The Famous Huangshan (Yellow Mountain)

Monday evening I left Nanjing for Huangshan city. My Chinse was good enough to be able to purchase a bus ticket from the ticket agent who spoke no English. However, it was not good enough to know that there was a 7:30 AM bus in addition to the 7:30 PM bus. That meant that the bus arrived in Huangshan at 2AM. The bus ride was very pleasant. I sat in the forwardmost seat, which meant I could stretch out my legs and look out both the front and side windows. It was dark, so I couldn't see too much, but it was still nice looking at the small villages that we pass through. The road varied from being a modern expressway to being down right ridiculous. One minute we could be zooming along on a three lane paved highway, the next moment we're going 10km over a patch of caked mud, and the next we're making our way down through the center of a small village. The bus drive was moderately insane. Have you ever seen a coach bus weave through the traffic? He would lean on the horn if stuck behind anyone and cross the double yellow line to pass. As we passed cars as if they were standing still, I looked over his shoulder to see how fast we were going. The speedometer was broken. When we got to Huangshan another traveler (a young French man) bought a cab to try and head to the hostel where I had made a reservation. I told him the name of the road and he called over his cell phone to ask him where the road was. For ten minutes we drove around with him asking, "Huangshan Bei Lu? Huangshan Bei Lu zai nar?" (Where is Huangshan North Road?) I began to grow worried when all of a sudden we stopped right in front of the hostel. Apparently, the web site I got the address off of had slightly mistranslated the name. The hostel was dark with doors locked, but this problem was quickly solved by the taxi driver who started banging on the doors and yelling. The hostel was only a couple years old and remarkably nice and clean. A few minutes later I was in my room fast asleep. Huangshan City Huangshan City is a beautiful small city about an hour away from Huangshan mountain. I would guess that the population is around 60,000 people. To me it is a perfect mixture between modern and old. There is a much slower pace of life here, and everyone is very friendly. As I walk around during the day, people stop and wave and say, "hello." I sat on a bench by the river and had a nice conversation with a woman who was in the city on business. There was a row of open air restaurants where I have been having cheap and delicious food. The other day I ordered an entire fresh fish (absolutely delicious), a bowl of rice, and a pint of the local brew for a few American dollars. During the evening you can see lots of people outside playing cards or Chinese chess or just relaxing and talking with their friends. There are a lot of poorer people in the city, trying to get buy by taking people around in bicycles or by hawking stuff on the street. But there are also a lot of cars and modern paved streets. Huangshan Mountain Huangshan mountain is reputed to be the most beautiful in China. I found it both amazingly beautiful and extremely touristy. There is a stone staircase and several cable cars going up the entire mountain, and then going between all the different peaks. The staircase is crowed with vistors, I'm guessing the 6.5 km stair case to the summit had about 4,000 people on it. From the top you could see the majestic peaks, the valleys below, lakes, clouds, and forests. As we were about to go down from the peak it started to thunder and downpour. During this part, we had to cross a ridge between two of the peaks. On either side there was a drop off into the ravine below, except we couldn't see the bottom because we were in the clouds. Forunately, it wasn't too unsafe because the stone staircase was well built and had a strong railing. The scariest part was being at the peak of a mountain in the thunderstorm.