Mt. Qingcheng & Dujiangyan

Posted on May 27, 2014

For detailed information on how to do this trip see our tips section here. Months ago, back in the UK, I’d looked up places to visit in China by going through the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list. One place listed was Dujiangyan Irrigation System. It looked quite out the way to visit, and it’s also something that’s not so impressive to look at. It is basically an engineering masterpiece which can only be understood by reading about it rather than looking at it. However, I wanted to go. So, imagine my delight when I found that a high-speed train exists, direct from Chengdu to Dujiangyan. Excellent I thought, we must go! A bit of reading told me that it was also near a popular mountain and the two are best combined into a day trip. So at 8:30am we were boarding the high-speed train to Qingcheng (in Chinese Q is pronounced like ch. So it’s pronounced like Ching Cheng). Almost the whole line was elevated above the trees and we glided in comfort at 200kph to our destination. A bargain at £1.50 each. We arrived an hour later at a glistening new station in Qingcheng. We caught the bus to the base of the mountain. A group of people who spoke no English did their best to make sure we knew where we were going. They pointed at their leaflets which had the name of the mountain written in English. The bus was a flat rate 20p and as we found out later only went to the mountain by request, usually it went the opposite direction into town. Very helpful of them to make sure we were going the right way. That morning it had been dark, cloudy and chilly in Chengdu so we’d taken our fleeces for warmth. We’d given no thought to the sun. That was a very stupid mistake for us to make. By the time we reached the mountain the sun was shining and the sky was blue. It’s the end of May and we are quite far south, the sun can do some serious damage here! We had the umbrella in the bag (which we bought on the Nepalese/Tibet border when we were unexpectedly caught in a downpour with no waterproofs) which Annemarie could use to keep the sun off her. I would have to buy a hat and let my arms take the punishment. My arms can take the sun without burning but obviously there’s other dangers than just burning, but that’s my fault. Suncream is impossible to buy. Many Chinese are now quite white (thanks to the whitening they have in every...