Fuddland

This category is a subcategory of Travelling in China.

It took us a while to get started. The town of Jǐuhuá Shān (九华山) is not very large, but its layout rather confused Rose and me; the maps on the various signposts didn’t seem to tally with the one we had purchased, and the way to proceed up the mountain wasn’t as obvious as it could have been.

Consequently, we set off on a path that ultimately led to the main road to the summit — that is, a twisting, winding, tarmacced route around the peaks built for mini-buses and cars to ferry passengers speedily to the top. This meant we were missing all the temples and small settlements that are dotted around the mountain.

So after about an hour of following this road, vainly hoping we could find a way off it and onto the mountain path proper, getting rather frustrated by local shop owners who didn’t seem to know where they worked when shown a map, I decided the best course of action was to throw a mild temper tantrum and curse the whole of Jǐuhuá Shān for being so bloody difficult. Thankfully Rose has the patience of a notably-patient saint and an outlook on life that says, “Well, we’re here now, so let’s make the best of it,” so she shook me by the shoulders until I calmed down. We went back down the road to the town and started again, finding the correct path almost immediately.

So here is the key to finding your way up Jǐuhuá Shān: whenever you see a flight of stairs, climb it. Then climb it some more. Then turn the corner and climb the stairs you find there. Savour each and every level pathway you come across, for just a few yards beyond them are more and more stairs, all of them relentlessly going in an upward direction. To reach the very top takes a good few hours, even if you take the cable cars part of the way [which we didn’t] and is pretty hard on the thigh and calf muscles even if you’re in good shape [which Rose is but I’m not].

It’s stairs all the way, and it was stares all the way too: as I mentioned, the place was pretty busy with other visitors, we seemed to be the only foreigners there, so for the entire day we were subjected to barrages of, “Hullo!” or catching whispers about the approaching lǎowài (老外), a slightly derogatory term for a foreigner. Most of the time we replied, sometimes through gritted teeth, but for me at least, it started to get old within the first eleven seconds of being in China, so to have to put up with it all the live long day wasn’t the most fun I’ve ever had.

Thankfully the scenery more than made up for it: after almost a year of living with the flat, concrete-covered expanses of Sūzhōu (苏州), it was a real treat to see tree-covered mountains and valleys surrounding us, disappearing off into the haze. Sadly more disappointment was to be found in the people who dropped litter wherever they stood, showing as much respect for the countryside as they do for city streets. The wrappers for the hundreds upon hundreds of sticks of incense that were being lit at the numerous temples littered the floor of the temple grounds, and I saw more than a few people drain their drinks and simply chuck the empty plastic bottle into the valley below.

As you climb you come across more than a few very small settlements — nothing more than a few homes and some adjoining restaurants, offering a quick and cheap[ish] meal to restore one’s waning energy. There are also some small, very basic snack bars at many junctures on the way, providing instant noodles and bottled drinks. Of course, all of these establishments need their stocks constantly replenished, a job performed by some not-young men carrying carefully balanced, but very heavy-looking loads across their shoulders, hanging from a sturdy length of bamboo.

Eventually, sometime in the middle of the afternoon, we made it to the top. Jǐuhuá Shān is one of the four sacred mountains if Buddhism in China with a history of over 1,500 years, and the goal for the majority of the people who make it this far is to visit the temple of Tiān Tái Sì (天台寺), but we opted to walk in the opposite direction along the peaks and get away from the hordes of people and their cursed shouts of “Hullo”. We found a peaceful boulder on which to perch — but clearly we were not the first there, for a few sticks of incense were jammed into a crack, which we re-lit and sat looking out over the peaks.

The time came to head back down the mountain; we were pretty exhausted and had intended to take the cable car most of the way down, but the queue was so long that we ended up walking the whole way back down the stairs too, arriving back in the town just as it was getting dark. On the way we passed some lazy folk being transported down the mountain on bamboo-based sedan chairs carried by two men, and a troop of scavenging semi-domesticated baboons licking plastic wrappers and banana skins in search of a snack, another sad reminder that although this beautiful, historic area is officially protected and a designated national park, some people still don’t afford it the respect it deserves.

We were prepared for it to be busy: after all, we were visiting during the week-long national holiday, so virtually anywhere we might have chosen was going to be overflowing with tourists. My personal hope was, drawing from my experiences climbing Fèng Huáng Shān, the number of people around us would be inversely proportional to our height above sea level. [Translation: the higher we went, the fewer other people we’d see.]

Of course, despite being on a bus bound for Jǐuhuá Shān (九华山), and being in possession of tickets that clearly said, “Destination: Jǐuhuá Shān”, our transportation didn’t actually terminate at Jǐuhuá Shān, but instead threw us off at a place called “So You Wanna Visit Jǐuhuá Shān? Then Give Us Your Cash”: a large building in which we had to buy two entrance tickets to the township and surrounding area of Real Jǐuhuá Shān. Then it was a further minibus-ride up the winding mountain roads to the town proper, which served as a wonderful introduction to the landscape, all lush green trees and rice paddy-covered farmland.

The small town of Jǐuhuá Shān is given over entirely to hotels, restaurants and other tourist-friendly services. As predicted, it was teeming with people, although interestingly we didn’t see any other foreigners almost the entire time we were there. In the town and at many points up the mountain path are various Buddhist temples and monasteries, and it seemed that a lot of the visitors were there for religious reasons as much as anything else.

Having arrived quite late in the day, we set aside the mountain ascension for the next day and decided to simply find a hotel, then have a bite to eat and a few beers. I’d read in my guidebook that it was possible to stay in the monastery, but disappointingly when we went in and asked, we were told that we couldn’t stay there because we weren’t [and aren’t] Chinese. It was the same problem I was faced with in Dīng Shān (丁山): forcing foreigners into the more expensive establishments under the assumption that we’re all significantly wealthier than locals.

Sensing our dejection with his well-honed emotional skills, one of the monks conjured a mobile phone from somewhere deep within his robes and made a few enquiries at other hotels on our behalf, but the one he led us to was on the pricey side. The monk just sort of wandered off without saying anything more, so we decided to take matters into our own hands and check out the other hotels in town. But just as we were about to start negotiating with a woman who’d approached us with an offer, our monk friend came running over, looking rather annoyed that we’d just walked away while he was — it transpired — still trying to help us. He called over a different woman who was hovering nearby and we agreed to check out her place, which turned out to be fine and about as good a price as we could hope to pay given the peak season. It was up some stairs and away from the town centre, providing nice respite from the bustle and noise of the crowds.

We picked a busy-looking restaurant and found that by merely hesitating slightly over whether to order a particular dish or not, the waiter offered to give it to us for a much reduced price. That’s the kind of non-aggressive haggling I like! A few local beers later [which, as with many Chinese beers, were so weak as to have no discernible effect — at least, that’s what I told my besht mate the traffic warden as I returned her hat], it was time to turn in and get a good night’s sleep ahead of the next day’s climb.

We only stayed in the capital of the province of Ānhuī (安徽) for one night, so I can’t really comment in great detail on what it has to offer, but it was immediately apparent that the city was a lot less affluent than Sūzhōu (苏州). As opposed to the beggars that are rife throughout Sūzhōu, in Héféi (合肥) we saw homelessness in the sense of people sleeping rough, at bus stops and in shop doorways. I can’t think of a time when I’ve seen anyone actually sleeping on the street in Sūzhōu. Perhaps there’s a shelter somewhere that I’m not aware of.

[Aside: the previous statement notwithstanding, people nap anywhere and everywhere in China. They think nothing of lying down and catching forty winks on a public bench, on the ground outside the restaurant where they work, or using their hardhat as a pillow on a construction site.]

Read the rest of “Jiuhua Shan [Part II — Hefei City]”…

A few weeks ago I travelled with my faithful companion Rose to Ānhuī (安徽), the province just west of my home province of Jiāngsū (江苏), to visit a range of mountains known as Jǐuhuá Shān (九华山): Nine Glorious Peaks.

Our route from Sūzhōu (苏州) was not the most direct: first we went a couple of hours north of Sūzhōu to spend the night in Tàizhōu (泰州), the hometown of one of Rose’s colleagues — a woman in her early twenties — and were treated to an insight into Chinese family life and culture. We arrived late morning and were presented with quite a lavish lunch — amongst the many and varied dishes, I remember a combination of tofu and crab’s lung being quite tasty, although Rose seemed to think that you’re not supposed to eat the lungs of crabs. [We didn’t suffer any ill-effects, so at the very least perhaps they’re okay in small quantities.]

The conversation was pleasant enough but quite simple, and once Rose’s and my Chinese skills had pretty much been exhausted, talk consisted of various members of the family pointing at a dish, saying, “(吃)” [“chī”, meaning “eat”], us smiling politely and chopsticking a token amount into our mouths.

Tàizhōu itself is spectacularly unspectacular, with no real claims to fame beyond being the hometown of a few renowned masters of the Peking Opera. I thought at one point my hosts told me that Hu Jintao, the current president of China, is also from Tàizhōu, but this appears to be false so I probably misunderstood what they were trying to tell me.

Dinner was taken at a lush public bathhouse, and proved to be mildly farcical in that we changed into cute little short pyjama sets [cream for the boys, pink for the girls], went to the restaurant upstairs for a buffet dinner, then came back down to the changing rooms, stripped off the jammies and went to enjoy the [separate, unisex] sauna, steam room and pool. Why we had to change out of our own clothes in order to dine is something I’m still trying to figure out.

The sleeping arrangements were quite awkward: Rose, her colleague and the mother shared the main bedroom [with the mother insisting on sleeping on the floor]. The father was sent to sleep at a friend’s place [in case he caught a glimpse of Rose’s bare elbow, or something], and I was given the daughter’s bedroom. A child of the one-child-policy era, the room was adorned with portraits of her, glammed-up to the eyeballs and post-processed beyond recognition.

Lunch the next day was along the same lines as the day before, save for the beverages. In an effort to make us feel even more special, and to make a change from the beer that we [the men] drank with yesterday’s lunch, the father decided that a triple brandy was an appropriate lunchtime beverage for a strapping lad such as myself. Rose, being a more delicate — but still Western — female, got away with a standard, shot-sized helping. I managed to finish mine and had a warm fuzzy feeling for my troubles, but it was a shot too far for the dad and he was clearly more than tipsy at the end of the meal, making it even harder than usual to make out what he was saying.

My still cheeks a-glow, and laden with a generous parting gift of fruit, buns and soft drinks, we set off on the next leg of our trip: a train to Héféi (合肥), the capital of Ānhuī.