Next on our Agenda was Beijing but before we could go there we had to sort out a visa problem. We had arrived in China with a two entry visa, each visit for 30 days but we now wanted to start our second 30 days without actually leaving the country. The rumour on the grapevine was that the immigration department in the town of Leshan had the most lenient administration in China and this seemed like the most likely place to get what we wanted. Leshan was only an hour on the bus from Emei-Shan so we spent a day down there trying to sort this out.
We went to the immigration office in the morning, left our passports with them and then headed off to see the fine sights of Leshan. The biggest sight in town is a statue of the Buddha. When I say the big, I mean huge, standing at a height of 71 metres, it was blasted out of the cliff about 1300 years ago when some bloke had the bright idea of using half of the cliff face, in rubble form to stop up the treacherous river below. As a result, the people of Leshan got a much safer river and a giant Buddha called, Dafo, to boot. Dafo doesn't actually have boots of course, but amongst the many statistics that the people love to tell you about him, one is that a family of four can have pic-nic on his big-toe nail.
We got a boat ride out to see him, and shared the boat with a load of Chinese tourists who all paid hand over fist for an 'official photo' in front of him, in which they were forced to hold a very odd pose by the particularly angry photographer. Most of the photos must have shown a slightly strained smile, disguising a perplexed and dissatisfied countenance. We took exactly the same photo ourselves using our own camera, standing right beside the other people, without paying someone who looked less qualified than the subjects to wield a particularly non-pro camera.
We thought we had seen all the statue sights of Leshan until by chance we happened upon the huge statue of a naked woman wrestling a giant crocodile. We could find no reference or explanation for this so took a couple of pictures and then collected our visas, processed as we hoped and now giving us permission to stay in the country.
An overnight back in Chengdu followed before a flight the next day to Beijing where we landed in the little obscure airport off to the side that no one really uses. It is rapidly getting done up for all the Olympic traffic, having been a former military airport and is still covered in military propaganda posters. We were ushered into a tin shed, along with two other plane's worth of people where we all waited crammed together until slowly truck after truck arrived with the bags. There was no carousel though, instead just a tiled desk where the personnel would chuck the bags and people would clamber over each other to get their belongings. It was chaos and the bags came in no particular order. The drivers didn't even quite know where to drive their buggies to resulting in the crowd constantly crushing from one side of the building to the other as the drivers tried different doors. An hour and a few bruises later, we emerged victorious with our bags in our hands, found a bus with a bit of help from a girl who got no end of abuse from the taxi drivers and next found ourselves fighting for a taxi at Tiannamen Square to take us to our hostel. We got a taxi, and after a call on his phone he knew exactly where he was going and we were settled in for our first night in the capital.
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