had never seen such a quiet and peaceful scene in my life.

Zhang was cooking in the kitchen while his wife kept reminding their daughter to hurry up to get ready for her school. Breakfast, rice porridge, steamed bread and pickled vegetables, were served free of charge to all guests. The food was simple, but we felt at home.

The question now in my mind was how we should go back to Huanglong. The tractor, the only available means of transportation, was parked by the house. The host might drive all of us back in two loads, I thought. Then, I heard the claps of Zhang’s hands. “Attention, please, we’ll set off at eight o’clock.” He now sounded like a commander. I was going to ask which group would go in the first ride when Zhang picked up my bag and put it into the trunk, saying, “Get on the tractor, everyone!” So the 11 of us stood tightly packed in the small trunk and it started pumping on the road. My heart almost jumped out every time the tractor made a turn on the winding trail. The ride seemed much shorter in daylight, but it felt even more nervous when you could see how dangerous the road was. I grasped the edge of the trunk so tightly that when we finally arrived at the entrance to Huanglong, I could not straighten my fingers, meanwhile, I felt the pain on my shoulder, which had been grasped by a man rider standing behind me. When I looked at my husband, I could not help laughing. His back was covered by a layer of white wool from the sweater worn by a woman standing behind him. Obviously, no one was less frightened than I was while riding on the road.

Zhang helped us get down from the tractor and shook hands with each of us, saying, “Please come back and stay with us again. I promise to provide you with better living conditions.” On hearing this, my eyes became wet. The one-night stay had given us such unusual experiences. I told myself that I would surely come back again. I would see how the little girl is doing in school, taste the qingke pancake made by the hostess and go up the mountain with Zhang to collect wild mushrooms.

(china.org.cn May 13, 2002)