Wulingyuan

Well, Becky's more or less regaled you all with the epic travelling we've just endured, between Shanghai and Hong Kong. In my defence, I was tired and I honestly thought that what we could hear from our hotel in Zhangjiajie City was a dog barking in the distance. Yes, it turns out it must have been a brothel. And yes, never trust a cab driver when you're desperate, anywhere in the world; I'm so naive. Another detail that i don't think Bex mentioned is that we were so petrified that we barricaded our hotel door with ruck sacks to prevent anyone getting in (pictured above right, with our travel towels drying over them [we daren't use the hotel ones]).

In the long run however, I'm willing to bet that this is the story we'll be boring dinner guests with for years to come.

Back to the story: after having caught a series of trains and buses we finally allowed a fellow passenger on the last local bus to Zhangjiajie village to guide us to a 'luxury hotel' (at least that's the phrase she pointed to in the Mandarin phrase book). Well, at least it was safe, and we eventually worked out how to switch the hot water on too. The awkward part was when the girl didn't leave us alone - including knocking on the door and standing there wordlessly after i thought we'd shaken her off. Turns out that she was expecting a tip for walking us to the hotel; well she went away when we gave here some money.

When you ignore the herds of yakking Chinese tourists, Wulingyuan easily achieves the distinction of being one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. The whole area, hundreds of kilometres square, is decorated with these amazing stone pillars and monoliths. Between these huge blocks run very lovely, not to say inviting, streams with shoals of fish glinting here and there. The vegetation is quite hard to describe, sort of jungle-like, with the trees and shrubs having a fine leaf structure, just as you might see on a Chinese ink painting. Bamboo sticks out of the soggy undergrowth on the slopes at the top of the mountains and in the valleys, adding to the distinctly sino feel of the region. The walls of these incredibly massive stone pillars (i can't think of a better word than 'pillar') are breathtaking in their size and sheerness; some of them are over 200m straight up. The colour contrast between the green green vegetation and the expansive rock faces of these pillars is quite exquisite too.

Awe at all this stunning scenery was kept in check by coaches unloading packs of Chinese tourists walking up and down shouting at the top of their voices, each tour group wearing identical prime coloured baseball caps. Nature takes second place to a shouting match on a mobile phone for most it seems. When you're a businessman, you're a business man - no matter where you go. So you go hiking in a suit, and in some cases high heels for the ladies; maybe loosening a tie as a token gesture to nature. Some of these gents even had a laptop bag as they puffed up the mountain-side.

Along the entire trip, we must have seen less than five Westerners, and even then at a distance. Becky and I were definitely a novelty - groups would start calling "Hel'oo" in high pitched tones in an effort to get a response from us whenever we walked past them. Others would shove cameras in our faces. Trying to communicate back was normally met with laughter cascades, especially when we attempted to use the semi-useless Lonely Planet Mandarin phrase book. Judging by the looks we got, anyone'd think that we'd stated (with Pythonesque melodrama): "My hovercraft is full of eels".

The way from Zhangjiajie to Hong Kong was otherwise a breeze. I suspect that by this stage Becky and I knew the ropes (even if it didn't consciously feel that way). Changsha, incidentally is the birthplace of The Party so, having time to kill, we went to their first Headquarters. This is still something of a pilgrimage destination for the remaining true believers, judging by a holy shrine to the Chairman in the main building. The picture, left, shows me in a rather mischievous mood, planting incense before a minature statue of the Great Leader. Still i got a nice, and cheap, leather wallet from one of the shops outside peddling revolutionary mementos.

Needless to say, Hong Kong is a world apart from all of this. We're still getting used to that.

rgds
//richard
(Hong Kong)