Blog 7: A Golden week in the Yellow Mountains

The beauty and curse of this experience also extends to our holiday time.  The beauty allows us to have 3+ weeks of school / company holidays for travel.  Those holidays typically center around Chinese occasions.  We have 2, week long school breaks (September and April) and 1 Chinese new year (February, 12 days).  We have (and will continue) to take full advantage of that time.  The curse, however, is that I am writing this blog on a work trip to Beijing on Thanksgiving.  It is a give and take. 

My mom was our first (of many) visitors to China and she planned it to overlap with the first school break in September.  We looked everywhere for a place to go… but, when you are competing with 1.4billion people for cool destinations, everything was either way over priced or way too crowded  Finally, we settled on a short trip to the Huangshan, China to see the fabled yellow mountains. 

This trip let us test out China’s high speed trains, the “non-Shanghai / non-western” China, and forced us to hike a bit.  It was only a 4 day trip, which was also good because we needed some downtime and wanted to avoid a week-long, every minute booked vacation.  This was perfect. 

However, as with most things in China so far, it didn’t come without complexity.  I travelled to the US the week before (Michigan) and returned with Mom on Saturday afternoon.  On Sunday, our sea shipment arrived… so, Sunday and Monday were 8am to 2am days filled with unpacking and organizing…. Then we left on Tuesday morning at 6am.  Quite an exhausting way to start the trip.  Nevertheless, we made it and enjoyed it. 

You learn quickly that Shanghai is Shanghai and China is different.  Shanghai, in many ways, is just a wildly modern big city; traffic, pollution, people, western foods, great transit, cool museums, incredible skyline, and things to see / do, etc.  Then when you leave Shanghai, you feel the opposite.   The Yellow mountains offered unbelievable scenery…  but, few of the western conveniences. 

The trip to / from Huangshan was great.  Really, for those that haven’t travelled on a high speed train, you don’t know what you’re missing.  It is spacious, smooth, always on time, never encumbered by weather problems, and cost effective.  Unlike most of my China travel, we encountered zero problems. 

We arrived after a 5hr train ride… It wasn’t the shortest route and we had lots of stops.  Still though Mom’s new card game (Phase 10) kept 5 of us busy and Lay’s Potato Chips kept Emily happy.  After we arrived we still had a bit of work to do to get to our hotel; 2-1hr bus rides and 1-2hr hike / gondola to the top of the mountain. 

The hike was the hard part.  It was only ¾ of a mile, but it was all stairs.  We originally thought we could take our own baggage, but in the end that was foolish.  We hired a guy to take it up the mountain; this guy was 60 yrs old and carried bags up and down all day long… amazing.   We made it to hotel and the sights were nice along the way… however, they were nothing compared to the next morning.  We finished the evening with a traditional Chinese meal…

The next morning we planned a long hike to see the mountains.  I don’t know how to describe it.  It truly blew us away… It looked a lot like Avatar, but without the waterfalls; the waterfalls appear in the spring and disappear over the summer.  The drops were fierce, the climbs were ruthless, and the safety precautions were limited… It is a good thing we had three adults for three kids because of us had a vice-grip on Jacob, Caroline, and Emily.  The rails were short (probably thigh-high), most sections only had a single rail with no protection under it, and the steps were narrow, short, and steep.  It was an easy location for a slip, trip, or fall. 

This was also classic China; big crowds, tight spaces, and a mosh-pit for every queue.  It was also very rural.  And, lots of celebrity attention.  While in this area of China we saw 8 other westerners (and all adults).  Oddly enough one was from Texas Tech, but still only 8.  There really aren’t many western kids outside of our bubble.  So, when our 3 kiddos enter “real China”, they get a lot of attention.  Pictures, stares, hair-touching… It all happens.  Caroline is the most accepting of it, she doesn’t like it, but she goes with the flow… Jacob hates it – he recoils at the sight of it.  Emily doesn’t really like it and will sometimes let it be and other times will pull back.  It is odd…  makes you have sympathy for celebrities who can never leave the spotlight.

The Yellow Mountains were a real treat.  We heard they were cool, but had no idea they were this good. 

After the Yellow Mountains, we spent the next two days exploring ancient Chinese towns and tea fields near the mountains.  They were unique, gave us a great opportunity to buy some neat souvenirs and learned a bit about ancient China. 

The tea fields were cool.  Everyone in China drinks tea, everyone.  They tea fields take a lot of personal attention and labor to manage… the literally pick the sprouts off every plant by hand… I guess they have enough people to do it, but is seems wildly inefficient.  I will take my Coke Zero all day long. 

The ancient towns were less than I had hoped.   I thought we would see immaculately maintained buildings that marked the thousands of years of history.  As it turned out, most of the building were run down, everything was in Chinese (understandably, but it reduced the experience, and the crowds were a mess).  It was ok, but it wasn’t great.  On the positive, however, we did get to see one of the filming locations for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. 

Sorry for the delay on this blog.  Life has been extremely busy.  Work has pushed me to travel ~85% and the daily life fills in the remaining 40% left over…  We are busy, which is probably good…  and still enjoying our time here. 

Picture 1 - Grand arrivals:  My mom and I made it with no problems; amazing what a glass of wine and a flat seat does for Grandma.  Of course the best thing about getting your shipment is getting to play with the boxes. 

Picture 2 - First trip on a high speed train:  This was our first trip on a Chinese train... The station was a little daunting, but we figured it out and made it on time.

Picture 3 - No words:  I warn you that neither words, nor pictures paint the true beauty of this place.  And, I will run out of things to say with following collages.

Picture 3 - The Fog:  This place is foggy 70-80% of the time, so we were lucky that we got a few breaks.  Still the fog made this place seem like a true mystery.

Picture 4 - To to top:  There were no easy ways to get to the top... we did take a cable car most of hte way there, but still had 0.5 miles to climb to get to our hotel.  The craziest thing is, they use people-power to carry everything to the top.  Also, check out the campers... a little too close for my comfort.

Picture 5 - Sheer cliffs:  The cliffs were 2000ft vertical drops.  Amazing pictures and views here.  They literally built stairways into the sides of the cliffs...  We had three adults and three kids and held them until their hands hurt.  Some people were just letting their kids run around --- crazy.

Picture 6 - up and down:  This place wore us out.  We knew it would be challenging, but this pushed our limits.  Up and down for 6hrs straight.

Picture 7 - Best pictures of all:  The one of the left is a great family picture at the end of the hike and the one on the right does the best to show the drop...

Picture 8 - More pictures.  No words, just good shots.

Picture 9 - Great selfies and backies:  I did my best to help carry our bags.  I took them like 100 ft and then bailed... Dude it was heavy.

Picture 10 - Humor that mom doesn't appreciate.  When you are next to a cliff, you have to pretend that you are falling.

Picture 11 - Crowds and Chinese food:  At one point the entire trail bottlenecked through a cave.  It was a little crazy... but, when in China, push you way through the lines.  Mom's first experience at real authentic Chinese food;  it wasn't great and no one really liked it.

Picture 12 - Great pictures:  just a few more.

Picture 13 - Wiped out:  The picture at the top was a rest stop mid-way through; we were really really tired.

Picture 14 - Unbelieveable:  This moment was surreal, but it also only lasted 3-5 minutes... Right after we got the pictures, the fog moved in and eliminated the view.

Picture 15 - Kiss a tree?  Why Not? :  I don't know whey they fell compelled to kiss that three, but they did.

Picture 16 - Tea Fields and squatty potties:  China loves tea.  This was an impromptu stop that our guide indulged... The fields are really beautiful; they are everywhere and require a lot of manual labor to harvest, dry, and sell.

Picture 17 - Panoramic:  Just a good view of the tea fields.

Picture 18 - Drying tea:  This is a small village outside of the yellow mountains.  We walked around for a few hours and enjoyed the sights...  The tea pictures show how they shows how they dry the tea.

Picture 19 - the smells:  there is this thing that a lot of people love... stinky tofu.  It is hairy and smells horid... It falls into the same category as Dorian; if you can manage the smell, then you can enjoy a good taste... we didn't touch it.

Picture 20 - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon:  The top picture is where the guy walked on water during the movie.

Picture 21 - Handicrafts:  Just a few random pictures.

Picture 22 - A taste home:  Well sometimes you get tired of east-food... and then you see McDonalds.  Now our kids hate McDonalds --- too spoiled by Culvers, I guess.  This stop tasted good, but smell pretty horrible.

Picture 23 - A great stop:  This town was having a festival and it was cool.  It was October, so they were celebrating a good harvest.  The artistry was pretty cool. 

Picture 24 - Fun pictures:  We had a really good time here.

Picture 25 - More fun:  The kids had a really really good time here.

Picture 26 - Random Pictures.  Emily always has a great expression.

Picture 27 - Old house of some old famous dude.

Pictures 28/29:  More of the same.

Picture 30 - Cool pictures.

Picture 31 - Back home:  We got back home late on 6-October, but early enough to celebrate Jacob's birthday.  

Picture 32 - Shanghai at night:  Shanghai is the most beautiful skyline in the world.  Truly cool place.

Picture 33 - Selfies and Backies:  Just more great shots of the city skyline.

Picture 34 - The Bund:  The bund is the old British area of Shanghai... It is on the Puxi side of the river and is the best place to see the entire skyline of downtown Shanghai.

Picture 35 - Time to leave:  Grandma had a good time, but the kids had more fun... Everyone was sad to see her go home.  Time to start planning for next year.