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Published: February 21st 2011
Being the travel junkies we are – we love exploring new places and cultures and China has been a great place to do this. Every free minute we have – we have been out wandering the city or making small trips to nearby cities. This has made our lives a bit crazy at times, but it’s a small price to pay for the experiences we’ve been having. I intro with this because this blog begins a wild 3 week travel /work trip. First stop.. Huangshan.
Huangshan (Yellow Mountain in English) is a mountain range in Anhui province that is very well known for its scenery and sharp jutted granite peaks. We had been talking about making the trip for quite some time, however, the trip required a full 3 days and we just hadn’t found the time. I had just returned from a 3 day trip to Beijing for some meetings so Joni had some free time to herself in Shanghai and planned the entire trip just in case we decided to go. (I think she was a travel agent in another life!) We only had one free weekend before we left for a 2 week trip to Western China
so we decided we should just do it.
There are two main ways to get to Huangshan from Shanghai.. bus and train. Amazingly, the train takes 13 hours and the bus only 6.5 hours. Personally, I would much rather take a train as the seats are much larger, better heated, and typically much faster. However, given the 6.5 hours extra travel time – we opted for the bus. This was a huge mistake we would later regret.
We woke up at 5:00 am, bundled up for the cold weather, and jumped on the Metro for an hour long subway ride to the Shanghai South Bus Station. We boarded the bus and quickly realized what we were in store for. It was 20 degrees outside and the bus appeared to have little or no heating, the bus was crowded as every seat was sold and the entire aisle was full of people who had bought ‘standing’ seats, our knees were jammed into the seat in front of us, the crazy bus driver whipped around hairpin turns on the sides of mountains, and several very short 5 minute cartoons were playing on repeat on the small tv screens which appeared
to depict very odd situations including some of terrorists killing people?!
The worst part by far was the loud Chinese music….. correction… VERY loud Chinese music that accompanied the cartoons and blared from the crappy speaker directly above our head on constant repeat. Although we couldn’t understand what they were saying, it was clear that other passengers were noticeably upset yelling at the driver and pointing at the speakers. We later found out after the trip that sometimes the bus companies will take advertising and must play the music/cartoons at a certain level as part of the contract. It was an absolute horrid 6.5 hours and only an hour into the trip I was on my Blackberry attempting to book a return flight from the nearest airport to Huangshan. We both agreed – there was no way we were coming back to Shanghai on this bus….
When the bus finally reached its destination – we got off relieved, only to realize that we hadn’t the slightest clue where we were. We were dropped off in what appeared to be a ghost town and there were no mountains in sight. When we travel in China we always plan thoroughly
in advance including printing off Chinese characters of anything important. I guess this is just one of the things that comes with living in another country and not speaking the language! We had thought there would be another small bus to the mountain base, but somehow our planning had failed us on this account. As we walked around a bit trying to orientate ourselves – a young Chinese couple approached us and asked us if we were headed to Huangshan and wanted to share a taxi to get there. This made me a little nervous as this sounds a lot like one of the scams you read about, but our options were limited so we went with it. It actually worked out well and we chatted with the couple on the drive there – turns out they were students from Shanghai and were fluent in Mandarin, English and Italian!
We arrived at the base of the cable car and took an amazing 15 minute ride to the top of the mountain. The views were incredible and as we looked into the distance we could see the granite peaks poking up through the clouds. This is what the Chinese refer
to as the ‘Huangshan Sea of Clouds’ because the clouds very much resemble the ocean from a distance. It was a very cool perspective to look down on such an unbelievable vista.
When we got out of the cable car and started hiking the mountain – we both realized why so many of the peddlers at the base of the mountain were selling tie on metal spikes for your shoes. To us it seemed utterly absurd at first, but when we got to the top of the mountain and realized many of the paths were covered in a thick coat of ice – suddenly they looked like they would have been a very good $3 investment. December in eastern China is not exactly the ideal time to go mountain climbing, but our time here is limited and we like to avoid crowds. We had heard that the crowds here were ridiculous in peak times of the year - to the point that you could not even move on many of the paths. This was not the experience we were looking for to enjoy nature so we opted for sucking it up in the cold and ice instead… It was
definitely the right move.
Since it was already early evening we did a little hiking and then made our way to our hotel. Hotel options up on the mountain top are very limited and by limited I mean crappy and very expensive. We had done our research, stayed in the ‘best’ option and were well prepared, but no online review could prepare us for what we were about to experience. The hotel lobby looked nice enough, but when we opened the door to our room the strong smell of mold and ice cold air hit us like a wall. The walls were dirty and large parts of the carpet were covered in mold. On top of that – the room only had two single beds. Joni had clearly booked a queen room so we went to the front desk to ask for a new room only to be told all the queen rooms were ‘closed’ for the week. Apparently something had been lost in translation and we reluctantly headed back to the room.
We let the heat run on high and ventured out to watch the sunset from one of the lookout points. For a brief time we
forgot about the crappy hotel room and enjoyed the beautiful scenery around us. We were utterly disappointed when we returned to our hotel room after 2 hours of high heat – only to discover it was still ice cold. The entire time we were there, there was never a time when we couldn’t see our breaths. That night I put on all the clothes I had brought with, including three layers of pants and 6 layers of shirts and we took all the covers and cuddled up in one of the twin beds together. And to think this was one of the most expensive hotels we stayed in while in China…
The next day we set out at 5:00 am to hike to a peak to watch the sunrise. This is what Huangshan is most famously known for and the sunrise pictures you see of this area are quite incredible. We weren’t lucky enough to see the full “Huangshan Sea of Clouds” during sunrise, but the views were spectacular nonetheless. We planned to hike the entire day across the mountain and then down the western slope. I won’t explain the day in detail because the pictures will speak for
themselves. I will say that it was probably the most intense hike I’ve ever done in my life though. Up and down steep peaks changing 1000’s of feet in altitude. It was incredible to say the least.
One thing that has always amazed us about China is the lack of safety precautions. Many of these trails in the US would be shut down due to safety concerns. It blows my mind that you can be standing at the edge of a 1000 ft. cliff along a trail where thousands of people walk each year and have nothing more than a rickety 2x4 post to protect you from falling to your death. Now throw in a slippery layer of ice on the path… yep.. suddenly those metal spikes were looking more like a good life insurance policy.
We hiked the entire day and continually pushed ourselves to the point of exhaustion. Throughout the day we saw many old men carrying large loads of rice and supplies up the mountain on their backs including one elderly man who had an entire dead pig balancing on a piece of wood bearing on his shoulders. You could see these guys struggle with
each step and imagining how little they got paid for such an incredibly hard day’s work really gave us a new outlook. For me it was definitely an eye opening experience. To think of all the petty things we complain about in the US and here this guy is carrying a 100 pound pig on his back up a mountain everyday to provide for his family. Kind of puts things in perspective….
As you will probably notice in the pictures – these mountains are very sharp and jutted resulting in some very difficult climbs. Joni is not particular fond of heights and we reached several points along the trail that were so steep they required a ladder like climb. I particularly remember making our way down one mountain looking ahead and seeing a trail going directly up the side of a very steep peak. Joni looked ahead and nervously stated that better not be the path we are headed on. As we reached the valley we realized it was in fact the only way out. We mentally prepped ourselves for the ascent (which was rightly called “100 ladders”) and I half feared a meltdown. We made our way up
the face of the climb and she never looked back once to look down the face of the mountain. It was a great feeling when we got to the top of the peak and realized what we had just done.
Instead of taking the cable car down, we decided to hike. It took a good part of the day, but we made it just as the sun began to set behind the mountain tops. We took a 20 minute taxi ride to our hotel at the base of the mountain. We were both very much looking forward to a new hotel and this one turned out to be much nicer. The main reason Joni booked this hotel was because it was right next door to the natural hot springs. The next morning we went to the hot springs resort and had the entire place (all 20+ pools!) to ourselves. All of the pools were themed including a coffee spring with coffee beans, a wine pool with red wine, and a shallower pool with little fish that nibble the dead skin off your feet (a little weird). We soaked our sore bodies in everything but the ‘little fish’ pool and
it was a great way to recover from the previous day.
Later that day we took a taxi to Hongcun Village about 2 hours from Huangshan. Hongcun is a very old traditional village and was actually the location where several scenes from
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were filmed. We wandered the small alleyways around the city and saw many Chinese still living the old simple way of life which was very cool to see. From Hongcun we took another hour ride to Tunxi where we enjoyed a stroll and traditional Chinese dinner on Tunxi Old Street. From there we ducked into a small back alley café and enjoyed a cappuccino and banana/chocolate crepe before heading to the Tunxi airport for an 11 pm flight back to Shanghai. (Like I said.. there was no way we were taking the bus back!) We arrived back in Shanghai with only two days to regroup before we left again!
Stay tuned for details of our two week power trip to Yangshuo, Chongqing and Chengdu!
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