Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
China's Huangshan mountain was an even more incredible spectacle than Tai'shan, and again I'm not talking about the views! As with Tai'shan, every pathway is fully stepped or paved, and there are also three cable cars carrying tourists to the summit area from different base points. If I was to suggest that there were probably in the region of twenty to thirty thousand people up there (and it wasn't even a weekend!), it wouldn't even be a Paula-esque exaggeration (and with each visitor paying a £23 admission fee plus £8 per one-way cable car ride, that's a fairly profitable mountain!). So many people, and 95% of them part of tour groups, all following a guide / flag bearer and wearing the same coloured cap, chattering and giggling away. Absolutely amazing, and once again, surely only in China! Fortunately for us, all tour groups followed the same set of paths, and at the point we managed to deviate from these we were suddenly free from the distraction of the crowds and presented with an equally mind-blowing spectacle, the scenery (on what this time was a bright, sunny, fog-free day). We were told that the vast, vertical granite rock faces constituted China's most breathtaking mountain scenery, and I can easily believe that. It was a real shame we didn't have more time to walk around the crowd-free areas and take in the views for longer, but unfortunately we had to descend the same day, all of the mountaintop hotels (yes, I said "mountaintop hotels"!) being fully booked up.
That was day two in Huangshan, actually (Huangshan, I think, being the name of the city, the area and the mountain). Day one was our visit to one of the well-preserved ancient villages. It was nice, well-preserved and ancient, although I think Paula and I both enjoyed our wander into the area of geniune rural farmland next to it, complete with rice paddies and water buffalo, just as much. On the bus on the way back we bumped into a Erik and Puck, a Dutch couple we'd met in Mongolia - small world! We travelled together to the mountain the next day and then went out for dinner in the evening as well. Which leads me on to dinners in Tunxi (the part of Huangshan City we stayed in), the other main feature of our stay there, which gave new meaning to the term "fresh food"! We ate in local cafes rather than the tourist orientated (twice the price) restaurants, which were a really good set-up: we simply pointed to ingredients we fancied (rather than having a menu) and then left them to come up with incredibly quick, cheap and delicious dishes. We didn't choose, however, to point to anything in the cages outside on the street, the live ingredients available including hens, ducks, rabbits, fish, snakes and hedgehogs! We did witness one such selection, though, a chicken, and the highly technical method of putting it out of its misery was to hold it by the feet and smack it against the pavement! Lovely!
- comments