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!

Nanjing Days and Shanghai Nights

Oct 13th-17th

We arrived to Shanghai at around midday and it was surprising to see the contrast between grey, laid-back Xi'an and hectic, big city Shanghai.

We checked into our centrally located hostel, the decent Blue Mountain on the Bund (www.bmhostel.com) and tried to get our bearings.

We dropped off our stuff and already started exploring. Thinking we were walking towards Shanghai's famed waterway, we walked west until we didn't feel like going any farther. We walked back to our hostel and decided to actually look at a map this time, and realized we had been heading in the wrong direction.

This time we went east and within 10 minutes were face to face with Shanghai's impressive and famous skyline located across the Huangpu river in Shanghai's Pudong district.

After snapping numerous pics of the interesting architecture such as the oriental pearl tower, the spaceship looking tower I thought looked cool, yet Josh found tacky; and the Shanghai world financial center measuring 492m and looking like a giant bottle opener.

On our side of the Huangpu river is Shanghai's famed Bund. The Bund was the city's old wall street and many of its classical buildings were built in the early 1900s by foreign powers such as England, France, the US, Germany and Russia. In the 1920s, Shanghai was called the Paris of the east for its beautiful architecture and cosmopolitan feel.

Once the communists came into power in the late 40s, Shanghai faded into commercial obscurity. The impressive skyscrapers we were looking at across the Huangpu had only been conceptualized and built starting in the 90s, to invigorate the economy and reinstating Shanghai as the economic capital of China.

Shanghai is now the commercial center of China; its most modern and avant-garde city; and its largest with over 18 million residents.

After admiring the contrast between colonial and contemporary, we headed back to the hostel before grabbing a delicious Shanghainese meal and returning to the Bund to admire the impressive skyline at night.

Our hostel was located just off East Nanjing road, the wide pedestrian shopping area with enough lights and people to make Times Square jealous. During our time in Shanghai, I couldn't tell you how many times we walked up and down that street, wondering how it's possible for there to be a Starbucks at every corner and ignoring the countless touts offering watches, purses or sexy lady massages (a known extortion scheme in Shanghai).

Other than our walks down East Nanjing and multiple visits to the Bund, we didn't do too much in Shanghai.

We did walk through People's Square and I took a few hours to wander through Old Town with its quintessential Chinese tea house and architecture, but it was overrun with tourists (as many foreign as local), which made it difficult to navigate the sometimes narrow streets.

 

  

On our second night we met Ed, a Brit living in New Zealand who was giving a speech at a conference in a nearby province. He joined us for a walk to Shanghai's French concession. The French concession was the former neighborhood of the French colonial community reflected in its elegant buildings and layout. We tried to find an affordable restaurant in the Xintiandi area, but the European restaurants and Italian and French fashion houses glaring snobbishly at us left us with no satisfying options.

Instead we ate at a fast-food styled Chinese place and bought 50 cent beers while playing a game we thought up called Shanghai Die.

A simple game: one person rolls the die, the others call a number, whoever is the closest to the number called without going over wins. The loser has to drink for the number of seconds their number is off by. If one person guesses correctly, the others have to drink for 5 seconds.

Simple yet effective.

The following evening Fredrika and Camilla arrived to Shanghai following their 38-hour train ride from Chengdu. We went to Captain's bar which offers great views of Pudong at night and has the cheapest drinks anywhere on the Bund. After we played more Shanghai Die, an instant classic.

Helinä arrived the next night and we thought it would be nice to go to Pudong to the Ritz Carleton Hotel to get beautiful views of the Bund and the oriental pearl tower. We all dressed in our finest clothes and made our way there. The waiter told us to get a seat on the outside terrace we needed to spend a minimum of 400¥ (66 CAD) each and considering my budget is 50$/day, no view is worth that. Instead we went across the street to the Shangri-la hotel and had a drink on its modest 36th floor, at Jade on the 36th restaurant and lounge.

Feeling aimless we went back to the hostel for a quiet evening. As soon as we got back, a former bartender at the hostel invited us to have drinks with her because it was her birthday. She was already pretty wasted and was happy to pour us shots of vodka.

Before we even had time to settle into our chairs, a German guy told us he was a promoter at a club called Muse and that if we went before 11 we would get in free and drink free all night.

Sounded too good to be true.

It turns out that promoters often recruit foreigners (mainly white people) to enter clubs and drink for free to increase the party vibe. Chinese patrons generally just sit and spend copious amounts of money on premium vodkas and champagne. They use white people to get the dance floor started and to hype the Chinese.

While we weren't explicitly told to do so, we started jumping around and dancing like there was no tomorrow, and as promised, the vodka and tequila flowed all night.

My Gagnam style dance drew rave reviews from our fellow Chinese party-goers.

We slept in past our noon check-out time and then showed Helinä the Bund and walked down East Nanjing one last time. Winnie had arrived in Shanghai and paid us a visit at our hostel an hour before we left for the train station.

Our next stop was Huangshan or the yellow mountains, known as one of the most iconic of all of China's mountains and providing some of the most spectacular scenery China has to offer.

Winnie had told us that like Huashan, there are hundreds of thousands of stairs: my knees said no but my heart said hell's yes!

Xi'an Part 2: Murder Mountain and One Last Pagoda

Oct 10th-12th

Huashan, one of Taoism's five sacred mountains had lured us for quite some time. While still in Montreal, Josh had stumbled upon an article about China's Murder Mountain, having been notorious for the amount of deaths that occurred on its steep steps and kilometer cliffs. With some research, we found out it was called Huashan and was not too far from Xi'an. Josh had showed Winnie some pictures and he instantly wanted to join us.

Before we knew it, we were on a bullet train and in 20 minutes we were near the base of Huashan, some 120km away. Man I love that train!

We started our ascent from the village of Huashan, following a 6km path leading up to the north peak. The climb was progressive and only began to get difficult after the first two-thirds. I was a little hesitant having Winnie join us considering he was 59 years old, but he really surprised us and held his own.

Hiking in China, at least sacred mountains implies stairs, hundreds of thousands of steps cut to various heights and widths, finding new ways to wreak havoc on your muscles and knees. Another unfortunate reality when hiking in China is the hundreds to sometimes thousands of people at the summit. Not because they are in amazing shape and into physical activity, but because each mountain has at least one cable-car carrying tourists and tour groups to the summit.

Once we reached the north peak (1615m), it was instantly evident that a cable-car terminated there by the sheer amount of people who greeted us. We quickly left and continued the climb towards the south peak, Huashan's highest at 2160m.

It is quite easy to see why this was once known as murder mountain because of the incredibly steep stairways, near vertical climbs and the then-absent handrails. Today, Huashan is a shadow of its former deadly self, having installed all the safety features necessary to minimize casualties. The only remaining danger I could see was if someone out of the thousands of people ascending or descending at any given time were to fall and start a domino effect down the steep stairs.

What's nice, however, is that most tour groups follow a rather predictable route, and at a pace which is very easy to overtake, leaving us with some breathtaking, unadulterated views of the surrounding landscape.

Before reaching the south peak, we did what we had come to Huashan for: scaling the cliff on three planks of wood.

The cliff that I'm speaking of is over a kilometer in the air and originally consisted of a chain bolted to the rock-face and three planks of wood to scale the cliff to reach a secluded temple.

Today it remains much unchanged except for the line that you attach and detach the mandatory safety-harness to and from as you stare at the distant ground below you.

Even though you are harnessed in, the width of the wooden planks and the fact you are over one kilometer above the ground, separated only by a few one-by-fours is still a bit scary. Also, the passage was obviously made for one pilgrim at a time and the fact that you have to repeatedly pass over or under people going in the opposite direction adds to the perception of danger.

Upon reaching the south peak, we took a break and admired the amazing scenery sprawling around us. From there we started our descent, jelly legs already setting in. We took a brief detour towards the west peak to admire the wedge of rock leading up towards the summit.

We told Winnie to imagine how good that first beer would be once we get back to the hostel and he was instantly a man on a mission. A Bavarian in search of beer? We couldn't keep up!

It was nearly 5pm by the time we had reached the north peak. To save our knees and to make sure we caught the train back to Xi'an, we took the cable car down.

When we got back to the hostel, we were greeted by Helinä, our Finish friend from Sanlitun, who had just arrived from Beijing.

The next day I made my way to the Little Goose Pagoda, a 43m structure built in 707 AD to house the scriptures of Yi Jing.

After this brief visit I got lost for around an hour before retracing my steps and just getting on a bus going in the opposite direction. The only consolation I got was seeing this sign that represents the current Sino-Japanese relations due to the disputed islands in the South China Sea.

That evening we wandered through the Muslim quarter until Winnie had to catch his train to do a Yangze river cruise. Helinä, Josh and I continued sampling Chinese Muslim (also known as Hui) specialties like skewered quail eggs, spicy octopus and delicious mutton and beef kabobs.

Josh and I saw some delicious potatoes stewing in chilies and chives and quickly ordered 2 packages. Unfortunately, they turned out to be cubes of fat, which were not as delicious as they originally appeared.

That evening Helinä, Josh and I went to the hostel bar and sampled their many shots including the flaming goose pagoda: essentially a 3-story flaming sambuca shot on steroids. I threw in the towel early, but Josh and Helinä continued to party until early in the morning.

Our final day in Xi'an was spent wandering the back streets in search of some good street food and mentally preparing for our 16-hour train ride to Shanghai. A nice relaxing way to finish off our Xiantastic time in this former imperial capital. Not too bad indeed.