Chinese Medicine

On the way back to civilisation, bad luck struck again, and Jonny developed the worst toothache imaginable. His cheek swelled up to the size of a large orange, and we had to head for the nearest city. Toothache is about the last thing you want to get when travelling in under-developed countries. Where the tropical medicine is often better than anything you’ll receive in the UK, dentistry is often of the ‘if in doubt, pull it out’ school.

China is famed for its traditional medicine, and we had had a few brushes with it up to this point. Jonny had had his ears de-waxed with the longest cotton bud I've ever seen in my life; I had twisted my ankle quite badly on the Great Wall of China, and had some fantastic sports massage by a lady in Pingyao who managed to stop the pain for a few hours; following on from that, I went for another one in Xi’an and was offered ‘cupping’ – a traditional remedy that works on the basis of drawing toxins out of the body. Thinking it would be something akin to acupuncture, I agreed, and to give him something to do, Jonny was offered a free treatment as well.


Randomly placing cups on Jonny’s back and around my bruised knee, he sucked up the skin with a vacuum pump. Apparently the more bruised you get, the more toxins are coming out. All I could see was skin starved of oxygen, and purple bruising developing. Cupping, in my humble opinion, is nothing but outdated quackery and hocus-pocus.

Trying to find a decent modern dentist in Kunming was always going to be difficult. The first dentist was asleep on his own chair when we walked in, and after a cursory examination wanted to pull out Jonny’s gold tooth without even doing an x-ray. Needless to say, we left very quickly. Then we spent four hours in the local hospital, which was all very modern and had full oral x-ray facilities, but nobody spoke English. Somehow, through sign language and drawing pictures, we managed to get an x-ray done, but still couldn’t get any strong painkillers. Only then were we pointed in the direction of the local Colgate sponsored, sparkling clean and full English speaking dental hospital! After finally receiving a proper examination, it seemed Jonny was going to need to be somewhere for a while to sort the problem out, and the last thing we wanted was to be stuck in Kunming for another week.

The frustrating thing was that even in the proper dental hospital, the only painkiller on offer was under-strength ibuprofen. I couldn’t understand how, even in the major hospital in the city, they couldn’t prescribe ibuprofen with codeine or another stronger painkiller. Later I found out that the Chinese have an uneasy relationship with Codeine, or any opiate, due to the history of Opium Wars with the British, and the vast numbers of opium addicts in the population throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. Codeine Phosphate was only licensed for use in cancer patients last year, and for any serious terminal illness, pain relief is woefully under-prescribed. We also learned that with no national health system, victims of accidents in China are often left on the roadside, as if you take a poor man to hospital unfortunately the good Samaritan is liable to pay his medical bills. When in China, it’s definitely best to be either healthy or rich, and preferably both.

We flew straight to Hong Kong, where our friends Gary and Angel put us up, got Jonny a dentist who managed to sort the problem out without major surgery, gave us the Slaughter and May company junk for a morning, and generally spoiled us rotten. Despite the pain Jonny endured for a few days, there is no doubt that we are definitely the lucky ones.

Kham Again

From Tiger Leaping Gorge, we headed further north into Tibetan Yunnan, where we approached the high altitude plateaux at an altogether more sensible pace. Before Tiger Leaping Gorge, we’d taken in the very beautiful but distinctly touristy town of Lijiang, whose great saviour was the amazing quality of its arts and crafts, but wanted to get further off the beaten track, if we could. We got to Zhongdian, recently re-christened Shangri-La to help bring in tourist trade after it was named as the subject of the 1930s British novel Lost Horizon (available in all good Yunnan bookshops).

Its 80% Tibetan here, with a few other minority groups, and really feels it: cold and crisp with the kind of amazing quality of light that you get at very high altitudes; Tibetan people of all ages dancing in a circle in the town square at dusk; being served deep fried yak cheese with sugar for breakfast (surprisingly tasty!).

Shangri La was our stopping off point to get to Deqin (Day-chin), which we’d heard was a largely unspoilt region. Its difficult to get to, being at least two days journey from the nearest airport or train station, and is only just opening up to tourism. We stayed at a little Tibetan trekking lodge – traditionally built in brick and wood and with space to keep animals below (newly converted to a shower block for backpackers) and with murals and paintings on all the walls.

Leaving our big packs behind and taking the barest essentials, we did a steep four hour trek uphill to a mountain pass. From there it was an hour downhill to a little village called Yebong. The facilities here are basic, to say the least. In fact, we’ve got quite used to decent backpacker hostels and clean, warm surroundings in almost all of the places we’ve stayed. Here it was rough and ready – four newly constructed hostels in a row on the side of the valley, with planks knocked together and thin mattresses for beds, one shower shack outside – solar powered shower though, not bad - and a ‘thunder-box’ on the path outside.

But to make up for the lack of creature comforts, Yebong is a valley truly deserving of the moniker ‘stunning’. There is no road, people get around on foot and mule and I guessed that this was how the Swiss Alps may have looked, in the days before carver skis and cable cars. Waking up in the morning and looking out over the valley, it was difficult to keep your balance: the feast for the eyes was too much to take in.

From Yebong you can trek to waterfalls and glaciers – all difficult climbs (for us) through thick mud and steep forest, but really worth it when you get there. We went in a group as it’s easy to get lost. The area is so new to tourism there aren’t any decent maps to be had; one man nearly didn’t find his way back and a search party was sent out to find him.

Getting back after the day’s trekking, we ate at the hostel. This wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds, as Jonny had to go into the kitchen (which was only lit by one dim light bulb) and order according to what he could see on the shelves. Spying a piece of meat, he flapped his arms in the universal sign of the chicken, and received a nod of the head. Great, he thought, chicken with vegetables. A short while later, much to the dismay of the group of Israeli’s who we’d been trekking with, a beautifully cooked piece of pork was served up. His excuse? In Tibet, pigs must fly! The flying pig was closely followed by a huge pot of casserole, containing an entire chicken, which had been duly chased around the yard and sacrificed for our dinner. Head, claws, everything was included!

It can't be long before this kind of life is a thing of the past for Deqin. It's certainly true that where backpackers go, a couple of years later the Chinese tour groups will follow. Deqin's saving grace at the moment is the lack of road but given that the Chinese government have built a train to Tibet's isolated capital, Lhasa, and are half way to finishing their highway to Everest base camp, unspoilt parts of Tibet are increasingly difficult to find.

A Dam Shame

More trekking. This time at “Tiger Leaping Gorge”, the world’s deepest river gorge, spanning the mighty Yangtze in the Yunnan Province of South West China. Named after a tiger was seen leaping across the stepping-stones at the turn of the century, these days the gorge is far too wide for any tiger to jump (even if there were any left in this part of the world) as a result of four separate earthquakes, which have driven the gorge apart.

And what a joy it was. We followed the upper path that winds through the forest and around the cliff - only safely accessible when the weather is good due to the high risk of landslides, a problem which isn't helped by the serious deforestation in a country that consumes about 25 million trees every year simply to make chopsticks.



This was the path of the ancient tea traders carrying tea between India and China and the pack mules are still in evidence, although these days they carry not tea but tourists up the notoriously steep ’24 Bends’. The whole walk normally takes about two days (very fit hikers can do it in a day), but we weren’t about to rush. Our legs were still recovering from Emei Shan, for one thing, and to take in the spectacular scenery and make the most of the top quality hostels en route, it’s best to go slow.

Despite the high risk of earthquakes, the Chinese government is planning to dam the gorge in 2008, flooding the entire area and ruining this beautiful place, not to mention the homes and livelihoods of thousands of locals. Officials say it’s the only solution to China’s serious water shortage: providing for over a billion residents is no easy task, as witnessed by dry water taps in many of the toilets, restaurants and hostels we’ve visited over the past few weeks.



As we picked our way down a somewhat slippery path to the rapids on our third and last day, we could hear the boom of the initial blasting (we thought it was thunder for a while) echoing over and over between the enormous cliffs on either side. It was unbelievable to think that Tiger Leaping Gorge might not even exist by the end of next year.

Upstairs, Downstairs

“A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”

Having fully recovered from our brush with Tibet, we decided to go ‘active’ for a while and headed for Emei Shan. One of China’s four holy mountains, the peak is 3047m high and is considered a necessary pilgrimage for many Chinese Buddhists. For some devout followers, climbing Emei Shan involves bowing with their heads to the ground after every 3 paces; for most visitors, however, taking a bus and cable car to the summit, and taking the bus back down again, is a more than adequate expression of faith.

The whole mountain is a giant staircase, with old craggy stone steps on the ‘long way round’ and newer concrete ones on the other, steeper, side. At intervals along the way are ancient monasteries, with names like ‘Magic Peak’ and ‘Elephant Bathing Pool’, where you can stay and rest overnight for a few dollars, and where large families of monkeys terrorize tourists with food or valuables. Starting at the steep side’s Wannian Temple we, along with hundreds of other people, began our trek upstairs. After the first hour of walking in the heat, Jonny, predictably, had turned into his ‘amazing melting man’ alter ego. I was reminded of the sign at Covent Garden station that says, ‘this emergency exit has 124 steps. Do not attempt unless in an emergency’; climbing this mountain would be no easy feat for these two Londoners. We took it, quite literally, one step at a time. A few hours and hundreds, if not thousands, of steps later we stopped for lunch, where we met an American guy, Jimmy, and another English couple, Pat and Nic, who walked at a similarly snail-like pace to us. We continued the climb together, which thankfully took our minds off the task.


It’s every pilgrim’s (and by this point, we definitely felt like pilgrims) wish to make it to the Golden Summit for sunrise on Emei Shan. Up there, magical things happen, like ‘Buddha’s Aureola’, a natural phenomenon where your own shadow becomes tinged by a rainbow, and when monks have been known to jump off the cliff believing they’ve been granted early nirvana. A bed would be good enough for us, mind you: we were determined to make it to the top before nightfall.

Nine hours after we began the trek, our five completely exhausted bodies somehow reached the top cable car station. Here you could get a lift to the last section of stairs and a hotel for the night and a further hour’s walk to get to the ‘Golden Summit’. Our relief soon turned to horror, as we realised we’d missed the last cable car of the day. As we pondered the prospect of a 3am rise and a two-hour morning walk to the summit, two Chinese ladies shouted down from the cable car station. Jonny somehow translated, “another cable car…going now!” Every last vestige of energy we had was spent running up the (yet more!) steps to the cable car station, carried only by a huge sense of elation that we would, after all, see the sunrise. At 4.30am, we woke up for the last hour of walking to the summit. It was pitch black, so foggy you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, and raining.


We had no idea how to get there, but knew we had to look out for a giant golden statue comprising four elephants and three Buddhas. Ten minutes later, we stumbled across a strange, marble plateaux, with steps and a sign saying ‘best place for Golden Summit photograph’. Surely this couldn’t already be it? We had no idea – it was so foggy we couldn’t see anything at all. We decided to stay put. Even if we weren’t right at the top, we would be in a good place to see the sunrise. When the light came, we were standing at the bottom of the biggest golden statue I have ever seen. There were crowds of people lining the plateaux and three temples of Bronze, silver and gold. At 6am, the sun poked its head above the clouds to a resounding cheer. We’d done it.


Or had we? If we thought the climb up was hard, nothing could have prepared us for the walk down again. Deciding to take the long way round, as it was more picturesque, the first hour of walking down wasn’t too bad. And then my knees began to really hurt. By 5.30pm we still had 2 hours of walking to go, and only one and a half hours of daylight. Despite the very real pain, we all quickened our pace to an, ‘almost-run’, singing songs and eating large amounts of chocolate to keep us going. Twenty minutes before we reached the bottom, the heavens opened and proper, torrential rain soaked us from head to foot. We didn’t care though: at least we’d make it back for beers in the hostel.

Emei Shan. One to remember.