03.11.09

Another brief update, this one coming from Hefei

Posted in Travel at 7:17 pm by Benjamin Ross

It’s been a few days since the last short update, and this one is coming to you from another smokey net bar, this time in Hefei, capital city of China’s Anhui province.  Tex and I met up yesterday in Hangzhou (he was coming from Wenzhou, and me from Linan), and from there made the trip out Huang Shan (Yellow Mountain).

Generally as a traveler, I’m not too interested in “scenic spots” of which China has hundreds, but Huang Shan has been recommended to me by enough people (Westerners and Chinese) that I decided we couldn’t come all the way to Anhui without checking it out.

First off, I must say Huang is expensive, very expensive, even during this relatively dead tourism season.  The ticket to the mountain itself was 200 RMB, however women could get in for 100 due to a special Women’s Day week discount.  If my memory serves me correctly, neither the Great Wall nor the Forbidden City in Beijing, both sites of presumably greater tourism magnitude than Huang Shan, eclipsed the 100 RMB mark, let alone 200.  In addition to the fee to enter the park, there was another 80 RMB fee to ride the cable car up (yes, I know we’re both wimps, no need to comment), plus an additional 80 RMB to ride the cable car down.  All said and done, I spent about the same amount of money in an afternoon at Huangshan, than I did in my 3 days in Suzhou and 2 days in Linan combined.

As for the mountain itself, it was nice…I’ll leave it at that.  The scenery was picturesque, but not the best I have ever seen, and not the best I have ever seen in the Middle Kingdom.  Hanging out at the summit is a pleasant experience, but in reality, not all that different from the various other “famous mountains” I have “climbed” in China.  The main attraction at the top seems to be various rocks and peaks which are officially described as resembling a particular animal or object.  Of note was 手机石, which resembles a cell phone, complete with pretruding antenna.  Passing guides could be heard asking the tourists what brand of cell phone the rock resembled.

We we were fortunate in that we were able to go to Huang Shan this time of year, because I imagine that during the summar and holidays, it is absolutely swamped by herds of tourists. As we climbed up to the cable car, we passed a sign which read “From this point 2 hour wait to cable car.”  We had no wait at all.  All in all, Huang Shan is a nice site, but I’m glad I didn’t travel all the way to Anhui just to see it.

So immediately after Huang Shan, Tex and I headed to Hefei to see the capital city of Anhui.  Like much of Anhui (excluding Huang Shan) Hefei is one of the more anonomyous capital cities in China.  It’s one of those cities few people would ever travel to for tourism.  We spent the day meandering through the streets of Hefei, exploring one of China’s more industrial capital cities, and taking in the local sites and sounds.  There is so much dust in the air that I can feel it between my teeth, but overall I like the friendly, innocent vibe of this town.  As soon as I finish this e-mail, we are off to a small alley along the downtown “walking street” where earlier today we found an excellent array of local street food (future blog post to come as well). 

In accordance with our original desire to experience some of Chna’s least fortunate parts, tomorow morning, we are heading off to Fuyang, the city with the lowest per capita GDP in Anhui.  We aren’t really sure to expect, but at least we know we won’t be paying through the wazoo like we did yesterday.  After that our plan (subject to change) is to pass through Bengbu, and then finally Nanjing.  More updates to come, and of course lots of pictures when I get back to the US on the 19th.          

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