Four of my friends from the program and I decided to get out of Shanghai for the weekend to escape the pollution and crowded city so we packed a backpack and headed to the Anhui Provence. In Anhui is where you will find Huangshan, known as the Yellow Mountains in the states. The yellow mountains are very famous for their beautiful scenery and steep climb to the top! Being from Colorado, I jumped t the chance to go hiking for the weekend and be in the thin air that comes with higher altitudes! We hopped on a long distance bus Thursday night and spent the next 6 hours traveling to Anhui!
Unfortunately for us, once we got off the bus on their last stop, we realized that we had taken the wrong bus! Luckily we were still in Huangshan but unfortunately the area is enormous and we were over an hour away from the hostel we had booked and were stuck standing on the street at 1am. We decided to just make the best of the situation and got two rooms at the nearest hotel. In the morning we spoke with the front desk and by some miracle, our little mishap ended in us being 25 minutes from our first day trip destination instead of the 1.5 hour trek we had been planning to make! Funny how things work out! So with that positive news we headed out to Mukeng, a bamboo forest along waterfalls and rivers in the Huangshan foothills. we got there and began walking around the paths around lakes and trails surrounded by massive bamboo trees 50 feet tall and about 8 inches thick! I didn't know that bamboo even grew to be so big before then!
After a while of exploring we began to hear drums in the distance. We knew there were performances that the local village put on for the park so we set out to find them. Once we got to where the show took place we had quite an interesting time getting in with the broken and minimal Chinese that we knew as a group. We were greeted by two locals who told us we weren't aloud to come in and even at one point yelled (in English) "F*** YOU!", obviously taken aback by this rudeness and confusing random situation we were just about to leave when one of the local men noticed a hole in the sleeve of one of the boys in our group's shirt. He pointed to it and said a lot of Chinese that we didn't understand and proceeded to invite us into the area. We still have no idea why the hole in our friend's sleeve was the deciding factor in this situation! But we went in and they showed us how to pray to their gods and we did a little prayer ritual with them then went to the stage where the performances were held. There were about 10 men and women all in their "tribal" attire with modern touches. Us being the visitors to the show pulled out our cameras to take their pictures and were surprised to see they were doing the same back to us! Apparently they rarely see white people and were clearly excited we were there! They were so friendly and taught us traditional dances and even invited us for lunch that people in their village had made for them! It was delicious and, surprise surprise, was mostly rice and cooked bamboo shoot! When a group of Chinese tourists showed up they began their performance. The women did a dance, one man put fire on this body, in his mouth, and blew fire balls, and one man stomped on broken glass! It was crazy!! As we headed down from the forest we found a little zipping set up that ran across the lake two times! It definitely did not look like the most secure structure but we figured, "why not?" and decided to go for it! Turns out it was a wonderful choice and we had so much fun sipping across the lake surrounded by the beautiful scenery of the area!
We left the bamboo forest afterwards and went to a new hostel closer to the entrance of the yellow mountains. The hostel told us of an outdoor market with lots of stone figures, toys, tea, chopsticks, and other merchandise we could bargain for. I ended up buying myself a 6 cup tea set with beautiful, unique patterns and bargained my way from 180¥ to 100¥, the store owner was being very stubborn on the price and it took me holding a 100¥ bill in front of him and threatening to leave until he'd go for it! At the market we got dinner and I ordered a classic Huangshan dish of their fried noodles. Delicious! Then we headed home preparing for a long day of hiking the yellow mountains!
5:45am came way too early. We were downstairs at 6:10 eating breakfast that our hostel had prepared for us and at 6:30 the bus was out front of the hostel to take us on the hour and a half bus ride to the mountain.
Once we got to the ticket office to get passes to Huangshan we got our first glimpse of what a touristy place the yellow mountains were! There were a few hundred people in line to get to different areas of the mountain by yet another bus, thankfully our line was the shortest and didn't take long to get us on our final bus ride before hiking! The 20 minute bus weaves through the beginning of the mountains gaining elevation quick and transforming the scenery into beautiful jagged cliffs and green trees lining the bottoms.
We were finally at the mountain! Majority of people were buying gondola tickets to take them to the first real scenic area but we had already decided that we were hiking the whole way! Little did we know before starting this trek, unlike mountains and hiking that I'm familiar with, Huangshan's trails are entirely paved... And entirely stairs! It took around 4 hours of climbing to make it to the first scenic area where the gondolas let the tourists off. 
From that first area the views were beautiful but the most memorable was actually watching the Chinese tourists. There were thousands of Chinese tourists all gathering in this one area once getting off the gondola and were waiting in 3 hour long lines in order to get to a special famous destination. You may be wondering what could possibly be so incredible that thousands of tourist would pay lots of money to get them to the top of a mountain to see. The answer is: a tree. It's not an ancient tree and it didn't do anything special. What it did was grow one of its branches a little longer then the others to make it "look like an arm is stretching out to welcome people to the mountain", which is why the tree is known as the Welcoming Tree. People wait in 3 hour lines in order to take a picture in front of this Welcoming Tree. There are just some Chinese mannerisms I don't think I'll ever get used too or fully understand.
The five of us decided that as part of our hike on Huangshan, we were going to make it to the very top of the highest peak in the Yellow Mountain Range, Lotus Peak. By this time our legs were tired an wearing out fast but we never quit movie and walked up stairs after stairs until we made it to our final destination! The views front the top of Lotus Peak are breathtaking. You look around and you are the tallest thing for as far as you can see. Peaks and valleys are all you see in every direction you turn! It was such a feeling of accomplishment to have made it so far!
The trip down from Lotus Peak was significantly shorter then the trip to the top, although walking down stairs just works a different set of muscles than going up the stairs, ensuring that no matter what, you will not be able to walk the next day! But we got to the bottom in once piece very excited about what we'd just done. From the time we began climbing the stairs until when we got back down to the same point, we had been climbing up and down stairs for 7.5 hours! Not some little hiking trip, that's for sure!
That night my roommate, Charly, and I both fell asleep at 8pm and didn't wake up until 9am the next morning. The only reason we were able to move was through the application of ample amounts of Tiger Balm and Icy Hot to our throbbing legs!
And what would a traveling story be without a little insanity thrown in last minute? All weekend, for some strange reason, we missed almost every single bus that we took. We each took turns being reason for almost missing the bus but my moment didn't come until we were heading back to Shanghai. Our hostel got us a taxi van to take us (unnecessarily) about 1/2 a block from our hostel to the long distance bus stop. We got off the taxi bus and onto the Grayhound-like bus going to Shanghai and right as we were pulling out I realized I had left my kindle, one of my absolutely favorite things, in the taxi van. I jump out of my seat and start screaming to stop the bus (in English which no one understands) and frantically am yelling at everyone to stop and let me out of the bus to try and chase down the taxi van! Finally they get what I'm saying and stop about 100yds away from where we'd been. Myself and my friend Peter jump off the bus and sprint after two different vans that looked like the one we were in, I was literally sprinting after the wrong van in the middle of the road! After not catching up to it I run back to our hostel panting and frantic trying to tell them to call the van they had gotten us and tell her to come back. In the meantime my roommate is dealing with the bus driver who's threatening to leave us! After a few minutes of pure panic that I had lost of one my favorite things I'd brought to China, a little taxi van pulls up front of our hostel waving the kindle in her hand! The people of China have been overall incredibly nice, but it was even more then I had expected! It was an absolutely crazy but memorable way to end a perfect weekend in the Yellow Mountains!
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