Into the wild - Anji

Shanghai is a 25.000.000 people metropolis, sometimes you feel the need to breath. You can just feel the filth, the poverty, the luxury filling you up, till you find yourself drowning in the open air.

So sometimes you decide to take a 3 hours ride to the closest biggest bamboo forest in the world, in the city of Anji.

As soon as you get there you can sense already that Shanghai is far, far away. Everybody stares at you as you are some kind of alien. That's because you are probably the first foreigner they ever met in their life. Anji is in fact NOT a touristic attraction for foreigners.

Getting to the forest is in fact all but easy. Nobody seems to know or willing to be helpful. So we decide to use our last resource, showing people pictures of bamboo. Which as stupid as it sounds, it actually worked. So we get on this public bus, not sure if we are going in the right direction or not.

I say "we" because I didn't travel by myself this time, but with a good friend of mine. Last time we tried to get here we ended up visiting a different city, while this time it rained the all time so despite the fact he is a good travel companion I have to say we are not the most lucky travelling team.

here he is on the "family" minibus, we will call him Mr. S

Anyway, luckily on the bus we find a very nice woman that tells us (in chinese, because here nobody speaks any english) that we can go there together. So getting out the bus we get on a mini bus which we think is being driven by this woman's husband. So first we head to the local market so she can buy some fruit, then we go to her house, and in the end this man takes us to the forest. So, thinking this man is acting for kindness, I thanked him the all journey long. Too bad at the end of the ride he asked for money. Oh well, at least  we arrived.

There's not much at the feet of the forest, just some stands with 竹人 (bamboo people) selling steemed bamboo and other snacks. (I myself had some disgusting fried sausages with plum sauce) so then we enter the forest, for the price of 45 kuai. Because in China nothing is for free, not even a walk into the forest.

 You can see the stands at the end of the road...

 ...and the gates of the forest at the other end

If you think that walking ALL THE WAY to the gates would be too much effort, so you can take a ox ride

The birds are fake

It's raining. A lot. And we are walking into a forest. Ideal...NOT. But the impact is quite nice, surrounded by thousands bamboo trees while the silence of rain is hugging you like a mother would hug his crying baby.

At some point, deep into the forest you see two samurais, standing in front of each other, in silence, while a weak wind is playing with their kimonos. They slowly move their right hands gripping the hand-decorated hilt of their swords, bending slowly forward reaching a perfect draw position. Everything stops. The wind, the rain, the time. Then a leaf slowly falls inbetween the two, and as soon as it touches the ground the two draw their swords and cut the opponent with a single cut. A bamboo tree falls into the ground, cut in two. As the torso of one of the two opponents does. A powerful, but silent spray of blood gives some colour to the green forest. Then the time starts flowing again.

Except, we are in China, so no samurais. Only loud Bamboo people. So we keep walking up the walkable path till the top of the mountain. At times I can see other paths getting deep into the forest and I feel the need of seeing where it would take me. At times, with the silent rain all around me, I swear I thought I saw HIM, right there in the deppest heart of the forest.

 Yes, there's a rollercoaster in the middle of the forest

So we finally get at the top, climb up an observation tower, and this is the view from the top. Too bad the day was misty, even if actually I think the mist gave it a very mysterious feeling.

 Bamboo people's village 

 Little house at the other side of the valley, reachable riding a WIRE from a top to the other end of the valley. Too bad the WIRE thing wasn't working that day. A perfect way to die.

The observation tower

After that we quickly got back to the feet of the mountain again. But the day was young, so I had a great idea, why not walking up directly in the forest without following the path? After not even 10 minutes this was the result:

 I swear I got bit at least 20 times in like 5 minutes. Bamboo mosquitos are vicious.

So we gave up on the climbing idea and we followed a second walkable path

Too bad after 30 min walk we reached a crossroad, and since we were really not equipped for a walk into the reiny forest we just decided to go back the way we came

 About the next picture, if you look well enough you can spot a HUGE shadow on the top of the hill. What was that? A building? A tree? A spaceship? Godzilla? Nobody knows. Write your own opinion in the comments.

One other thing is worth saying about this second path: the ammount of spiders we saw. There were everywere, such an ammount I never saw before in my life.

Anyway after a quick break at the local tea house, we decided it was time to find a place to stay for the night.

So at this point we had 2 options, either stay at the close village with the bamboo people, in the middle of nowhere, or going back to Anji town for a fun evening. In the end we (I) decided to say bye to the bamboo people and go back into town.

So after choosing the hotel (the worst place I ever staied in my life) we had a stroll into town

The town is really small, but life seems so serene and slow compared to Shanghai. At the same time, you realize you could not live in such a small city, where everything is dead at 8 PM on a Saturday night.

You know the machines in which kids try to win a stuffed animal? Well, in China you can also win cigarettes...

The main square, people selling Chinese flags for the national "I hate fucking Japanese bastards" day

So around 9 o'clock we decide to try one of the two local clubs. Now, this needs an explanation. In real China (so not Shanghai) people go out dancing at 9 and at 1 AM the night is finished. Anyway, we find this sigh outside the club:

It means no Japanese people or Dogs are allowed inside. If you have no idea why, go read a newspaper you ignorant human being.

Anyway, as soon as we get in we gather everybody's attention. Most just stares at us, the bravest comes to say "HALLLLO" to us, and then they laugh and go back to their tables. Finally we are invited at a table for some free food/drink/anything else. They say they are 18, but that's a story for some other time. So after maybe 2 hours the attention they are giving us starts being almost umbearable, how can you dance/have fun when EVERYBODY inside the club is staring at you? I'm not such a attention whore, so we decided to leave. 

After a decent night of sleep, we are going back to the smoky, dirty, filthy city of Shanghai. Home sweet home.

6 Months Later

Six months has passed. 

Why didn't I write for 6 months? Because I realized that I was not writing for myself, but for someone else that didn't need to read that anymore.

Why am I writing again? That's what I hope I'll find out writing this. Maybe now I'll write for myself. Or maybe I'm still writing for her. or HIM. Or maybe it's just the bloody jetlag. Probably.

Yeah about HIM: I never found him really. I always felt he was a step forward. Or maybe it was me being always a step behind. Or maybe it was both, in that case we are now two steps distant.

And I do feel this two steps. I thought that this time was the right time, I thought I was gonna catch HIM. But I never felt further than I do right now. I'll keep looking, not sure this is the right place anymore.

But since I got no choice I can't help but keep walking.

Well let's see if I can quickly recall the streets I walked in the last 6 months, if I don't know where I am I definetly cannot know where to go, right?


In April I took some time off to re-organize my plans. A very important person came to visit and helping me recover. During that time, I forgot what I was looking for. Time will tell if it was because that's when I actually got closer to HIM.

So we visited places, like the lake city of Hangzhou :

 There's a Chinese legend that says that the 3 small towers in the lake will light like fire one night every year

 This is Longjin willage, where the best Chinese Green tea is made

 One kite slowly falling in the like as the sun is going down. (you don't say?)

     Following 3 pics of Hangzhou's lake

This is the Yu garden tample in shanghai. And no, it's not snow, it's pollution.

             Old town of Qingbo next to Shanghai

And we ate things:

Basic Ramen Noodles

Follows 3 specialties of Hangzhou's market, starting with pinapple rice

Fried crabs on a stick

An entire chicken in a clay box....

Snack in Old Town

...sa di panettone...

Xiaolongbao!!

Hotpot. It needs description: Hotpot is a chinese way of eating in which one person decides which soup he likes and then he orders few raw things which he will cook himself in his own pot. It's delicious and fun.

We just had the best time ever.

After that I kind of lost my motivation in finding HIM. It didn't felt that important any more. I just found some more pictures of HIM with kids:

  I wonder if they would still recognize HIM after all this time...


So I moved back  to Italy and Scotland during the summer.

Guess which is which 

It felt good, it felt right.

So why am I back here then? Why I felt like I had to look for HIM again? Because that's what happened, I left everything and came back, for HIM.

Can't really say if that was a good idea. Maybe with time I'll realize it was. Or maybe not, maybe it was just a bad idea and time will only remind me of that.

All I know is that now it doesn't feel good at all. I started this to find what I'm lacking, and I find myself now thinking I just lost what I was looking for.

So now I'm here, lone as I deserve to be, in the city of gambles and promises, where the first are never won and the second never kept.

And I'd better make this fuckin' worth it.