Hefei – A Thoroughly Unimpressive City

On Friday we went to Hefei. Danny had a conference there and I figured I may as well check it out. Hefei isn’t terribly interesting. All the websites we looked at pretty much described it as an ok place for a layover but not really worth visiting. It is actually pretty large in population, about the size of Philly, but it is mostly an industrial city without a lot of sights worth seeing.

We got in Friday night and went to the guest house at University of Science and Technology of China. Their campus is one of the nicest things to see in Hefei, although when we arrived it was dark and they do not keep it well lit at night. Usually when we travel I am super motivated to go see stuff as soon as we arrive but since there isn’t a lot to see in Hefei, we just checked in and went to bed early. The guest house was ok; it pretty much looked like a generic three star hotel. For some idiotic reason the hotel is cash only, kind of weird but whatever. China has a cash based economy. Danny always likes to point out there is less identity theft; I wonder if there are more robberies though. I’m pretty sure the government here would never release statistics on it and there is no way to know.



Saturday morning when we looked around USTC’s campus we found it had a pretty lake with water lilies and some pretty rocks.

That night Danny found a little night market while I was resting and since there was nothing else to do, I went with him to check it out. It was just a few booths set up selling food. I snapped a few pictures of it and then decided it wasn't very exciting and headed toward the juice shop across from it.
I don’t know how we find these lunatics but as we were walking away from the market this really drunk guy started yelling at me. I kept walking. Then he ran up to me and tried to shove me. At that point Danny stepped in front of me and asked him in Chinese what his problem was. I didn't really understand what he said but apparently he was pissed off I took his picture and said some bizarre crazy stuff about having already died once. Danny fended him off and told him we didn't want his picture and we were only interested in the neighborhood. He kept trying to shove Danny, who was standing in front of me at that point. It was pretty futile since he was a really little guy. I think I might have been able to take him even if Danny weren't there. A few seconds later his friends chased after him, one of them dragged him away as they apologized profusely in Chinese pantomiming drinking to me with apologetic gestures since they assumed I didn't speak Chinese. How have we had two complete strangers try to pick fights with us on the street in less than one year? Is this normal in China or do we just have really bad luck. We weren't even in bad neighborhoods. I lived in New York for five years and never had these kind of problems.

We spent the day in Sanhe Ancient Town. It is about an hour from the city center. We took a bus for 12 RMB each, about $2 a person. There wasn’t a ton to do but it was a cute little town. They had a pretty gate, a pagoda and some old fashioned buildings.


 

The most exciting part was our boat ride. It was 20 RMB a person, about $3, to take a ride for about twenty minutes with a live performance of Chinese music. They also give you tea and sunflower seeds, which I didn’t really care for. The performers were really good and they all dressed up in traditional costumes.




 While in Sanhe we also visited the childhood home of a Nobel Prize winning physicist named Yang Zhenning. Danny met him on his last trip to China 10 years ago. He was in his 80’s and married to a 30 year old woman who used to be his student.





After we got back we had dinner at a shopping mall called Wanda Plaza where I was hoping to find some western food. It is a pretty fancy mall complete with Gucci selling $500 shoes. The food was not as impressive. The closest I came to western food was pizza with sauce that tasted like ketchup and fruit and corn as toppings. Danny got the “Wild Germ Hates Soup with Crisp Skin.” That’s right. Google translator strikes again!


The next day we checked out Lord Bao's Park. It pretty much is the only sight we read about in Hefei that tourists might be interested in. It is basically a big park with a couple of monuments in memory of this guy named Lord Bao who was known in Chinese history to be a very honest and fair judge that the emperor liked but all the nobles hated. He had three guillotines – a dragon shaped guillotine to kill royalty, a lion to kill nobles, and a dog to kill commoners that he had sentenced. The park was a pretty place to stroll around and it had a few monuments that were mildly interesting.






















I think at this point in our China travels we really have done so much sightseeing that another pagoda and another tomb is just not as fascinating though. Hefei also really isn’t that impressive. I was pretty happy to head back to Shanghai at the end of the weekend. It isn’t my favorite city but at least I can find some decent places to go for dinner. Danny was stuck there for a whole week but I think he doesn't mind it as much since he has work to do anyway and a bunch of our friends are at the conference with him.

Yellow Mountain

For Chinese Labor Day we decided to take a trip to Huang Shan or Yellow Mountain. I sort of had to talk Danny into going because he reached the point where he is sick of traveling. By the end of the holiday Danny had made a “sweeping declaration” (much like they do in How I Met Your Mother) no more traveling in China on Chinese holidays. We’ll see how long that lasts…

Traveling during Chinese holidays is exceptionally crowded and not always the most pleasant.  We tried to recruit some friends to join us but they all decided to stay home and hide from the massive crowds. I have to admit, it is my fault we went and got stuck in so many lines but the only time I have off work is Chinese holidays.

We took a bus tour that left from Shanghai South Railway Station. It is probably the cheapest way to do road trips but you need to speak some Chinese or go with someone who does. Otherwise you will have no idea what is happening. As always Danny got stuck being my translator. He’s a pretty good sport about it.

The bus left Shanghai at 7:30 am. The guide described our itinerary and gave some history about the places we were going. At first I had Danny translate everything he said for me but eventually I gave up and watched Game of Thrones on his tablet. I finished all the episodes over the course of the holiday's bus rides. Now I've moved on to reading the books. The guide talked for over an hour. I think most of the other people found him interesting, but I only understood one or two words a sentence.

We stopped at a few rest stops along the way.  They are similar to American rest stops except they are dirtier. They have mostly squat toilets which smell horrible, the food is pretty much gross, and there are way more smokers than in the states. Half the people on our tour smoked. It was really gross. The bus smelled every time they came back from smoke breaks.

After a few hours we got lunch. It was one of the Chinese banquet meals with tons of meat. I skipped the lunch and packed some snacks instead.

After a long drive we arrived at a historic town called Xidi. The guide led everyone around and told them the history of the place. Danny and me decided to walk on our own. That way he didn't have to translate. It was really pretty. You had a nice view of the mountains from the town.  It had all the old fashioned buildings with ceramic tiled flying rooftops and a pretty entrance gate. There was a creek that ran along the streets. A few buildings were mini museums and from the inside they looked a lot like the room from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon where they had that fight scene.  I was surprised there wasn’t much food for sale there but there were tons of souvenir shops. I bought a little vase.

 

One fun thing about Xidi was everywhere we went we saw art students sketching. They were on a class trip and staying at the hotel just outside the town. Some of them were really good but their paintings were almost all identical. The Chinese education system doesn’t really foster creativity. It was clear they were taught a very particular process for how to draw the scenery.  Their technical skills were awesome though.

                                 

After Xidi we drove to Tunxi Old Street in Huangshan City to have dinner and look around. We found a western restaurant with a really cute decor and mediocre pasta. The buildings looked pretty unauthentic but it was ok. There were a bunch of stores around that specialized in selling ink plates and other materials for calligraphy.

We headed back to our hotel for the night. It was ok but had no real decor to speak of. We didn't want to put time into planning a trip but if we had I'd have found somewhere cuter the first night and stayed on top of the mountain the second night. We didn't spend much time there anyway. The guide gave us a wake up call at 4:00 am and we had to be on the bus for Huangshan by a quarter to 5.

Surprisingly everyone was on time. It took us about an hour to get to the mountain. We had to take a shuttle bus to the base of the mountain. It wound around really scary curves with extremely steep drops on the side of the road and no sort of safety rail.













The mountain looked really beautiful but really crowded. The Chinese government even sent in soldiers to help with crowd control although they didn't do much. I was itching to start hiking but we had paid for tram tickets up the mountain. The line was awful, everyone kept pushing and there was no sign to tell how long the wait would be. After about forty minutes waiting in a very crowded line for the tram we found out it would be two more hours before we got there so we called the guide and told him we were walking up. We were the only ones from our bus that hiked up. Everyone else ended up waiting two and a half hours to get to the tram.

 

 










The hike up was the best part of the whole trip. It took us about three and a half hours to get to the point where the tram would have left us. It should have been less but I'm really out of shape. This guy who was carrying a baby and kept stopping for smoke breaks was keeping place with us. The whole climb was up really steep steps. They were surprisingly well maintained though. The hike was a little crowded at times but not terrible. The view was breathtaking. From some points you looked down and just saw clouds. There is a Chinese saying that you won't want to visit any other mountains after seeing Yellow Mountain. The mountain is really misty and it feels sort of dreamy
being up there in the clouds.

       

As we were walking we saw guys that would carry you up the mountain in these little contraptions. They are similar to rickshaws, one guy holds the back and one holds the front and you sit on a chair in the middle. It sort of made me think about how rich people would get around in ancient times. It was sort of annoying because parts of the path are really narrow and you can't pass them. Even so, I felt sort of bad for the laborers carrying people up the mountain. I guess it is a living.














Once we got to the point where the tram left people it was once again ridiculously crowded. We were supposed to have lunch in a restaurant on top of the mountain, see some of the famous sights and come down the other side of the mountain to get a bus. Since we left a little late we didn't catch up to the group on top of the mountain. It was still really pretty, there were a few really famous scenic spots, but the crowds made it somewhat unpleasant.There was a giant line to walk to the other side and we got stuck waiting for about an hour and a half before we could walk across. People were really rude and kept cutting in line and the soldiers just stood around and didn't do anything about it. I was really disgusted that people were smoking in the line... I mean come on it is supposed to be a nature hike. In the mean time it started raining a bit. We both caught colds afterwards...

    


Once we got past the line to enter the narrow slippery part of the mountain, it was less crowded again and much more pleasant. We sort of rushed because we were behind our group and wanted to catch up. We didn't end up stopping for lunch because we were rushing so much. We just stopped for a few minutes to have some pretzels and snacks we'd packed.




 

If we hadn't been with a tour group it would have been nice to stay at one of the hotels built on top of the mountain and have lunch in the restaurant. The people from our tour said the food was really bad though. The hotel we saw was just a hostel with crappy bunk beds but I think the other ones were nicer.

 

We finally made it to the tram and only waited in line for about 15 minutes to get down. On the ride down it was so foggy you couldn't see anything out the window most of the way. It was like a free fall through the clouds for the first few minutes until you could see the trees.

It turned out we rushed for no reason. When we got to the bottom only half the people had made it down and  everyone was waiting in this little museum about the mountain. We were pretty tired and just sat and rested without looking around much. I don't think there was that much to see besides a video and a map of the mountain built into the floor.


Once everyone got there we went to a "tea tasting." It wasn't really a proper tea tasting; it was more of a sales pitch. They told everyone they couldn't take pictures but they said it in Chinese so I ignored it. Sometimes it is useful to play the dumb American. They gave you three types of tea to try and then tried to sell them. A lot of people on our tour bought them. I don't really like tea much. Danny loves tea but thought everything they sold was really poor quality.

On the way back we stopped for another Chinese banquet meal which I didn't eat. I sat with the tour group and had some sandwiches that I'd packed for the mountain. A couple people at our table spoke a little English. I found out one of them used to live in Philadelphia by random coincidence. They mostly spoke in Chinese though and I tried my best to follow some of what they said. When people talk about food I usually understand a fair amount but I can't really chime in. Everyone was really nice though. It still would have been more pleasant if there was food I like and people weren't smoking while they ate.

The guide gave us a choice of going back to the hotel or going to Tunxi Old Street again and finding our own way back. I was starving so I got off at Tunxi Old Street without Danny and found a place that sold pizza. It was actually the best pizza I've had in China. It was deep dish and reminded me of Uno's. Afterwards I shopped for a few minutes and then headed back to the hotel to meet Danny. My taxi driver spoke the best English of any driver I've had in China. It almost never happens that I find a taxi driver that can speak a word or two of English and he could actually have a conversation. It is the small things that make me happy. :)

The next morning we got on the bus at 8:00 and were told we were going to some sort of museum and then a little town called Xiong Cun. The museum turned out to actually be in a place called Huangshan International Art Forum. It was actually an infomercial like sales pitch. They also said we weren't allowed to take pictures. They were selling pretty ridiculous products. Danny translated a bit for me. They sold underwear that supposedly protect you from radiation and make you more virile and other equally inane health products. We ended up waiting outside while a lot of people on our tour bought that crap. We mocked the products and people foolish enough to purchase them but they didn't understand us because we were speaking in English.

Next we went to Xiong Cun. Danny tried to look it up before the trip but didn't find out anything on the internet. It turned out to be a tiny old farming town. It was kind of pretty and had a somewhat interesting history dating back to about 1100. The town's main claim to fame is one of the town's leaders had taken the civil service test and risen to the rank of secretary of state sometime during the Qing Dynasty (1600-1900). I'm not sure his name but they have a big statue of the guy.We toured around the town a bit. I really like the mountain views. The farmers plant things right along the side of the mountains by carving out steps.

 

The other interesting thing about the town's history was around World War II is was a military training site. Americans helped train people there to fight against the Japanese. Danny pointed out it is one of the few places in China where you will find a Taiwanese flag.

At the end of the tour we were supposed to take a boat ride back but it wasn't running. Our guide told us she would make up for it by singing Chinese opera. She was actually pretty good. As we walked back to the entrance we heard drums. They did a traditional dance to scare away ghosts. The custom is you give him beer to feed him so he can prepare for battle. People threw coins at him instead of beer. I thought it was sort of cool; the costumes were the best part. Danny thought they focused on collecting money too much and didn't give much of a performance.

 



















 














After Xiong Cun we stopped for one final banquet meal which I didn’t eat before driving back to Shanghai. I’m not quite sure where they ate but it was in an grubby little neighborhood with a beautiful view of the mountains.