HuangShan 2

The China experience. After a while you start wondering what this means … Is it the language? Is it the way people look? Let me tell you about our trip to HuangShan.

As always before we go on a trip, we do some research in order to gather some information regarding the destination and the way how to get there. The easiest way to get to HuangShan is to go by bus. It only takes you 5 to 6 hours. This was confirmed by a travel agency and one of my colleagues. So we booked a bus ticket to HuangShan leaving on Friday morning at 6 am. The bus left a little bit later, but that was no big deal. The bus seemed decent enough. No heating though and water everywhere on the floor and no clue were it came from. Anyway, around 11am we were wide awake and ready to arrive at Tunxi (the final bus destination). At 12pm I saw a big mountain to my left and so I awoke Eva mentioning that we were almost there. This was, however, not the case… People were getting off the bus on the most remote places while others were still getting on the bus. We were puzzled. At 1pm I finally saw a real bus stop and I wanted to get off, but the bus driver told me this was not the final destination. In the mean time unofficial taxi drivers were making us crazy, trying to get us into their taxi. We decided to stay on the bus, as there was no mountain in sight. At 2 pm we finally arrived at Tunxi station only to get into a taxi to get to TangKou. The hotel was okay but sadly enough, no hot water.

One of the reasons why we wanted to go to HuangShan this autumn was to ‘avoid’ Chinese tourists. They are like a flock of birds, travelling to the same place at the same time. This weekend was not in the holiday season and it was raining, so we expected less tourists. During the climb the Chinese we encountered seemed totally unprepared: at best they had running shoes, wore normal clothing (to go to work) and all the women carried handbags … It was like they went to work. We even saw men in suits. Unbelievable.
At last we reached the top, and what we saw there, amazed us even further. Chinese by the hundreds, making so much noise (most of the people on the top came by cable car). Most of them were in some kind of tourist group with a lot of plastic raincoats in variable, flashy colours with the guides speaking from loud speakers. Cacophonous! We instantly got very annoyed. We tried to outrun every group, but there was no escaping. We constantly heard loud Chinese tourists, who were smoking where they were not allowed to smoke, spitting (that we will never get used to), getting into your way (for some reason they do not react properly when you are walking head on). After one hour we had enough. Cold and wet we wanted to head downwards.

After collecting our things, we took the “public” bus back to TunXi. I say “public”, because we never saw a bus station. A really friendly lady just said: “Wait here, the bus will come.” At 4pm we were finally in a dry place on the bus. After 10 min we noticed that the bus was going in circles around the village and the bus conductor kept shouting out of the window. (Dao Tunxi ba! - We have seen worse advertising campaigns!) Finally after half an hour the bus was completely full plus 3. Amazing how the “public” system works, it’s like they are competing with official taxis, unofficial taxis and other buses.
But anyway, we were on our way and arrived with no further problems at our next hotel.

After a hot shower we were off for dinner. Getting food is always an adventure, so after this exhausting day we chose a restaurant in an international hotel. We ordered some dishes and after 5 min the waitress came back with the news that the fish I had ordered, was out. “Okay, what do you have,” I asked? “Do you have this?” She checked in the kitchen and came out with a positive answer. 15 min after that, another waitress came and said that there was no more of the fish I ordered. I got frustrated, and asked again: “So what do you have?! Do you have this?”. “Yes”, was the answer. We ate our soup, vegetables and meat, but, still no fish. Eva got tired of waiting so I asked for the bill, but I was not going to pay for the fish I never got. Guess what? It was not on the bill. There never was any fish…