Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
On Saturday, Nicole and I visited Longhu Shan (Dragon Tiger Mountain) with Kaitlin, Mark and Sam. We had to travel up the night before, Nicole and I on a late train that didn't arrive until after 1am. Everyone else in our carriage was clearly stuck on the train for the duration of the night and desperately trying to sleep any way they could... all but one a******* who decided what everyone really needed was to listen to him blaring Pink "Get This Party Started" out of his smartphone at loudly as he could. At first I was furious, but something about the whole scene was so ridiculous, and even more ridiculous because it's so typical, that I ended up laughing, and then sobbing with laughter, right up until the song ended. We managed to find a taxi driver from the station easily enough, although he was lying through his teeth when he told us he knew the address of our guesthouse and later tried to drop us off in the dark in the middle of nowhere. Nevertheless, we made it to our guesthouse and were up in good time the next morning to go hiking.
Well. I thought we were going hiking, because that's what I assumed you did on a mountain, but what we were actually doing was exploring the general 'scenic area', which comprised several little "ancient" (read: still under construction) villages, temples, small walking routes and rock formations. We were bussed about for a lot of this, only walking about half the time. The weather was absolutely terrible, starting cool and misty but turning to torrential rain at around lunch time and hardly letting up for the rest of the day. I was soaked. My iPod has since died of water-damage(/two years of constant use/being dropped about eight times daily) and my camera screen is even more screwed up than it was after Spring Festival. OH WELL.
There were some cool things at Longhu Shan, maybe most of all the demonstration of the ancient local custom of buring coffins in natural hollows in the cliffs. From a distance, you could just make out the battered hundred-year old coffins nestled in the niches of the cliff-face, and from the base of a temple we watched a demonstration of how people would manage to place these coffins into the cliff face. I'd be lying if I said I completely understood how it worked, even after watching the demonstration, but they hoisted some guy up a long way on a rope, and then he seemed to haul the coffin up after him, and they played dramatic drum music and he came flying back down astride the coffin and it was all pretty cool. We also saw some synchronised cormorant fishing, like they used to have on the HSBC adverts, with all the old men in poling their boats about in circles. Later, we followed some of the walking trails through caves and past the most fmous rock formations (Elephant Trunk Hill actually did resemble an elephant's truck. Decapitated Turtle Rock was just a big rock next to a slightly smaller rock). We also saw a cave named Fairy Lady Rock/Erect Cave, which, as the sign explained, was so named because it resembled a woman's private parts - I think we can all agree this is hilarious.
We came back to Jiujiang that same night, arriving past 11pm and marking a total of 10 hours' in wet socks (ugh), leaving Nicole and I ready to start our new weekend job the next day...
- comments
Jo Trying to imagine the reaction of the local Ilkley parish council if we suggested re-naming some of our famous rocks in similar fashion....