Huangshan City

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After working 8 months at web, I've been able to take 3 paid days leave plus my normal 2 days off from my working week so I got 5 days off altogether. Oooh, So, this is how we came to be on the night train to Huangshan. Hard sleepers. Well, there’s a first time for everything.

The journey (14 hours) took the train through places that reminded me of what it is like to travel again and although my mind wandered to another time an other worlds, my body moved on and I moved forwards with it leaving Suzhou well behind.

Many bodily functioning sounds were heard continuously on the train, not in the least wind. It became apparent to me, on the journey, that the Chinese really don’t mind breaking wind in public whilst their faces show nothing of what is happening down below. If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, my eyes would’ve told a lie.

On leaving the train, we were bombarded with hat, map, taxi ride and bus ticket sellers. It really was the worst I’ve experienced but I suppose this is a holiday destination and, after all, we are tourists and this is our holiday. But, NO, I don’t want your hats or your maps. Thank you.


Huangshan city is made up of a normal looking Chinese city and one long old commercial shopping street which looks and feels like Lijiang. These buildings are old but the shops all sell the same things to the point of if you turn around and around a few times until you are dizzy then set off walking, you think that you have seen it all before and you have and you will again, if you continue.

There is one gem, two actually. On the old street there is an original Chinese medicine shop which is over 300 years old from the Qing Dynasty. The counter looks like a bar from a Western movie and behind the long thin high bar/counter, the length and height of the walls are completely drawered. Some are left hanging open, maybe for weeks, most are closed. All are painted in a dark brown colour living the life of many generations of lifetimes from before. The shop and its smell are both ancient and fascinating.

The second thing is that's here are master calligrapher’s and they write tang dynasty poetry on fans. And, my funniest moment was when the calligrapher wanted to make the fan more personal, he asked my name. Tracey - Cha Xi , he said and translated it into Hanzi. Cha Xi? Tra Shee, yes, I think that trashy is totally appropriate I laughed so that is what I have on the fan. Cha Xi means look west, he also wrote Xiao Xiatian which means disappear summer - which to me seems rather telling as I have decided to go on the trek from Deqin around the Kawa Karpo Kora in September and after spending some time with a friend in Kunming, I'll go home - look west, disappear summer.

Tomorrow, we’re on the 6.15am bus to the mountain - steps all the way.

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Photos

Cha Xi - look west
Tra Shee
Trashy

HuangShan City old street
before everyone came back from the mountain

open and closed
black or white
old or young
boy or man