20 September 2009
We rose late this morning as Scotty believed that we were leaving for Huangshan today. We had breakfast and packed lazily. We confused the front desk man when we said we wanted to check out. Luckily he knew enough English to inform us we were booked until tomorrow. After confirming the date on our train ticket, we realized we had another day to enjoy Shanghai.
After dropping our stuff back into the room, we headed for the shopping complex next to the main train station. The main floor was a supermarket with a massage parlor downstairs and a huge camera section upstairs. Scotty's lens had broken and so he was in search of a new one. After attempting to bargain down the price of a replacement lens, the cheapest over 3000Y, one shop said they would fix it for 400Y. While waiting for them to repair the lens, we walked around and Scotty attempted to find a cheap fish eye lens. He bargained them down to roughly US price but ended up not buying. The camera guys didn't seem to be as eager to sell as the other vendors unfortunately.
After a failed attempt to find Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant near the train station, we ate a a Wu Da Nang and had our dumplings (9 Yuan). We then headed to People's Square and Nanjing Road via subway. I love Shanghai's subway system. Very safe and cheap! I wish it went to more places though. Of course the city is expanding their subway system and adding tons of new lines in the future. Additionally, the construction everywhere is a bit maddening. However, the city looks like it will be quite spectacular by the World Expo in 2010. We are definitely here at least a year and a half too early to enjoy the new and improved Shanghai!!
We enjoyed refreshing boba milk tea for only 4Y (less than $1 US!) This was the first time we had found cold ones, which were great after walking around in the heat and humidity. We then toured the Shanghai Planning Exhibition. It consisted of pictures of historic buildings on the second floor followed by the crazy plans they had for the world expo next year. They had all these models of the city that seemed to grow in size as we moved from floor to floor. The last model was huge and took up half the floor. We also watched a planetorium style 3D video rendering of Shanghai post-2010.
After the exhibition it was time for more boba tea and some strange goopy bread-like fried ball (3 Yuan) things that I liked but Scotty didn't. For dinner we headed back to Yang's Fry Dumpling place for a 11Y dinner consisting of more dumplings and a 7Up (I was very excited as I had learned how to say soda - "qishuir" - and was understood by the cashier when I said it!) Scotty got another body massage in preparation for the climb on Tuesday while I headed back to the Zhao An.
-Julia
21 September 2009
Leaving our bags at the hotel concierge desk, we set out to old Shanghai. Since Scotty believed that we were leaving yesterday, his magical power over rain failed and it rained the whole day. We walked around the main shopping area and took in all the vendors offerings. Some shops specialized in handmade stamps (with whatever name or symbol you wanted on it), others were filled only with fancy combs (ranging from 150 to 1000 Yuan - 20 to 120 dollars), Chinese fan shops, pearl jewelry shops (where they would do a love demonstration by cutting open the oyster and showing you the pearls... btw, freshwater oysters can have upwards of 30 pearls). For lunch we wanted to go to the Nanxiang Dumpling restaurant, however, their was a huge line despite the rain. I think Jack cut in line when we ate at the Restaurant last time. So we instead ate at the restaurant directly below the Nanxiang. While the food wasn't as good, it offered great views of the tea house and the ponds. We had dumplings, spring rolls, a soup filled dumpling, and sweet bean cakes (all for about 60 Yuan). Then we ventured off into the side streets where we found the real Shanghai. Live and not so live fish in small tanks ready to be killed and sold, unknown varieties of vegetables/fruits, and pig hearts, feet, and snouts abounded. Scotty took pictures of the veggies at one stall and got laughs from the surrounding vendors for his weird foreign like behavior. He also elicited an angry response from the pig feet/snout lady when he tried photographing her stall.
We returned to get our packs from the hotel and I relaxed in the lobby while Scotty got a hair cut. Well, more like a head shave. Apparently the #3 here shaves a lot closer than in the US. I named it the Buddha head cut. His head was practically shaved bald.
We walked to the train station and were pretty soaked by the time we got there. We had been booked soft sleepers, the ultimate luxury seats on the train, for the overnight train ride to Huangshan (~15 hours.) The China rail system is definitely no Amtrak. The four classes are hard seats and soft seats (cramped compartment with seats that don't recline and filled with cigarette smoke and loud people), hard sleepers (open compartments where you can lie down on a fairly comfy bed but with beds stacked three high and also very smoky and loud), and soft sleepers (enclosed compartments with beds stacked two high, with four beds total per compartment). Scotty almost got locked in the hard seat class when he went exploring. In the soft sleeper class we got a western toilet where the other classes had squatters. Needless to say we enjoyed our soft sleeper especially since it was just the two of us in the cabin.
We watched the scenery flash by from our compartment window until the evening darkness set in. We couldn't figure out how to get food so we had the snacks we had packed from the US. We fell asleep in anticipation of our first hike.
-Julia
9-22-09
Today I woke up to the sun beaming into our train cabin. Again, there was no food service, so Julia and I snacked on US crackers and an apple. We arrived in Huangshan city around 9 am and were met by another tour guide named Jack. Apparently Jack is a very popular English name among tour guides (however, the tour guide also had an unpronounciable Chinese name that we cannot remember). We then started our 45 minute ride to the base of the Huangshan Mountain gates. Along the way we picked up some water for 1.5 yuan each, which is cheap compared to the 10 Yuan you'll pay per bottle on the mountain. Food and water is very expensive on the mountain because everything is hiked up the mountain by porters. We first arrived at a big bus station where the Chinese tourists can take specially authorized taxes or buses to the top (the government of China has limited to the number of vehicles on the main road up to the base of the Huangshan gates due to heavy traffic and accidents). However, because we were foreigners Jack was able to acquire a special permit that let us drive our tour van up to the gates.
We were dropped off at the eastern train (or backside of the mountain), which offer a shorter and easier hike up the mountain. The western trail (or frontside) is suppose to be much longer, very steep at times, grueling, but prettier. We decided to take the easier route up and we arranged for Jack to pick us up from the bottom of the west trail. Apparently, even going down the western trail is difficult and takes about 6 hours. The eastern trail is said to take between 1.5 to 3 hours. There are also two cable cars that go up the mountain for the less adventurous. The student entrance fee to hike the trail was 110 Yuan each. There were many stalls selling water, food, and trinkets along the trail up the mountain. Prices proved to be very expensive, as the water we bought was 8 Yuan each and an apple was 5 yuan. There were very few people hiking up the trail, but we discovered that many Chinese tourists are willing to take the cable car up and then walk down. We even saw one older gentlemen being carried down by porters. The price to take the chair was about 300 Yuan... however, it seemed that there were multiple prices listed on the chair... so I'm not sure if the amount varies depending on where you start. As we climbed up, we ran into numerous porters with chairs waiting anxiously (or sleepily in many cases) for tired tourist to give up and purchase a ride up or down. On our way up, we only saw four people besides us and the porters climbing the stairs. Two of which were businessmen, complete with suits and a briefcase. It was quite funny to see them huffing and puffing their way up the stairs. Julia and I are both out of shape, so the hike up caused us to sweat and huff and puff like mad. We ended up playing leap frog with the businessmen, often passing them, or having them pass us as we took picture breaks. Unfortunately, it was rather cloudy, thus making it difficult to see the rock formations that Huangshan is famous for. Many Chinese paintings depict these famous mountains and their rolling clouds.
While headed up the trail we ran into numerous porters carrying linens for washing, and rice and noodles up the trail. We even ran into packs of 6 porters carrying giant marble blocks (each about 10 feet in length and 10 inches to a side). To coordinate their movements, the porters chanted a tune. Many of the Chinese tourists were quite amazed that two westerns were climbing up the mountain with backpacking backpacks on... with several snapping photos as we walked by.
We finally made it to the top after a lunch break, numerous stops for photo shoots, and 3 hours and 17 minutes. We were very excited to find that we had made it to the top... and then very disappointed when we discovered we had to walk about 3 more kilometers to get to our hotel. Additionally, the signage at the top of the mountain, while very helpful in identifying viewing points, was very poor in regards to finding the hotels. As there were many paths, we constantly were having to ask the porters, or anyone else we saw who looked official, where the Pai Yun Lou Hotel was. We were relieved to eventually find it and excited to take a warm shower and to get out of our drenched hiking clothes. The hotel is listed as a four star hotel and it certainly lived up to its name (and price... 1280 Yuan for a double). The rooms were also very nice, ours having a flat screen tv, complete with satellite TV (which despite its many channels proved useless to us as it only had one channel in English, which repeated the same news stories every 15 minutes). The hotel also had a restaurant, which offered very nice, though expensive food. Our appetites got the best of us, as we ordered way too much. We had sweet and sour pork with pineapple (so yummy!), steamed buns, and mu shu pork (though there was no pancakes to put the food in like in the US), hot tea, and two cokes. While very good, we also paid an extreme sum of 220 Yuan or 30 dollars. Considering we had been eating for about 7 Yuan or 1 dollar each in Shanghai, this was crazy expensive.
Tomorrow we're going to wake up at 4:15 am to catch the 5:55 am sunrise at the top of Brightness Peak...
- Scott
23 September 2009
We woke up this morning a little after 4am to hike up to Brightness Peak for 6 am sunrise. However we chose the wrong path from the hotel and then couldn't figure out the spartan trail map, so we decided to hike up Purple Cloud Peak instead. We made it up in less than 30 minutes and hiked a little off the trail to find a nice eastern facing view. Off in the distance excited Chinese were screaming and shouting. Nearby a woman was singing a Chinese song. Whoever said that Americans are annoyingly loud never hiked with Chinese people. Finally dawn broke. We could see swarms of clouds over the first row of mountains but it was by no means the most spectacular sunrise I have ever seen. After a quick jaunt down the mountain, we had a few snacks for breakfast and headed off in the correct direction to Brightness Peak. We wandered around taking a few side trails and tons of photos but eventually made it to the 1860 m summit, rising an estimated 200 m from the Pai Yun Lou hotel. Our time was roughly 2 hours and 45 minutes. There was even a hotel up on the peak and we were thankful we weren't staying there. I'm not sure we would've found it or even made it up there yesterday. We decided this would be a good viewing area for sunset. We grabbed some food at the shop up on the summit and then headed back to our hotel for a nice two hour nap.
We headed up to Brightness Peak one more time for sunset. This time we took 45 minutes to hike the 3km. Without the hordes of people it would probably take 30 minutes. We climbed over a few rocks and found a nice secluded area for sunset. Hiking these peaks for sunrise and sunset is a gamble because you are never sure whether the top will be clouded over. However we were lucky and the clouds cleared at the top and afforded us a view of the famous Huangshan cloud sea below us. We watched as the sea flowed quickly over the crevasses of the lower peaks, like a waterfall, filling in the basin created by the mountain sides. The sun peaked though and lit up the marshmallow dolloped surface in pinks and purples. Unfortunately right at sunset (5:55 pm) the mist overcame and blocked the view.
We had dinner at the Pai Yun Lou Hotel restaurant again. Tonight we had fried potato shreds (I had envisioned hashbrowns but it wasn't quite as fried but still tasty), meat dumplings, and sweet and sour pork. Tomorrow will be another early morning to catch the sunrise at Beihai and then the knee crushing 9km descent down the western stairs.
-Julia
P.S. One little side note. Its about a 2400 foot climb from the base of Mt. Huangshan to our hotel, and from there another 600 feet to Brightness Peak.