Monday 30 April 2012
Morning in tulou, night in Xiamen again
The nights sleep in the TuLou was not bad and we woke in the morning with the couple already left, we had no hurry as the bus back to Xiamen was in the early afternoon and so we had an easy morning.
We met the restaurant owner and despite me having seen enough TuLou to never see one again, Chris still had designs on seeing a square goddamn Tulou. We asked the restaurant owner and he was very nice, he pointed us up the street and told us to just wander in, and if anyone asked for money to show his business card and tell them he said it was free!
We did exactly that and wandered around the town poking our heads into all the varied TuLou around the town in various states of usage and repair. From the immaculate refurbished tourist trap to the dilapidated run down one, to one converted into a restaurant to one mid regeneration! Square ones, round ones, half ones, crescent ones, we saw them all!
We also realised that half the town had broken off and become a walled in theme park style TuLou visitor attraction! We never entered it but saw the forests of tourists wandering around and the expensive entry costs! Much happier with our DIY cheap and cheerful approach!
We also walked along and found a tiny temple over a river and took some pictures, some of which I really like, came out beautifully!
In the town just before the bus arrived we went to a tea shop, had some tea and Chris bought a lovely little tea set, and some very expensive tea! along with some packs of tea to give to the teachers in the school as a gift!
We made our way back to the middle of town and the bus eventually turned up, we jumped on and settled in, 5 hours back to Xiamen we arrived at a random place in the outskirts and bus driver up and kicked us off, typical chinese bus driver! with no bus station in sight I managed to decifer the bus timetable enough to get us to the train station and from there on to our new hostel. On the bus however we realised that in our haste to get off, Chris had left his tea set and tea behind! Damnit! less than 6 hours we had that damn thing! At least it wasn't too expensive, and if there is one thing China sells, its tea sets!
The heat in Xiamen was really something and we were happy to dump our stuff in a new hostel. this became one of my favourite hostels in China as it was very friendly, very lovely staff and all very relaxed, in a beautiful colonial style building! When we arrived the guy asked without looking up if we had a reservation, in chinese, i replied in Chinese we did and he asked what name, when I replied Nathan he got very confused and looked up in surprise!
We spent the evening chilling in the bar and chatting with the staff as the hostel was pretty empty and in the evening headed to Xiamen port to the starbucks to drink an iced coffee and look out over the island and the bay from the rooftop terrace, very nice and very relaxing!
Amoy (Xiamen) to the middle of nowhere!
For a long time Chris had wanted to go out into the province south of us here in ZheJiang and explore a bit, especially as he wanted to find some Chinese traditional TuLou, or Earth Houses, round houses that served as small estates, housing many families and providing a safe and defendable space with huge 5 story high walls！ We saw some pictures on the internet a few months ago and read about them in my guide book and so decided to go to find them!
We got to the bus station mentioned in the guide and asked for two tickets to roughly the right area as mentioned in the guide book, the guidebook however said we would need to change bus, but this bus seemed to go straight there! As we boarded the bus it was seriously full, Chris found a seat at the back and I tried to ask the bus driver to tell us when we arrived, he agreed, but by this time the bus was full so I had to sit right at the front, next to an old chinese man. As soon as I sat down he started chatting to me, and he was very nice, and obviously friends with the bus conductor woman, after half an hour they changed places and I was sat next to her, and again I explained where we were going, and what we wanted to see, and she understood and said she would help us out!
The bus journey was pretty long, another 5 hour job, and took us out of the town into the country and into pretty rural countryside. We stopped off for a rest half way at a fruit seller and after the toilet break (a small shack out back with 2 holes per gender and no privacy, with an outside tap for hand washing) I had a look around and saw the most bananas I had seen in one place! madness!
Back on the bus and starting to wind into the mountains we saw a few of the elusive tulou buildings and some pretty sights, at one point we stopped halfway up a big hill and the driver got off, I also got up to stretch my legs and saw he was filling the buses water tank from a hose, he tried to explain that on these bad roads he wanted some more weight over the rear wheels, and also to dampen the suspension a bit! Now leaking water we headed off again and an hour or so later drove through a lovely tulou town.
This was the town Chris had mentioned and so we prepared to get off...and were promptly whisked out of town again without stopping! I mentioned it and the guide explained that was the expensive tourist town, we didn't want to go there, she would help us out! 15 minutes later the bus stopped on a small bridge and we were asked to get off, along with two other foreigners we had seen at the back of the bus, turns out they also wanted to go to see the TuLou.
The bus conductor woman got on her phone and said a car would come to meet us and she promptly stood and waited ten minutes, stopping the whole bus full of people, to make sure the car did indeed come and get us, she was very nice and soon we had been loaded into a car and driven away, one problem, in our conversation I had explained I wanted to see TuLou, and she had said she would help, but hadn't explained to me exactly where we were going or what we were doing, or who this man and car was, or where they were taking us!
I know Chris would be ok with a mystery exploration tour but the two other foreigners who I accidentally swept up into my plan (I guess she thought we were together) and dragged along into the mystery tour, and to make matters worse he was driving away from the village we had driver through!
15 minutes later we arrived in a small village between some mountains and the driver told us we had arrived. Getting out he asked if we wanted a hotel, and if we wanted a hotel proper or to sleep in a TuLou. when he said sleep in a tulou he managed to make it sound the most uninviting place in the world, but when Chris headed his eyes lit up, He had said before he wanted to try to stay in one and he we were being offered it!
We went for the TuLou and the other couple also agreed, with more than a little trepidation!
With that we were decided and the man took us over the road and into a huge Tulou in the middle of the village, inside he showed us into the middle and told us we would have to wait for the guy with the keys.
The TuLou is a huge circular building, the outside having rows of small windows quite high of the ground and in total the TuLou must have been at least 20 meters high with four floors and around 100 smallish rooms with a huge open central courtyard. There was a big old wooden door in with a large sliding bolt across it and in the centre of the Tulou some low buildings and a small prayer space. Back in the day the single door was used to stop bandits and create a safe space inside for the tea stores and the children to play. Now however the population has dwindled fast as all of the young move out into houses nearby and the huge urban migration of China. Our TuLou had only a small population of 5-7 old women on the ground floor pottering around and living as they had their whole lives I imagine.
Eventually the guide came back with some keys and took us up to the second floor, the stairs were wooden and we were asked to please go one at a time to be careful, especially with heavy bags, and looking over we saw a suspicious gap where a 5 meter section had gone, when asking him what happened he shrugged and said it had just fallen down, very reassuring!
We eventually came to our rooms and after explaining we didn't want to all be in the same room we managed to secure a seperate room for them and for us, he explained that the rooms had been cleaned and although there was no toilet facilities inside the building the owner also had a shop over the road and we could use his toilet while the TuLou was open, however the TuLou was shut at 9pm and barred from inside so we would have to go before we went in, and then wait until 6am the next morning for the old women to open again. If we needed a break in the night every floor was equiped with a bucket at the end of the hall for our convenience!
We were still up for it and surprisingly so were the couple, turns out the girl was Italian and the guy was a Londoner, they were a couple out travelling and she had studied Mandarin at University and so comes out every year to get some practise in! After the tour came the price, he started at £5 a night but we bargained down to £3, a big more reasonable!
After we had dropped our stuff and settled in a bit we wanted to head out and see some TuLou, after bargaining with the driver for a bit we agreed on £18 for all of us to take a few hours with the driver around some especially nice local TuLou, we jumped into a different car with a young guy and some awesome Chinese dance music and drove off!
First we arrived at a hill and he told us to head on up the hill and take a look from the top, a little confused we carried on up past a toilet block to a tall yellow observation point build on the top of the hill, no signs on name showed what it was but from the top we really did get a good view of the valley and all of the TuLou around, we took some pictures and then shot off again to see various different tulou, big ones, small ones, new ones, old ones, one had even been redone out as a luxury hotel! It was nice but not quite as atmospheric and fun as our bashed up old place!
After seeing enough TuLou to sink a battleship we headed back to town and grabbed a meal in the guys restaurant, after dinner we had half an hour before curfew so walked around town in the evening light and chatted with the other couple, bought some souvenirs and some beer and snacks and went back to the hotel with 20 minutes to spare. Unfortunately they had already closed the gate and we were locked out, doh!
We knocked and the guys from the restaurant heard us, came out and got on their mobile, before long the bolt was drawn back and a tiny old lady let us in again, after we were in she explained we could easily let ourselves in and out by simple lifting this huge wooden beam and drawing it back, which she promptly did herself! Not bad for someone I would guess was over 80!
We headed up and all retired to our room to drink beer and chat and had a lovely time. At about half 11 suddenly a large mouse ran across the floor, got to the door, scratched it a bit and dived back under the bed, much to our amusement! an hour or so later they headed to bed as they had an early start in the morning and we got some sleep too, not too uncomfortable really, but Chris does hate the hard beds they prefer our here!
Zhangjiajie to Amoy
A long day of travelling from Zhangjiajie to Xiamen back by the sea, a town I have been to before but I didn't know that it's old name was Amoy! The home of Amoy sauce I imagine!
Got on my bus ok and had a 5 hour trip to Changsha, when I got off the bus I asked the bus driver how to get to the airport and he was helpful, it seems being foreign with a little chinese really makes a huge difference, he gave me some directions around the block and along and I found the direct shuttle bus, I saw a little snack booth selling some local speciality flat bread which was pretty tasty and I got the bus to the airport.
40 minutes later I was in the airport and checked in. When I checked in they took everyones passport and had them wait a few minutes before handing it back, when it came to be my turn the handed it back but told me there was a problem with my bag and I should go with security to sort it! I was surprised as apart from a ton of electronics I wasn't really carrying anything of interest! I was ushered to then end of the row of desks into a smallish room filled with x-ray equipment and between their very limited english and a bit of chinese (I didn't know the word for battery) we worked out they had X-rayed my bag and found a battery! They wanted to know where it was and to check it for...something?
The only problem being, I didn't have any batteries! After discounting an inhaler and various other bits and bobs even the security guys were stuck, they invited me behind the counter and together we compared their X-ray to the bag and found nothing, weird! in the end they gave up and just let me get on with it, however i really noticed that all the way through they were friendly and nice, lovely people!
After that fun onto the plane and another few hundred air miles under my belt, all with different carriers of course! haha. I'm pretty used to flying chinese style now and so settled in and got some chinese done at 30,000 feet, much to the hilarity of the chinese woman reading over my shoulder in the uncaring and unsubtle way chinese people have down to an art, she even starting reading some of it back out loud, haha! When we landed as soon as the wheels touched every chinese person turns on the mobile phone and then jumps to their feet and starts grabbing their bags whilst desperately calling everyone they now, even before we have even fully decelerated people are queuing up to the doors waiting to get out and the air is filled with every type of ringtone you can imagine, a bit different from landing in the UK! I waited and took my time, the bags are always last anyway!
Xiamen is a nice town but the transport sucks, they opted to give the metro a miss and use a Bus Rapid Transport system, a series of high level segregated roads and mixed ground level roads that is completely unintelligible, three lines with little directional marking and only Chinese characters everywhere. Last time I spent an hour going the wrong way away from town but this time I was prepared, except for the face that apparently the airport isn't on any route! doh! I found a shuttle bus to the train station and from there the BRT to a metro stop to meet Chris! He had made his own way to Xiamen and we met at the metro stop before he led me down a few tiny rabbit warren streets to our hostel for the night.
The hostel was comfortable enough, some chinese people turned up their noses at foreigners so we were bumped from dorms into a private and a dorm, but one toilet/shower combo room between 11 people, including many chinese girls, was never going to end well, getting a shower was a nightmare! Also for some reason all the rooms had windows into the hallway with no glass and only a net covering, letting the sound from all the rooms mingle into one, not a wise idea!
Tomorrow a new adventure! Out of Xiamen and into the wilds of FuJian province!
Monday 23 April 2012
Zhangjiajie 5
Zhangjiajie 3
Zhangjiajie 2
Zhangjiajie 1
The avatar mountains!
This was my last full day in this part of the trip before I flew off to Xiamen and I still I hadn't made it to the most famous attraction around here, the famous ZhangJiaJie mountains, the place they filmed Avatar (kind of, they took some pictures here and rendered Avatar a bit like them).
I was up and out for half 8 and met a friend I made last night before jumping together into a taxi to the bus station, in the taxi the driver found out I was going to Changsha to catch my plane the next day and recommended instead that I save some money and take a bus company he knew instead of the official one, I consented and we dropped past on the way to get their card and check the bus times, half past 8 tomorrow, from the same place, no problem! Back in the car the driver mentioned he could just take me straight to the mountain for 50rmb, £5 to go straight there instead of the hassle of waiting for a slow bus, it seemed worth it to save time so O.K., onwards!!
40 minutes or so later we arrived.... at a tiny row of shows and several large hotels in the shadow of the mountains but still they were out of reach, the driver dropped me at a tour company entrance and left me there to fend for myself, walking in I found the tour guide manager and got talking about a trip, and then the problems started.
First he considered it impossible to see the mountains in a single day, especially since it was already 10am and I was only just making enquiries, gesturing to a huge map he pointed with a stick to all the places I 'must see' and explained how over the next two days he would show me them all on his lovely air conditioned bus. Eventually I convinced him I already had a flight and only had today and he conceded to a cut down tour, only the top sights and I would miss some of the famous mountains with names I apparently should have heard of, and famous viewing platforms with poetic Chinese names that simple don't translate...
After 20 minutes came the crunch, the price, he started at 950rmb per person (£95) for the one day tour, per person! so nearly £200 for us both. This was a huge surprise for me as I had expected a pretty cheap day seeing a mountain and only paying for a few bus tickets! he obviously saw the look of disbelief on my face and so the bargaining began, eventually he offered 700rmb each for the tour, still a hell of a lot of money!
I decided bugger it I would just walk and see the damn things myself and if I missed the sights I would use the £70 to buy something nice to console myself, along with some nice postcards! As my friend and I walked away he tried to entice us by pointing out the complimentary seafood lunch, which for my was the final dealbreaker as I don't eat fish unless I can help it!
Since we still hadn't eaten breakfast we went to a nearby restaurant which being so early was empty except for the staff eating their noodles from a huge vat outside, they offered us the menu but we settled on what they were having, a cheap bowl of noodles with some spice and a tiny piece of meat, cheap and filling. As we were eating my friend started chatting to the waiter, and then another older man turned up and they both sat down, this was way beyond my chinese so I sat there and concentrated on my noodles, too much Chinese first thing in the morning is tough going and so I just waited, eventually my friend explained the plan. it turned out the waitress had said that the tour was overpriced and as we were two we could just get a local guide instead and do it ourselves. The man was the guide and he wanted 100rmb for a days guiding, in Chinese only, fair enough, the park also had a one day entry fee of 250rmb per person, so that was a total of 600rmb, plus 50rmb for a taxi to the park entrance to save us a three hour walk... In all for both of us we decided to go for it and our new friend called a taxi and after stopping for some cash, we were off!
We arrived half an hour later at the entrance to the park, a big building and a road block which is supposedly at every entry and exit to the entire mountain range! The guide was very friendly and tried to help us in any way he could, he even said in the past they would use their relatives entry card to sneak guests in for free, but now they have finger print scanners for ever guest, linked to your entry ticket so only you can use it, which also stops resale, madness!
We arrived at the park gate and this big building with 15 or so pedestrian entry gates a big ticket office/toilet complex was completely deserted except for the 10 or so staff hanging around in various uniforms. We went to the ticket office and bought our entry tickets, 250rmb each for day, and then waited whilst the same man came out of the booth and processed us through the gate into the park proper, including fingerprinting us both and linking the card to our print, crazy!
Once in the man left after waving towards an empty bus stop and so we waited there for the internal shuttle bus system to come and collect us. Now I see what they have done, closed the entrances and exits and made a free to ride shuttle bus system all around the huge mountain range area so that upfront payment let us see the mountains and ride the buses, but all the extra attractions all had extra fees!
20 minutes later the bus arrived, completely empty, and drove us to our first stop. Having the guide was invaluable, he knew we had only one day and had a perfect plan of the map in his head, he knew which bus to take, from where, where to get off and where to ask to be let off, and which queues to jump and where to go.
Soon we had skipped a few of the more uninteresting mountains with a promise we would see plenty more and arrived at one of the main attractions, the great glass elevator.
Apparently not quite the longest, or tallest, or biggest elevator in the world but this huge outside lift from the ground way up to the top of a square cliff was still mighty impressive, and also they say has the title for the worlds heaviest!
After buying out entry ticket (£2 each) we headed into the elevator, skipping the wrong way down queue lines and avoiding the metal detectors at our guides expert direction. Soon we had boarded the lift with unfortunately dirty windows and after a short wait were fired skywards to our first real glimpse of the mountains.
As soon as I exited the lift out guide motioned us out, down, round, down a tiny path to the first viewing platform, he waited while we look, admired, took lots of pictures, and then helped me take a picture of myself there. His method of photography was to take the proffered camera and duck around constantly shooting pictures so you could later choose one you liked, it seemed to work well and was at least efficient!
As soon as we finished he dismissed this area and we jumped on another bus (from the top) down the other smoother side and onto a new area.
At this new area again we jumped out and walked directly through a rabbit warren of little paths to the best viewing places, some busy but famous, and some quite unknown but still very pretty. Soon we got into a rhythm, we arrived, we all looked together, I took some pictures of mountains, he took some of me, we moved on, we did ask to see everything in a day and he was damn well going to do his best.
The mountains themselves were beautiful, huge karst mountains towering up as huge plateaus, through their life being worn away into a forest of individual peaks before slowly falling away leaving isolated monoliths towering towards the sky. In their final stage leaving huge valleys littered with the bodies of these fallen monuments.
The number of people around these places was pretty high but the guide told us this was low season and pointed out just how wide the roads and queue systems were, designed for the summer rush! The avatar creators were originally going to use a another Chinese location to film but at the last minute the government of this area offered the use of their mountains for free in return for some publicity and their strategy seems to have worked, on the day we were there an average 10,000 people came through the gates, and that was low season, high season that trebles to more than 30,000, and special holidays it can go even higher! with each one paying 250rmb a go that equals a nice earner for the government around here!
The guide tried to explain to us why we should pay an additional fee to enter a replica miao minority village, considering the way the media portrays the chinese attitude to minorities they really seem to love visiting replica villages, taking pictures with people in replica dress and buying 'traditional handycrafts', and the minorities really put a big markup on everything, even for the chinese! We explained we had seen plenty of fake traditional villages thank you and we would like to carry on without going inside this mockup, he seemed pleased, I'm not sure he likes them either!
As we walked along we saw a tiny path down the side of the hill, barely one man wide, snaking back and forth down into the valley, this, our guide informed us, was the old road to town, a good days walk through the mountains to anything resembling a road before you could get a bus, and come back the next day, now their our roads and buses and hotels and all sorts, but before this was a deserted and very remote part of China, and until 30 years ago the home of many smugglers and bandits! He even showed us some caves used be them as stashes or basic living areas.
This place would be an amazing place to explore yourself, chuck on a backpack and a tent and wander along the miles of paths, camping out and popping up into the visitors centres now and then for a shower. I would love to take a week just walking around and taking pictures, alas the government doesn't allow this and you must stay outside in the masses of surrounding hotels and bus around, limiting you to not exploring down into the valleys too much.
The different valleys all had the formations in different stages of development, the older ones more isolated and smooth pillars, the younger ones huge forests of craggy needles pointing up, each one apparently different but after a few hours of this the novelty started to wear off and the pictures and mountains started to look the same, the guide pointed out some with special stories or names which was interesting but the chinese have a remarkable talent at removing charm from a place, the more isolated less touristy places kept their breathtaking reverence but the more popular and famous landmarks and peaks were covered in people and all nicely roped off with carefully made concrete steps and buses for anything more than a slight walk. It really took the achievement out of any real mountain climbing and of course the avatar connected was well and truly milked with statues, pictures and plaques at every location from the film and the chance to be digitally added to an avatar backdrop etc, there were also young girls in replica minority clothing dragging young guys over for a photo with a minority girl for only £1, they asked me but I replied that if they wanted a photo with a foreigner I would also need £1, they decided against it and moved on to easier prey....
One famous part has a natural bridge out from the main plateu to the top of a pillar forming a huge natural arch you can walk over, very famous, and also very pretty, and also there is a railing which is literally covered in padlocks. The tradition is to buy or bring a padlock and inscribe it with you names and your wishes for love, life or family and lock it to the railing thereby ensuring it will come true. The chinese never wanting to miss a good thing then started selling padlocks with an engraving service and before long it had gotten out of hand! The place was covered with hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of padlocks along every railing around this flying island of rock, some old, some new, and hanging from anything you could lock a padlock to, trees, railings, you name it....
Another strange tradition is to wedge sticks under rocks so that they look as if they are supporting the rock, as seen in my pictures, the chinese version of cairn I guess....
Moving on we went to the highest point in the park with a nice view out and on the very top, a cable car station, which takes you down over the trees and animals (apparently including monkeys, although I didn't see any!) down to a 5 star toilet and bus stop after which we were both getting pretty tired. We asked if we had seen the best of the park and when he replied that we had we took a few pictures around a deserted stream in a valley bottom and he helped us get a shuttle to the main entrance before picking up the cheap bus back to the town. I arrived in my room tired, dirty and mountained out for a while but happy, I had beated the system and paid a discount rate for a personal guided tour, avoided buying any tacky souvenirs or avatar merchandise and seen what I really wanted to see, the mountains themselves, all the other touristy stuff can take a running jump...
Wednesday 18 April 2012
Fenghuang hotel room
Fenghuang to zhangjiajie
Woke up a bit late and missed a message from Paul (the British guy) asking to meet up which was a shame, but I hope I will catch up with him in shanghai.
I had seen a few things yesterday that I wanted to pick up including one beautiful silk painting, but in the end I couldn't justify buying it, a beautiful 1.5meter tall Buddha, maybe next time!
I also took a lot more photographs around the town but by lunchtime I think I had pretty much seen all of the things that the old town had to offer and it was time to catch the bus!
Back on the bus for only 3 hours this time (lighter traffic) and soon arrived back in zhangjiajie!
This time I was determined to find a place to stay that had a real bathroom! Luckily I had booked online with a youth hostel, it was a bit out of town and the usual Chinese bus service of dropping you off in any random old place didn't help, especially when the taxi driver didn't know it either! After a quick phone call I arrived and found a lovely clean room, pretty cheap, and a wonderful bathroom with a strong hot shower! Fantastic! By the time it was all sorted and checked in I grabbed a wonderful shower and headed to bed! A busy last full day tomorrow!
I had seen a few things yesterday that I wanted to pick up including one beautiful silk painting, but in the end I couldn't justify buying it, a beautiful 1.5meter tall Buddha, maybe next time!
I also took a lot more photographs around the town but by lunchtime I think I had pretty much seen all of the things that the old town had to offer and it was time to catch the bus!
Back on the bus for only 3 hours this time (lighter traffic) and soon arrived back in zhangjiajie!
This time I was determined to find a place to stay that had a real bathroom! Luckily I had booked online with a youth hostel, it was a bit out of town and the usual Chinese bus service of dropping you off in any random old place didn't help, especially when the taxi driver didn't know it either! After a quick phone call I arrived and found a lovely clean room, pretty cheap, and a wonderful bathroom with a strong hot shower! Fantastic! By the time it was all sorted and checked in I grabbed a wonderful shower and headed to bed! A busy last full day tomorrow!
Fenghuang in the day
2/. One of the wider Fenghuang streets
3/. The entrance to the Fenghuang park gardens
4/. A necklace hanging in the window of a shop built on one of fenghuang's bridges
5/. Boats on the river
6/. posing near the bridge
7/. view down towards the edge of town
8/. standing on the edge of the bridge over the river
9/. Cormorant fisherman's boat waiting for the fisherman to return
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