Voice of Will: Shanghai 1

2005-02-05 - 1:27 p.m.
A wonderfully busy and very hectic trip to shanghai.
So we are in the middle of a 2 month break for foreign teachers in china. (most teachers get the 1 months off with their schools, but we somehow managed to convince the administration we wanted christmas and new years off and got that plus the rest of the time. 7 weeks paid vacation is really nice.) Crissy decided it was ok for me to get away from the kids for a week, and I really needed it. So I got to travel with one of our collegues (Rita) and one of her former students (Michael). Both of them are fun, and we get along really well. So no big deal.

We flew out of Zhengzhou airport after a 3 hour delay for fog and landed in Shanghai airport in time for lunch. Then we got to the chinese version of travelling. Hurry up and wait. Run to buy tickets then sit around for a couple of hours, then run to the bus/train/airplane. We ran into this problem through out the trip. Another chinese travel technique is to cram as much into a trip as possible to see as much as you can. WE were gone for a week, and we saw 3 different major cities, 1 gigantic mountain, and 3 or 4 villages. That means less than one day at each location.

Shanghai we caught a 3 or 4 hour train ride to Hongzhou. Now trains are very affrodable in china, but everyone and their brother knows this, and they all travel this at this time (the Chinese new years is very important, imagine thanksgiving, christmas, new years and the 4th of july all wrapped up into one festival. The party starts the week before, and everyone is travelling to get home for about 2 weeks before, and 2 weeks after) So the train was packed. We get into Hongzhou at 8 pm without a hotel in advance. That was a recurring theme and a major frustration each and every night.

After walking for about an hour we finally found a hotel that would take us at a reasonable price and would have 3 in a room. The next day we have time to go to world heritiage site in hongzhou. Now you need to understand about world heritage sites. They are usually of significant importance to the country, and a very large source of revenue. It also means they are big tourist traps. The location was beautiful, the buddhist images were breathtaking (I really like maitraya sculpture, or the dharma protectors on dragons and tigers.) WE also attened a well known buddhist temple at the same world heritage site.

We even got to go to the West lake. If you have ever been to a really pretty lake, this is like it. You had fantastic views of the skyline of hongzhou, and the mountains surrounding the city.

A few words about hongzhou. It is BEAUTIFUL. Everything is clean, there are trees, green leaves, bushes, grass, and a lot less pollution. I wish our school was located here I would never want to leave. Even though the music was really bad everywhere we went. I think the people saw foreigners and grabbed whatever english music they had. WE ate lunch listening to Kenny Rogers "The Gambler" and Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton "Island in the stream" Now let that sink in. Here you are surrounded by chinese people, in a fully chinese resturant, eating really good chinese food, trying to relax, and you get "you got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run" and you can hear the cook 'no wen da hold em, no wen da ford dem' in the back ground. Sometimes China makes my head hurt.
We were on a tight schedule, so there was no chance to sit back and relax and enjoy the atmosphere because we had to catch a bus in the late afternoon. We rush to the bus station to make sure we got there in time. We were 45 minutes early so we had to sit and wait.

We get on the bus and I find out it is supposed to be a 5 or 6 hour trip. Now I purposefully didn't want to know where we were going because I didn't want to ruin the suprise. But I really dont' like part of the suprise being speinding 1/4 of the day on a bus. At night (see previous entries about driving at night), in the winter. This point was made to me because coming down one side of a mountain, I can actually feel the rear end of the bus sliding on the road as the driver is fish tailing it around some of the curves. What is really interesting to me is that no one seem worried by this. I was reminded of a story about bus travel in china, as long as the passangers don't scream the driver can do it.

We get into a city I still dont' know the name of, and after be mobbed by a very large group of chinese who see Lowei and think like vultures, we managed to find an international Youth hostel. i like it other than the fact that even with the heat on, it felt like a refirdgerator. But the room was large, the shower had scalding hot water, and the bed could use the padding and blankets of the empty beds, it was great.

Next day we travel to the local villages. These villages are some of the oldest still standing villages in china, and have been used in several chinese movies (most notably Crouching Tiger, Hidden dragon. I have now been to almost every set in that movie (except the stuff in the desert)) These villages are interesting, and from a historical perspective very enlightening. But to someone not interested in the history, they just look like run down old buildings who have too much acid rain on the exteriors. To me it was a very informative indepth view of cultural china, including how people in the villages still live like this. We witnessed several people picking crops, doing their laundry in the stream which ran throught the village, using the same stream for garbabge dump, and bathroom, as well as watching a slaguthered pigs blood run into this stream. WE would go to houses and the owners would let us in to see the "cultural" relics and way of living. Very asture and beautiful, as well as back breaking and future devouring.

We then travelled from this area to the Mountain. Huangshan. We stayed the night in a hotel we found when we got off of the van we rented again about 8 pm in the pouring rain. This hotel was a 3 star hotel, and on the whole really rather good. They had a bathroom with a bathtub, and 3 large comfortable beds with a wonderful heater.

HuangShan is the mountain from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and it is immense. When we got to the top the sign said, 5 km this direction is one thing, 6 km in the other direction is something else. just wow. Very beautiful, but we got there in a deep fog, and the top of the mountain was covered in rain clouds. According to some people there it is cloudy over 200 days a year. But we had 30 minutes of clear views that were breathtakingly spectactular. Apparently a very well known geographer in china had visited the 4 great mountains (coincidentally enough at the 4 extremes of china, north, south, east and west) stated if you could only visit one mountain in china visist Haungshan and then you won't have to visit any others. We didn't dare climb it, the steps carved into the mountain were coated in ice and very slippery. Instead we took the cable car to the midway point. WE managed to make it to one of the designated points where there was a small store that charged 5x the going rate for a soda, and even water for making noodles. There is a very interesting hotel at the top of the mountain but we didn't get to stay there (I am thinking of taking crissy there if I can get a sitter for the kids for a week!)

But again we ran into how the chinese travel. We had only 4 hours at the mountain before we had to catch a bus to catch our train to Shanghai. The bus was crowded, and the train was an overnight train, but at least we got beds. No big deal.

More coming on shanghai tomorrow.

Will