Huang Shan (Yellow Mountains)

Hello all,
Last weekend I went to Huang Shan, or the Yellow Mountains, for my last big trip here in China. I return to the mother ship on Sunday, so this may be one of my last blog entries... I doubt that I will continue my blog after I get home. I'm not one for writing my day-to-day stuff in an online journal-type thing. BUT who knows...

Huang Shan was beautiful. At our highest point, we were at roughly 6000 ft. in altitude (~1860 meters). So yes , we were hiking through thick clouds that were rolling in and out of the valleys. At points, the clouds would completely hide some of the largest peaks in a matter of a few seconds. It was pretty amazing and it shows you how dense clouds can be. On our first day we hiked the western trail, which is the longest and hardest path. It certainly did not fall short of our expectations; the first day was about a 10-12 mile hike. It doesn't seem like much but in those 10-12 miles we climbed--as I said--about 6000 feet. That's quite a few feet per mile, if you break it down. So as you can expect, we were exhausted when we reached the top... so we took showers at a neighboring hotel (because our room did not have showers), ate some dinner, had a few shots of Jamo that Owen brought, and we CRASHED. We had a dorm-style room, which means that we shared our bedroom with 12 other old chinese people that were very loud both awake and sleeping. I had a guy snoring right in my ear for most of the night, and another guy farting like it was his job in the bunk above me (I think that's who the culprit was). Lets move onto some pictures.....



This was our first night when we stayed at the bottom of the mountains in a town called Tunxi. Very clean and small city. This was the old town... your basic junk stores with some good food. We had Korean BBQ this night and these photos are of a little cafe/bar that we found with tables set up outside (a rarity in China). We met the owner Frank, and a few other foreigners that are going to school in Tunxi/Huang Shan.

This was our bus ride up to the entrance of the mountains... we almsot got in an accident on the way back from the hike. Very hairy ride... and these drivers FLY through these roads.

This is the early stage of our hike... that railing is what we followed up most of the mountain.

This is a view down the valley that we started our hike from.

One of the peaks low on the range.

Most of the following pictures are just some peaks that I found interesting... I will only comment when necessary...

OK I couldn't rotate the picture... but this is me at a lookout point... We sweat out a good portion of MSG this day.... I hope.

Tree's growing out of rocks.... amazing.


Getting into the clouds....

This particular peak was windy as hell.... below me is nothing but rocks... good thing I'm not starving out here, or I may have blown off that peak...

New hair do...


Clouds hiding a huge peak...

The 'Welcoming Tree.' This tree sybolizes Chinese hospitality and friendliness... the plaque told me so. I think this tree was over 1000 years old.

Walking the plank.... probably about 5000 ft high



I will NEVER complain about my job again. These guys carry beer, concrete, food, sheets, bags of flour, statues, etc., etc., to the top of the mountain with these yolks. So basically they hiked the same trail I did with about 200 extra pounds. Oh and it's their job... Crazy.

Nearing the top...



Steps to Lotus Peak, which is the highest peak in Huang Shan. The peak was closed due to shabby steps and wind, but off to the side of the steps (on both sides) you only have a few feet to walk before it drops off. One of the few times I felt a little vertigo creeping up on me...

Path up the mountain.... those ants are people...


Bonzai!! This tree reminded me of Katarte Kid, which reminded me of my youth, which ABSOLUTELY deserves a picture!

Thumbs up for not being able to see where you would fall!

This is the next morning when we were trying to see the sunrise. This was about 4am at the Purple-Cloud Peak; one of the best spots to see the sunrise. However, the morning was very foggy (as it usually is), and we weren't able to catch a sunrise. Still a pretty cool thing to be climbing mountains at 4am....

Same peak after the crowd parted ways...

A path.

Same path.... that's Owen way up there.



Foggy peaks.

The following pictures are further down the mountains, when the clouds started clearing up.



Around 8-9 on our way down the East Trail. It only took us about 3 hours to climb down the East Trail. That was with a bummed knee, so it coulda been quicker, maybe.... But who's in a hurry?!

Blue skies!!
This is our ride home. AKA the 'National Lampoons Bus Ride Across China.' The 2 hour ride from Huangshan to Hangzhou turned into a 4 hour ride because we were pulled over by the police for having too many people on the bus. For the first half hour or so Owen and I were sittin on stools in the middle of the aisle. Then the bus driver made someone get up for us in case we were pulled over. Well shortly after we changed, we were pulled over and all of those sitting in the aisle were esccorted to a police van and dropped off down the road 3 miles. Well if we were in that situation, it would have worked out because 3 miles down the road, our bus picked up the people AGAIN and continued on down the side streets to Hangzhou. If we took the expressway, we woul have been pulled over again...... this is not unordinary by the way!!

So that concludes my trip to Huangshan. We had a blast. If we climbed 1 step then we climbed a million... my knee is still a little tender, but it will be OK. It was worth the scenery.

Before I leave China I may post some more random pictures of my last few days here, as I'm sure there will be many gambays and a couple large dinners to go.

I have enjoyed writing in this, I hope you have enjoyed reading it.

See ya!

Plans for this weekend

Hey guys! So I'm taking one last trip while I'm in China; and I'm very very excited...

Today I'm going to Huang Shan (Yellow Mts.) with my buddy Owen from Minneapolis. Huang Shan is located in Anhui Provence, which is only like 4-5 hours away. It's very close, and relatively cheap for us to get there.... we figured this will make up for the outrageous prices on the mountain for food, lodging, and opium (kiddin).


We will be going to the summit of one of the highest peaks in the whole mountain range. The hike will take us about 6-7 hourse going up, and then coming down we will take another trail that will take us around 2-3 hours. It's like any other tourist place in China, so yes I'm sure we will see our share of babes in heels, dudes in neat cowboy boots, and kids who just started walking 3 days ago; so this is why we decided to walk the hard way up: there will be less of that, and more scenery.

Here is a link to a page about Huang Shan: This way!

Ok we are leaving at 7, so I have to take a shower. Check back this week, I should have a bunch of pictures up here.

Happy hiking!

Nothing to do with China...

I found this on YouTube and it brought back many many good memories. One of my all-time favorites (both the band and this song).

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

National Lampoons Chinese Vacation

Hello once again!

I've been getting back into the swing of school life after a lovely visit from Ang. We had a blast. She flew into China on the 15th, and we parted ways in Shanghai on the 28th. We had a few nights in Chanxing so I got to show her some of the sights and spots of this small city. Then we headed to Hanzhou for a couple days, Guilin and Yangshuo for a week, and then it was off to Shanghai. She got a little taste of the country, and a little taste of the city life of China. We thoroughly enjoyed our vacation. It's been about 2 1/2 months since we saw eachother (prior to the trip), so we were both very eager to simply watch movies and relax. Welllll we got to do a little of that, because we had so much to do!

So here are some pictures of the last couple of weeks:
Here's the happy couple at a local tea bar, drinking tea, and eating a bunch of snacks.

This is what you get at a tea bar after only ordering green tea. There is fruit, peanuts, watermellon seeds (which are tasty), beef candy... and they keep it coming all night! Some people could come here and have a dinner with the amount of snacks they bring you..... It only costs about 20Y for all of this. Thats about USD$3...

Ang gazing out the window... there were probably fireworks going off somewhere.

Here is the fresh food market. You can come here and get anything you need to cook with. Its just like a farmer's market that is held eveyday. Most local chefs come here to get the day's fresh ingredients. We bought some berries this day. You can also get fresh eggs, noodles, tea, rice, chickens, ducks, eels, fish, etc. etc. etc. Its a cool place.

This is our first hotel we slept at in Hangzhou. The Xi De Bao Hotel.... small, clean, hot water, goodie basket near the bed...

A nice shot of the sun peeking through over West Lake. I've been to West Lake about 4-5 times now... it may be my favorite place to go to in China. Plus it's kinda close and cheap to get there. Very nice place.

Musical fountains at night. They place play music in a loudspeaker, and the fountains are synchronized with the music. Pretty cheezy, but a good spot to sit and relax near the lake.

We went to the Temple on our second day to Hangzhou. This is my favorite carving there.

These are all statues of different Buddahs. I think there were 500 total in this building.

The Buddah of this particular mountain again. Better quality this time.

The happy couple standing in front of a statue of one of the Buddahs.

Aaaaaand then we were off to Guilin!

Look at those pearly whites!

This is Jerry's car. Jerry was our travel agent who set up our trip in Guilin for us. He picked us up at the airport and drove us to the hotel in his new wheels. Jerry was a HUGE help and got us pretty good deals on everything that we did. He also made sure that we had drivers to get us around. Thanks Jerry!

This is the Long Haired Village outside of Guilin. Here the women dont cut their hair until they get married. They put on a dancing and singing show for a few yuan, however we declined and decided to meander about the streets of the village instead. Very touristy place but it was nice and quaint.

I found a huge spider and immediatly turned 6 again...

This is one of the small houses along the river in the Long Haired Village.

This man was walking a water buffalo up and down the river bed...

This is his water buffalo.

We had to cross this bridge to get to another part of the village...

A shot of the river in the mountains.

Awww!

This dude was all puckered out. There were dogs all over the place. Maybe he's grateful that he made it through another meal!

These are the long haired women all dressed up. When walking out they pinch the butts of the men that they like..... it's kina like running a gauntlet of eager, single women. Talk about pressure!!

This is on the way up to Longxin.

Further up the mountain.... you can see the terraced rice paddies. An amazing farming technique...

This is a shot of Longxin as we were approaching.... the beginning of our hike up the mountain...

This is one of the paths heading up.

Longxin from the top down. See the paddies in the background...

Terraced farming at it's best. Remember, this is all done by hand. Many of the farmers here are older and a lof of them are women. In this village, the men are in charge of the cooking and housekeeping, and the women do the farming. So basically you have a bunch of tough farm girls walkin around...

Some girls in traditional attire.

A clearer shot of the paddies.

Woman working in the field. You can see how mamoth these mountains were...

Same woman...

Another worker looking like an ant on the hill.

Our walking path.

The village from above.


Ang horsin' around at the top of the hills...

Paddies...


These guys were funny.


Still using the ox and plow. This was pretty cool to watch.


Back to the village for lunch!

Caught! Lots of this goin on in these parts...

This is day 2 from our boat trip down the Li River. I dont know what the hell that's supposed to resemble.... a pretty fancy boat tho. One thing that was annoying to me was that there were about 50 boats all going down this river at once.... can't be good for the fish, or the water.

Cruisin'...

The following pictures are basically just shots of the mountains. I wont comment on all of them... just where I feel it necessary.







Snake wine anyone???! I was close to trying some.... but it was just a little too much for me.



Sunburned feet!



And here we are in Yangshuo. Jerry asked this girl to show us to our hotel. Glad there aren't too many Eric's in China!

Hotel in Yangshuo.

Nice views everywhere.

Had to get a shot of this... No wings tho...

Night 2 we took a bamboo boat ride further up the Li for about 60Y... or about $8. The ride was a little over an hour, and he would pull right up to anything we wanted a picture of.

Mountains from our bamboo boat.

That rock was tied to a rope; it served as out anchor.

Mountains...

Nice reflection...

Some water buffalo grazing along the river.

This guy's cleaning up after a hard day in the fields.


Fisherman...

Fisherman up close. The fish with these trained birds called cormorants. They catch the fish for the fisherman... no strings attached... (I'm killing myself over here!)

Horseback riding. It woulda been a fun thing to do but I didnt really see anything about it after this night.

I had rice in a pineapple for dinner. Good stuff!

We rented a scooter the next day and rode into the country. We are stylin our shades. I got mine for 15Y in Hangzhou!


Grave sites on our trip through the country. Pretty interesting to see. We both thought cremation was more common here. This was on a little side road heading into a small village. It could just be a local thing I suppose...

When we arrived in Shanghai we had the taxi driver drop us off at our hotel that we booked online. However when we got there, the area was extremely dirty because they were doing construction on like 2 buildings and the road that it was located on. So we decided to go elsewhere for our first night. That hotel was kinda dingy, so we said, "Hey we're in China, let's splurge a little....!" So for the last 2 nights in Shanghai we stayed at a Howard Johnson. I know what you're thinking.... "Howard Johnson is splurging???" Well.... yes it is. It was right on the main strip, it had an indoor pool (my first pool sighting (with clean water in it) since I've been here), free breakfast every morning, a spa, VERY clean rooms that were suite style, and a bathtub!

This was our bed...

and this is a shot of the rooms separated.

Nanjing Xi Lu.... the shopping district. Notice the western influence in the buldings...

Pizzza Hut is fine dining in China!! I've eaten enough noodles, rice, and mystery meat since I've been here and thought "I wont be able to get a pizza anywhere for the next month.....," so we ate at Pizza Hut. I actually just got a seafood pasta meal, which was very tasty.


Shanghai at night.

PuDong and the pearl tower. Shanghai's modern part of town.

The French quarters...



Old Town Shanghai..... This was an old part of town where there were more markets of cheap stuff. We didnt buy anything tho. It's mostly the same stuff that you see anywhere else.

Pond in the Old Town.

Parts of Shanhai look like they're straight out of a Sci-Fi flick.

People hanging their clean undies out to dry! No driers in China...

That bulding to the right was the HoJo (our hotel). This is right at People's Square...

View from our hotel room right before we left. It was kinda dreary in Shanghai. Dreary and Humid as hell...

So that was our trip in a nutshell. I took more pictures than that but it takes me forever to upload pictures here in China. We had a blast. The mountains were excellent and full of fresh air and clean water.... Shanghai was a little different. I don't think I'd make a special trip back to Shanghai again in the near future. It was cool, but I'm not much of a big city guy... plus the only things to really do there are shop, drink, and eat. I would like to see how it changes in another 10 years tho... interesting place. Excellent vacation.




These clowns were here to meet me as I was walking back to my apartment with my hands full of luggage. These are some of my favorite students! The kid in the back who's got the other on his back (red and black stripes) is codename: Woman Tiger. He's a funny dude. There are some twins in the front who are two of my most eager-to-learn sutdents in the school, and the others are just plain horsin around!

This was long.... thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy!