Huangshan: Yellow Mountain

Xuijiahui has become familiar and people have found their favorite places to go for restaurants, cafes, bakeries, xiao long bao. This past week on our China trip we made a delicious sweet and sour chicken that I definitely plant to make at home. On Thursday night the SJTU students threw a welcoming party for us at the Minhang campus, the main SJTU campus (I am at Xinhui). We sang the Ramblin Wreck song and put on a couple other performances; including a Backstreet boys song (which they all knew) and one of us even break danced. They provided most of the entertainment with some karaoke, band performances, a song from High School musical (some fo the volunteers told me they learned several of the musical's skits in P.E.) and games. Its interesting interacting with people your own age but have grown up in a completely different culture. On Friday morning we left for Huangshan (Yellow Mountains) on a 6 hour bus with 8 people, one of whom who could speak Chinese. The bus ride took to Tunxi, a town about 1hr from the base of the mountain, and spent the afternoon exploring the Old Street. Our hotel room was $15 a night but the A/C was tightly regulated and would shut off after one hour. Only the hotel had the remote so I had to call down to the front desk in broken Chinese and tell them "I have a problem, air conditioner, #506". Luckily, a storm that night kept the room cool. We also visited another very beautiful ancient village—the Hongcun Village.On Saturday we left the hotel at 7:00am to take two taxis to Huangshan. There are two main paths up the mountain so the 4 guys in the group of course decided to take the harder but supposedly more scenic path while the 4 girls took the cable car. Climbing up was no small thanks to large backpacks with all our clothes, food, and water for the whole weekend. Initially two of the girls started the climb but they turned back after 20 min of hiking. The trails were actually steps carved into the mountainside but that did not make the 6 hours hike up to our hotel any easier. Along the way we also climbed up to the 3rd highest Celestial Peak at 1810m before meeting the girls at our hotel, located on the 2nd highest Bright Peak (the highest was closed for ecological preservation). While location was great, the room had concrete floors and had 4 bunk beds in a room smaller than the average college dorm room. Still the hotel was worth it because it allowed us to see both sunrise and sunset the next morning. Most importantly we were able to drop our bags at the hotel so we could explore the summit more easily. For sunset we ventured off trail and found a group of professional photographers preparing for sunset. They seemed entertained as we took pictures of each other while waiting for the sunset, especially the "falling" pictures. On Sunday we got up at 4am to beat the sunrise crowd. Even getting up that early the crowd was large but we being Americans we climbed up the rock wall next to the sunrise viewing area to avoid the crowds. Only downside is while waiting for the 5:15am sunrise we were blinded by Asian tourists taking flash pictures of the 4 Americans on the rock. After taking a quick nap after sunrise we headed back down the mountain a different way, this time it only took about 4 hours to hike down and caught an afternoon bus to Shanghai to visit the World Expo.