A Little Intro
Susu and I decided to make the trek to Huang Shan for the three-day weekend of the Mid-Autumn Festival. This "Mid-Autumn" Festival took place on the weekend before my birthday, the 10-12 of September... which is still technically summer. This probably belongs in Gregg Easterbrook's Unified Field Theory of Creep section in the next Tuesday Morning Quarterback.
We had tried to go there on two other occasions, but were foiled each time by predictions of heavy rain. This time, there were again predictions of rain. But we figured that we're young and can handle it, and if we waited for the perfect weather to arrive maybe we wouldn't be and we couldn't. So we made the right choice, said "screw it," and booked tickets and a hostel and stuff.
Setting Out
We left on the Friday morning before the three-day holiday (I get Fridays off from work, which really made it a four-day weekend), deciding to take the cheaper and faster - by arrival time, not top speed - bus to get there. Then we learned why people pay more for trains.
We were unable to sit next to each other, due to a semi-late arrival, and the people we asked refused to switch seats, despite there being no discernible advantage to sitting next to us rather than with each other. Whatever, that's trivial. Next, while I was prepared with a book, Susu was planning on sleeping during the journey. Unfortunately, a passenger with a whole crate of newborn chicks (as in baby chickens) screaming "FEED ME" placed said crate directly under Susu's seat. She put up with that for about five minutes (four-and-a-half minutes too long) before asking the person to take it back, which she did.
The seats were uncomfortable, as they were not intended for someone my height. So when I wanted to doze off (we woke up at like 5:30 to catch the bus, so we were a bit tired), my entire head fell backwards kinking my neck, as the seats only went to my shoulders. Apparently, I'm not China-sized.
At the rest stop, I ask a man, who I think is the busdriver, if I have time to run in and grab some road food/water (you can't buy lunch on a bus, another advantage for trains). He says "sure." He sounds fairly confident, so I walk inside, consider buying a hot lunch, decide against it, buy a water, browse the snack foods, choose two of them, and calmly walk back outside. When I get there, the bus is not next to the gas pump where it was. My phone rings, I see that it's Susu. I hear a loud, long, honking sound just outside of my sight range. Instead of answering, I just book it towards the noise until I reach the idling bus, where Susu is waiting outside for me. Thankfully, she noticed that I wasn't on so she got off to check for me. The busdriver was whaling on the horn for her to get back on so they could hit the road. As I re-enter the bus, I see the man I talked to sitting in a seat three rows behind me. Aiyo.
We arrive in Tunxi, Anhui in the early afternoon tired and stiff, and we hadn't even climbed a mountain yet.
Tunxi
The hostel was quaint and quiet. The owner ran that and the restaurant across the street, where we ate some authentic Anhui food. He also hooked us up with the place we would stay on top of Huang Shan. Nothing five star, just good old fashioned hospitality.
Instead of waiting for a bus, or overpaying for a taxi, we decided to grab a bicycle towing a cart with two seats in it for five yuan to get to the Old Town. Not too shabby.
The Old Town was like a smaller version of Li Jiang, where I went with my parents. The town is set up in the old fashioned way, but they only have five different shops that repeat themselves endlessly wherever you go. It's pretty and easy to buy trinkets, but it also takes about half an our to get the gist of it.
However, just as we were about to buy some sweet rice wine and head home, we saw this:
A game shop. Literally, a shop full of mind-bending games. The type of games where you have to fill a small normal wooden object - like a cube - with smaller wooden objects of abstract shapes and sizes. We went from thinking, "it's only 4:30, what are we going to do for the next five hours, I've got so much energy," to "holy crap it's already past 6 and I'm mentally worn out. Let's eat, drink that rice wine, and pass out." And pass out I did, at around 8:30.
The Ascent
The next morning, with the help of our friendly host, we caught a cab to the base of Huang Shan for 20¥. We split the ride with two unsuspecting Chinese ladies and the fee on the cab's meter was over ¥130, so I don't know if we actually got a good deal or what happened really. All I know is we got there fairly cheap. Woohoo!
After making reservations at the bottom for a tent at the top, we took a bus and a cable car about halfway up the mountain. The pretty voice in the cable car told us about the beautiful sights we were beholding in four different languages... unfortunately, instead of being able to see for miles, we could only see for inches due to peasoup fog. All we could do was hope it wouldn't last the whole weekend.
Exiting the car, we started making our way towards our campsite. The first group we pass by is a bunch of tourists from Duluth, Minnesota with huge, heavy-looking cameras and tripods pointed directly into the haze. I caught myself giving them the "crazy laowai" (老外, affectionate [maybe] term for foreigners in China) look that many Chinese were giving them. No fog and I wouldn't have thought twice about it, but under the circumstances, they looked kinda ridiculous.
The first major spot we reached was Now-I-Believe-It-Peak. The sign says it all:
Here are some other early photos we took:
As we approached camp, we ate the first of several instant, no-need-to-microwave noodles. This was actually kinda cool. One package came with rice, sauce, a spoon, chopsticks, water, and a package of an unknown chemical. After breaking up the rice, you place the chemical in the small space underneath the rice in the plastic container, then you pour the water on it. Put the rice on it and the sauce under the whole container. The chemical gets very hot and simultaneously heats the rice and sauce. 15 minutes later, you can enjoy an above-average instant meal. I think we got one of each of the four varieties for this trip.
Sometime in the mid-afternoon, we reached the camp area. The tents were not yet set up (that'll come later). However, there was a basketball court. After catching me looking at the court longingly, Susu told me to go and play some.
I just wanted to score one point at this altitude before continuing on, but the other guys wanted me to keep on playing. Maybe twenty minutes later, I was dripping with sweat having scored five or six points myself in an ugly game. And not at all prepared to hike around the mountain for another two hours, which is exactly what we did.
We took a winding path that went between the mountains and the sightlines cleared up to display hundreds of mountains floating on the clouds like islands. Huang Shan is one of two mountains in China that inspired the floating mountain of Avatar. Really incredible looking, like with this sort of thing, it's hard for photos to do the real thing justice. The wind would push the clouds like waves over the tips of mountains or over the edge of cliffs like waterfalls. What would have been a two-hour hike turned into three because we would turn a corner and just stand and stare in awe at the fantastic view we were unable to comprehend.
We returned to find the tents all setup. This is Chinese camping:
Furthermore, I had to sleep diagonally in the tent. As I said, I'm not China-sized. Fortunately, Susu is small and wasn't too bothered by the sleeping arrangement.
The Ascent, Day Two
We woke up at 4:30 the next morning to catch the sunrise an hour later. Due to the previous day's fog, one of the managers of the campground gave us a 30% chance of actually seeing the sunrise. We decided to risk it. After waiting until 5:15 or so, many people started fleeing to return to camp for sleep or food or whatever. We were some of the few who stayed and witnessed this:
Simply amazing.
We headed back to camp, got our stuff, and set off for the peaks. There are three major peaks of Huang Shan, we decided to go to two of them: the 1860m and 1864m peaks (6,102ft and 6,115ft).
Let me tell you, that is a lot of stairs. But we actually reached the 1860m summit pretty quickly (like in an hour or so). This is me upon arrival:
Overreaction? Perhaps. Furthermore, the next peak is only 4 meters higher, that can't be too tough to climb, right? Wrong! We had to climb about half way down (on teeny, tiny steps that were not made for my 13 sized shoes) before ascending back up again. Plus, during the steepest sections, the railing was below my waist level, which didn't make me feel very secure when using - I was just hoping a gust of wind wouldn't knock me over the side to fall into eternity. But still, very beautiful scenery, the mountains we passed here have stories of gods living on top of them. Although, I thought they looked more like evil fortresses for super-villains, I can understand the sentiment, they look completely impenetrable and unclimbable. Finally after descending and reascending, we reached the top top.
Near our hostel, we grabbed a quick foot massage while watching an incredibly entertaining show: The Generational Game! A couple of celebrities born in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s duke it out trivia style with some songs thrown in for fun (China requires at least three songs per show, or two if it's a news program). They start old to embarrass the know-nothing-about-the-good-old-days kids then get more and more current much to the detriment of the dinosaurs. Replace one celebrity on each team with an everyday person and I think this show kills in America.
We take an overnight train home, arriving in the early morning. Just a beautiful weekend, thank goodness we didn't decide to put it off again.
I'm in Guilin now, so more adventures to come soon!
Stephen "Scuba" Lauer
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