Hailuogou Glacier Park and Gongga Shan
Travel Location: Hailuoguo-Glacier-Park,China
Another early start. We departed Kangding at 6.30 am, heading for Hailuogou Glacier Park via Luding.
Luding Bridge
At Hailuogou “the land is trembling and the valley is buzzing”. Mao’s secret hideout revealed in Moxi!
Luding lays claim to hosting what some regard as the most glorious moment of the Long March. The bridge, built in 1706, is unremarkable in appearance, a 102 metre-long chain suspension bridge, over the Dadu River. On 29 March 1935 the bridge had been captured by the Nationalist Kuomingtang. Twenty Communist Red Army troops, armed with grenades, successfully won a passage across the bridge fighting against a more formidable Nationalist force. This allowed the Long March to proceed before additional Kuomingtang caught up to them. We chose to admire the bridge from a vantage point on the shore. In other words, we didn’t want to pay yet another entrance fee for visiting a tourist spot in China.
We used the public toilets in Luding which were remarkably clean by Chinese standards. Such cleanliness was likely due to the husband and wife who lived in a tiny room at the front of the toilet block and extracted a fee (0.5 RMB) from those who have “to go”. Their pots and pans sat to the side in the entrance to the gents amenities. They could only fit a single bed and a few possessions in their room. Human resilience is amazing – that people can live in such conditions and still eke out an existence.
Down the street from the toilets was a bustling street market. The crowd would part just enough to allow bikes, car and the odd bus to pass though. Food was the main offering for sale – vegetables, meat and live chickens. We bought some fruit and a pancake from the street vendors.
Hailuogou Glacier Park and Gongga Shan
Our bus arrived at the Park at around 11am, having stopped so as to allow people to buy a swimming costume. The Park boasts some hot springs and in the interests of decency, nude bathing is not acceptable.
From the entrance we transferred to smaller scenic bus which travelled 37km on a narrow and winding road to the foot of the glacier. It seems you have to pay for all sightseeing in China – 200RMB for park entry, 60RMB for the bus and then 130RMB for the cable car to see the glacier. The bus would only take us to the foot of the glacier, where we couldn’t actually visualise the glacier. As seeing the glacier seemed to be the point of travelling this far, we forked out for the cable car which would take us a further 7km towards the head of this river of ice. We highly recommend catching the cable car, or “glacier ropeway” as it’s officially called. It offers commanding views of the Hailuogou Glacier from its terminal moraine, which abuts a green forest, to its birthplace in the upper reaches of the eastern slopes of Mt. Gongga.
Mt. Gongga, known as Gongga Shan in Chinese, is the highest mountain peak in the Daxue Range with an altitude of 7556m. It’s snow-capped all year round. Hailuogou Glacier is Asia’s lowest altitude glacier. The Hailuogou Valley, 290km from Chengdu, is about 31km long and covers an area of 200 square kilometres. There are actually several glaciers in the Hailuogou Glacier Park, the largest of which is the imaginatively named, No.1 Glacier, 14.2 km long and up to 150m in thickness. Wow! Occasionally there is a dramatic ice fall. Our guidebook for the Park informed us that “the great collision between the ice pieces brings forth the electricity which behaves a powerful blue spark. The land is trembling and the valley is buzzing”! The distinctive feature of this glacier is the fact that the great tongue of ice extends into a virgin forest.
The cable car ascended to an altitude of 3400m. We trekked down a steep path from the viewing platforms to the glacier itself and snacked on the glacier. (We didn’t eat the ice, we ate on the ice). The undulating surface of this river of ice was intimidating up close. It resembles waves at the beach stopped as they were rising to a crest, frozen mid-motion seemingly never to break on the shore. Marred with crevasses it was not a place to venture alone. The ice had incorporated so much gravel that it had become a dirty grey hue.
We chose to walk to the glacier, however, if the trail to the glacier from the viewing platform is too difficult, you may choose to hire a stretcher ride from the men clad in green. These guys would traipse back and forth all day on the steep route to the glacier sparing tourists the indignity of breaking into a sweat. They would all relax by puffing on a cigarette. It must be good for their cardiovascular health, the walking that is. There’s got to be an easier way to earn a living! Such hard labour could be seen as exploitation and demeaning, however, there may be seldom other opportunities for gainful employment for these men.
We then visited a nearby remembrance plaque to Japanese tourists whom had perished on the glacier in 2001.
If you want to enjoy the hotsprings it will set you back about another 60RMB. Some claim that soaking in the warm waters has healing benefits for not only aching joints and muscles, but also for intestinal disorders and diabetes! Instead of soaking in these rejuvenating waters, we cured our ails with some of the local tea.
Moxi Town and Mao’s Hideouts
Leaving the glacier at around 4pm, we spent the night in the historically significant little town of Moxi, at the foot of the glacier. While Moxi only seems to exist to support the tourist trade to Hailuogou Glacier, it boasts of having Mao Zedong “visit” during the Long March. Mao hid out in a local Buddhist/Taoist temple, known as the “Jin Hua” (Gold Flower) Temple, and a Catholic Church. The outer walls of the temple grounds are adorned with murals depicting inspirational scenes form the Long March. We walked through the temple grounds, past the smoke billowing from tall burning sticks of incense, and while the majority of people from our tour group had their fortunes read, we exited via a narrow doorway at the side of the temple compound. We meandered through narrow laneways of Moxi town, turning left then right, past playing children and elderly women, couples eating dinner on the curbside, past mothers toileting their kids and women washing their hair. We soon arrived at a Catholic Church where Mao hid out during the Long March in 1935.
A new church has been built of concrete, adjacent to the original wooden building. A congregation of about 35 people currently meet here each Sunday. A pleasant elderly lady was sitting at an equally aged desk at the front of the old church. For 3 RMB she’ll let you enter and even turn on the lights in the building. The rooms of the lower floor were decorated with historical photos and artefacts of the Long March. Venturing up a rickety stair case we explored the bedroom and dining room. The bedroom was sparsely furnished with a wooden desk and a wire bed-frame without a accompanying mattress. Wonder if that’s the place where the Chairman rested his weary eyes at the end of a long day? It was quite exciting “experiencing” this small but tangible piece of Chinese history.
We strolled up and down the main street of Moxi. A vendor was skinning a rabbit on the roadside, next to a woman roasting a lamb that had been pounded flat and attached to a wire frame to facilitate holding it above hot coals. We eventually chose to dine alfresco style at the “Green Home Restaurant” accompanied by a bevy of mosquitoes. We consumed freshly prepared chicken pieces, beef and green vegetables, and rice.
Moxi had a grotty feel. Several bars, with wooden and bamboo slats for walls, were more appropriately located on a beach in Thailand. Shopfronts with soft red lights above their doors were not infrequently seen. Spartan homes with their doors open to the street revealed families eating, watching television or playing games or cards.
We spent the night at a large well-equipped hotel, the Bing Chuan Fan Dian (not the quaint Bingchuan Fandian described in the Lonely Planet China, 2005 edition).
Another enjoyable day on the road.
