Gongtan(China): 1N/2D

June 2014 (by Pat)    Itinerary Link

GONGTAN

YK had carefully planned an itinerary that would take us to various interesting places. Our first goal was Gongtan, a 1700-year-old village on the Wu River(Wujiang in Chinese), a tributary of the Yangtze. Some years ago the village was scheduled to be flooded by a dam on the Wu. To avoid this destruction, the residents moved the town, brick by brick, to a safe location.

YK could find no information on travel to Gongtan on any English language website, so she enlisted the help of a friend in China. The plan was: train from Chongqing to a town called Pengshui, bus to a boat dock outside of town followed by a two hour boat journey on the Wu to Gongtan. It didn’t work out that way.

Even finding the train proved to be a problem. Our cab let us off in an underground cab area. Following signs upstairs, we found ourselves in a large cavernous and fairly empty hall, part of which was locked off as if it hadn’t opened yet. There was no sign of any train activity and no directions to trains. After wandering around the hall for a while, we noticed a building next door that seemed to have activity and went over there. It housed the ticket counters, but there was still no sign of actual trains. We returned to the first hall, again saw nothing happening, and eventually went outside, in the rain, and explored further, finally finding the entrance to the station in a third building. We then got on what proved to be, for some reason, the wrong security line, but eventually we found our train.

The train was already packed. We ejected people from our seats. I then fought my way down the aisle, eventually finding storage space for our luggage on the overhead rack. We then settled for the 2 1/2 hour ride to Pengshui.

It was during this ride that I first saw the fish. In addition to a snacks and drinks vendor and a fruit vendor, there was a toy vendor roaming along the crowded aisles. The toy vendor was holding an orange plastic fish with flashing lights inside, playing a jingle, and wagging its tail. I remember asking YK who would buy such a thing on a train and she said maybe a father returning from a business trip.

When we arrived in Pengshui we had a rather long walk, up and down flights of stairs, to a small parking lot full of cars and minibuses. We were accosted by a rather aggressive gentleman who was intent on taking us somewhere and, before long, our bags wound up in his minivan. YK drew a picture of a boat and he seemed to understand, but it was not clear that he was taking us there, but wherever he was taking us would cost 10Y each. As more passengers got into the van, it became clear that we were headed into town.

When we arrived in town and the other passengers had left, he indicated that he would take us somewhere else for an additional 4Y each. We thought at first this might be the boat dock, but, when, we tried to clarify, we learned the boat dock would be 70Y. We gave to him 8Y to see where he would take us and he took us to the bus we wanted.

The driver of the bus was a somewhat chunky middle aged woman with dyed blond hair and a skirt that didn’t quite cover everything it was supposed to. She came over to us, we told her where we were going, she understood and told us the fare would be 4Y. We then waited for the bus to fill up, eventually heading out of town. After about 20 minutes, she pulled over and told us this was where we were to get out.

We walked down to the river, found the boat, boarded and then were told that the boat was not going to run that day because there weren’t enough passengers. [I found this youtube video showing what we missed]

This presented a major problem. We were in the middle of nowhere, along a country road with little traffic, didn’t speak the language, and had no idea how to get anywhere.

Fortunately, we had saviors. There were three other ejected passengers, a couple and their high school age son. And the boy spoke some English. He said we would have to try to catch a bus to Gongtan. I had no idea if there were buses to Gongtan or how one caught one, but was glad to be around people who seemed to know what they were doing. I learned later that the buses stop anywhere along the road, but only if they have empty seats and the buses that went by us were all full.

After 30 or 40 minutes, a car passed us and stopped a bit down the road. The father went and talked to the driver and the driver offered to take us all to the next town. When we got there he arranged for a hired car to take us the rest of the way. We were saved.

Of course, we didn’t have a hotel reservation. YK had used a site called Agoda to book our hotels, but nothing in Gongtan has a web presence(finally found this 6 years later.) We followed the family to their hotel and asked for a room. We were given several to choose from. The cost for one night was 100Y.

The accommodations were, to say the least, rustic. No towels, soap, shampoo or toilet paper and a squat toilet.

But the view from the porch was gorgeous, overlooking the village and the river to the sheer cliff on the far bank.

We walked around the village for a while, then returned to the hotel where the proprietor served the five us dinner on the porch. I remember thinking that this was the first place I had been in China that seemed peaceful. As it grew dark, music and singing emerged from the one bar and echoed back to us from the far cliff.