The conclusion to this travelogue was written by
spellbinder. What follows is his text, and all that remains for me is to express my gratitude to the readers for their interest, and to
spellbinder for the excellent company.
***
Overall, yes, it was a great trip. Personally, I was especially lucky that
Fanat had thought everything through down to the smallest detail, and I hardly had to do anything myself (except, of course, for what concerned me personally — tickets, hotels, etc.). At the same time, we significantly reworked the original plan, as a result of which it began to almost perfectly meet my needs; the main one was the ability to sleep longer in the mornings. (“Longer” means at least until nine..
After that, I don’t really sleep anyway, but getting up at 5–6 a.m., as our tireless
Fanat did, is absolutely not suitable for me — this is still a vacation, not a marathon.
) And at the same time everything remained very intense. True, I do have some dissatisfaction with the too-short duration of our stay in Three Kingdoms City, as well as with the excessively (in my opinion) rushed inspection of some other places, but these are trifles, because, for example, the weather was not very good, and from an objective point of view our timing turned out to be just perfect.
In addition, there was an unpleasant blue path opposite the palace of the Dragon Lord (apparently installed temporarily for some event); it spoiled the view quite a bit and interfered with immersing oneself in nostalgic memories while contemplating the place of our childhood dreams... Besides that, we visited Tang City, which I would hardly ever have visited on my own, and it turned out to be genuinely interesting (I like abandoned places, and that location is essentially one of those). So overall, I am more than satisfied.
I was also very impressed by
Fanat’s businesslike approach to analyzing filming locations. I learned a lot of things that I would surely not have noticed myself, thanks to the little details he spotted (this is especially true of Qiuxia Garden). I am not capable of that — I usually fall into detached nostalgic contemplation with the thought, “Wow, I saw this place 20 years ago and dreamed of visiting it, and now here I am!”, after which small details simply stop noticing..
I also want to add that Zuibaichi Park has been significantly improved over the 13 years since my previous visit, and now there are far too many visitors there, which interferes with the tranquil contemplation of the places of our dreams.. On the other hand, there are now lots of beautiful flowers.
Changes have also taken place in the rules for visiting the pagoda near the scholastery: it is no longer possible to climb to the top, which caused my regret, since I had planned to find the signs of the Spellbinders that I left there 13 years ago.
And yes, the weather and our footwear made things genuinely difficult... On my first evening (in Wuxi) there was also heavy rain; the hotel was hard to find (it’s my beloved Asia!), I got thoroughly soaked and arrived in a very negative mood, and my shoes were not intended for walking through puddles either.
It was also quite cool. The overall conclusion is that November is not particularly suitable for comfortable walks around filming locations.
All in all, it was great, and I want more.
Thank you to
Fanat for organizing the trip.
