Huangshan

The saying goes something like this: If you climb all seven of China's famous mountains, you can skip the rest of the mountains in the world; and if you climb Huangshan you can skip the rest of China's mountains. This is according to our Norwegian friend, Jo, who is a bit of travel expert, having hitch-hiked across most of China last spring break. Jo called us the night before our friend Alicia from Seattle was supposed to arrive for a five-day visit on her way to Hong Kong to ask if we wanted to tackle Huangshan over a long weekend. We were so desperate to leave Shanghai that we told him to go ahead and book three train tickets, so when Alicia arrived we said, surprise, welcome to Shanghai, we're leaving for a mountain in the middle of China tomorrow night.

And so with two Norwegiens--Jo and Maurius, our dear Colombian friends--Sylvia and Filipe, and Alicia we headed to Anhui province on an overnight train. The train was fun, but our Chinese travel companions were up at 4:30 coughing up last night's nicotine, drinking tea, and talking in the ridiculously loud way that only the Chinese can. From the town of Huangshan, we took a one hour bus ride through tea farms to the base of the mountain, where a Mr. Hu suddenly appeared in our bus. Mr. Hu is one of those resourceful Chinese who know enough English to both exploit and help travelers. He seemed to know all the restaurant owners, hotel managers, and bus and taxi drivers on the mountain, not to mention the fact that he claimed to be related to President Hu. He hooked us up with the cheapest accommodation on the top of the mountain: a room behind the hotel worker's housing with seven bunks, no running water, and two outdoor squatties out back. We were roughing it and the room suited us just fine. Besides the rickety bunks and mildew-spotted sheets, the room was perfect with a concrete landing that served as the coolest patio with an incredible view of the surrouning peaks covered with the extraordinary colors of fall foliage.

Huangshan means Yellow Mountain, and all those famous Chinese landscape paintings make a lot of sense now that we've been there. The mountain is a series of naked granite peaks with maples and other deciduous trees draping their bases and bonzai-shaped umbrella pines clinging to the rocks. Huangshan is famous for its clinging mists and low clouds, but we had two days of full sun and crisp autumn air, which was incredibly refreshing coming from the smoggy humid air of muggy Shanghai. Our last day was shrouded in fog, which prevented us from seeing any vistas, but provided a very Chinese atmosphere of dense, sound-deadening air full of contemplation.

The highest peak in the park is just over six thousand feet, and you can walk all the way to the top up a flight of stairs that is several kilometers long. This is a strange way to explore nature and somehow walking up a never-ending set of stairs is much harder than walking up the side of a mountain the way we're used to. No switchbacks; just one foot after the other, plodding up and up at a hypnotizing pace. We took a cable car up to the top, then hiked all over for two days: to the East for sunrises and to the West for sunsets. We managed to sneak off the stairs for one adventurous hike up a valley, only to be caught by the guards when we popped back up a ravine on the wrong side of the fence. He asked what we were doing, and our Norweigen-accented translator told him we were hiking. The guard told us it was very dangerous to leave the trail and lined us up on a wall. We thought we were going to get a good scolding, but instead he seemed quite charmed and told us how strong we were and couldn't believe that girls could climb up the side of a mountain like that. He shook our hands and we walked along the paved path back to our room.

On our last day we decided to hike down to the bottom on foot the long way, which was a seven hour hike mostly down a giant flight of stairs, but which also included some surprisingly difficult steep climbs upward. It ended up being quite grueling, as even the men who climb up and down the mountain daily carrying up to 100 kilos of goods on their shoulders admit that going down is much harder than coming up. I guess I forgot to mention that all of the supplies for the resort on the top of the mountain are carried by stringy Chinese men who shlep their loads on bamboo sticks over their shoulders for ten dollars a day. It's hard to believe your eyes when one of these guys races past you up the steepest stairs you've ever seen carrying six or eight cases of beer or a broken refrigerator. When Maurius asked why they didn't use the cable car, they said that it would take away too many jobs. Of course.

Our legs were shaking when we got to the bottom and we had to cram ourselves into a minibus with our packs on our laps for a harrowing ride back to town. Our nervous Norweigen translator screamed in Chinese whenever our driver started to pass on a blind corner, "This thing that you are doing is not okay!" To calm our nerves we sang an original version of The Wheels on the Bus, with verses like "the people on the bus are scared to death, scared to death, scared to death..." and "driver of the bus goes ha ha ha, ha ha ha, ha ha ha, whenever we start to scream." The driver said that he liked our singing very much and we kept coming up with more and more ridiculous verses.

With aspirin and beer nightcaps, we slept like rocks on the train on the way back to Shanghai and our legs were so sore we almost collapsed when we crawled out of our bunks this morning. It is a bit disappointing to be back in the big city after such a lovely vacation. It's nice to know that most of China is stunning and that it is just Shanghai that's ugly and noisy and unpleasant. We are anxious to see more of China--even though we officially don't have to go to any of the other mountains in the country. And we continue to feel blessed by our incredible foreign friends who are tackling this other-worldly country with us week by week. I must say we are quite happy with our life here today.