Huangshan trip, part 2

The second portion of my trip south for the National Holiday consisted of visiting some more remote areas of Jiangxi province. After the day of visiting the small city of Yuliang, we went back to Tunxi where I reserved a room for that night. Jon and Emma were planning on catching the night train back to Shanghai to get to a wedding the following evening. Long story short, they ended up staying at the hostel that night as well as the tickets they had purchased were for the wrong day. So, they had to get up VERY early the next morning to try and get to the wedding in time (which they did).

That morning, I headed to the bus station to catch a bus 2 hours south the Wuyuan, which is the main city in the area that I wanted to visit. According to Lonely Planet, this area contains "some of China's most delightful and picturesque" villages in the country. This area has now been discovered by tourists (mostly Chinese), but you can still see many instances of how village life is still the same as it was decades ago. After arriving in Wuyuan safely (which I consider no small feat as the long bus seemed as if it would slide off the windy mountain road at any time), I caught a mini-bus to the village of Qinghua. Qinghua is famous mostly for an 800 year old wooden bridge called Caihong bridge (Rainbow bridge). As you can see, if was pretty nice, and had great scenery of the area. I especially liked the stepping stone dam that doubles as another bridge across the river.



After wandering through the old part of Qinghua among chickens and dumbfounded locals, I caught the bus back to Wuyuan to then get a ride to another of the villages, Likeng, where I planned to stay the night. Arriving in Likeng was like walking into an old Chinese movie, meaning it looked like what I think China should look like - red lanterns swaying about, tucked in the hills with cows and water buffalo grazing along with rice and tea plants, and women washing clothes and gutting fish in the streams.


When I first got to the city, it was swarming with tour groups, but I found a room, and knowing that I had a place to stay, I started wandering outside of the village proper. It was one of the first times since being in China that I was somewhere quiet and peaceful, which was great. Later in the day, the tour groups all headed off to their next destination, and the city became much more pleasant as it seemed that no tourists stay the night in the village. I'm almost positive I was the only waiguoren (foreigner) in the village that night.


The next morning, I got up, wandered around some before the return of the tourists, and then escaped the masses and headed back to Wuyuan. I wandered around Wuyuan for a couple of hours until my bus back to Tunxi at the base of Huangshan, where I met a couple of French guys, Paf and Thomy, who were also staying at the hostel I was to be staying at that night. We wandered around the city, talked, drank, and ate (of course they ordered snails - they're French (they even commented on how stereotypical they were being)!). The next day I had a few hours before my bus back to Suzhou (via Shanghai) and I went to the "Old Street" in Tunxi, which is a preserved street of tourist shops in some really neat old buildings (all the architecture that you see in the pictures of this area are in the Huizhou style, which is special to this region of China).

Then I was on a bus back to Shanghai and then directly home to Suzhou. I got back to my apartment at about midnight on Sunday, just ready to start classes the next morning. Overall, it was a great trip. I was able to see a lot of beautiful areas of China, meet some really friendly people, and eat some great food.

Just tonight I got my first haircut while in China. I walked into a barbershop, and 30 minutes later, I was the owner of a brand new 'do. It actually is a pretty good haircut, and it only cost 10 kuai, or $1.50... China's great! I hope that everyone is doing well and I'll try to update this more often as I need to catch up on my exploits from the last couple of weeks.

Also, I've uploaded more photos into the photo gallery that I didn't post in the body in case you're interested in perusing.