Our vacation to Anshun was a success despite a rocky
start. We left Sanmen on a Wednesday
afternoon and took a train to Ningbo (40 min. train ride) where we had to lug
our suitcases up many flights of steps since the Chinese seem to have an
aversion to escalators or elevators.
Even when they are in place (and running), you usually have to go up at
least a flight of steps to reach it.
They do have ramps next to the steps which makes the dragging a little
easier, but it is still awkward (and going down stairs is harder than going up
because of runaway luggage). We then
caught a cab to the Ningbo Airport and successfully checked our heavy bags and
extra baby bicycle seat for no extra fee.
Once in Guiyang we caught a taxi to our hotel where we spent one night
before heading to our final destination: Anshun.
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| A bit tired, but happy to be on vacation |
There is a train to Anshun, but since we hadn’t yet used the
Chinese bus system, we opted to take a public bus for the 1.5 hour drive. After buying the tickets we realized they had
a time stamp on them of 9PM when it was only noon. This led to several tense moments as we tried
to figure out what to do for nine hours when we thought it was supposed to be a
frequent bus route. Thankfully some nice
Chinese people understood what we thought was our dilemma and kindly informed
us that was the time that our ticket expired – not the leave time. We were leaving on a bus less than 30 minutes
later. The bus actually proved to be a
really nice mode of travel with luggage in tow.
It has much greater storage capacity than the trains, making it less
stressful.
Once we arrived in Anshun, we tried to catch a taxi to our
hotel but every taxi was full. Some
overly helpful bystanders then took it upon themselves to get us to our
hotel. We eventually ended up with our
luggage and Mark in a three-wheel motorized cart and Vicki and LiLi sharing a
taxi with some other random stranger. We
weren’t sure if we were actually going to make it to the hotel and Mark’s
driver didn’t even know where he was taking Mark – he just tried to follow the
taxi, not realizing we were dropping off the stranger before going to the
hotel. Further, the three vehicle
couldn’t keep up. Vicki’s taxi would be
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| Ringing a bell at the Confucian Temple |
completely out of site and then we would catch them at the next traffic
light. It was very stressful. We did make it though and successfully
checked. Although it was classified as a
4-Star hotel, it was pretty worn. It was
nice to have a lay down space for 8 full days though.
The next morning Mark built the tandem and we left trying to
ride it to at least some local attractions.
However, the weather was not cooperative. We were not out with the tandem for more than
two minutes when it started to rain. It
was more of a mist to begin, so we still pedaled for 30 minutes just to start
to get our bearings and to practice navigating with the GPS (which was off
since Google Maps doesn’t actually align with GPS points. So while (most) streets are right, we were
really riding about 0.5 miles off course according to the GPS. When we returned to the hotel we dried off,
grabbed umbrellas, and headed back out to try to navigating on foot. After getting a little lost, we finally made it to the Wang Ruofei house, which was the home of a rich “proletariat” during
the start of the communist revolution in China.
We then continued on, trying to find the Wen Miao Confucian Temple. We wandered through a traveling carved stone
market and wandered along a riverside, trying to figure out where the temple
might be. We stopped under a gazebo to
get out of the rain in order to look at our map and an old man there told us to
follow him and he would take us there.
We were a bit skeptical as he took us down some back streets with old
cobblestone roads, but he brought us to the temple! We definitely wouldn’t have found it on our
own. After walking through the temple
grounds we dec
ided to head back to the hotel, looking for a place to eat dinner
on the way home. Not far from the hotel,
we stopped at a restaurant that looked like a hotpot. While it was a hotpot, the broth base was
ambiguous. We just pointed to one on the
wall, and when it came it was too spicy for us to consume. They ended up scooping out the red peppers,
adding more water, and bringing us rice in order to make it edible for us
(though certainly not palatable!). They
also
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| Our unknown meal |
brought LiLi an egg dish and a bunch of bananas since there was no way she
would be able to eat the other dish.
We’re still unsure as to the base of the broth. We thought the bones and claws looked rodent-like,
though some people have told us it may have been a frog. We will likely never know! It was definitely a strange exercise in
saving face, with us trying to decide how much food we had to eat to not
embarrass the restaurant and the restaurant trying to help make their food
edible for us. This meal was the low point
of the trip for Vicki, who went to bed hungry that night!
On Saturday it was still raining so we still couldn’t ride
the tandem to any of the more interesting tourist destinations. We decided we couldn’t spend two days back to
back wandering around Anshun in the rain though, so we decided to try to get to
one of the destinations too far away for us to pedal to. We chose Hongfeng Lake, which was about 65K
away and was supposed to be a beautiful reservoir with many maple trees and surrounding
ethnic minority villages. We asked the
staff at the front desk of our hotel to get us a taxi there (expected price of
$60 round trip), and one hour (and $100) later we had a private driver and tour
guide (who didn’t speak English). This
was Mark’s low point of the trip. If he
had been in a door-side seat, he would have jumped out at an intersection when
still in Anshun. However, he couldn’t
convince Vicki to do so. It was quite
stressful for the tour guide to keep talking and talking to us despite us
telling her again and again “women zhi wei yi dian dian Zhongwen” (We only know
a little Chinese) and “women bu zhi dao” (we do not understand). Mark finally got the idea to pull out his
Chinese language flashcards and LiLi’s Chinese books and say “You be teacher;
us students; sit here”. So the tour guide
sat between us and we practiced our pronunciation. From that point on she (largely) stopped
trying to explain the history of the area to us and just became a companion,
which was nice. She also became fairly
competent at using our handheld electronic translator, which made the stress of
communicating drastically decrease.
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| Happy to eat a good lunch with our tour guide and driver |
As we made it to the town with Hongfeng Lake, the tour guide
asked if we would like to eat lunch before going to the lake. We agreed that was a good idea. The first place the driver stopped looked
like a hotpot from the night before, and when we told them “bu la” (no spicy),
they decided it best to take us elsewhere.
The driver then talked to people on the street and made a few u-turns as
he drove and we thought for sure we might never get lunch or get to Hongfeng
Lake, but alas we made it to a backwoods restaurant. Our tour guide ordered for us and we ended up
with a delicious meal of eggplant (not slimy!), rice, an egg dish, fish, and
some type of root. We finally made it to
Hongfeng Lake in the early afternoon. We
bought our entrance ticket, and soon found out that Hongfeng Lake looked like a
foreclosed tourist spot. And, none of
the destinations “included” in the entrance fee are accessible unless you
charter a
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| Hongfeng Lake... |
boat. Since it was a rainy
day, and the place was disappointing looking already, our tour guide negotiated
the cost of the boat down from Y500 to only Y300 – about $45. This was turning out to be an expensive trip
to an awful destination! None of the
islands turned out to be very interesting, and our tour guide, who had come
along to learn about the place since she had never taken a group there before,
was confused as to why it was a destination at all. At least we got a good lunch!
With rain predicted for Sunday as well, we decided it was
safer to walk Anshun in the rain then risk going to another disappointing
tourist trap. We also wanted
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| Anshun Bai Tai (White Pagoda) |
to look for
a baby carrier like we saw all of the locals wearing. We ended up covering quite a few miles,
walked through a nice local park around a lake, and visited Anshun’s white
pagoda that was built in 1326. While
certainly not how we hoped the vacation would be, this day didn’t really
feature anything negative, which made is a positive day, right? The best part actually was that while walking
back to our hotel, we found a great bakery that made delicious cookies and
muffins. We stocked up our room so we
could hopefully never be hungry again on this trip!
On Monday the weather finally cleared. 55 degrees and cloudy! We pedaled the tandem 35K to Tian Long Tun
Bao, which was an old stone village largely unchanged since the Ming Dynasty
(14th century). The homes are
built of stone and the people around here are the Buyi minority, made up
largely of farmers. They wear distinctive
clothes – which were not just for the edification of tourists (unlike the Miao
at Hongfeng Lake), because we saw lots of locals working out in the fields in
these outfits miles from the actual tourist attraction. Not quite sure
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| The stone houses |
what to expect of this
destination, we were pleasantly surprised to find an awesome Buddhist temple on
a mountain with some beautiful hiking paths and ancient walls. The village itself, while old, was much more
touristy, with the main road through it being a thoroughfare for Chinese crafts
(which to their credit did seem to largely be locally made) and antiques. Overall, it was a pretty neat destination
that is undersold in the information we could find online before the trip.
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| Buying a baby carrier |
When we got back to our hotel in Anshun that evening, we
decided to ask the hotel staff if they could tell us where to find a baby
carrier like we see all the locals using.
The one staff member offered to take us to get one the next morning. While 10AM the next morning was a bit late
for us since we had other places we wanted to go, we really wanted a baby
carrier and to honor the woman’s generosity.
She was actually ready to go by 9:30AM the next morning. We then took a taxi to a little side street
market where there were at least four sellers of these carriers. In the States, these retail for over $100
each. We ended up buying three different
varieties of the carrier for less than $35 combined. We also got LiLi a “watermelon suit” – a
fuzzy hooded blanket they wrap their kids in before putting them in the baby
carrier. We were back to the hotel by
10:10AM – well worth a delay in our day’s plans since we got such awesome baby
carriers! The nice woman who took us
there wouldn’t even let us pay for the taxi (only $1) or give her a tip. We tried to explain to her how much they were
worth to us and that we’d like to give her a tip for helping us find them, but
she refused. Such generosity!
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| Happy to finally be on the bike! |
Since the weather was still (relatively) clear, we wanted to
go explore some more local sites on the tandem.
So we hurriedly changed and were out pedaling by 10:30AM. We decided that since we had previously
budgeted two days for Huanggushu National Park, we would head there since if we
didn’t get to see much because of our morning delay, we would at least have a
game plan for the next time we went. The
park was 45K away, or about 2 hours.
While it was supposed to be a “Provincial Road” we would take all the
way there, which in past experience here in China are relatively well
maintained, this particular road would sometimes devolve to a very rutted dirt
road, where we could pedal faster than the vehicles could travel. The little villages along the way were fun
though. And there were so many more
instances of cows in the road than we encounter back home in Sanmen.
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| LiLi knows how to attract a crowd |
However, Chinese driving habits drove us a bit crazy
here. For instance, horns (which are the
loudest horns we’ve ever heard in our lives) are used much too frequently. And they just keep honking the whole time
they are passing you. Also, if an
oncoming vehicle is bigger than you and they think your lane is the nicer
route, they will just take it. Large
vehicles prefer to make left hand turns from the right lane and vice
versa. Less of a turning radius
then? We’re not sure on the logic, but
it can be scary. Lights in the dark are
also optional, even for large vehicles like public buses. And looking before pulling out into the road
is completely optional. Apparently
oncoming traffic is supposed to respond to you?
Since our speeds are so low, these driving habits are much less
dangerous for us than they probably sound here; they are largely just
incredibly annoying.
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| Enjoying some field corn |
Well, anyway, we made it to Huanggushu around lunch time and
decided to find a nice place to eat. The
restaurant we ended up at just had us point at food items (as is often protocol
here) so we had no idea what we were actually getting. The Chinese are usually good at telling us
when we have ordered enough food (when pointing you have no idea preparation
method or portion size). This restaurant
didn’t tell us though, so we had way too much food when it finally came. The food was actually incredibly good, but we
sure got a “Yankee Discount” when the bill came. We can often eat out for $2-$5 for our
family, and at a really nice place it might be about $20. This bill was $45. This rarely happens to us though, so we just
chalked it up to a learning experience.
We could have easily asked the price before completing our order – there
were warning signs that this place might be expensive.
Since lunch took so long (it was pretty slow service) and we
knew the ride home would take a lot longer (we did a lot of descending (1000ft)
to reach our destination), we only had
about 1.5 hours to do anything. So
instead of buying
the park entrance ticket, we decided to try to find the stone
village that was supposed to be nearby.
We never did find it (we think we may have missed it by a couple
kilometers), but we did enjoy a nice day
of riding. Since we were pushing
nightfall (we had a headlight and taillight on the bike), we decided to take an
“expressway” (not closed to bikes) that largely paralleled the bumpy provincial
road. Unfortunately though, the traffic
on it was a lot faster and the scenery was less interesting. It was easier for LiLi to sleep though
without all the bumps of the provincial road.
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| Guanyin Temple Cave Buddha |
On Wed. we went to Dragon Palace (Lónggōng) Cave. It was about a 40K ride from the hotel (also
1000ft descending). This was a really
neat place with a water filled limestone cave
that you take a boat through to
see all of the stalactites. Right nearby
there is also a Buddhist temple built inside a cave. We were pretty tight on time if we wanted to
try to beat dark, so we didn’t know if we would actually
make it to the cave
temple, but we did and it was worth it (though we did get back a little after
dark). It was a pretty unique one. Instead of riding the same way back to the
hotel, we decided to take a road that had a sign pointing “to Anshun”. It ended up being a beautiful road through
lots of small farming villages. The
second best road of the trip - fun times!
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| Entrance to the limestone cave via boat |
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| Limestone stalactites |
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| Unique waterfall in the Tianxing Scenic Area |
On Thursday, our last full day in Anshun, we headed back to
Huangguoshu National Park. This park is
famous for the Huangguoshu waterfall – the largest in China. Since we had been there two days prior, we
knew right where to go to buy our tickets and headed straight for the first
stop: a small waterfall in an area with lots of peacocks. LiLi was so impressed with the hundreds of
peacocks walking around us. She would
have loved to stay there all day.
However, based on all the tourist spots listed on our ticket, we figured
we only had about 45 min. at each location.
On to the next stop!
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| Crazy carved limestone valley |
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| Cool road climb to Huangguoshu |
45 minutes later (yes, when we were supposed to be done with
the second attraction), we finally arrived at the second stop (after another
big descent too (1000 ft) – so the way out was going to be even slower!). I guess our plans were going to change a
little! This spot was the Tianxing
Scenic Area and was so beautiful. They
built a bunch of stepping stones and paths through a river surrounded by
limestone which had been carved by the river.
The start of this was pretty crowded, but (thankfully?) most Chinese
tourists only come for the picture, not the experience. So by the first bailout, almost all of the
people were gone. This scenic area may
have been our favorite part of the trip.
When you finally exited on the far side, you then have to take a bus
back. But most people on the bus just
want to go to the next tourist spot, so it was only at the last minute that we
realized the bus was driving past where our tandem was parked! We managed to successfully jump off the bus
though, and only had to walk a little ways back. We then had a beautiful hill climb out of the
valley to get to the main attraction: the Huangguoshu waterfall.
Since this was the main attraction, it was also the most
crowded. It was also the only place
where we saw any other Westerners during our whole vacation. There were about five of them here. This waterfall ended up being a bit
disappointing. It is taller than Niagara
Falls, but the actual water flow is so much less, making it that much less
grand. It did have a natural cave carved
out behind it though, so you can walk behind the “water curtain” of the
waterfall. The Tianxing Scenic Area was
much more grand. On the way out we
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| Huangguoshu Waterfall |
bought some more boiled sweet potatoes (our staple food of the day, along with
Oreos, since we knew we didn’t actually have time to stop and eat), ate some
Gu, and started the ride home – only about 40 minutes behind schedule. We actually felt a lot stronger that evening
that we had two nights prior when doing the same ride, so we made it back to
the hotel only about 20 min. after dark.
On Friday, our journey home began. We checked out of our hotel and took a taxi
to the bus station, where the staff was very helpful (they wouldn’t even let
Vicki carry a suitcase) in making sure we got on the correct bus, which was
mostly full. The one employee even went
on ahead of us to ask some people to move, so that we could have seats next to
each other. Once in Guiyang, we caught a
taxi straight to the airport and again checked in successfully without any
extra weight charge or a fee for LiLi’s bicycle seat. Since by the time we would arrive in Ningbo,
all the trains to Sanmen would be done for the day, we called “Taxi Jackie” (a
local entrepreneur who knows a little English and now has a very successful
taxi business with very nice cars and (mostly) safe drivers. He can sometimes be unreliable though, since
he always says “yes” even if he didn’t understand your request) to have one of
his drivers meet us at the airport and drive us the two hours home. It was actually quite nice to not have to lug
our stuff through a train station, and instead have a guy with a sign with our
name on it waiting to pick us up. He
even had oranges for us in the car.
LiLi was so excited to get home and see all of her
toys. Unfortunately, we were greeted
with the smell of rotting food. The
power had gone out very soon after we left on vacation, and the property
management folk (who knew we were gone since they are the ones who register us
with the local police) missed checking our apartment to reset the breaker. Our freezer was filled with nastiness (shrimp
and crab). Cleaning that was not exactly
what we wanted to do once finally home…
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| Behind the Huangguoshu Waterfall |
Overall, it was a good vacation. We pedaled for 18 hours in the last four full
days. LiLi is an amazing toddler –
always pushing us to ride more than we even want to! It was interesting to see another province
and to realize how wealthy Zhejiang Province is in comparison. It was also neat to see so many of China’s
ethnic minority groups since the Han Chinese make up 92% of China and 99.2% of
Zhejiang Province. We also learned to
always pay the hotel deposit in cash, because then the hotel can’t forget to
take a hold off your bank account! Two
weeks on, the hotel hadn’t cleared the hold, so we had nearly $1000 in our
Chinese bank account that we couldn’t touch.
When we called the hotel, they had “lost” the deposit receipt and said
they couldn’t clear it. And our bank
said we would have to wait for it to clear automatically (after one
month). Thankfully, the hotel finally
found the paperwork and cleared it for us.
China is full of little learning experiences…
We have a lot more to update regarding our recent weekend
trips to Linhai and Hangzhou, so hopefully it won’t be so long between
updates. We considered shortening this
once since it is so late, but decided we wanted the written memory of the trip.
