Huangshan, or Yellow Mountain, was my first of two weekend trips to Shanghai’s neighboring provence of Anhui. Getting to the famous mountain range required a six hour “big bus”. As soon as Friday Chinese class was over, my four friends and I hopped in taxis and asked the driver to speed to the bus station. In classic fashion we boarded with two minutes to spare. Half way through the bus ride we stopped at the coolest looking rest stop I have ever seen. After arriving and getting settled in our hotel, we went out and explored the local town.
As nice as it is living in Shanghai, it’s refreshing to spend some time outside of the international super city every once in a while. The air is cleaner, the pace is slower, and best of all hardly anyone speaks English!
The next day we spent the better half of the day climbing Huangshan. Getting up to the first peak took about a two hours and after that we continued along to other peaks. Seven hours of stairs made my legs felt like they were going to fall off, but the views made it all worth it.
From my experiences, climbing, hiking and doing general nature stuff in China is much different than other places. For one, the sheer number of people doing those activities with you almost makes it more of an amusement park than a hike. Never before have I had to stand in line for hours to get back down the base of a mountain. And you may have noticed my use of the word “stairs”, a lot of the hiking trails I saw in China were stone paths with stairs. That being said Huangshan is particularly touristy and getting to the top without stairs would be a very difficult task.
All in all, an incredible weekend.
这个周末我跟五个朋友爬了黄山。我们坐了六小时大巴去安徽。我们晚上到了旅馆。吃了晚饭以后，我们就睡觉了。我们星期六早上六点醒来然后是坐大巴去黄山的。我们打算先去爬上黄山去，再吃午饭。爬山去以后，我看到了特别优美的景色。去黄山以前，我从来没有看怎么漂亮的云雾。爬山的时候，景色越来越好。我拍了很多照片。爬下去以后，我跟我的朋友去吃了晚饭。我们吃了安徽菜，非常好吃！因为我们太累了，所以到了旅馆去睡觉。星期天我们坐大巴，回上海。这次旅行太棒了！
