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Published: June 14th 2009
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More buses...
A few hours on a bus from Hangzhou to Huanshan sounded peaceful enough...wrong! Honking, swerving, sliding, perilous close calls...we were a wreck by the time we got to Tangkou, but hey, the scenery was beautiful..:) Hello Everyone! This is Jennifer again, and we are back from over a week of vacation as our students were taking the College Entrance Test (the Gao Kao). I know it has been a long time since I have written. I am still angry about the other blog website access being “taken” away from us, www.blogger.com, so part of my absence has been some sort of rebellion at having to start up again on a different website. But, I have missed writing and I do have some great things to tell you about... so here I am!
We just got back from a mini-trip which took us from Shanghai to Hangzhou and then on to our ultimate destination of HuangShan (Yellow Mountain). The purpose of starting in Shanghai was for me to find some shorts and shoes. Apparently, I have bigger feet than anyone in the city of Danyang. They also do not wear shorts...at least not shorts that I would be caught dead in...not even in China. Unfortunately, I was still not able to find shoes in Shanghai to fit my feet (size 40 EUR or 250 CHN or 8.5 US). And that is just the shoes.
Countryside...
No telling how long this truck has been around...I bet it still runs too... You can’t imagine what it is like to shop for clothes. (size 175, XXL or whatever will fit!) I did find a pair of shorts (yes, one) so I was happy. The next day it was off to Hangzhou.
Sean and I boarded the train to Hangzhou early the next day. Danyang to Shanghai is about 1.5 hours East and then from Shanghai to Hangzhou is another 1.25 hours South. We did not have enough time to see all of Hangzhou. We did however get enough of a taste that we know that we will need to come back to explore the city properly. It is a much bigger city than we had first thought so we knew right away that we had bitten off more than we could chew trying to see this city and then Huang Shan. We decided to leave the next day on a bus to Huang Shan.
It is an all-day event (adventure) to get to Huang Shan. At least to get to the part that we wanted to see...which was the beautiful mountain, also known as Yellow Mountain. We took the three hour trip in a nice air conditioned tour bus. Equipped
Scenery...
Rice fields as we ride from Hangzhou up to the small city at the base of Yellow Mountain... with our DVD player, the trip went very fast as we are catching up on Season 5 of Lost. We arrived in Tunxi (or I should say we were just dumped in Tunxi) and now we needed to find the next bus to Tangkou. I felt very nervous as we got off the bus as it was apparent that we were no longer in Shanghai, let alone Kansas! This was a bus station in the middle of nowhere with people yelling at me and shaking their car keys...apparently they were taxi drivers and wanted our good American Dollars (haha). Nervous and tired, I had to actually “bark” at this one woman who had followed us for the long walk through the dirt roadway (you have no idea how hard it is to roll your luggage on a dirt road - hehe) up to the ticket counter for the next part of our journey. Using our China book, we pointed to our ultimate destination and we were directed to this door where there were several people standing around this rickety old “short” bus. Once again, we hauled our luggage into the bus, took our seats in the back row and waited
From flat fields to rolling...
Flat rice fields begin rolling up into small hills and then mountains as the air begins to get chilly... for the driver to start the bus.
Finally, as we pulled out of the bus depot, I could see the stale air of the bus leave and the fresh air of the mountains take its place. There were about 12 people on the bus, all of whom took their turn staring at us. I was too busy looking at the beautiful scenery to notice too much else though. And if I wasn’t staring at the scenery, I was clutching the side of the bus as the driver drove up the narrow mountain roads with nothing to stop us from barreling down a hillside if he lost his concentration for just one second. Lets just say the drive into Tangkou is not for the weak at heart but that is nothing compared to the bus ride home....
Finally, after an hour and a half of a bone-jarring, bruising ride we pulled up to a strip of “stores” in this small city and the people on the bus motioned to us that this was where we get off. This was when we encountered “the incredible”, “the wonderful” Mr. Hu. He had boarded the bus and handed Sean his business card.
Blood on the wall...
Have no idea how, or why, there is a huge spray of something that looks like blood on the wall here...but the serendipitous cross makes it an interesting pic...no?? Apparently Mr. Hu is the self-appointed ambassador for this small city. He owns a restaurant where his wife is the cook and he also owns a hotel....more importantly...he speaks English! We loaded up our luggage in the trunk of his 4-door sedan and headed to the hotel where we had already had a reservation. We told Mr. Hu that we would make the walk down to his restaurant for dinner. We walked up to the counter in the lobby and it was when the girl asked for our passports, Sean realized that he left our backpack on the short bus!!! Ahhhhhhhh!!!! Quickly, I ran outside to catch Mr. Hu, in hopes that he could help.
I will let Sean tell the rest...😊
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