Anhui Tour

Our story begins in Anhui province, an area famous for its small rustic communities and lush countryside. We arrived in Huangshan Shi (or Tunxi) railway station. She wasn't alone. Tunxi was the nice but somewhat tacky stopping point for every Chinese tour group in the region. My main reasons for visiting China were the predictable ones: See some villages, visit Huangshan. When I arrived it was raining and as any fools knows, its a bad plan to climb a mountain in a thunder storm. So I decided to do the villages first. I set of early in the morning with three girls from my hotel. We were planning on taking a local bus to a big village called Xidi and then going on from there. However we ended up negotiating a price with a taxi driver for the day. He was a nice guy, and the mix of English (his only word was 'taxi'), Chinese and sign language kept us happily amused. The first and best stop of the day was Chengkan. A nice Ming (?) dynasty village with an unintelligible but very poetic entrance sign. It felt like a real village, open sewers, cows and scruffy children. It was very relaxing to wander through, although it was a Chinese village so the of course the experience came with an entrance fee. I wondered how much if any of this, the villagers ever saw. Although there was also a tour route, we decided that was dull and went for a freestyle private tour walk. The result was us getting slightly lost but luckily we managed to surreptitiously follow a grandmother back to civilization. We also visited a bamboo forest (supposedly where some of crouching tiger hidden dragon was filmed but I'm yet to find a decent reference for this). A hilly area feathered with bamboo and inter spaced with tea plantations. It was very peaceful and I was glad we'd gone. The people in the hotel also here for a visit Huangshan had told us not to bother: “bamboo forests are so dull!”. I'd had to explain to them that where I was from, bamboo wasn't so common to see everyday! Our last stop was Hongcun, the tourist spot of the day. It was beautiful but busy and we spent much less time here than we did in Chengkan. Once again using local grandmothers to negotiate the alleyways! This was a village of street food and we sampled an abundance of different deep fried biscuits, some of which were edible. The day ended slightly stressfully as our taxi driver finished his shift without telling us. The last bus had gone and for an hour or so we thought we were stranded. When his replacement finally turned up he didn't get why we'd been worried- silly westerners, not knowing about local shift patterns! When the weather cleared up I went to Huangshan. The bus left as 6am which was a bit horrible, especially as I had stayed up too late the night before. Ah well! I went with Adam, a Chinese guy from my dorm and we joined up with a few others on the bus, since it is package tour arranged by my China advisor from Top China Trip, so by the time we got there we had a good hiking team! Huangshan is big, so for the sake of seeing some of the nice less touristy bits at the top we took a cable car up the east side of the mountain. We then did a 16km hike around the summit. This was steep and some of the paths, slightly terrifying, when you saw from the side they were only 10cm of concrete, 100s of meters above the ground. The views were lovely though, spectacular pine trees clinging to rocky peaks rising out of a sea of mist clad lower mountains. The Chinese have a crazy habit of building steps around their mountains. It is a bit odd and makes it into a tourist destination rather than a peaceful retreat, but it does mean that you can access amazing areas without being a stupidly high grade rock climber! We shared the sunset with the masses then, after a few hours sleep in a hotel on the summit we shared the sunrise with the masses too. The two looked somewhat similar and although beautiful were somewhat disturbed by the camera flashes and cheers. Unlike most of the Chinese I considered sunrise an unholy hour to go hiking so I returned to bed for a bit and we set off down the mountain late in the morning. I was quite dehydrated and my legs cramped really badly in the night so going down hill was rather painful. Unfortunately it was 16km of walking down stairs. I say unfortunately. That's only from the pain point of view. Actually it was amazing, and as we passed the cable car level we actually had the mountain to ourselves in parts. I have to admit though, one of the potential side track peaks was closed and I was quite glad as that saved us 5km of irresistible but excruciating beauty! The next day I spent hobbling. I caught a bus to Hangzuou in the afternoon as I needed to get back to shanghai to catch my train to Hong Kong. My first proper bus journey in china. I spent it having an in depth girly chat with a Chinese girl, it mainly focused on her ex boyfriends. My visit to Hangzhou was fleeting. I arrived in the evening at the long distance bus station which was really far from town. A series of local buses took me to where I wanted to go and some locals on bicycles helped me find the hidden door of west lake hotel. My companions were a couple from New Zealand and an English couple who are travel China. The next day we all went on the same train to Shanghai! Once there, I said goodbye to the others and caught my sleeper to Hong Kong (booked a week in advance due to my paranoia of overstaying my visa). I say caught. That was the closest I've come to missing a train so far- not realizing that I needed to clear customs before boarding I left catching this train rather short and was rushed through the station by some friendly officials. But all was well and I made it to Hong Kong.