A Day on Yellow Mountain
After the end of last semester I spent about 10 days traveling near the East coast of China. During that time, I visited Shanghai, Hangzhou, and finally, Yellow Mountain (Huangshan). Now, five months later, I’m finally getting around to telling you all about the final leg of my trip. Man I am so backed up with writing it’s embarrassing. I really need to kick it into high gear. There’s still so much to tell you. There’s still so many places I have been and will be going to. I want to share all of that with you. Assuming, of course, that I get off my lazy, procrastinating ass and write about it.
So anyway, I present to you the last step on my summer trip through China.
Huangshan is a mountain range in the Southern part of Anhui province, near Tunxi. In 1990 it became a UNESCO world heritage site and today is one of China’s biggest tourist destinations. There are over 50 kilometers of footpaths in over 140 areas of the range, as well as numerous cable cars in the more popular areas. There are a variety of hotels at the top of the mountain for tourists to stay. I’ve been told that the sunrise at Huangshan is an incredible sight. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to spend the night. For me it was up and down in one day.
There are two important things to know about Huangshan. First, it’s expensive. Just to enter the park is over 200 RMB. If my memory serves me correctly, my entire visit cost me over 400 RMB. That’s including a shuttle bus to and from Tunxi, a small city about an hour away where I spent the night. Also, food and drinks are incredibly expensive on the mountain because you literally have no other option unless you’re willing to lug that stuff around all day (I wasn’t). A bottle of water costs 8 RMB up there. When a bottle will cost you 1 to 2 RMB everywhere else in China, that’s highway robbery.
The second thing to know is that Huangshan is big. Like, really big. I spent seven hours hiking all over that damn mountain and there were still plenty of areas I didn’t have a chance to visit. To see everything, to get the full experience, you need to spend the night up there. And don’t forget to get up for the sunrise!
Huangshan is notorious for it’s fog and rolling clouds. Sometimes they literally take you by surprise. One minute your hiking a trail on a nice, clear day and the next you’re completely enveloped in fog. It got so bad at times that I couldn’t even see more than 20 feet! It was especially creepy when you would find yourself looking out over a ledge into a fog bank, and a minute later it would blow away to reveal a thousand foot drop.
There were so many missed opportunities for fantastic pictures because I had to pause and absorb the beauty before reaching for my camera. And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I had my camera out a big cloud would come rolling in and ruin the shot. Foiled again, as they say.
As you can probably imagine, there are a ton of stairs on the mountain. Stairs going up, stairs going down. Stairs, stairs, stairs! On the initial climb of the mountain, it seemed like the stairs would never end. I must have spent a good two or three hours just getting up to the first peak. How exhausting. A favorite sarcastic joke of mine that day was, “Oh look, more stairs. I did not see that coming.”
Traversing the many peaks requires you to continuously climb up and down stairs. In most places it wasn’t so bad, but sometimes I came across an area packed with tourists and would have to wait. Hanging on to a steep staircase in a precarious position with many people in front and behind is not fun. Needless to say, I had nightmares about climbing stairs for a few days afterward.
Huangshan has some pretty unbelievable scenery. From the ancient trees, to the rock formations, to the peaks, to the valleys, to the small lakes. Huangshan has it all. It’s no wonder that this mountain has been the focus of countless stories, poems, paintings, and pretty much any other kind of art form found in China, for thousands of years.
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WOW.
Wow to the breathtaking views (I completely understand the absorbing part – how could you reach for you camera when you do not even know that there is such a thing as a camera in that very moment), wow to all those stairs which would have killed me and also to your stamina. Please at least tell me that you could not move a single muscle the next day.
Thank you, Graham, for taking me with you on your journeys via your blog. It enables me to see and experience things I couldn’t otherwise. You never make me feel like I missed out and am such a sucker for being in China and not even seeing these places, but you have the certainly rare ability to give these small worlds to us through your writing.
Hope this is a tiny little reward for beating the mighty power of procrastination ^^
im with the Other Laura. wtf, stairs!?
but i LOLd at your sarcastic stair comment. i believe we had a moment like that at leshan… although, im positive there were more stairs on huangshan.
@Laura B: Thanks so much! It’s too bad that you didn’t get much opportunity for travel around this great big country. I’m glad my pictures can help you in some small way to experience some of the great sights China has to offer.
@Laura: Yeah, we probably did. There were a lot of stairs at Leshan. But seriously, nothing compared to Huangshan. Huangshan is just endless stairs. Endless!