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Published: November 11th 2009
Tunxi by night
Just goofing around with a camera and avoiding the tourist streets, which were LOADED with Chinese tourists.Ok, next stop:
Huangshan.
For the tea connoisseurs Huangshan city is a place where you should have been. People around the world flock to this city for the local delicacies, which are growing on the lush green tea fields sloping on the hills. Illustrous teas like the following are grown here:
• Huang Shan Maofeng, which growns of altitudes of around 1000m and are bathed in the mist
• Qimen Hongcha, also known as Keemun black tea, the original main ingredient for the English Breakfast tea, before manufacturers substituted it with cheaper stuff.
• Taiping Houkui, also known as Monkey King, the premium large-leafed green tea, which grows north of Huangshan. Handpicked and prepared: A classic.
The town houses several teamarket, both wholesale and tourist style. And tasting is recommended, as not every tea is everybodies liking. As as good tourist we scavenged the town for our goods and did our precious tea purchase on a market, to be more precise a nice supermarket: vacuum packed tea....
We didn't have a clue on the teas here in Huangshan and the first part I was actually copy-pasting from the Lonely Planet ;-p We came for something
Tea harvest
Chrysantium tea is grown here. The white little flowers are now being harvested. Jasmin also grows here, but unfurtunately we didn't see it... else: the Yellow Mountains.
Good, the mountains are ~70km from Huangshan city (aka:Tunxi). So we took the bus from Shanhai to Tunxi, which is actually not indicated on any map and when we compared the destination on our bus ticket, it didn't loop like anything that we've read/found in our local bible: the China Lonely Planet. Apparently only the LP uses the name Tunxi and the Chinese are more in favor of Huanghsan City (which is also incdicated on the traffic signs below the Chinese characters). But as Tunxi is shorter I'll keep on using it. Leaving from the hostel at 6AM we've arrived at the base of the mountain 1.5 hours later. Bravely we decided not to use the cable car to go up, but instead to hike up. So basically it was a bloody trip of 2.5 hours covering 6.5km up the steep slopes. (FYI: the cable car takes only 12 minutes to go either up or down), with one rather heavy backpack, as all drinkg and food at the top is expensive. All the stuff sold there is carried up by men who took the same path as us... I cursed the bottle of wine we
Halfway the top
Rain started pouring down. Thunder and lightning flashes accompanied us on our trip further to the top. brought along as we didn't drink it the evening before.... Halfway the mountain the weather tunr for worse and rain started pooring down like s#@t. Luckily we were near a 'service post' so the damage on our side was at that timestill ok, but after 20 minutes we dicided to go further and the rain started 5 minutes later again. When it rains you're actually walking in the clouds, so the view was rather poor, but still ok. More complaining will coming up, cause when we arrived on the top, we figured out the visibility is totally poor and our 'hotel' with dorm beds was still 1 hour further. Good at the hotel, shower and try to hopelessy tried to dry the cloths and we started palying cardgames (indeed this blog entry is dull, cause this trip was rather dull....). But after a few hours at least to cleared up a bit and we did a second attempt. This time we saw indeed the 'Heavenly Sea' properly for ~30 minutes. The Heavenly Sea look-up point is where you can see the granite steep hilltops/mountain tops poking through the lower clouds, so the clouds resambles the sea and the tops various
Admiring the view from the top
Freshly arrived on the top. From here we went further to our dorm beds. islands in it. and hicked further to the Fairy Bridge, this is a small granite bridge constructed between 2 steep rock. I must admit it looked very, VERY nice. The pics that we took are not paying properly respect to the reality..... But the sun went down so we had to go back.
Next we getting up too early for, what I would say right now with hindsight a very stupid trip: 4 hours hiking through what's cally THE ILLUSTRIOUS SEA... but we really saw nothing. For 4 hours we were descending deep into/ acsending from the gorge bottom in the clouds. The visibility was never more than a few meters. But what we saw was BRILIANT and very weird. We made some pictures of the moments it was possible. But walking 4 hours in the clouds + rain is rather killing. So knowning that we had to get back and that in itself kicking from the hotel back to the groud station would be 5 hours through the clouds, where basically nothing new could be added from a visual point of view (milky couds everywhere...)_, we decided to hike only hour 1 to a nearest cable car to
Heavenly sea
Fortunatley is cleared up a bit in the afternoon. This is the Heavenly Sea. descent there.... Back in Tunxi I had my Dico diner (chinese styly of KFC) and Agi had her Martini Rosso (half bottle), just to shooth the body and mind....
Adios,
C&A
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Jenny and Henk
non-member comment
Mount-Sinterklaas
Hi, nice to hear every now and then a story written by one of you. So different. We celebrated Judith's birthday. Quite surprised you phoned. Perfect! Sinterklaas did arrive in the Netherlands last weekend. We will miss you. Have a nice happening on top of one of the mountains on your own. Where to buy surprise gifts?! Next weekend I am "invited" to bring DOBB from Amsterdam to Belt-Schutsloot to replace the present motor by a much stronger one for more impressive tours in the canals of Amsterdam. Last week Jenny was teaching a group of 40 people how to prepare a perfect high-tea. Next week the father of Judith will go to the hospital for a rather big surgery. And the birthday of Jenny is getting closer but she is not able to present her wish-list yet. So, I have the feeling I kept you posted of what is going on over here. Enjoy! Until .........