Huangshan

I was beginning to get fed up with China, or rather with the Chinese. As soon as I got off the Su Zhou Hao at Shanghai International Ferry Terminal on Sunday afternoon there were taxi drivers galore trying to get me to take a ride with them. A fellow passenger on the boat and I both needed to get to the nearest Metro station and so after trying to say a few times where we wanted to go in both English and Chinese, pointing to it on both the 'Central Shanghai' and 'Metro' maps on the pop-out map of the city I have, trying to explain where we were now on the map, pointing in the direction of the Metro itself and using other various hand-guestures we were finally on our way, heading down a road, turning left, then left, then left again and another left before the driver asked us again where we actually wanted to go. You'd have though a taxi driver should know the map of his own city. This one probably did, it just gets him more money to go round in circles a few times and acting all confused.

Da was in Shenzhen for a few days and so I had to find somewhere to chill until he got back. I could have stayed in Shanghai and seen some of the place, maybe going to one of its many museums. Incidently, having been traveling for over four weeks now I still haven't entered a single museum. Dad, you must be horrified! Yi Hui suggested I go to somewhere like Zhou Zhuang - a river town about an hour-and-a-half's bus ride from Shanghai, where they filmed one of the Mission Imposible films - but I'd already gone there on a day trip with some guys I met in the hostel in Shanghai a few weeks ago. Yi Hui says that it was very beautiful when she went there many years ago but we were sorely dissapointed. True, it looked pretty, but virtually every single building in the Old Town had been turned into a souvenier shop, their owners shouting "you come lookie!" and "this, only [insert rediculously high value compared with what it's actually worth] yuan, look!" as you walked passed. And you had to pay to get in there! They should be paying us. I might be sounding like exactly the sort of people I hate - the ones that when you go canvasing for Plaid say "we moved in to this lovely quaint, unspoiled part of rural Mid Wales from the South of England but now it's just not the same with all these people from the North of England moving in, ruining the community" - so sorry for being hypocritical, but don't they realise that the reason people want to visit a 'quaint' (excuse my use of one of the most quintessentially English words... or maybe 'quitessesntial' is even more quintessential...) Old Town is exactly because it is 'quaint' and 'unspoiled', something people find special, something that has a charm about it, but as soon as it transformes into basically a massive carboot sale selling junk worse than what you would actually find at a carboot sale it looses all its charm and everything that once made it special. That day wasn't a complete dissaster though, as we found a little garden appropriately named 'Paradise' to escape the witch-like (most of these souvenier shop owners seem to be female for some reason) voices of the Old Town and all had a good laugh together.

So there I was in an internet cafe in Shanghai searching the web for somewhere to go for a few days. A couple of places looked interesting, although whenever I saw the words "...has a lovely little Old Town" I quickly closed the window. I stumbled upon a place called Huangshan fairly early on in my searches and after comparing it with a couple of others I thought I might as well go for it. I got a taxi to the main train station, waited in line for a ticket, had a few people barge in in front of me to dodge the queue in true Chinese style, bought a return ticket to Huangshan, left the station to find a bite to eat, got hounded by a few taxi drivers while crossing the street who couldn't understand why I didn't want to use their dodgy services, bought a meal in a Chinese fast-food restaurant, was still hungry so went next door to buy a very tasty custard cream doughnut, made my way to the train, walked past the carrages, walked passed more and more carrages (this train was huge, I have no idea how long it was), found carrage number six, found middle bunk number twenty-one, put my bags on the rack, got out the book (although it's more of an extended essay really) I'm reading about a policeman's reminices of Old Llanwddyn (very interesting, anyone in Llanwddyn who's reading this blog I highly recommend you get a copy) and settled down for the night and the eleven-hour train ride to Huangshan.

I arrived here after a virtually sleepless night just before ten on Monday morning. "You want bus?" and "Here, you want raincoat? You buy map, yes?" were the first things I heard after leaving the train station gates. By now my "Bu yau, xie xie" had gone through the phases of "Bu yau" and just ignoring them to giving them the 'evil eyes'. All I wanted to do was find the Huangshan International Youth Hostel (88% ratings on Hostelworld) which was meant to be just round the corner from the station and have a nice cold shower. Walking down the street I was again hounded by a load of Chinese-style rickshaw drivers who shout "Hello!" as you walk pass (evidetly the only English word they know) to try and get your attention. Now, if a Shanghaiese taxi driver with a metre doesn't know the way to one of the main Metro stations when I have a map in my hand, as if one of these rickshaw drivers would have any chance on earth to get me to where I wanted. You wonder if any tourist is dumb enoughto actually use one of them. Perhaps that's why they haven't needed to learn anything beyond 'hello'. I hadn't booked into the hostel in advance so when I came across the other International Youth Hostel called Koala (92% ratings) and found they had had a room I thought things were looking up. But after paying for the room and a 100 yuan deposit for the key I found that I only had 7 yuan left - about 55p - and was in desperate need of a bank. A fairly large town like this must have a HSBC I thought, but no, only Bank of China. I was in such a rush that I forgot to go upstairs to the dorm to dump my rucksack and so went back out onto the street with all my belongings, round the corner, down some stairs, down a very dodgy-looking alleyway (at least dodgy compared to most of Shanghai; it seems to be the norm in this town) and found the Bank of China with the ATM outside. Card in the slot, select English, PIN number, everything good so far, cash out... sorry, "card communication failed". After a couple more attemps in vain I entered the bank and explained the problem. The manager didn't know what the problem was, phoned someone else to ask and told me to go to the main branch in town. 5 yuan by taxi, he said, but emptying my wallet and showing him how little I had he felt a sorry and gave me 5 yuan of his own, went outside to a taxi, told him where to go and how much it he should charge and I was on my way. 11 yuan is the minimum for a taxi ride in Shanghai, but this is not Shanghai and it was interesting seeing for the first time in Asia a taxi driver not using the metre. I got out a couple of minutes later, entered the main branch, tried their ATM - "card communication failed" - was given a ticket (number 1111 - easy to recognise when it was being called out) to see a representative, had a word with her and found out that a HSBC Solo Debit Card can't be used to withdraw money with them. "Do you have another card? A Visa or Mastercard? A Credit Card?". Sorry, no. No wonder, as Elaine says, a Solo is free. Nobody would ever pay for one. Only one thing for it then - I'll have to exchange my remaining Sterling, all thirty pounds of it (although I have about five pounds in coins that they can't exchange). "Do you have your passport with you?" Umm... I should do... wait a second... where is it... Then I realised I must have left it with the receptionist at the hostel when she was checking it, such was my rush to get to a bank. "Will a driver's licience do?" I asked. "Sorry, we need a passport". So, not having money to take a taxi back, I ask for directions to the train station. She points in some vague direction. I make my way back passing plenty of stalls selling water along the way which by now I could really do with but was not prepared to spend any money at all. I would have to be very thrifty these next few days, I thought, which means that the postcards I wrote to Auntie Jan and Auntie Mary and the letter I wrote to Sophie Deas can't be sent until I get back to Shanghai and find a HSBC, so sorry ladies. Entering the hostel, the receptionist hands me my passport straight away. "You left this" she says. I know. This time I go upstairs to dump my things, head back to the closer Bank of China, exchange my sterling (at a very good rate I thought) with a whole form to fill in before I got my Yuan, head back to the hostel and had that cold shower I'd been waiting for. "We've been travelling China for a while now and we're always surprised with how friendly and kind the Chinese are," said one of my dormmates when I got out of the shower, his voice almost drowned out by the incessant beeping from the polluting cars on the street below. Yeah right, I thought, maybe the ones I've met in AC but certainly not the majority of the ones I've seen in China. So as you can see I was beginning to get fed up with China, or rather with the Chinese.

The town I am staying in is actually called Tunxi and Huangshan (literally Yellow Mountain) is the mountain range close by in southern Anhui province. If ever you've seen any traditional Chinese paintings of a mountain it was probably of Huangshan. You've probably thought 'wow, that's very striking, the artist must have used a lot of his imagination' if you've seen one, but actually it's just as striking as it is in the pictures. It's China's most famous mountain range and is a UNESCO World Herritage Site. Needless to say, it's also one of China's most popular tourist destinations too. I got up at quarter-to-six on Tuesday morning to catch the one-and-a-half hour minibus ride I'd booked that would be leaving at six from outside the hostel doors. I actually woke up at half-past-four when my alarm went off an hour earlier than I expected - I hadn't changed my mobile phone's timezone since coming back from Japan. I was a little unsure of how the day would go; I'd already drunken two out of my four 1.5 litre bottles of water I'd bought from the supermarket round the corner. I could have topped them up with the hostel's tap water and used my iodine drops and neutralising tablets for the first time but thought I'd see how it goes. If I was desparate I could top it up from a spring on the mountain or from a stream as I would be taking my water purification gear with me, and if the worst came to the worst I could fork out and buy some from one of the stalls up there. Food was also an issue: I hadn't really had much to eat the day before as I was trying to save my cash and the supermarket didn't have much suitable mountain climbing grub on sale so I would have to do with a pack of 'French Bread' (strange-tasting brioche), a pack of custard-filled muffin thingys which tasted a little alcoholic, two small packets of chocolate biscuits (the only chocolate on sale was Snickers and some Nestle stuff, both way too expensive), some jellied fruit, a packet of peanuts and two small sausages. A strange selection maybe but it should give me the energy I needed to last the day. Finally I was concerned about timing: the last minibus would leave for the town at 5 p.m. giving me about eight hours walking time. I wasn't going to stay the night on the mountain in one of its many over-priced hotels to watch the sun rise like some other people in the hostel but was determined to make the most of my day by seeing as much of it as I could. There were cable cars to take you from the foot of Huangshan to half-way up it but, again, I didn't want to throw my money away if I could help it. I'd heard it would take about eight hours to walk from the eastern base to about two-thirds of the way up, walk across the range for a while seeing some of the sights and walk back down the western side. But I wasn't too worried. After all, I can be a fast walker when I want to be and I've got plenty of back-up energy stored up inside of me.

We got to the foot of Huangshan and then transfered into another minibus to take us to the eastern base. Here we would have to buy the enterance ticket. The Lonely Planet guide to China says that "No matter how you approach the gate you will be still be shocked by the enterence fee" - a whopping 200 yuan normal price but I got in half-price with my student ID. I had a good look at my tourist map I'd bought on the train and at the one on the wooden plaque by the enterence: 3.5 km until the first 'Scenic Viewing Point'. You're not allowed to stop to look at the view while you're walking which is part Chinese philosophy and part practicality given the narrow steps all the way up. Oh yeah, there are steps to take you everywhere. So through the gates I went at 8:20 a.m. and up the first few steps I climbed. One hour should be enough to get to this first viewing point, if I walk quickly.

Things were going well for the first kilometer or so. The sun wasn't shining, hidden behind the clouds, but it was dry, although some showers were expected later on in the day. I was wearing for only the second time in Asia my walking boots plus my white shorts and white shirt - the coolest and most absorbant clothes I have. The stairs were short enough to manage two steps at a time and I was steaming ahead of all the short-legged Chinese. Slowing down when I got stuck behind somebody carrying food and water ballenced on either side of a long pole perched on their shoulders proved a pleasant break as you had to wait for the steps to get wide enough to overtake. But I knew I couldn't keep up with this speed for long as by the end of the second kilometer I had to sit down and could hear my heart beat two quickly for its own good. I was also drinking more water than I had rashioned for myself and by this stage my first bottle of water was already half empty. I slowed down a little bit and made it to the viewing point in time with a few minutes to spare. The water prices here were already 10 yuan for a small bottle compared with the 2.5 yuan I'd paid in the supermarket for my 1.5 litre ones. The price would inevitably increase the higher up you went although I'm sure they would we up for some bartering.

If I was going to make it up this mountain alive I would have to slow it down a bit. That first section proved to be the hardest though so looking back I'm glad I rushed it. It was another 3 km to the next viewing point and the upper station of the eastern cable car. I could see how far I would have to climb by looking up at the cable above and following it up and up. A long way. I'm not sure how steep the gradient was but my guess is that this next stage averaged about 40-50 degrees. I had some brioche, opened one of the packets of chocolate biscuits and nibbled on one of those, took a sip of water and started walking again, this time only one step at a time but nonetheless at a good steady pace. I could see I was about to enter the thick clouds and about half-way up I was walking through a rain shower. By this time everyone around me (almost exclusively Chinese - although this might be one of China's main tourist destinations it seems that applies for the Chinese only) is wearing their thin plastic poncho-style raincoats like the ones they were trying to flog off outside the train station. I didn't have anything waterproof with me to put on but I wasn't complaining. My shirt was already drenched from my own sweat (and, originally being white, was now see-through) and the rain accompanied by the visable light breeze was cooling me down quite nicely. When I reached this next viewing point, named 'Wild Goose Ridge', I wasn't out of breath at all, had a custard-filled muffin and rummaged around in my day bag for a buiscuit which by now had all fallen out of their packet, took another sip of water and looked at the map to see where I should go next. What's more, it was only 10:15 a.m. It looked like the not-so-slow-but-not-so-fast and steady approach was working better than the blitz attack after all.

The road forked into two different directions at this point and I decided to take the one that would lead me to a lake to see if it was in the same league as Lake Vyrnwy. The steps at this point were slightly more narrow than before which didn't help the fact that there were substantially more people around now that they had all gotten off the cable car. Most belonged to tour groups from various corners of China each wearing rain coats in the colour specific to their group and a baseball had also either with the tour group's logo or that of the hotel they were staying in. After getting to the lake - or what was probably a lake down there somewhere hidden away under the thickening fog - which was only half a kilometer up-hill from Wild Goose Ridge I thought I might as well carry on straight away to the meteological observatory, only another half kilometer. The steps were getting so congested by now that even if I wanted to I wouldn't have been able to go two steps at a time and I somehow ended up in the middle of one particular tour group and walking alongside a Chinese guy about my age who looks exactly like LuZe.

We started talking to each other: where are you from (always a rather pointless question as I don't know the names of anywhere in China apart from the major provinces and cities and they only just about know where the United Kingdom is let alone Llanwddyn or Wales, but that at least gives you an oppertunity to talk about it), where are you travelling to, for how long, etc. It turns out that his name is Char (that's what it sounded like anyway), and he's a twenty-year-old university student from somewhere in North-East China. His English isn't perfect - about LuZe's level - but anything's better than my non-existant Chinese and it was good enough to get by slowly in a conversation. When we reach the observatory he introduces me to his mum who takes a couple of pictures of us together. Like I said, for some reason Huangshan was virtually desserted of non-Chinese and suddenly - maybe because there wasn't much to see over the edge other than thick fog - I found myself the main attraction, more so than the mountain they'd all come to see. I didn't mind at all - anyone from AC knows that I'm used to being surrounded by Asians :P - and was quite enjoying posing for pictures with all the teenagers, especially when they remarked on how handsome I was! I must say that I don't think I was really looking my best, what with my see-through shirt exposing my moobs and hairy chest, but we all know that Asians have different tastes. I was further introduced to his English teacher and her sixteen-year-old son and when the tour guide lead them on I thought I might as well tag along. They certainly all wanted me to join them.

As we continued along the ridge we were all chatting to each other. They seemed to take a shine to me and were asking all sorts of questions about life back home, schooling, work, table manners, gap years and the like. It was giving them all some good practise of their English and I was taught a little Chinese too including the word for 'fir tree', which I've now forgotten. Char's mum gave me her baseball hat to wear, which almost flew off my head several times in the gushing winds we were now experiencing. I was introduced to an eighteen-year-old girl called Dodo too who's English was very good indeed for her age surpassing that of her English teacher - although having had two years of interpreting non-natives is useful experience, such as knowing that 'the bus in the sky' means cable car and being able to guess what word they're trying to say by thinking about its context (the Star Treck harmonica holder incident comes to mind, Ondra) and impressing them by guessing it correctly. "Wow, you can speak Chinese!" Said Dodo as we were walking single-file down very narrow stairs with sheer cliff-faces either side of us after I correctly guessed what word the English teacher's son was trying to say. "No, he's just clever." Said Char. Either one will do for me, but considering I'd just been talking about what Welsh weather was like in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter it wasn't too difficult to guess the word he was trying to think of was 'season'.

This went on for a few hours whereby they were very impressed that I wan't feeling the cold and wasn't afraid of getting a cold, although my fingertips were incredibly wrinkly. I was also fortunate not to get the dreaded crotch rash which I had after my last bout of long-distance walking in Kyoto. I had no reason to leave the tour group and we were making steady progress towards the western side of Huangshan, passing various 'Scenic Points' along the way. The mountain range is famous for many reasons, most of which were shrouded by the fog. But we were able to see some of the "Strangely-Shaped Rocks" including one which is meant to look like an old mobile phone with a long antenae and also some of its more famous fir trees such as "The Tree to Welcome Outsiders". All the while I felt very much at home with them: I was lent an MP3 player and listenned to some camp Chinese Pop to which I could easily sing along to after only one verse; I was 'nudged' over to the safer side of the path if ever I verged (wow, I just looked up the word 'verge' on an online dictionary to check if I used it in the right context and there are so many different definitions. Still not sure if I'm using it in the right context though) near the edge; and every so often we'd take a few pictures of us four together. Having Dodo explain the meaning behind the names of various places on the mountains was also very useful and proved a lot more informative than the Chinglish signs dotted around the place trying to do the same job. At about 2 o'clock we arrived at the western cable car and finding it cheaper than I'd expected (they thought it was quite expensive but considering the amount of work that must have gone into constructing it I thought it very fair) and realising that after walking through rain for the last four hours or so I hadn't needed to touch my second bottle of water nor the majority of the food I brought I decided to join them on it. As we decended below the clouds we finally saw what makes Huangshan a World Heritage Site: a vast mountain range of many many peaks, seventy-seven of which are over 1000m, the tallest being 1864m, covered from the foot upwards with dense fir trees until the barren granite cliffs take over. And with this as our background we exchanged email addresses and signed eachother's baseball caps. They promised to send me the pictures they'd taken as I hadn't brought my camera with me (my battery charger's broken and the batteries from the supermarket in Tunxi were a waste of money) and Dodo and I said we'll try to keep in touch.

When we reached the bottom they had to wait for the remainder of their tour group to arrive, some of which had decided to walk the western side of the ridge instead of taking the cable car. I bought the bus ticket to get back to the main gate bus seeing as I had another two-and-a-half hours or so until the last minibus back to Tunxi left I decided to stay there until the rest of the group had caught up. They began to eat their lunch - snacks of dried peas and crackers - sharing plenty of it with me. Of course, they refused to eat any of the food I offered them. We continued chatting about this and that while munching away until all the food had gone then, not wanting to stand around in the rain and get cold, we took shelter under a gate where the English teacher's son produced a pack of cards. They asked me if I knew any Chinese card games to which I replied "only one, I don't know its name but you play it like this..." I'd only played it once or twice before with Shu Haur in Coffee Lounge sometime in second term and I've forgotten its name again now after a few rounds and lots of help from the English teacher who was peering over my shoulder and giving me more than just hints as to what I should do I was going out first (i.e. winning) in almost every hand. They were all impressed by how quickly I learned it. "See, I think he's clever as well as strong." Said the English Teacher, although I put my success down to her virtually playing for me. Her son, however, proved not-so-good at the game and gave up after almost an hour of play. A ten-year-old took his place who was almost in tears after his dad kept telling him what to do. "His dad thinks he knows more than his son," said Dodo. "All dads think they know more than their sons!" I said. After another round the rest of the tour group had arrived and it was time for them to continue on their way towards some hot springs, another of Huangshan's attractions. I said goodbye and hopped on the bus. Maybe I was wrong about Chinese people after all, I though as I was driven down the spiralling road away from my new friends.

Arriving back at the main gate I wasn't sure where to go to get the minibus back to Tunxi. I had a good half-hour before 5 p.m. so I walked around to try and look for one. I could see lots of people heading into a big building on one side of the car park area and, assuming is was some sort of waiting area (there were many people coming down from the mountain at this point, enough to fill at least a dozen or so minibuses) decided to follow them inside, up some stairs and into a room with benches all around the sides. A strange little waiting room, I thought, as there were posters of tea plantations on the walls and three big barrells of tea leaves on the floor. I sat down in on the beach near the far corner and, seeing everybody else around me wearing identical red and white baseball caps, realised that I was the only one in the room who didn't belong to this one tour group. A mother ushered her young daughter to sit next to me to practise her English, which was very good considering she'd only been learning for a year, who swapped places every few sentences with her friend so that she could 'have a go' at speaking to me as well. The mother took a few photos of us together with her camera and the children yet more photos with their phones. Once again I was the centre of attention but as always I was enjoying it and made the most of it by encouraging them to practise their English. Then two ladies in a strange hippy-like multicoloured uniform entered the room, one of them rigged with a microphone and speaker, and proceeded to do a presentation and prepare samples of the tea on offer for us all to try. This wasn't a bus waiting room after all but a show room. The teas - one red and two green - were all delicious and watching them prepare it by pouring the teas from one pot into another, pouring hot water over the teapots etc. was interesting. It all had an 'Eisteddfod Tesco Foodhall Tent' sort of feeling to it, whereby everybody looks interested and is more than happy to take the free samples on offer but everyone knows that nobody's going to buy any of it at the end, even if the three tins of tea do come in a golden fabric-lined box.

I left the showroom with everybody else, went through the shop which had every type of tea you could ever want on sale on the way to the exit and saw that, as I feared, everybody around me who were members of this one tour group went to their own bus. I looked at my watch and saw that it was ten minutes past the hour. I'd better find these minibuses, I thought, and fast. After asking at the Main Gate information desk I found out I needed to go onto the main road, round the corner and wait at a junction. On my way I passed two taxi drivers, the first offering to take me to Tunxi for 260 yuan and the second for 200 yuan. I'm sure I could have got that down if I'd tried but I'd rather put up with having my legs squashed between my seat and the one in front of me than paying that sort of money. Besides, I didn't even have that much on me. At the junction there were about twenty of us all waiting to catch a minibus heading in the right direction. We waited... and waited... but it seemed as if this time they really did stop when they said they'd stop. After about half an hour of the Chinese people around me trying to persuade buses coming from Tunxi to come back quickly and pick us up it was obvious that we'd have to find some other way. Fortunately, a girl from the hostel with whom I went into Huangshan with that morning saw me waiting on the side of the road and told the driver to stop. "How much?" I asked. 25 yuan, she says. "That's good enough for me" I said as I clambered into what can only be described as a weird Chinese hippy van turned into a makeshift minibus. There must have been about eleven of us including the driver and crammed into this little space but it was a way back and only a few kuai (another word for yuan) more than the minibus in. We got dropped off just outside the hostel and I went straight up to the dorm to have, you guessed it, a nice cold shower!

The next day I slept in late, checked out of the hostel, stayed inside the hostel all day (it was raining heavily outside non-stop), chatted to the girl (a Chinese girl in her twenties, again from the North East) who stopped the hippy van for a couple of hours, wrote most of this entry and got the night train back to Shanghai. My time in Huangshan made me think about what the 'real' China is. Is it the super-clean multi-storied shopping centres of Shanghai? The desparate souvenier sellers and rickshaw drivers of the towns? Or the welcoming and friendly Chinese vourists travelling their own country that I meet along the way? I suppose in such a massive country with so many different faces there's no such thing as the 'real' China after all.