Worked Up

A China Caves Project

The following day was taken up with a visit to Wulong to meet the County officials and give them our opinion of Furong Cave and the district. This happened in each new area. The party headquarters were in a tall concrete building fronted by an imposing set of steps. It was quite strange meeting with important officials, responsible for the administration of millions of people. There were two television crews this time, photographers and reporters. The main official brought things down to earth by hawking noisily and spitting onto the floor during the exchange of speeches! We had another banquet, and drank more toasts.

Colin Boothroyd left the expedition at this point to take up a job teaching English in Ecuador. It would be some time before we met up again.

At our evening meetings several of the team said the Jiang Kou area was no good; we were just being taken to 'show caves'; any caves that might be here, were too difficult to reach, high up in the mountains and remote. I was more optimistic. Monks Cave was fairly interesting; there were sites at Wulong and we hadn't really checked the area out. Furong Cave showed what potential there might be. Pete Francis and Paul Seddon said we should seek more local help to find caves. However, some of the team also wanted to leave off caving early and spend time shopping and sight seeing in Beijing.

Meeting

Dave Checkley, Steve Openshaw and Dick Willis

In the end it was decided to leave Jiang Kou as soon as possible. The team would split up, to go to two new areas, Fuling and Ba Xian. It was also decided to leave off caving one day earlier and ask Professor Zhu to give back the $40 dollars per person we were paying for that day. He would have to change the time of our flight from Chongqing to Beijing.

I could feel myself getting more and more worked up by these decisions! I felt some people were expecting too much; to be driven around to the entrances of caves that nobody else had been to, fed, housed, all the beer you could wish for; and then complain about forty dollars a day! I thought they didn't realise the problems this presented Professor Zhu. The onus was even on the Chinese to find the caves! Comments like, "You can live for a week in Indonesia for $40", etc. Why shouldn't the Chinese make money out of us? The Chinese have caught on to the 'market economy', for better or worse! We had no real complaints about the Chinese side of the expedition and in fact we were charged a lot less than other expeditions to China. We had never been kept waiting much for transport and our changing plans had been catered for.

I didn't want to leave this area yet; I hadn't wanted to leave Xin Long; I didn't come to China to go shopping; I felt frustrated! In this mood I decided that evening to walk up to the mountain above Furong the next day, rather than rely on any one else to get there. Some argued that it was far too hot to walk anywhere and I'd need to carry so much water just to compensate for the sweat. I thought our biggest problem had been setting off too late and coming back too early; we always walked in the full heat of the midday sun. I planned to leave before dawn. DC did say they were going to try and get up there with a jeep; but stubbornly I didn't want to risk it. In any case the map showed no roads in the area we needed to be in. I was grateful nobody tried to stop me.

Monks Cave