The Yellow Mountain

Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Huangshan, Anhui, China
Sun 13th Sept. Tour Day 22: Huang Shan

We had an early start today to catch a bus to visit Huang Shan, the Yellow Mountain. We stayed in the town of Tangkou. In the afternoon, we visited Hongcun Village, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Ringed by mountains, it was known as "a village in a Chinese painting". This maybe explained why the place was packed with young art students practising their skills – Deng told us that they spent 2 to 3 weeks here as part of their art course. The village comprised many 10th/11th century buildings in the shape of a water buffalo (supposedly), with canals leading to a couple of lakes – South Lake and Moon Pond. However, many of the houses had now been converted to tourist souvenir shops.

Afterwards, some of us visited the Emerald Valley, also called "Lover's Valley". We had a lovely walk up through the serene valley with bamboo forests on the slopes, streams forming many emerald pools, waterfalls, bridges, huge boulders. Some scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were filmed here.

Mon 14th Sept. Tour Day 23: Huang Shan, Yellow Mountain

Our visit to the Yellow Mountain, Huang Shan, for a hike up to one of the summits, at about 6,000ft! Not sure I was looking forward to this, even though the scenery was sure to be stunning, comprising precipitous peaks, bamboo groves and ancient twisted pines growing from the mountainsides.

We arrived ~8am and took a cable car part way up, which would cut an hour off the trek and allowed more time at the top with the best scenery. Then, there followed a 4 hour hike up to the Lotus Flower Peak and Bright Summit Peak, along winding concrete steps, some extremely steep and long. This was probably the hardest thing I’d ever done physically and was absolutely knackering. When you got to a photo point, you could see extremely steep staircases (up and down) in the distance and you hoped you didn’t have to go that way, but you did! The route wasn’t straight up and/or down, but via undulating staircases which hugged the contours of the mountains. It was an incredible feat of construction to build these paths, stairs and balconies on the side of a mountain, many of them you couldn't even imagine how they had done it. There were even shops on the way, and a hotel near the top, which was supposed to be ideal for an overnight stay to see some spectacular sunrises and sunsets. All consumer goods, materials for building, etc, had to be carried up and down the mountain by people. I got a celebratory can of lager from the hotel as a reward to myself for managing to get to the top! The cable car going down was great, with spectacular views travelling down through a tree-covered valley. Again, another amazing feat of engineering trying to get your head around how they built it.

We had an evening meal in a local restaurant just across the road, and then stayed on for a bit for a few more beers. We had a longish bus journey back to Shanghai the next day.

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2025-02-07

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