Matt in China: Jiuzhaigou Valley

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ApproachingLight
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Dittos. Matt these are beautiful. Some of these building are amazing.
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Matt
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Here's a nice little restaurant/shop
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Closed up for the night.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/283.jpg[/img2]

Joni and I circle the buildings in the village checking out the designs painted on them.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/284.jpg[/img2]

A mani pile
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"Owner's Building"... administrative offices of the village.
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We were running out of light... and we still had miles to walk to get to the bus.... so we snapped photos of the art to check out later.
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Being in a city of tens of millions for over a week, I had gotten used to constant noise. Traffic, advertisements, people, machines... it's annoying at first but easy to get used to. Then I come to the mountains and all of that is removed again. No traffic, no planes overhead. It's just the sound of millions of these prayer flags.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/290.jpg[/img2]

[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/291.jpg[/img2]

Restaurant
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Matt
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I'm not sure why these monuments are white while everything else is so elaborately colorful.
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Ever been in a place where there are limitless photographic opportunities that is just overwhelms you? I just started snapping away, while the light was slipping away. We had to get back and I we had to wake up at 5 am to catch a "12 hour" bus.
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Matt
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The detail in this painted house is amazing. All hand-drawn, the windows are hand-carved, and all the gradients and color transitions are perfect.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/299.jpg[/img2]

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Me
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Joni (now she is sick)
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Me
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/304.jpg[/img2]

Here is my view from that very spot.
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ApproachingLight
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These are worthy. The colors, the mountain background. The colors are so vibrant. Even if you punched the saturation a little, you can tell from the darker tones this must have been a very amazingly colorful day. Can you imagine the maintenance?
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Matt
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With the sun hiding behind the mountains and the valley turning ice-cold, we are rushing back, on foot to the bus station. I'm snapping away at what I can.
I'm feeling better after being sick for so long. Joni had gotten sick earlier in the day and we rushed to a village and I had to locate a restroom for her to puke her brains out. (Restrooms are labeled W.C. in China). Good fact to know.

Here is the a nice view of a garden. Agriculture is banned here due to environmental reasons, so small gardens are usually a mix of wildflowers and small concealments of whatever crops will grow up here.
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The top of another Mani pile.
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Buddha is always watching you.
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Another cool Mani pile.
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Back in Jiuzhaigou village, we hit a few shops and I have my appetite back. In fact, I am starving. Joni isn't not too hungry, but she can't resist eating some Dico's fried chicken
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Dico's was on the second floor of a souvenir shop. Panda things are popular here as the valley is (or was) one major habitat for the Giant Panda. I bought a cool photo book of the valley so I could see all the things I missed.
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We head to the hotel and later that night, I puke all that chicken up. The next morning I still feel like puking and the bus ride... supposedly 10 hours... actually more like 14 to get there, is supposed to be longer due to construction... and the bus, with no heat, is covered in morning frost. Not a great day for me.
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Matt
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I mentioned before that the valley traveled from Chengdu to and then into Jiuzhaigou was the scene of some of the most devastation of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. On the way up I guess I was sitting on the wrong side of the bus, because I didn't see much of the Fujiang River and the devastation of the old highway and villages. This is where the 8.0 quote hit on Monday May 12, 2008. Within 2 minutes and estimated 80% of buildings were destroyed.
As you can see from the photos I snapped from the bus, the steep cliffs here are fragile towers of Limestone (not hard granite). They created rivers of boulders that crushed villages, destroyed dams and completely obliterated the large highway on the other side of the river.

Today, that side of the river, as well as many of the villages are abandoned. The Chinese government erected signs commemorating lost homes and towns, giving details to what was lost. Cars, trucks, foundations, crushed by boulders still sit on that old highway. What you can see destroyed is almost as haunting as what you cannot. Large mountains of boulders cover what was once a village of thousands. An estimated 68,000 people where killed. The amount of rock is impossible to remove. Not all victims can be counted. That side of the river cannot be reclaimed.

So much rock fell from the sheer cliffs of the valley, that it actually filled the river bed, causing the bed to narrow, the water to rise, and it to flood out of control. More homes, crops and lives were lost.

Edge of a village wiped out:
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/314.jpg[/img2]

Upper village wiped out, so the a lot was rebuilt below.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/315.jpg[/img2]

3-lane highway gone.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/317.jpg[/img2]

The river is a turbulent mess of debris and white water. Construction on the new major highway is underway on this side of the valley.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/318.jpg[/img2]

A sign commemorates a small village covered under the debris.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/319.jpg[/img2]

Remnants of the old highway.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/320.jpg[/img2]

Homes... swept away.
[img2]http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/china2/321.jpg[/img2]

I would have taken more but the lighting, fog, and speed the bus was going at was just too much. We arrived in Chengdu late at night, so the bus ended up being roughly 16-18 hours with frequent stops. No puking for me during the whole ride. I was so proud.
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hobkyl
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Amazing the power of natural disaster, it never ceases to amaze me. Great photos of it all. Being in a valley...wouldn't a road on the otherside of the river be just as susceptible to another disaster?
“There’s an inconsequentiality to our lives that living in the wilderness shows up. Mountain are real, they set their limits, they set ours. They expose us, make us vulnerable and strong at the same time. “
--Alison Wat




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