China Blog February 26, 2009
It's time for an update. I'm writing this sitting in Mr. Hu's Hotel and Restaurant in Tangkou town at the base of 黄山 (Huangshan, or Yellow Mountain). It's freezing cold outside, and also inside most of the buildings. In Shenzhen I complained that I'd packed too many winter clothes, but now I'm eternally grateful, and am making use of every layer. Huangshan is one of the most famous mountains in China, and normally is a major tourist destination. But I happen to be here during the off season, which means that most of the hotels are empty, the trails contain far fewer Chinese tour groups, and the ticket prices are slightly lower.
First however, an update on my whereabouts the last week. After Shenzhen, I returned to Changsha in Hunan Province to spend more time with He Yuan, a friend I'd met there one week before. The weather this time was mostly cold, wet, and dreary. Did a bit of walking around, however, and got to know several of Changsha's neighborhoods. I stayed in a micro-hotel right in the heart of the city, half a block from the pedestrian-only shopping street. This is where He Yuan likes to go shopping. She's not so keen on the older streets of the city, where vendors sell vegetables laid out on the sidewalk and butchers slaughter chickens, pigs, snakes, and turtles before your eyes. I found these backstreets (of which Changsha has many) far more interesting sights to behold, but He Yuan is afraid of snakes.
I call my hotel a "micro-hotel" because the rooms are tiny, and the bathrooms communal. It was fine for my needs, however, and there was a free endless supply of coffee and tea in the lobby which was quite nice. Also within a block of my hotel was a Walmart. Walmarts in China are similarly sized as Walmarts in America (this one took up an entire city block), but are located in much more urban locations. The floor space, therefore, is spread across multiple floors, in this case one for food and one for general merchandise. If you've never been to a Walmart in China, you really ought to experience it at least once. It's far more interesting than Walmart in America (although I happen to find them, anthropologically speaking, quite interesting), and, frankly, fare more Chinese. Especially the food. The amount, and variety, of food obtainable at a Walmart in China is phenomenal. In addition to all the typical industrial food products that fill the shelves, there is a huge seafood section (with live turtles and eels), an entire aisle full of hanging smoked pig parts, and hundreds upon hundreds of prepared foods, from steamed buns and dumplings, to vegetable dishes, to all the foods that one typically buys in China from street vendors. Both times I visited this Walmart, it was incredibly busy, and I had to wait in line for several minutes (even though they had over 50 check-out stands).
I really enjoyed Changsha, liked how it had the feel of a big city without all the expats and inflated priced, but eventually I had to leave. My Chinese classes in Shanghai start really soon, but first I wanted to visit one more place during my "vacation" before starting school. So I came to Huanghsan, in Anhui Province, roughly halfway in between Changsha and Shanghai.
The "off season" at Huangshan technically ends in just a couple days with the coming of March, but from the look of things, I'm here in the heart of the off season. The place is so empty, which creates some very strange sights given the scale of some of the infrastructure around here, which is equipped to handle many hundreds of times the number of tourists who are here right now. The reason why it's the "off season", however, are abundantly clear, and are mostly meteorological.
It's cold and wet. Before I arrived, the weather forecast actually called for snow. In actuality, I only patches of snow on the mountain and have been witness mostly to rain (although snow might have been preferable to this miserable rain).
I took an overnight train from Changsha to Huangshan city, which is actually still an hour away from Tangkou, the town at the base of the mountain. I was unable to obtain a "hard sleeper" ticket, so I rode instead in a luxurious "soft sleeper", the Chinese equivalent of First Class. I would have been fully content with hard sleeper, where you can a bed with sheets and a pillow in a six-bed compartment. The only difference in soft sleeper is that there are four beds to a compartment, and the compartment has a sliding door. So if you were a party of four, you could have complete privacy (but when you are traveling with strangers it doesn't really make a difference).
The train arrived in Huangshan city at 5 am, and after the wait and minibus ride, I arrived in Tangkou at 6:30, during a deluge. My Let's Go China guide told me to find "Mr. Hu" but instead he found me. Mr. Hu speaks English and runs a restaurant and hotel here in town. After breakfast, a few cups of coffee, and luggage storage, he had me on the mountain within a couple of hours. I spent the next six hours scaling thousands of stone steps up the steep face of Huangshan. It was quite a workout. Along the way are numerous pavilions for resting. There are also porters who will carry tourists in sedan chairs (at a price, of course), but I would have none of that.
Unfortunately, much of the sights along the way were hidden to me because of the thick fog. Worse, the steps were slippery and wet because of the rain, and my clothes and shoes got quite wet. It was not the most ideal hiking weather. But I did eventually make it to the top, where I had the good fortune of clear weather to behold the sights as they are meant to be seen. At the top, one gazes out in wonder at rocky peaks rising out of the sea of mist, handsome pine trees rising at cockeyed angles from the rocks. If it sounds like a postcard image of China, there's a good reason. Most Americans have probably seen images of Huangshan in their local Chinese restaurant. It is most popularly reproduced in watercolor on scrolls. In person, it really does look like it does in those paintings. All in all, it was quite worth it, despite the crummy weather endured during most of the climb, and the inflated prices at the top. I spent the night in a dormitory in a giant hotel at the top of the mountain. I was the only person in the entire dormitory. A number of trails meander about the summit area, but this morning I stuck to the most direct route down because I had a vicious headache. I was still able to enjoy some of the trails as they snaked through canyons, caves, and other otherworldly rock formations. I descended the mountain by cable car a) I was still exhausted from the previous day's hike and my headache was still killing me, b) because Let's Go warned me that descending Huangshan by foot is murder for one's knees and cartilage, and c) because the rain seemed reason enough.
So now I'm back in the gateway town if Tangkou, which is cute enough, if cold. Mr. Hu's wife cooks some good food though, and I just met my first American in more than a week, who is also living in Shanghai and thought he'd do some hiking.
First however, an update on my whereabouts the last week. After Shenzhen, I returned to Changsha in Hunan Province to spend more time with He Yuan, a friend I'd met there one week before. The weather this time was mostly cold, wet, and dreary. Did a bit of walking around, however, and got to know several of Changsha's neighborhoods. I stayed in a micro-hotel right in the heart of the city, half a block from the pedestrian-only shopping street. This is where He Yuan likes to go shopping. She's not so keen on the older streets of the city, where vendors sell vegetables laid out on the sidewalk and butchers slaughter chickens, pigs, snakes, and turtles before your eyes. I found these backstreets (of which Changsha has many) far more interesting sights to behold, but He Yuan is afraid of snakes.
I call my hotel a "micro-hotel" because the rooms are tiny, and the bathrooms communal. It was fine for my needs, however, and there was a free endless supply of coffee and tea in the lobby which was quite nice. Also within a block of my hotel was a Walmart. Walmarts in China are similarly sized as Walmarts in America (this one took up an entire city block), but are located in much more urban locations. The floor space, therefore, is spread across multiple floors, in this case one for food and one for general merchandise. If you've never been to a Walmart in China, you really ought to experience it at least once. It's far more interesting than Walmart in America (although I happen to find them, anthropologically speaking, quite interesting), and, frankly, fare more Chinese. Especially the food. The amount, and variety, of food obtainable at a Walmart in China is phenomenal. In addition to all the typical industrial food products that fill the shelves, there is a huge seafood section (with live turtles and eels), an entire aisle full of hanging smoked pig parts, and hundreds upon hundreds of prepared foods, from steamed buns and dumplings, to vegetable dishes, to all the foods that one typically buys in China from street vendors. Both times I visited this Walmart, it was incredibly busy, and I had to wait in line for several minutes (even though they had over 50 check-out stands).
I really enjoyed Changsha, liked how it had the feel of a big city without all the expats and inflated priced, but eventually I had to leave. My Chinese classes in Shanghai start really soon, but first I wanted to visit one more place during my "vacation" before starting school. So I came to Huanghsan, in Anhui Province, roughly halfway in between Changsha and Shanghai.
The "off season" at Huangshan technically ends in just a couple days with the coming of March, but from the look of things, I'm here in the heart of the off season. The place is so empty, which creates some very strange sights given the scale of some of the infrastructure around here, which is equipped to handle many hundreds of times the number of tourists who are here right now. The reason why it's the "off season", however, are abundantly clear, and are mostly meteorological.
It's cold and wet. Before I arrived, the weather forecast actually called for snow. In actuality, I only patches of snow on the mountain and have been witness mostly to rain (although snow might have been preferable to this miserable rain).
I took an overnight train from Changsha to Huangshan city, which is actually still an hour away from Tangkou, the town at the base of the mountain. I was unable to obtain a "hard sleeper" ticket, so I rode instead in a luxurious "soft sleeper", the Chinese equivalent of First Class. I would have been fully content with hard sleeper, where you can a bed with sheets and a pillow in a six-bed compartment. The only difference in soft sleeper is that there are four beds to a compartment, and the compartment has a sliding door. So if you were a party of four, you could have complete privacy (but when you are traveling with strangers it doesn't really make a difference).
The train arrived in Huangshan city at 5 am, and after the wait and minibus ride, I arrived in Tangkou at 6:30, during a deluge. My Let's Go China guide told me to find "Mr. Hu" but instead he found me. Mr. Hu speaks English and runs a restaurant and hotel here in town. After breakfast, a few cups of coffee, and luggage storage, he had me on the mountain within a couple of hours. I spent the next six hours scaling thousands of stone steps up the steep face of Huangshan. It was quite a workout. Along the way are numerous pavilions for resting. There are also porters who will carry tourists in sedan chairs (at a price, of course), but I would have none of that.
Unfortunately, much of the sights along the way were hidden to me because of the thick fog. Worse, the steps were slippery and wet because of the rain, and my clothes and shoes got quite wet. It was not the most ideal hiking weather. But I did eventually make it to the top, where I had the good fortune of clear weather to behold the sights as they are meant to be seen. At the top, one gazes out in wonder at rocky peaks rising out of the sea of mist, handsome pine trees rising at cockeyed angles from the rocks. If it sounds like a postcard image of China, there's a good reason. Most Americans have probably seen images of Huangshan in their local Chinese restaurant. It is most popularly reproduced in watercolor on scrolls. In person, it really does look like it does in those paintings. All in all, it was quite worth it, despite the crummy weather endured during most of the climb, and the inflated prices at the top. I spent the night in a dormitory in a giant hotel at the top of the mountain. I was the only person in the entire dormitory. A number of trails meander about the summit area, but this morning I stuck to the most direct route down because I had a vicious headache. I was still able to enjoy some of the trails as they snaked through canyons, caves, and other otherworldly rock formations. I descended the mountain by cable car a) I was still exhausted from the previous day's hike and my headache was still killing me, b) because Let's Go warned me that descending Huangshan by foot is murder for one's knees and cartilage, and c) because the rain seemed reason enough.
So now I'm back in the gateway town if Tangkou, which is cute enough, if cold. Mr. Hu's wife cooks some good food though, and I just met my first American in more than a week, who is also living in Shanghai and thought he'd do some hiking.
posted by Matthew Hartzell at 10:28 PM
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