Huangshan

Huangshan

Asia » China » Anhui » Huangshan
September 26th 2013

Published: September 26th 2013

Edit Blog Post

JAWhite1587

Let's Do Dis

Waiting for the bus: Jessi, Taryn & Annie

As predicted, Fall is turning out to be a significant season for travel in this chapter book.

Last week was Annie's last week in Hangzhou. On Tuesday, she packed up and moved North for the winter (dummy!) to Tianjin -- not far from Beijing. So, to send her off on a nice farewell, we headed off on a fantastic retreat to nearby Huangshan - Yellow Mountain. Not entirely surprisingly, Huangshan is like any typical mountain town in a Western country. There are small shops and restaurants, cable cars and bus shuttles to the hiking areas, and little bed-n-breakfast style hotels dotting the landscape. The mountain itself is incredibly majestic, and its name is not ironic... the rock is extremely yellow, especially in the morning light.

I butted out of work a few hours early on Tuesday afternoon to head to meet the girls and get ourselves quickly to Huangshan - which is also the name of the town. We met up finally at 2, and extremely hurriedly rushed to the bus station to book tickets and hopefully make the last bus, which I thought to be at 3:10. I was wrong. There was one at 3:40, 4:10, 4:50, 5:30...

Huangshan Beer and Huangshan Tea

you get the idea. So, feeling relieved and silly, we camped out at the bus station for awhile sharing music and generally swapping excited anticipations of what this trip was going to be like.

The bus ride is 3 hours long. We slept for it.

We arrived in Huangshan as the sun was setting. This was about when it dawned on me that I wasn't entirely sure where this bus station was in relation to our hotel, nor how we were meant to get to said hotel as I had a phone number but not EXACTLY an address. Well done. This was my first realization of just how strong my Chinese has actually gotten over the last 10 months. After a bit of deliberation between myself and the girls over next steps, we decided to plop down, pull out our phones and figure out what to do next. As we were doing this, we were approached by a friendly-enough cab driver asking where we needed to go. Now, normally I avoid these men at all costs. If a cab driver is offering you a ride, it's shady. Period. But he wasn't being pushy nor rude in any way,

It's Early

Taryn, Annie and Jessi

so I went ahead and told him that my hotel is on the mountaintop... how do I get there? He asked me how far up it was. I told him I didn't know. He asked me if I had someone I could call. I told him I had the hotel phone number. He asked if he could call it for me. I told him he could. He spoke to the hotel, negotiated distances and other numbers, then told the person on the phone that I spoke Chinese and handed the phone to me. I took the phone, the woman rattled a lot of information off in Chinese and I said a lot of, "I'm sorry I don't understand. I'm sorry, I don't understand. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Speak more slowly! Please!" But somehow, I came to understand that the cab fare would be quite high, but reasonable for what he had to do. He named the price, and we got in. Annie asked the cab driver if he could take us to a bathroom. He did. We got back in the cab, and suddenly the price doubled and he was trying to confirm this with us. What about the bathroom

Really early

Taryn

made him suddenly feel the number was wrong? We panicked. We got angry. This was my first ever angry-in-Chinese moment. He told me the number. I asked why it changed. He explained something about using caution (a phrase I've learned from many moons of riding buses: Kai men shi; qing zhu yi anquan -- the doors are closing, please use caution) and money that he had to pay... I grew frustrated: why didn't he tell us this originally? Finally, we called a DE learning partner to translate. She spoke to him and told us it was a fair price. Put us on hold, asked her husband if it was a fair price, and confirmed that it was a fair price. We told the cab driver this and he started cracking jokes that actually made me laugh: "Oh, I get it -- the Chinese person says it's all ok, so it must be cheap enough. Ask the cheap person how much I should charge. I see." We actually joked the rest of the way up. And sure enough, the roads are quite dangerous - especially at night - and there were tolls that he had to pay. The price was very

Jessi and Annie at Huangshan

fair.

We had a fantastic home-cooked meal at the hotel, complete with Huangshan beer - something I'd recommend to any beer drinkers after a day like we'd had. We continued upstairs to a ridiculously giggly evening of Uno (we continued saying that, even with all of us pushing 30... some a little harder than others... this was just another night at camp).

We awoke the next day at 5am, as per the request and felt-like-requirement of our innkeeper. "You be down here at 6am. 6am. 6am. Here. 6am." And so we were. After several cups of coffee and an interesting adventure involving leeches in the shower (how would leeches even get in the shower in the first place? I really don't know. I really don't know), we were on a bus heading uphill.

My oh my how the Chinese do love their tour groups.

We did everything we could to avoid the larger crowds. This is quite a feat in China in general, and Huangshan proved to be no different. Yellow flags, red flags, yellow hats and red hats. Some red hats climbing trees. Some yellow hats sliding down stairs. To the peak! To

Huangshan

the peak! Up the rocks, up the rocks. Have a picture - one finger, or two? Tell me, do you like my hat? Yes! I do! I do like your yellow tourist hat! (Go, Chinese, Go! a new children's story).

And there were stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. Stairs going up. Stairs going down. Stairs going in circles. Stairs shaped like circles. Stairs that went to bathrooms. Stairs that went off cliffs. There were lots of stairs.

The scenery at Yellow Mountain is stunning. It's hard to believe it's real most of the time, and often seems painted. What blew my mind the most is the vastness of the mountain range. The mountain itself is massive, but the mountains around it carry on and on and on to the ends of the earth. You can see nothing but mountains and more mountains. While my brain knew that a 3-hour drive will land me in a hilly-but-non-mountainous city, it seemed like this mountain range covered all corners.

The best part about the trail itself was that the one we chose led straight to the Huangshan Hot Springs -- and not by accident. It was fast approaching 5pm

Huangshan

by the time we were heading to the hot springs themselves. We'd been up 12 hours, hiking for almost 10. Our bodies were angry. But ohhhhh did those hot springs make them happy! These were the most incredible hot springs I've ever encountered. Each small pool was infused with a different fragrance or essential oil, creating different health benefits for each pocket. One, for example, was infused with Jasmine oil. Another with Chrysanthemum. My favorite was the coffee pool --- aahhhhmazing. Annie's favorite was the Coconut Milk. There was one infused with red wine, another with green tea... there were dozens of these little pools all putting out these soothing and incredibly-mixed scents. This was also at a spa where they offered head, neck and/or leg massages. Perfect after a day like ours. We ate a small dinner (ok... well, the girls ate a small dinner because I ate pretty much everything... I was STARVING) and headed back to completely crash at the hotel.

The next day, we took a very lengthy taxi ride down the mountain to a small, ancient village called Hongcun. Hongcun was constructed by a Han dynasty general in 1131 and has been exceptionally well-maintained.

We visited a small school house, as well as several small shops and a restaurant that have maintained much of their old layout and all of their original walls. What it must be like to imagine the old shopkeepers sitting doing the very same tasks that you are doing day in and day out.

At any rate, we ended the day on more buses and buses back to Hangzhou. Just in time for Taryn and me to get to our date with Kenny G... see, Taryn's birthday is fast approaching and she has a thing for Kenny G. We don't hold it against her. Much. But by some happenstance, the man was in Hangzhou on the 19th. So, we got her tickets and made sure that she was in attendance at the Kenny G concert. And so she was.

So, that was our fantastic retreat to Huangshan, and Fall weekend #2 away from Hangzhou. Fall weekend #3 is coming on up in the form of yurts, camels, and mutton in Inner Mongolia. This adventure is to be continued...

Additional photos below

Photos: 31, Displayed: 28

For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. A...more history