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Published: October 28th 2010
Autumn Leaves I
On the way up the mountainThis past weekend I went to Huang Shan (the yellow mountain) and Huizhou in the southern part of Anhui with Peter. Every Chinese person I’ve ever met has advised me to go to this mountain. It is the gem of the Anhui province I suppose.
Friday we took a 5-hour train down to Huang Shan Shi, a town about an hour bus ride away from the base of the mountain. We got to the hostel at about one a.m. and I realized I had forgotten my passport. The hostel attendant then said to follow him and I didn’t really understand where we were going. We walked up to the local police station where 3 officers sat at a table eating greasy take out. The attendant and officer exchanged some words I didn’t understand with ‘hu jiao’ (passport) appearing every once and a while. I was quivering in the wake of uncertainty. I went upstairs with the attendant and one officer who asked me a few bits of information. He tried to access the Internet for about 4 minutes with no success whatsoever and it wasn’t a problem, go back to the hostel. So much for feeling scared whatsoever. I guess
Stagnant Rugby Scrum
Before penetrating the opposing teams defense I just kind of forgot my passport because I subconsciously labeled China as “an area I don’t need a passport” or what most people refer to as “home” or their country. Pretty strange to consider a place home, when you’ll never be Chinese because of your appearance. You may become what the Chinese call an “egg” (white on the outside, yellow at heart), but you’ll still be the “Wai gou ren” that kids smile, shout and point at.
The next morning we woke up to some pretty loud lobby chatter and got on a bus headed for the base of Huang Shan. We arrived near the base and began hiking at around 11 am. The scenery was quite atmospheric. Leaves of trees were bursting with shades of red, yellow, brown, green, and orange, and a mist covered every square centimeter of the mountain. Huang Shan is quite beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but the journey was no walk in the park. 15.5 km up an uncountable number of stairs tainted slick with rain and foliage overgrowth. 55 degree climbs with no guardrails while the rain tested us like ancient Chinese water drop torture test one’s patience. Then after the
Victory
After penetrating the opposing teams defense first pass, (a narrow slit between two giant boulders) we were met with great winds and massive crowds of Chinese people (all decorated nicely in their matching cheap yellow ponchos and yellow plastic rain pants). Hats were being blown off left and right and the rugby scrum of people going up and down through the slit remained at a stalemate. More team members gathered on opposite sides of the scrum and the narrow slit stair well was generating heat along with a rising competitive roar. After about three minutes of stagnant rage, our uphill venturing team penetrated through an opening in their defense and people surged, leaking through in a manner much like a hole in the bottom of a plastic cup full of water - quickly and cohesively. Peter and I made it through observing the audible and facial continuum of victory to defeat.
After another couple hundred stairs we made it past the pass and into another scurrying shit show of people who were buying food and kitsch Huang Shan souvenirs. It was hard to swim through the sea of yellow ponchos, let alone breathe because of the chain-smoking-yellow-crooked-toothed-old men permeating tar exhaust from cancer sticks. We
managed to shuffle and elbow through to get corn on a stick and several chicken skewers for a “soda pop at Disneyland” price.
We continued up and down the ridgeline from one peak to another when Peter was struck with quite the leg cramp. These two old men passed by with a throne chair attached to two bamboo poles and tried to convince Peter to purchase their service. It’s a pretty common service on mountains like these that will make you look like C-3PO amongst the E-woks. Peter got rid of the cramps after some massaging and about 20 minutes or so later, two people immediately behind me repeated the English phrase “foreign backpacker about three or so times. I didn’t really turn around or respond but then they said “laowai ting bu deng zhong wen” (old foreigner doesn’t understand Chinese) and I turned to greet them and they were quite flabbergasted. They asked us a few questions and decided that I needed to be part of their photo album.
A few more hours of hiking past and we were nearing the summit and a nearby hotel we had reservations at.
Before we had left we had seen some horror stories of Internet reviews from the xihai hotel. “Great location, but horrible accommodation” “close to the summit but rooms are musty and damp” “there was mold growing on the underside of my rock hard mattress, no heater and paper thin walls”. So as we were rolling in drenched from the rain, I had the expectations that we would be in a rundown shack and the space would have clearly never heard of the word “dry”. But, to my surprise the hotel was high class (for China). Heater, hair dryer, TV, towels, a shower that had a door (not even my shower in my apartment has a door or even a curtain), green tea, water heater, refrigerator, - the works. That!... was a pleasant and wonderfully dry surprise.
Woke up at 5 am to see the sunrise. The rain and mist were too heavy so we went back to sleep for two hours. On the way down, the weather cleared up for about half an hour 9 km down or so. The ridges and autumn leaves were spec…tacular. Gold brown, fire red, yellow and green leaves interspersed among the granite tan
Engrish II
Male urinary?? rounded giant boulders, with patches of fog and cloud dancing around the ridge. The ominous force of nature was quite overwhelming. We continued the descent while the few patches of blue sky past on. Hopped on a bus at the base to Tangkun, and transferred onto a bus headed for the Huizhou village Hongcun.
We made it there at about 3 pm and wandered around the old preserved area of town. It’s a series of narrow alleys, ponds, lakes, and backyard gardens. Most of the buildings were built +/- 200 years ago during the Qing dynasty. It was pretty well flooded with Chinese tourists until about 5 p.m. and then just DIED and turned into a ghost town. Peter and I made our way into an extended street market right outside of the village selling Huang Shan’s famous tea (“oh so so famous in China”… heh), handcrafted cups, plates, paintings of Huang Shan/Huizhou, Jade, silk, and other fabrics. We took a seat at one of the storefronts selling tea and tasted them all. A pretty stiff black tea, a relatively sweet oolong tea, a bitter green tea and a medicinal tea used for “curing tooth aches” that had a
very curious (eugenol like) taste. The tasting turned out to be ten times more of an ordeal then I thought it would be. Frantic chatter that was half playful conversation banter, half aggressive tea advertising, was enthusiastically belted from the tea saleswoman. She swapped our teacups in between breaths of sentences and replaced the previous tea with “another quite excellent tea”. The experience was enjoyable and the teas were quite delightful, comforting, and pallet inspiring. I bought some black tea and we left to go find a hotel.
Woke up this morning in Hongcun and headed out to catch a bus to Nanping, a labyrinth of alleyways with historical leftovers from the Qing dynasty. While we were having breakfast we watched a little kid and his mother pass by wearing the most ridiculous complimentary clothing one can find. The mother wore a black leather jacket, black leather mini skirt, and black high-heeled boots with lace and her son (presumably her son!?) was wearing an Adidas misprint sweatshirt that had “aaidds” on the front and the back. After Peter and I laughed about the occurrence, a limping man approached us asking if we wanted to ride in his makeshift tri-wheeled
ghetto industrial Pedi cab to Nanping. And because of the sheer ridiculousness of it all, we said yes.
After a 30 minute bumpy ride sitting on half of a park bench inside of a steel box riding on three skinny wheels, we arrived in Nanping. However, there weren’t any other forms of transportation as far as the eye could see, so the gimp had us by the balls. He agreed to wait and take us to Xidi for a total of triple the price. Allocation of scarce resources I guess… So we paid an admission fee to Nanping and a guide showed us around the town (and thank god too because the alleys were like a corn maze on steroids). It was amazing old style architecture. White walls that have faded over hundreds of years to shades of gray, black, red, and a plethora of other worn out rainbow colors. While cruising through the alley maze surrounded by mountains and farmland, we ran into some Chinese actors and crewmembers filming a movie. I took a picture and they all got rather upset… wups. After Nanping, we arrived once more via crazy industrial tank of a motorcycle at Xidi. Xidi
was very similar to the other Huizhou villages, just a lot more touristy, less like a labyrinth, and more populated. There were also a few pavilions on the hillsides that overlooked the valley and village. Quite the nice view.
From Xidi you hail busses passing by on the street like a cab. There’s no such thing as a bus station there. Made it back to Huang Shan Shi, where our train was leaving from and we met another American teacher while cruising along the old street of the town. He’s from Seattle. Small world. Got to the station and rode hard sleeper the whole way home. It was glorious.
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