Xiao Hei, I'm In Love

My biggest disappointment was not able to go to Western Sichuan, it was closed for foreigners due to an incident involving a monk that burned himself. When I was in Chengdu, Tibet was just re-opened and I was pretty optimistic that I could go to western Sichuan too, but unfortunately I couldn’t. Devastated in despair, I had to go through Lugu Lake to get to Yunnan, which is not a bad idea after all cos I did enjoyed my time there.

After arriving in Xichang by a night train from Chengdu, I went to a internet café next to the train station to get some information about Lugu Lake. I had no clue at all bout that place. But another silly rule from the Chinese government, foreigners can’t be online at internet café, WTF!! and Chinese themselves have to scan their ID to use internet. Later I heard that in Beijing, sometime they need to take picture first before online. Urghh…

A Chinese girl at the internet café felt pity for me and offered herself to travel with me, I speak a very little Chinese and she speaks no English, what a perfect travel buddy! Together with this girl-Wan Ping, another Western Sichuan victims-two Switzerland girls and a Hungarian TaiChi Master, we stayed the first night in Sichuan part of the lake. I cried inside when paid the admission fee, 80 fricking Yuan!!! I never have to pay for the magnificent Lake Toba that might be at least 5 times bigger than this lake. If you’re coming from Yunnan part, you have to pay 100Yuan for the same lake, so I can’t complain. I made promise to myself, if one day I’m back to China, I need a fake student card for 50% discount admission fee. Everything is cheap in China, everything but the admissions. 

Quite Lane of Wuzhiluo

The only recommended guesthouse there was Wind’s Guesthouse, it’s pretty much because that’s the only one with dorm beds, and the location-Wuzhiluo is a very laid back place, but for me it’s not that fun cos it’s not by the lake. We need to walk at least 15 minutes to get to LouWa to see the lake.  So on one breezy afternoon, me and Wan Ping walked to the lake and tried to find a place to spot sunset, we couldn’t have a real conversation, but somehow we could communicate well, most of the time when I used my magic word “ting bu dong” we'd just chuckled and laughed. We couldn’t reach the place for sunset cos it’s covered by a hill, but it was great to have a ‘guide’ to walk around the lake. A little black puppy ‘insist’ to lead our way and we named it Xiao Hei, the most common name for black dog that literally means Little Black. The first time we saw it coming out of the bush, it was eating a dead bird, but somehow it kept following us and when it walked quite far ahead of us, it’ll stop for a moment until we’re getting closer, then it would continue walking. It didn’t bark at all, but just turned its head staring at us and waited in silence, then continued walking again. It became our guide for more than one hour until it almost dark. That was so damn cute and touching, but it’s just another unavoidable sad goodbye. I was broken hearted.

Adorable Xiao Hei