Highlights of Huangshan

(Yellow Mountains)

April 6, 2000.  We leave Tunxi (Huangshan Shi) with our guide, George, for a three hour drive to the southern part of the Anhui province and our destination, Huangshan (Yellow Mountains).  

The drive to the backside of the Yellow Mountains takes us through the most beautiful countryside that we have seen in China dotted with traditional villages and patchwork of fields.  The farms are neat, wood is stacked orderly and pork loins and field greens are hung out to dry in the sun. The fields filled with both bright yellow rape plants used for making cooking oil abut the traditional rice paddies.  Here farmers still use water buffalos to plow the paddies.  

As we moved further west and gain altitude, tea plants become visible. Villagers are harvesting the tea and sending it on to be dried and cleaned.

The next district we entered is not as prosperous but still it is more livable then the northern cities that we had visited. Here also the air quality was so much better then we had experienced elsewhere in China.  

We arrive at the Taiping Cable Car and ride to the top of "cloud dispersing" area.  It takes 10 minutes to walk to the Xihai Hotel. Although the accommodations are not deluxe, it is like  a Holiday Inn, utilitarian.  Also on top are three other hotels with two more under construction.  For such a sacred spot in the past, it is very commercialized including large Korean and Japanese tour groups (suits and leather dress shoes climbing around on the mountain - an interesting combination).  

Paved trails wind around the lookout points of the Huangshan summit area.  Here is where many Chinese have inked beautiful drawings of the landscapes of craggy rocks, low hanging clouds, gnarled pines which have made this area so recognized. We are fortunate to see the mountain top on a sunny day so that we can fully appreciate the vistas, the signature mountain shapes and the foliage.  

April 7. We get an early start on our hike down the mountain. George, our guide who carried only a tooth brush and empty portfolio up the mountain, was very concerned that we would be  unable to hike with our loaded day packs. We were required to hike to Bright Summit and Lotus Flower Peak (1864 m)  prior to our descent which was a bit of a challenge but we succeeded in leaving George in the dust.

The rock formations on the western steps were enchanting. Some of the stairs are very steep, uneven rise and extremely narrow.  The path treads through two rock crevices. In the midst of these narrow steep stairs, a group of tourists were engaging in a heated argument over the fee for a porter to transport them across the summit.  Looks safer to me to walk rather than ride in one of the rope and bamboo contraptions offered by the locals.   

That said everything on the mountain is delivered by humans, all food supplies, building materials, people, baggage, furnishings.  Porters have assisted in the construction of the cable car stations and towers - old wooden walkways still exist below the cable cars where the workers carried supplies up originally.   The porter trails today look like something out of Disneyland winding around a giant mountain to the Magic Kingdom atop.  Slits between the rocks become openings for these walkways with delicate bridges tethering the black rocks with what looks like a fragile ribbon.  

One of the mountain customs is the number of locks engraved with lovers' names that have been accumulated on the mountain railings, symbolizing the "locked" nature of the relationship. This is especially visible on the western slopes near Heavenly Capital Peak.

We descent under the Jade Screen Cable Car into the Hot Springs Area.  Although we do not take advantage of the hot spring baths, we do stop for lunch at the Peach Blossom Hotel (Taoyuan).

After lunch we climb into our car for a two hour drive to a 150 year old village, Hai Zhong, in which about 300 families live in this city built by a wealthy business man of the time "Wang". His home has beautiful wood carvings of old opera stories.  We have an alien permit to go to this town since we are said to cross some major military installation along the way.  

We continue our descent into tea country and then down to the rice paddies of the lower lands. We return for another night in Tunxi and then fly to Shanghai the next morning.