Stairway to Heaven

About 10,000 stairs later - I'm back from Huangshan - WOW! This weekend was awesome - we hiked all the way up and back (some of us anyway). We didn't have class on Friday so we took advantage and hopped on a sleeper train to Huangshan Thursday night. My first experience on sleeper was a lot of fun - we played cards until they shut off the lights at 12. After arriving in Tunxi (Huangshan City) we took a small tour bus to the town of Tongku at the base of the mountain. While Tanner (speaks Chinese) was being bombarded by a lady trying to sell a hotel room, Eric and I read our guidebooks and tried to devise a plan for the group. We learned of an English speaking man named Mr Hu who was recommended for his restaurant and his knowledge of the mountain. When I stepped off the bus, I generally asked a group of people standing on the sidewalk "Do you know where Mr. Hu is?"
"I'm Mr. Hu," replied a 5 foot man. Well how about that?! Haha! Mrs. Hu cooked us some French toast at his restaurant while he suggested an itinerary and booked our hotel on the summit. We met some fellow Americans on their way down from the mountain and chatted, then proceeded to the 10 Dragons Waterfalls park. After hiking a few miles through some medium grade steps and waterfalls, Dragon's Heart pool enticed me to jump in. Ahhh. We continued the journey up the mountain and hit the first steep set of stairs. Some groans were heard, but this was just the beginning. When we reached the half way point, some people bought canes to aid. Steps steps steps and more steps... we kept ascending until the other guys were exhausted and stopped at a booth selling water (there are no roads to the summit, so everything on Huangshan has to be carried up on a porter's back). Somehow the guys struck a deal with the two 50 year old women to carry their bags up the rest of the way. $5 dollars a bag is a pretty deal, but I think there's something wrong about the principle of the matter (at least they didn't hire a chair to carry them up). After a series of breaks, I went a little ahead of the group and met some porters who I raced up to the top. Phew, I was tired. We made it to our hotel and were dismayed to find that all the restaurants on the mountain were closed. A rumbling in our stomach told us to give it a shot, so we tried one of the restaurants which was fortunately open. A full stomach and the crisp mountain air put me to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
Saturday morning we woke up to try to catch the acclaimed Huangshan sunrise, but a fierce rainstorm blocked the view, so we went back to bed. Later that morning, we were all still tired from the day before so we spent some time talking with the locals and playing some bball. Most of the people on the mountiain don't come down for 2 years at a time! We hiked around a little and saw some more spectacular views, but I didn't have my camera, darn it Stan.
Sunday morning we tried for the sunrise again to no avail this time because of the heavy fog/clouds. We ate lunch and split the group up in preparation for descent - Eric and I wanted to hike down but the others opted for the 15 minute cable car.

The western steps trail was far more picturesque than our route up on the east side, but it is also much more challenging with chilling, seemingly vertical sets of steps. We passed the famed "Welcoming Pine" - one of the many trees over 1000 years old. The vegetation on the mountain was pretty cool, with many ancient naturally miniature bonzai trees. Eric and I decided to add a short 1.5 km to our journey down to scale Celestial Peak - the highest, best view on the mountain. The stairs started below the clouds and led us up, up, up, and up through them until we could look down on the clouds and the whole mountain. Beforehand I had a lock engraved with Gigi's and my name on it (the vendors had a chuckle when I told them I wanted 'Gigi' engraved - ask her what it means in Chinese - I opted for Brigitte instead (miss you JB ahhh!, I had many Simba moments this weekend if you couldn't tell.) ). I locked our names onto Celestial peak forever.
Eric and I made our way down the mountain which sounds like an easy task, but the extra 1.5 km actually took us 2 hours because we wanted to go slow and not fall to our death - my knees are still killing me.

We rendevouzed with the crew at Mr Hu's and ate another excellent Mrs. Hu meal. We signed our names in the book and departed Tongku for the plane back to Shanghai.

Check out the Huangshan pics here.

Hangzhou

OK here's a quick update to what we did last weekend. Friday night after class we took one of the fast trains (200 km/h) to the other Chinese "heaven" town - Hangzhou. I was expecting a smaller town on the order of Suzhou, but Hangzhou actutally has a population of 4 or 5 million people. The main attraction of Hangzhou that people from all over China come to visit is West Lake, which is a large lake (probably about 5 miles circumference) in the center of the city. When we arrived Friday night we ate dinner, then checked into the West Lake Youth Hostel - a great experience and highly recommended. We didn't want to waste any time while we were there, so we started to walk towards some bright lights that we had passed on the way to the hostel. We stumbled upon the lake, and strolled around passing some clubs and restaurants, and eventually making our way to the downtown area.

Saturday we woke up early and checked out a series of ancient Buddhist temples outside the town, built in the 1100s. Many people were burning incense sticks and praying to some of the huge (100 ft tall) statues of Buddah. I felt like a champ when I hiked to the top of "mountain" they were built on (nothing after Huanghshan). After we were templed out - we headed back to the lake and rented bikes. I finally got my chance to be on the other side of the wheel - it was sort of a game seeing how close you could come to traffic without getting hit or before freezing someone in their tracks. We encircled the lake in a few hours then toured a newly renovated pagoda. We were relieved when we found out it had an elevator to the top. This one was worth much more than those ancient ones that they make you walk up.
Train left the station at 9:09 and we zipped back to Shanghai in an hour.
On Sunday, Kiki was nice enough to invite Mark, Fang, Liang, and I to her home for the Dragon's Day Festival Dinner. We helped her mom make spring rolls and tzongza (rice/meat wrapped in leaves). After lunch we walked through a nearby park where cut into a baseball game with some locals, and rented boats and sailed around a lake. Afterwords, in true Chinese form, we joined the 20 or so kites hanging above the city - ours was best because it had a tail. We went back to Kiki's place and her mom had dinner waiting for us, really great service around here :-). Finally her dad got back from his business trip and presented us with some rare fruits from Hainan province (Hawaii of China). Xie Xie!

Heaven Part 1 - Suzhou

The Chinese have a saying that heaven on earth are the two water towns of Hangzhou and Suzhou. Fortunately, last weekend and this weekend I had the chance to visit both.

Last weekend, I planned a trip for a bunch of people in our group to go to Hangzhou - around 15 people ended up making it there because I waited too long to buy the train ticket, doh! Instead Todd, Mark, and Will hopped on the slow train with our friends Lillian and Bird from SJTU and took a trip to Suzhou.

Suzhou was a big change from Shanghai - it was nice to walk down the street and not have to hear the constant blaring of car horns so familliar in Shanghai. We visited 2 of the 4 gardens the town is famous for and a pagoda where an old emperor is buried. I liked the first one, The Humble Administrator's Garden, the most probably because the other garden was very similar. They were both very beautiful - everywhere I looked I wanted to take a picture (can you tell from the 146 that I took?) I was amazed by the little bushes sculpted to look like big trees, the equivalent of Japanese Bonzai. Could you tell from the pictures?

After the gardens, we walked around town a little and I bought a silk weaving picture and some Chinese fans. Another thing Suzhou is famous for is all of its canals. They used to be the popular means of transportation back in the day, but now cars have taken over (gas is only $1.48/gal here).

The Tiger Hill Pagoda was Suzhou's version of the leaning tower of Pisa, where the founder of Suzhou is supposed to have been buried with 3000 swords and a tiger protecting his underwater tomb. We layed on the grass on top the hill overlooking the town for a while, then trekked back to the train station where we were able only to purchase standing tickets back to Shanghai. We ate dinner at........dun dun dun ....KFC. They are taking over this country.

I'll update about this weekend's trip to Hangzhou and the Dragon Boat Festival dinner after I come back from lunch. They've blocked Blogger and Flickr now, so I can't see any blogs, but hopefully this update will work. Zaijian

Jiadong & Qibao

This weekend, we took a group trip to see an ancient Confucius temple and some water gardens in the Jiadong area of Shanghai (this is a huge city - it took us 40 minutes on the highway to get there). The temple, one of many in China, was built in the 13th century and was the place students would pray to Confucius for academic help. In ancient China, to move up the social ladder and become a government official, students had to write an "8 legged essay" based on the topic the emperor chose for the year. Students came to the temple to pray for Confucius' help, and after the tests were taken the top three scholars in the area had their names engraved in a temple stone to be revered forever. Not a bad deal. The imperial examination system was used in China until 1906, but today parents still bring their children to the temple to pray before taking their college entrance examination (a 3 day test here! - the number 1 scholars in each area are invited to attend Beijing University).
Nearby the temple was an old garden and a pagoda. Fortunately, I was able to climb to the top (this is one of the only ones in China that let you go inside). It was a really tight squeeze near the top, and I was surprised to see Dr. Desai (my retired thermo teacher) pass me on his way down (after all the students were complaining). Looking down on the town from the pagoda reminded me of town in the final sequence in Mission Impossible 3. Have a look at the rest of the photos in the gallery.


Next we visited the nearby town of Qibao (pronounced Cheapo - and it certaintly was). Since I had skipped breakfast, my SJTU tour guides for the day, Kiki and Toto, informed me that this town was famous for its snacks - perfect! I like getting food from the street vendors more than restaurants anyway. Kiki was eager to make me try all of her "favorite" foods (each one seemed to have this distinction). My guides were so sweet and accomodating and insisted on buying me all of my snacks. I tried some crab dumplings, freshly made dragon's beard candy, a "real" dumpling filled with sesame, an octopus ball, some kind of iced tea, fried tofu (smells really bad), and good old chicken on a stick. Good thing I was full before she tried to make me eat her other favorite - pig's nose! After our walk around town, we all gathered to have a traditional dinner (don't know what they were thinking).

I had a chance to talk with Kiki for a little and asked her what she thought about having all kinds of censorship around (I couldn't find a CHINA Lonely planet among every other country in the local bookstore, and the Economist issue about China didn't seem to make it here). She said that no one really minds because the people have always been controlled by someone (the emperor for x dynasties). I'm not sure if everyone feels that way, but I can say that you will not be worried after reading the newspaper.
I also found out why I have seen so many people diving through garbage cans to find plastic bottles - they can earn 1 RMB (12 cents) for every 10 they return. I had been wondering about all the severly deformed (face burned off, hands mangled) beggars I'd seen too. She told me that many times people will hurt the baby in some way to make more people feel bad for them and give them money. It's a really sad sight to see a baby on the subway with a burned face. Shanghai is an amazing city, but China still has a long way to go.


I think that's it for now ladies and gents. Congrats to Ally with 2 goals in her WPIAL championship win! I'm planning on taking a trip to the town of Hangzhou this weekend. It's about 2 hours away and is next to a huge lake with lots of outdoor activities. I hope my guidebook gets here soon. We have our first 3040 test tomorrow, so I'd better start putting the study in study abroad.