hua shan

I haven’t had a lot of time lately, but once again I am on trains, buses and hotels traveling this time with the student group. But before I catch everyone up on the present there is more to tell about our trip to Xi’an during national holiday.

My friend Chris requested a “Chinese” experience while in China. Which meant doing as the Chinese do no matter where we were or what we were doing. This included eating breakfast at the local shops, finding back alley noodle shops for lunch and riding the buses and trains with the locals (for local prices) instead of following the more expensive and foreigner ridden tours. 2 hours out of Xi’an is Hua Shan (Hua Mountain). There are 5 famous mountains in China (Yellow Mountain is not one of them as it stands on it’s own), and their history is riddled with famous historical figures climbing, worshipping, committing suicide, etc from these peaks. The Chinese have as saying that you can climb all the 5 famous mountains in China, but once you have been to Yellow Mountain nothing else compares. Since I started out with the best first it only makes sense to visit the others and see for myself if they really pale in comparison. Chris, had suggested we spend one of our Xi’an days hiking the place so I enquired on where to catch the necessary transportation and we started early with our Chinese breakfast in hand.
The only indication we had that it “might” be crowded when the girls at the hostel mentioned that waiting for the cable car to the top was taking 2 hours of line waiting and that all the tours were full. Nothing could have prepared for what we encountered. Arriving at the transfer bus station in Hua Shan village we saw tall cattle fencing partitions set up to funnel a snake line into the arriving buses. These buses are dedicated to carting tourist to the trailhead/cable car area. The buses were moving fairly quickly, so we only had to squish in the line for a ½ hour making friends with a family from the North of China who were also tourists in town. We were the ONLY white people in this line.

Once we arrived at the trailhead and waiting another ½ hour in line at the bathroom we headed to the cable car line thinking to save our energy and hike around the top trails/peaks instead. A loud speaker was blaring informing the crowd that there was a 2-3 hour wait for the cable car ride. After a quick discussion we decided that at least hiking we would be doing something instead of just standing around, plus the hike was rumored to be only 2-2.5 hours.
Off we went to stand in line to head up the hill. Again, stone steps, straight up and the trail was more narrow that Yellow Mountain had offered. It was slightly hot so it didn’t take long before I had the sweat pumps moving. We had made a friend on the bus from Xi’an to Hua Shan, Emma, a college student from Sichuan province so the 3 of us hiked (staired), passed people in front of us, dodged other resting in the middle or the side of the staircase, rested, took a few photos and plugged on. The 1st 1.5 hrs was doable then we came to the part where hiking became scaling up an almost 80 degree staircase gripping the rusting chains fastened to the side of the rock (thankfully) and not looking back. The scramble up was unnerving in an of itself, but then factor in people in front of you, behind you and to the side coming down the opposite direction (refer to photo).

Now consider that as we neared the top and scrambled several more of these steep stair cases all those who were on the cable car were clogged at the top where those who we hiking were merging. It was a traffic jam of people to get to the top ridge. I actually waiting in line on the side of a steep stone mountain to get somewhat near the beginning of the top. IT WAS NUTS! The best part was that everyone kept complaining about how many people were there, how long it took to get to the top, etc etc. No one thought that perhaps they were contributing to the situation.

Also along the way we made several friends, Li Mama and her niece. Li Mama had her little black purse in one hand and a plastic bag of fruit and food in the other. She was 62 years old, she bragged. They had left the husbands at the bottom with the kid to wait in line for the cable car. We tagged teamed with them on the ascent stopping to talk and share food, and they would give us the update on the wait time for the car below. By the time we all made it to the top the husbands were still at the bottom in line for the car.

By the time we squished, shoved and wiggled our way to the top we were starving. A few enterprising Chinese were selling hot ramen-like noodles for 10 yuan a bowl ($1.50) and they could barely keep up with the demand. We slapped down the money and tried to find a spot to sit that wasn’t “too” close to the bathroom that they had set up shop. Plopping down on a small piece of cement slab I consciously ignored the heaps of garbage that had been left by the crowds and plugged my nose if the bathroom smells happened to waft our way. Near the end of our meal I happened to notice and promptly forget that there was a good sized pile of human excrement under a little tree not more than 10 feet from us.

After lunch, since we still hadn’t reached any ridge to speak of, Chris and I climbed up the steepest run of stairs yet and were able to snap a few photos and see the other side for about 45 minutes. But time was of the essence since now it was 2pm and whether we waiting (for 4 hours) for the cable car down, or hiked down we were barely going to make the bus back to our transfer station. After a bit of debate and some advice from Li Mama and her niece we all decided to hike it down together.

Again, I waited in line for 2 hours as the crowd slowly, step by steep step made their way down about 5-6 steep runs of carved steps all the while pushing through oncoming traffic. Several times I had to remind the people behind me to not push as – well - pushing someone on a steep mountain might result in serious injury if not death.

It took us nearly 2 hours to get to the section of the trail that was less steep and therefore less crowded. This section is about 2/3 of the total trail. Total it took us about 3 hours to hike down. Li Mama carried her purse the whole way, never complained and not once mentioned that her feet hurt in what we would call house shoes that she wore all day.

As we made it out to the bottom of the trail we cheered ourselves and other on, took a lot of sweaty tired photos and slowly made our way back to our transfer buses. Where we thankfully sat down and then transferred to our bus back to Xi’an. Both Chris and I could hardly move and going down any amount of stairs for the next 4 days was painful. But as Chris put it, “Probably not something I would do again under the same circumstances, but I’m so glad I did.”

(PS: Chris and I only saw 7 other foreigners the entire day – otherwise it was a sea of Chinese. THAT is a Chinese experience.)