When my students invited me on a field trip last Saturday, about the last thing I expected was another episode like this one. Of course, I should have known better: more adventures in psychedelia is exactly what I got.
We set off for a nearby mountain at the wonderful hour of 8am. On the way out there, I got to see that Hangzhou seems intent on building its very own Pudong on the southern bank of the river. I’m talking highrises lining the coast, all under construction at the same time. At this rate they could probably freeze new construction for at least ten years and still have vacancy issues. To the untrained eye it is starting to seem a bit ridiculous.
But anyways, we got to the mountain sight and it turned out that a significant part of the visit involved caves. And I’m not talking about any normal, run-of-the-mill holes in the ground: I’m talking psychedelic caves. We were treated to a really bizarre spectacle of acid-drenched lighting the whole way through, not to mention “springs” (read fountains installed about three years ago). Some of the cave scenery was pretty obviously fake, like concrete had been poured to spruce things up a little in there. But those lights, oh those lights. It was like some 60s light and sound show. Unfortunately, however, the sound aspect of the performance was performed by some tour guide yelling non-stop into a bullhorn.
After crawling up some pretty steep staircases in dank darkness, we emerged high up on the hill. All the usual usual suspects were present: some old architecture, a big gold Buddha in a pink cape that looked no more than three years old, and a pagoda overlooking the “serene” Zhejiang countryside (they were blasting apart the mountains across the way, presumably to build more redundant infrastructure). But then things started to get weird. Beside this pagoda was a giant guitar, with no ready explanation available as to what it was doing there.
Continuing along the path, what do we see? Another giant instrument, this time some bongo drum. What was going on here?
And so it was that every twenty metres or so, another giant instrument greeted us. We took in a piano, a giant horn, a flute, cymbals, a violin and some of those famous Chinese instruments whose English names currently escape me (think strings). Of course, absolutely no explanation was provided as to why these monuments to music were sitting randomly on some hill in the countryside. But the park did give us a pretty good hint as to what influenced its design: there was also a prominently large statue of a mushroom along the path.
After this stroll through the doors of perception, it was lunchtime (well, sort of, considering it was only about 10:45am). This break consisted mostly of the foreign guys trying to eat as quickly as possible so as not to be made sick by the beer their students were getting them to chug. My buddy Justin commented how it was always the quietest ones in class who turned out to be the party animals. I had three bowls of rice and a bit too much beer.
My own perception now a bit blurred, I found out that we were going to visit another cave. This time we had to descend really steep staircases with dangerous ledges, in near darkness of course. Near the end of this cavern expedition were some cool scenes and rock formations, but before I knew it we were back outside with three hours to kill until the bus went back to the city. People sat around, with some of the more tipsy students loudly practicing their kung fu moves on each other. Soon, the students decided they were going to go “play” in the parking lot.
So we just sat around for a few hours, nursing beers and enjoying the quiet bamboo forest. It was nice to get out of the city, even for just a few hours, and enjoy the relatively natural scenery (minus the oddities). It was also nice to see some of the students come alive as they left the apathy of the classroom behind (of course, the beer at lunch might have helped with that). But I really need to get my drinking water checked because I’ve been tripping way too much this year.