Crouching James, Hidden Joshua

Oct 18th-21st

After an enjoyable night train-ride to Huangshan city, also known as Tunxi, we took a public bus to our hostel. We arrived at Ancient Town Youth Hostel (www.yhaha.com) and immediately made arrangements to stay the following night on Huangshan, and the person at the desk happily shifted our second night's accommodation to the night we returned.

Since we had arrived in the morning, we lounged around most of the day, but still found time to wander down Tunxi's Old Street or Lao Jie. While it isn't very long, it is still charming because it's wooden shops and Ming-styled buildings. What was also nice about Tunxi, was that it was quite cheap compared to many other Chinese cities we had visited.

After playing some pool, Josh and I went to bed early because we had two intense days of hiking ahead of us.

The following morning, we woke up early and grabbed a light breakfast of oversize dumplings and took a city bus to the long-distance bus station.

From there we caught another bus to Tangkou, the city at the base of Huangshan. The bus journeys didn't end there. We then took a final bus to the beginning of the eastern steps, our route to the summit.

Huangshan or Yellow Mountain is one of China's most famous mountains and although it is not a mountain revered by Buddhists or Taoists, it is still said to be the most beautiful scenery of all of China's mountains, sacred or not. Countless painters, authors and poets have etched Huangshan into the collective psyche of the Chinese people, describing its granite peaks, impressive gorges and oft-misty landscapes.

Although it is supposed to rain 2/3 of the time on the mountain, we had seen a break in the forecast and decided to seize the opportunity.

We paid the exorbitant entry fee and started our slow yet steady ascent. The eastern route is said to be easier and less steep than the western route, but still comprises thousands of stairs. No matter how tired or fed up of stairs we were, we sucked it up because there were scores of porters climbing those same steps, bringing food, drinks or building materials; often weighing more than half their body-weight. Talk about a shitty job!

An even shittier job is the porters in charge of shlepping lazy or old Chinese people up the stairs while balancing the imperial style bamboo-thrones on their aching shoulders. To make matters worse, one of the people we saw being carried up had actually fallen asleep while the poor guys carrying him were sweating and working their asses off. Talk about unappreciative.

Personally I think if you are too lazy, old or weak to climb the steps, take the damn cable-car!

Because of our pace, we made it to white goose ridge (1770m) rather quickly. We took a brief break to admire the beautiful scenery around us before continuing our ascent.

Before long we had reached bright summit peak (1841m), which is famed for its views of the sunset and sunrise. This peak is flanked by the golf ball shaped meteorological centre and observation deck, numerous hotels and restaurants. A short walk from there brought us to alchemy peak, another fantastic viewpoint.

It was quite evident to us that there was a cable-car station not too far from the summit because there were exponentially more people there then we had seen climbing up, and most of them were wearing matching, poorly-made, goofy hats and visors: a tell-tale sign of a Chinese tour group.

We decided to ditch them and visit the often neglected west sea canyon. Unknowingly, we had been reading our map wrong and ended up at the base of lotus flower peak. At 1873m, it is Huangshan's highest. It was not in our original plans but since we were so close we'd be stupid not to climb it.

On the summit itself it was hard to take it all in because once again there were far too many people up there. The only consolation was that there wasn't a cable-car leading here, so all the people up there had climbed up, so I'll let it slide.

Once up there it seemed that people were more interested in Josh and my presence than in the breath-taking mountains around us. We posed for the 20 or so photos we were asked to be in and I made the summit go crazy by kissing a Chinese girl on the cheek for one of the pictures. I sometimes wish we drew this kind of attention back in Canada!

Our last stop of the day was fairy walking bridge: a narrow stone bridge wedged between two sheer cliffs at over 1300m in height.

With the sun slowly dipping in the sky, the magnificent granite peaks reflecting hues of orange, pink and red; and a sparsity of tourists at the site made this the highlight of our day. We stayed and watched until the sun had almost completely disappeared before trekking back up the steps to our hotel.

One of the highlights of any trip to Huangshan is its sunrise. Hundreds of people wake up at ungodly hours to get the best spots to watch this daily occurrence.

Josh and I got up at a respectable 5:20am and started climbing up the steps towards bright summit peak. When we got there, there were already several hundred people waiting. We quickly went to alchemy peak, but it seemed as if everyone had already had the same idea. As the sunrise approached, it became evident that the clouds that rolled in just prior to sunset the night before would impede any chance of the other-worldly sunrise we had been told of.

Since we were already up, we decided to start hiking even though it was only 6:15am. We had managed to orient ourselves properly and would go to the west sea canyon, which we had attempted to find the day before but ended up on lotus flower peak.

This portion the the trail was absolutely beautiful: numerous gorges and canyons; exposed trails sitting hundreds of meters in the air, picturesque pavilions on cliff-sides and the golden glow of the rising sun illuminating the whole area. Josh's legs were failing him so I continued to finish the first ring path and climbed back up to meet him.

We were now more than content with our feats on Huangshan and decided to start our descent. Before starting, however, we had to go up stairs for an hour just to reach our decent point since the west sea canyon was considerably lower than the summit.

Our descent would take us down the western steps, a grueling 15km steep stairway leading you past some fabulous scenery and exhausted people.

Our knees were screaming the more steps we climbed down, the looks of despair and desperation of those hiking up fueling our desire to get down and also making us happy we chose to go up the eastern steps.

After 2 hours of descending, both Josh and my right knee started acting up, further necessitating an end to this torture.

When we finally made it down, our legs were trembling uncontrollably but we didn't regret it for a second. We had done it. We had conquered Huangshan.

After our second of three fabulous meals of Hui cuisine at Meisti Renja, we called it a night and gave our aching legs a break.

The following day we made our way to the western Huizhou villages, giving us a taste of Anhui province's rural life. Our destination was Hongcun, a beautiful Song dynasty village looking like it's floating on the south lake.

The village, along with nearby Xidi village, are UNESCO World Heritage sites and rightly so, they are truly stunning.

Before we explored Hongcun, we hailed a 3-wheeled car to Mukeng's Bamboo forest, a mere 5km away.

We took an hour to climb to the highest point and took a zip line down to the other side! After doing so many stairs and climbing up and down things for so many months, it was amazing to strap into a harness and just zip right down!

Before exiting the beautiful bamboo forest, used for some fight scenes in Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, we walked through China's half-assed version of a haunted house with a giant gorilla over its entrance (don't ask why they had this in a bamboo forest). We caught another rickshaw back into Hongcun and commenced our exploring.

Hongcun's most iconic entrance way is a small, steep bridge which was also used in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I've personally never seen the film, but after seeing some of the beautiful sights in real life, I would definitely like to watch it!

Hongcun is centered by a central crescent-shaped moon pond. Branching from there are many narrow alleys, impressive halls with wood carvings and every other element of quintessential "chineseness".

It is no wonder that at every corner of this stunning village is a group of art students painting on their easels to varying degrees of artistic ability.

After exploring all the nooks, crannies and waterways Hongcun had to offer, we hopped on a bus back to Tunxi.

Although our stay in Anhui province was confined to just Huangshan and Hongcun, I fell in love with its beautiful landscapes, granite peaks, lovely rural villages and amazing cuisine.

I guess Ang Lee knew what he was doing!