Hua Shan - Part 1
If I came to China for one reason alone, I can faithfully say that it was to climb Hua Shan. (Hua Mountain) Never in my life have I done such an intense climb – and I do mean CLIMBING, as in I had to use the moves I’ve learned in rock climbing to manage some of the peaks we encountered – and I did it “alone”. I think this mountain is my greatest achievement to date. It took physical endurance, I had to massage my waning social skills, and it took mental preparation. All of which, I’ll explain as I go. I’m so proud of myself and yet, it was as grueling and frustrating as blissful and amazing, so it isn’t all wonderful bits and I actually learned a lot about myself when I got into some tough situations. I’ve found that I’m more of an introvert than I ever realized, preferring to do things alone and on my own schedule. I also crave solitude more than I ever did in the States, maybe because I’m without privacy here in Xi’an – or a sense of self.
I woke up this morning with a deep scratch in my throat. My body aches from the climbing of the past two days and I’m a little weary from the lack of sleep the night before last, so, I’ve decided to do some catching up on writing so that I can let my body rest after the ordeal I’ve put it through. I’ve got one more place I’d like to see in Xi’an before really completing this trip, but if I don’t manage it today, I can do it tomorrow before checking out of the hostel. And to be honest, the trip is really already very complete for me, what with the warriors and Hua Shan.
I was ready to go by 8am on Thursday morning. I didn’t have an exact plan in mind, but I knew I wanted to go to Hua Shan, find a hotel, do a little climbing the first day, sleep a bit, get up early to see the sunrise as the guidebook suggested, explore some more, and come home on Friday. I didn’t know how I was going to get there and I didn’t have a reservation for a room. I had a liter of water and no food. (I tend to go to extremes when trekking, assuming always that I’ll “manage” no matter what comes along. This, however, is a honed skill from traveling with a father who also has a sense of adventure when it comes to trifles like food…water, however, he doesn’t kid around about.)
I’ve learned a valuable lesson so far, and I’ll insert it here. Anything I think a local or someone who speaks Chinese can do better than me just isn’t so. I’m a capable human being and so far, I’ve found that when I ask someone who speaks Chinese to help me with something, either they get hoodwinked as well, or the outcome is similar to what I’ve managed with my small arsenal of words. This is such an important lesson and I’m grateful for it because I don’t think I would have tried to go to Hua Shan had I assumed that such a difficult journey was impossible for someone who can’t speak Chinese. That said though, I’ve also come to the conclusion that while China is set up for tourists, in the way of migrants who set up stands to sell overpriced baubles to Westerners, the people are very reluctant to actually help a Westerner get from point A to point B – without, of course, fleecing them of lots of RMB. The one thing I’ve heard over and over in Xi’an is, “You’re a Westerner; you have LOTS of money. You can afford it.”
The guidebook told me, somewhat vaguely, that there were several buses heading to Hua Shan from just southeast of the train station. It also mentioned trains to a stop near Hua Shan but the bus sounded more direct, with less chance of finding myself in the middle of nowhere. I made the mistake of mentioning my vague plan to my Serbian roommate, Lana, who has been teaching English in a town near Shanghai for the past year. This girl was a character and a half. She’s a year younger than me and the first night we walked around together, she treated me like a child, a personal pet, even. She asked very patronizingly about my history and interrupted me around the point when I said I had worked at my first job out of college for nearly three years to ask, “Wait, how old are you?” When I told her I was a year older than her, she exclaimed in horror that she had been operating on the assumption that I was 17 or 18 and hadn’t “done” anything yet in life. Her attitude changed dramatically. Earlier in the evening, though, she had said she was going to go to the train station to help me find the bus to Hua Shan and no amount of politely declining swayed her. She still stuck firmly to this objective after I told her my age, though I could tell she felt a little less needed. As if to assure herself more than me, she kept saying, “It’s because you speak such poor Chinese. You might get yourself sent to some other mountain, who knows?!?”
I’m getting off on a tangent here, but two “funny” things happened with Lana that are worth mentioning. Actually, tons of funny stuff happened, but I don’t want to write about Lana when I’ve got HUA SHAN to describe. Actually, I think I’ll create a little entry just for her. Later.
So Lana and I left the hostel around 8am and took a bus to the train station. She was terribly worried about pickpockets and I could tell she was nervous and preoccupied as we looked for the buses to Hua Shan. An aggressive salesman came up to us and hawked the single phrase, “Hua Shan cheap. Hua Shan cheap?” And Lana and I began bickering. She didn’t want to talk to the man in the first place which made it difficult. He’d say something, and I’d ask what did he say and she’d say, “Let’s go somewhere else.” The problem was, there wasn’t anywhere else to go. The man started by saying one way was 30kuai and round-trip was 60kuai, but Lana managed to exacerbate him and then he pulled a map out of his pocket and started shouting that the price was 300kuai. Lana actually turned to me at this point and said, “Maybe you shouldn’t go. I don’t like this guy.” Right. She wasn’t really helping at all and so I told her I would go and check on a train to Hua Shan and that she should go and purchase her bus ticket. For some reason, she wouldn’t leave me alone. She was determined to “help” me. She asked if I would go with her to the bus station so she could buy her long-distance ticket for later that day and then she’d be more focused on my “problem” and could help me. Even though it was early, the day was already beginning to get blistery and I wanted to be done with Lana. But, feeling a little doubtful about my whole plan, I agreed and we made our way to the bus station. She’d been there before, but of course, completely lost her way and we walked for 45 minutes around and around looking for the station. The characters in between the bus and train stations were a mixture of shady and she didn’t want to ask for directions. I was losing my patience when she finally saw a landmark that looked familiar and asked someone where to go. We bought her ticket and were heading back to the train station when she started imploring me not to go. She was trying to talk me into going to Hua Shan with the hostel because she didn’t think I was capable of making it there alone. I stopped her, shook her hand and told her firmly that I appreciated her advice and help up to that point, but that I was going to figure it out alone. She almost started insisting on helping again until I cut her a look that made her understand that it was time for us to part ways. She wished me luck, asked me to call my parents, and left, heading in the wrong direction. I called after her to tell her she was heading away from the hostel and she said, “No, no I’m not. You’re just turned around, is all”. I tried, I really did.
I went back to the place where we had met the aggressive man. He was gone and in his place were a dozen or so women. One woman came up and repeated the phrase the man had used, “Hua Shan cheap.” I told her I wanted to go to the base of the mountain and not on the all-around tour. She told me 60kuai. I told her I wasn’t leaving until the next day. She told me 30kuai. The guidebook said the price should be 20kuai so I haggled with the woman for a bit, but she held firm. A couple of times I said, no thanks and walked a little ways away from her to see if she’d say 20kuai was okay, but she’d get angry, come back to me with 30kuai and finally I said okay. She brought me to a small touring bus and I paid a man and was given a receipt. They told me to sit in the front seat of the bus, as I was the last one making it full, which meant I didn’t have to wait at all. There were two foreign guys sitting in the first seat behind me and I said “hello”, sat down, and the driver started revving his engine and we took off. The aircon wasn’t working so we opened windows and the sun managed to rest right in my eyes no matter what direction we were heading in. This made me sneeze a lot and so I closed my eyes and fell asleep. The bus chugged along and I dozed in between reading a bit and two hours later, we pulled into a dusty widespread town at the foot of an imposing mountain range. The length of the drive, a woman had sat with her back to the road screeching at the mostly-Chinese passengers about I don’t know what and I was thankful to be in the front seat out of the reach of her droning monologue. The two foreign guys weren’t so lucky, as she sat right next to them. Later, I would hear, in detail, about the frustrations caused by this seating arrangement.
The driver pulled up to what looked like a restaurant and turned off the engine. The tour guide started herding passengers out of the vehicle until one Chinese woman refused to leave. She spoke English and told us that the bus wasn’t moving for another two hours. The first stop before going to Hua Shan was the Chinese medicinal doctor and the passengers were forced to see the doctor, maybe purchase some medicine and eat lunch before going forward on their Hua Shan tour. This was my cue to look for the trailhead up the mountain. At this point I started chatting with the two foreigners. Karri spoke accent-less English, with a twinge of the “don’t-ya-know” I assign to the Northern Midwest. He told me he had lived in Minnesota for most of his childhood before his family returned to his native Finland. His traveling partner was Yishay, a 26 yr old from Israel, just out of the Navy. All three of us had the same goal in mind, so we shouldered our packs and headed off in search of the road to Hua Shan. We made it to an entrance gate only to be told we needed to head to the other entrance gate for the hike up the backside of the mountain to the North peak. We found a taxi and took a short ride to the Western entrance.
Hua Shan is a collection of 5 peaks with the Northern-most being the smallest. The mountain range rises out of a completely flat area making it even more imposing from the base. The air quality was horrendous and a haze sheltered all five peaks from our view. In other words, I had no idea what I was getting myself into, save the amazing descriptions from my guidebook. The mountain has had ancient significance and is considered one of the holiest in the Taoist community. The mountain is believed to be sacred because a man fought with a god to win the mountain for the people. Supposedly one of the Leaders during the 3 Kingdoms era played Chinese chess with a god for the rights of the mountain for the people. I would encounter Taoist temples all along the hike.
The three of us set off, chatting, getting to know each other and not thinking much about what lay ahead of us. A river flowed to our left as we hiked the well-paved path from the entrance up to the first major altitude gain. These mountains, being tall, steep and narrow, make for amazing views and intense gains in altitude. From where we stood, we could see that our mountains were made of stone with only stubborn vegetation managing to make a home in cracks and ledges all the way up. There wasn’t room for switchbacks and after a point, we started literally climbing stairs cut into the stone of the mountain. We stopped often, having started the hike at midday when the sun was most cruel. Karri and I continued to compare the amount of sweat we were shedding, while Yishay followed along behind us barely breaking a sweat on his brow. Karri and I talked about all sorts of things and Yishay was mostly quiet and contemplative, speaking only to make a joke here and there and to offer insight into some deeper subjects we covered. The three of us together made for an excellent traveling group. Even though our abilities ranged greatly – me feeling like I was right in the middle of the two – no one seemed upset with the overall pace of our group. As I said, they were perfect companions for the trek up.
