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Published: June 11th 2009
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Last week we took a week of leave and went on holiday to Henan Province.
Our Chinese friends and students were distinctly un-impressed that we had chosen Henan for our holiday over anywhere else in China. Especially as at first, when we were pronouncing the name of the province wrongly they often mistook us for saying Hainan, the beautiful tropical island province in the south (where very rich Chinese people go on holiday). When we put them right they were very disappointed!
The province is really populous but, per capita, relatively poor. Our friends told us that some of the people are dishonest, and not very nice, we should be careful of our possessions, and that there's a village known as 'AIDS village' where 'everyone in the village has AIDS'. In fact, in the early 1990s, due to a disastrous government program of blood transfusions, over a million people in Henan Province contracted HIV. This is what happens when the government censors news stories. People tend to hear about things through rumour and word of mouth and so naturally the stories change. Our friends are appalled that there's a village where 'everyone has AIDS'. How shocked would
they be to know that there are thousands of people in hundreds of villages all over the province that are HIV positive?
Anyway, first we went to Luoyang to see the Longmen Caves, a world heritage site nearby. The weather was boiling and sunny, not ideal conditions for viewing ancient religious sites but i bought a hat. They're not really caves at all; rather statues carved into the mountain sides. There are thousands of them. Some absolutely enormous and some little tiny ones, depicting all sorts of Buddhist subjects. They mainly date from the Tang Dynasty (first century). So they're really old. Lots are in good nick though so they were really amazing. Though many of the statues had their heads smashed off during the Cultural Revolution.
Next we headed for the main event: the mountains. We took a long bus ride to Xinxiang where we caught another bus to Huxian. Unfortunately we didn't know where to catch the bus from or what number it was. We only knew the road so we had to flag down every bus and ask if they were going there. Our (still very limited) Chinese skills came in handy there
because we felt a little less ignorant when we asked the drivers 'Are you going to Huxian?' rather than just pointing at the characters in our book.
We've been feeling a bit rubbish about how (not) much Chinese we've learnt in five months but on this trip the difference between knowing a bit and knowing nothing really came into its own. Outside of the Longmen Caves we didn't see one foreigner (though one false alarm- she turned out to be a Chinese albino). So we had to speak to get what we wanted and on the whole it worked out well (except when i asked for a bottle of water and was given a toilet roll).
After the buses came the final journey buy minibus taxi 2 hours into the Wanxian (Ten Thousand Immortals (what a great name)) mountains. We impressed ourselves bargaining the price down to just 90 yuan. The mountain road was terrifyingly steep with part of it, known as 'Precipice Long Corridor', carved right into the cliff face. The views were stunning with massive rock faces and huge drops.
We stayed in a village called Guoliang. It's a
tiny place with only 300 inhabitants and people selling dried fruit, nuts and fresh honey. The road to the village was only built in the 1970s. Before that the only way to get there was up the 'Sky Ladder'- ridiculously steep Ming Dynasty steps. We stayed in a very basic hotel and walked in the mountains every day. Sometimes in china it's frustrating trying to find a patch of countryside to hike in that's not groomed for visitors or covered in temples, teahouses and tourists (see my entry that includes Tai Shan) but this was refreshing as there were tracks leading off in all directions that you could walk for hours without seeing anyone. The views were spectacular. We had one especially epic walk up a steep valley. It got darker and darker as we reached the head of the valley and as the clouds closed in and a storm arrived. We walked all the way back in the rain but we'd learnt from our mistake hiking in a storm in Romania and Tristan wasn't carrying his passport in the front pocket of his trousers this time!
It was definitely worth the trouble to get to the
village.
Our last day was spent in Kaifeng. We watched men swimming in a beautiful but very dirty lake in the main park and we ate some fantastic food at the famous night market. It was bigger and more interesting than any other night markets we've experienced in china with masses of vendors selling all different things. We ate gorgeous fried dumplings and 'almond tea'. a bowl of hot gloop with nuts and dried fruit. A nice way to end our trip before the hard sleeper overnight back to Zibo.
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Wayne
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Wayne is here
Hi,Charlie. I am so tired...nothing els,just for my poor English,it costed me more than 20 minutes to find the unknown words in internet dictionary to read over this blog...555(I am not the number,just the crying sound) Thanks for lead me travel Henan and wait to next station. Question:which color do you like:pink,green,yellow,blue or purple?Mail your answer to me,thanks.