My trek to Jingdezhen was realized by way of 8-hour direct bus from Hangzhou after the return from Anji. For those interested in getting there, I would advise against this method. It’s expensive (140rmb), the buses are shit, and for reasons beyond my explanation they play really loud versions of old James Bond movies dubbed in German, with FRENCH subtitles! The hell is up with that? I’m convinced our driver was after some kind of insurance payout, and was actively trying to roll the bus on one of the endless turns through the rural roads of Jiangxi. For a similar experience get a drunken hillbilly to take you for a cruise through Kentucky. There is supposedly an airport in Jingdezhen, but if there is, there aren’t any useful flights available as I spent lots of time trying to find one. The train is the way to go, it’s about the same price as the bus, it’s overnight so you don’t waste the day, and there’s lots of them going from Nanjing and Shanghai, as well as other centers. There’s a shorter bus from Nanchang, but unless you are already in, or going to that void of Southern China, it is useless.

Once I finally got there, it was easy to get in a taxi and find my way to a hotel. It isn’t a big city, so everything is nice and cheap. Jiangxi Province, situated below the Yangtze River is considered part of Southern China, thus making the populace of Jingdezhen southerners. This is one of the reasons I couldn’t live here. You see; southern people don’t like to drink. That clashes with my raison d’etre. Red-faced after one 2% bottle of beer. Unacceptable. The other reason is that unlike in the north where most dialects are very similar to Mandarin the local vernacular down here is what you would get if you tried to learn Swedish, Urdu and Swahili at the same time and then suffered catastrophic brain damage.

Jingdezhen is the capital of Chinese pottery. Unlike many of the places that claim to be the capital of kites, toilet paper, steel bearings or airborne dust particles (for example see Weifang), this place really did have a lot of pottery. From what I could tell, the town was untarnished by the rampant modernism and “progress” that is destroying so many other Chinese cities. It has definitely got the ancient China charm going on. It has that bohemian artist vibe that is sorely lacking in so many other cities in China. You can walk down any given alley in the city’s extensive older districts and come across all kinds of wild pottery, people crafting things by hand, and painting big ass urns that are fit for an elephant’s remains.

I would highly recommend it to anyone, but if you’re interested in ceramic arts and pottery, you’ll be in heaven. It’s a bitch to get to, but I think that’s why it’s still such a great place. If they had one of those D-trains going here, and regular flights, it would be loaded with tourists and tossers.

Funny things I saw:

Guy in the train station was eating peanuts for like an hour all of the sudden jumps up and starts brushing off the shells like he was covered with bees, immediately reminding me of Nicholas Cage in the Wickerman. This made me laugh aloud, freaking out the people sitting next to me.

Saw a stunning uighur girl inside the train station as well. Of course she was married to the dude who played Noriega in the movie blow, aka the same guy who plays the child rapist in Once Were Warriors. Except this dude took it one step further, he got plastic surgery at some point, and when he did, he was like, “listen man, give me Owen Wilson’s nose.” Who the fuck does that?

In lots of places in China, it is perfectly normal to see people walking around in their PJs. In Jingdezhen, they took it one step further and decided to equip for the winter by using that idea, and sewing several layers of padding into their PJs. The end result is a whack of people wandering around in snowsuits that would be excellent camouflage in any room with 70’s wallpaper.
Saw a cow running through the streets, which may or may not have been chased by a bunch of screaming farmers on motorcycles. I say may not, because this was downtown, a good 10 km from any farm, so if they were trying to catch it, they weren’t doing a very good job. They might just been playing some weird Jingdezhen game, like the shit they do in Spain.

I saw more whorehouses than I have ever seen anywhere else in China. The only place I’ve seen more brothels was in Bangkok, but that’s a given. Jingdezhen isn’t a big place, but about 3 of the 4 major streets were lined with them. What’s going on here? Are all the ceramic artists moonlighting as harlots? Or are all the male artisans so stressed from their craft that they need to settle down at night with some cold beers, pack a smokes and a hooker or two? OR maybe it’s just that Jingdezhen wasn’t just the capital of pottery but also of hair salons that are open weird hours with pink lights and lots of done up girls hanging around. Yeah…that must be it.

There were many mysteries in Jingdezhen. For example the picture above. What the hell are those!?

Here is what the article on Wikipedia (obviously written by some local government lackey) says:

“Anji county is synonymous with bamboo, containing as it does 60,000 hectares of bamboo groves. It has been designated a pilot county for ecological construction. Within its boundaries are mountains and gullies, lush with forests and vegetation. The air is fresh and the river water is crystal clear.”

And this is how it should really read (I’ll be changing it myself shortly):

“Anji County isn’t a synonym for anything, but it certainly has lots of bamboo. It has been designated a pilot county for how you shouldn’t do ecological construction. Within its boundaries are mountains and gullies, lush with forests and vegetation that you cannot see because of the thick yellow haze that offers you the visual experience of someone with glaucoma. The air is about as fresh as a sumo wrestler’s thong and the river water may have once been clean, but we don’t know for sure because they’re all dried up.”

Now before any Anji locals somehow come across this and start dishing out the hate, let me clarify this. The county of Anji is a large place. Smack in the middle of it is the city district called Dipu and surrounding it are some small dirty suburbs. This is where the problem lies. It was more polluted here than in Hangzhou. I saw lots of small factories with chimneys belching out smoke in colours only an acid trip could make you appreciate. Once you get out of this central area, the air does clear up significantly (but not completely) and there are some vistas and villages straight outta the tourist brochure.

My Chinese friend told me that the food sucks in Anji. When you hear this coming from a Chinese person you suddenly long for the Golden Arches like a sinner for Pearly Gates. Thank someone up there, there is a McDonalds and a KFC and their both a stones throw from each other in Dipu. I must also note that in the same building that houses McDucks there is a large grocery store that stocks western booze. Entertainment being non-existent you should make use of this fact, much like we did. Spending the nights drinking in the hotel room and discussing current world affairs was about as exciting as it got. I saw one or two KTV places but I’m not sure if they’re KTV places or KTV *Wink Wink* places.

What to do there

Knowing that most of Anji is labeled as a “scenic spots” and tourist places, you’ll probably want to avoid the damn place altogether. Why is it that these places are always far crappier than what they’re hyped to be? That said there are some worthwhile things to do if you happen to be here for business or just want to escape Hangzhou for a bit. If it weren’t for the silly entrance fees at everything then I could actually recommend this place for people from farther away. These are the places that I checked out.

The Bamboo Museum (Zhúbóyuán/竹博园)

Are you a kinky bamboo fetishist? Or perhaps giant pandas float your boat? Well if you like both, then today’s your lucky day (if your going to the Bamboo museum today that is). I was most excited about this, because I’ve never seen the giant sloths in real life. Thankfully, unlike most of the wretched zoos in this country, their pen appears new and clean. They are also well fed, perhaps too well fed. If you’re sneaky you can go right down underneath and get right up to the cage where the lazy bastard will be chomping away at bamboo. Don’t get caught doing this, or the keepers will feed you to the pandas. For real.

The Great Bamboo Sea (Dàzhúhǎi/大竹海)

This place is pretty ridiculous. First, you need to take a toll-way to get there and it’s 10rmb for like 1 km of road. You immediately turn off the highway and go through the back roads of these little farm towns, which are actually pretty neat in and of themselves. Parking is 10rmb once you get there, even though it’s low season and no one else is there. Entrance is then another 60 rmb. The place has potential to have some nice hikes, although we didn’t have enough time to explore that option. There is a zip cord like and some other dumb tourist stuff. They’ve also built a tower that allows you to get above the bamboo canopy and look around at the encroaching development and beautiful power lines that dot the hazy horizon. It’s actually more relaxing than that, and can be nice, but I was expecting a lot more. I was expecting to only see bamboo for as far as the eye can see and then have some kung-fu masters pop out of the trees and start fighting each other to the death. What can I say? I set my expectations low.

Reservoir up in the mountain(Chinese name???)

I’m not quite sure why this is even a tourist attraction or why we went there, but I guess Chinese people find it interesting. There is a large reservoir built at the top of a mountain that has partially been turned into something of a place to go see. Again its like 40 or 50 kuai to get into and the park is tiny. Not worth the entrance fee, imo. What was worth it was the crazy car ride up through the mountains to get there. We passed all kinds of people cutting down and working with bamboo, and sometimes it proved to be quite the obstacle. So go just for the drive and the scenes it gives you, but once at the top don’t bother with the reservoir park. It’s a reservoir. On a mountain. That is all.
Some good bets would be to get out of the central town and go hiking. I was also told that in the summer there is very good rafting in some of the rivers. It appeared that the water in the mountains was very clean. So that might be worth a try. I can’t really recommend Anji to anyone who A) isn’t in the Hangzhou vicinity, or B) isn’t going there for business. But if you’ve never been to a bamboo forest before, haven’t seen pandas, and enjoy hiking/climbing insane hills on your bike, then Anji might be just the thing your thing. Also if one of your friends happens to have a girlfriend named Angela, and by chance you’re in Anji and they call you, uhhh yeah.

Longing to emerge from the sooty winter days of Qingdao, I happened on the opportunity to go treasure hunting for some Yuan Dynasty ceramics in the south half of the country in a place called Jingdezhen. Hangzhou was the city I would fly into. A good friend of mine who works in Anji, an hour north of Hangzhou had invited me down numerous times before, and I promised him that if I was ever in the area I would slide by. Going to just one random city in the Chinese hinterlands barely satiates my appetite for chances to see the unknown these days, so I decided I would pay my friend a visit.

The trip started with my usual attention to detail in planning (buying the air ticket the day before and flying down hoping to get the bus/hotel situation sorted after arrival). My goal to rival the Griswolds was realized when things started to unravel as before the plane touched the ground. As is usual practice in China, upon learning that we would be making our decent, I turned on my phone to let him know that I had arrived, landing and radio equipment be damned. I was informed by the kind Chinese robot voice on the line that my phone had run out credit. Fiddlesticks!

You would think that selling cellular minutes like every other commercial establishment in this country would be something that an airport out in the middle of munchkin land would consider. Besides Kentucky fried foul and pickled plums, this place was as useful as “duck and cover” in the event of a nuclear attack. Not having a phone was a problem because I needed to call my friend to confirm my arrival and find out what bus station to go to. Not wanting to be a lollygag around this lame excuse for a modern air hub I jumped into a cab and told him to take me downtown for 100 kuai, where I would presumably be closer to the bus station and I could find a place to get money for my phone.

Since the Hangzhou airport really is out in the sticks, and I didn’t want to waste any more time than I had to, as soon as I saw a China mobile place I told him to stop. The meter read 71rmb, so I got the cash ready and then proceeded to get into an argument about “our deal” for the 100 kuai to downtown. “Well guess what bud, I’m not even close to downtown, and you were on the meter anyways! Go suck on a rotten sea cucumber, ya prick!” is exactly what I should’ve said to him, instead I tossed him the 71rmb and ejected myself from the taxi in haste.

I made my way to the China mobile shop where I bought a 100rmb recharge for my phone. After dialing the number and following the instructions I remained hopelessly without a useful phone. Without trying to look like a foreign retard, and failing miserably in that regard, I asked the shopkeeper for help. They tried a few times, until they finally asked me where my number was from. From Qingdao I replied, and then they said that the recharges only work on Hangzhou ones. Awesome! In times past I’ve recharged my phone all over the country with these same little recharge cards so perhaps we can conclude that China Mobile in Hangzhou is managed by simians. Unable to return the recharge card I had just bought, the shopkeeper directed me to the large China Mobile center that was “Just over there at so and so road.” An hour later and possibly in some kind of Bermuda triangle of Hangzhou, I decided it would be wise to abandon this quest to find the large China Mobile center and concentrate instead on buying a new phone number. This would also prove difficult, as it seems I had been walking for an hour in the direction of absolutely nothing. An hour later I was back where I started and I hit up the first mobile shop I laid eyes on. The nice thing about China is that mobile calling is infinitesimally cheaper than in Canada, and new number can be up and activated for as little as $15.

Once I had finally got all that monkey business out of the way, I was able to get in touch with my friend who directed me to the Hangzhou North bus station, where I was able to board one of the buses that leaves every 15 minutes for a mere 27 kuai. One interesting (titillating?) thing of note about the Hangzhou north bus station. For the first time in China I actually saw on display real deal porno mags, just out in the open on the news stands, no covers or anything to shield my innocent eyes! I don’t know what that’s about but I guess Hangzhou isn’t a complete bust (or is it?!)