As I have been traveling, the most consistent theme I have seen among all cultures is that the leaders (kings, emperors, etc.) love to create grand structures for their legacies. Castles, pyramids, cathedrals, temples, mausoleums all seem to be commissioned by leaders on scales that are much more for acknowledging their power than for practical need. What I find ironic is that most of these were not completed within the lifetime of the requestor; and many were purely to commemorate their death. In Xi’An there is another great example of this in the Terra Cotta Warriors. It was/is an entire field of life-size pottery statues of ancient warriors, horses, weapons and equipment that would make up an army. They are situated around the burial place of the First Emporer of Qin to represent that he was so important he needed an army to protect him, even after death.
While I think the ego involved in why the site was created is rather funny, I do have to say it is one of the most enjoyable historic ruin sites I have visited. I commend how they have opened the excavation of the site to tourists, while not compromising the authenticity of the site itself. It was quite marvelous to see statues in their original environment. And observing the stages of the continued archeological excavation was very interesting.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
The Real Stair Master
If you google ‘scariest hikes’ there are two places that repeated come up; El Caminito del Rey and Mount Hua Shan (or huashan). And if you are going to do one, you might as well do them both. So I ventured south from Beijing to Xi’An. There I met back up with a couple of Dutch guys I had met in Beijing (Patrick and Martin, who camped on the Great Wall with me) as well as an Aussie (Joel). We also picked up a new friend in the hostel (Andrew, from England). The five of us set out to hike up Mt Huashan, spend the night, do the circuit of all 5 of its peaks, traverse the planks and carved foot hold of its most famous ‘scary’ cliffside, then hike back down. There is a cable car that most tourists take up to the first peak, but that did not seem like much fun. The notorious ‘Soldiers Path’ sounded like more of a challenge. Now we had read that there were a lot of steps on this path, and that it was difficult. What we encountered was much more than I expected. There were steps the entire way up and down the mountain. We literally climbed several thousand steps over the two day period. Some of them were actually vertical ladders carved into a rock face. Obviously these soldiers did not believe in going around anything. They just created a path straight up the mountain.
The physical effort to do this climb was more than any one day of climbing on Mt Kilimanjaro. It is two days later, and my legs are still aching with every step. To add to the enjoyment, when we got to the ‘scary’ part the second day, it had to be done in the middle of an all day rain storm. So the rock and planks were even more dangerous and my hands were cold slippery. Although, I may have to give the upper hand to El Caminito for getting my heart pumping.
But it was well worth the effort. The natural scenery was magnificent. And there were old temples scattered throughout the hilltops. The first day was pretty clear so you could see across the mountain range. While the second day was completely cloudy and raining, it still provided for some great views of misty silhouettes and peaks breaking though the clouds. I can see why Mt. Hua Shan is one of China’s sacred mountains.
The physical effort to do this climb was more than any one day of climbing on Mt Kilimanjaro. It is two days later, and my legs are still aching with every step. To add to the enjoyment, when we got to the ‘scary’ part the second day, it had to be done in the middle of an all day rain storm. So the rock and planks were even more dangerous and my hands were cold slippery. Although, I may have to give the upper hand to El Caminito for getting my heart pumping.
But it was well worth the effort. The natural scenery was magnificent. And there were old temples scattered throughout the hilltops. The first day was pretty clear so you could see across the mountain range. While the second day was completely cloudy and raining, it still provided for some great views of misty silhouettes and peaks breaking though the clouds. I can see why Mt. Hua Shan is one of China’s sacred mountains.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
I'm still out here
I have obviously had a hard time keeping up on my blog since I have not posted in two months. There are several contributing factors for this that are apparent to me, and probably many others that are not. Initially, the most significant was the result of continued difficulties around travel logistics. Not only does it takes up a lot of what would be free time to do things like blog and organize pictures, but it also monopolizes (or drains) much of my mental and emotional energy. My inherent way of dealing with stress and frustration is to vent that out (…quit smirking, I know everyone already knows this about me). But I do not want my blog to become my default way to vent if I am having a difficult day. It will be no fun for you to read, or for me to look back on and reminisce, if it takes on a negative tone. Plus, isn’t that what everyone uses Facebook for? :-)
Then once I got far behind on capturing my thoughts about the places and activities it snowballed and became very hard to catch up. I have been doing better lately of at least capturing some comments in an offline form, and I will try to do better at posting them. Then I will work on filling in some of the gaps for the last two months.
Then once I got far behind on capturing my thoughts about the places and activities it snowballed and became very hard to catch up. I have been doing better lately of at least capturing some comments in an offline form, and I will try to do better at posting them. Then I will work on filling in some of the gaps for the last two months.
China
My original plan (for as much as I had any type of real planning for this trip at all) for after leaving Beijing was to head down the eastern coast of China to Shanghai or fly directly to Hong Kong. But after to talking with fellow travelers and learning more about what China had to offer, I decided to hop my way directly south through central China. Each city looked on the map to be smaller and smaller, none with notable names, so I thought I would be getting a little off the beaten path into some rural areas. However, with 1.7 billion people in China, even what seems like a small city on the map has now grown into a highly populated metropolis with constant construction of high-rise housing.
My first stop was the city of Xi’An. Here I climbed Mt Huashan and saw the Terra Cotta Warrior (I talk about both in other blog entries). Also in Xi’An I met several really cool people that I made plans to meet up with in other parts of China and southeast Asia.
From Xi’An I hopped a 12-hour train further south to Chongqing. The city was again very big, although I found lodging in a small corner of the city called Ciqikou, that remained a quaint, albeit crowded, fishing village along the river. There I relaxed for a day and waited for a new friend, Andrew from England, to join up with me. We only stayed in Chongqing for another day until we embarked on our piece-meal adventure down the Yangtze River to explore the Three Gorges area. Yangtze is the 3rd longest river in the world. There are many organized tours to go down the river on mini-cruiseships and stop at several temples and other tourist sites along the way. But we wanted to have more freedom and stop at only a few spots, but at our own pace. So we took a bus from Chongqing to Wanzhou, then boarded a locals boat down river to Wushan; where we stayed the night. The next day we took a smaller boat to check out the Smaller Three Gorges (on the Daning River). All the gorges were quite scenic, although not as amazing as I was hoping. We were going to do some hiking in this area as well, but found that the likelihood of manageable paths was extremely unlikely.
From Wushan we took a faster hydrofoil to Yichang. Yichang is where they just finished the largest power-producing dam, which has huge benefit, but has also drastically changed the landscape of the river gorges forever. The dam was cool to see for a minute because of its significance, but was rather boring visually.
There was not much to see in Yichang beside just another city, so we decided to head straight out. Since we didn’t get to hike around Wushan, we decided our next stop would be Zhangjiajie, which is home to a magnificent National Forest, of the same name. The Zhangjiajie NF has magnificent limestone karsts towering out of the earth all over the place. They are such an unimaginable sight that it was used as the backdrop for much of the Avatar film. They digitally removed the bottom half of the karsts to create the floating jungle islands. For natural beauty, it is up there with the Cliffs of Moher for my favorite. Unfortunately, as with most things in China, they have stripped some of the natural wonder of the area by making it far too touristy by littering the area with concrete pathways, buildings and vendor stands. I have found the Chinese do not understand the concept of hiking in nature. Andrew and I were constantly fighting our way around thousands of Chinese tourists in their everyday work clothes and dress shoes strolling along with no regard for any other people they may be impeding. But other than that, and the fact that we nearly missed our bus out of town because of the terrible maps of the park that were provided, Zhangjiajie NF a wonderful day trip.
Luckily we did not miss our bus and were on our way to Yangshou that evening. It was a nice escape after a few weeks of constant Chinese culture. The area is a popular tourist stop, and therefore is very westernized. It was possible to find actual breakfast food, burgers and pizza; not to mention the constant beer-pong games being played at Jungle Jane’s Rooftop Bar. But my real reason for the visit was to get some much needed rock climbing in. And there is definitely some nice climbing there. Not to mention meeting some really cool climbers.
After a few days of R&R in Yangshou it was time to say goodbye to China and see why Hong Kong is so adamant to be separate from China.
My first stop was the city of Xi’An. Here I climbed Mt Huashan and saw the Terra Cotta Warrior (I talk about both in other blog entries). Also in Xi’An I met several really cool people that I made plans to meet up with in other parts of China and southeast Asia.
From Xi’An I hopped a 12-hour train further south to Chongqing. The city was again very big, although I found lodging in a small corner of the city called Ciqikou, that remained a quaint, albeit crowded, fishing village along the river. There I relaxed for a day and waited for a new friend, Andrew from England, to join up with me. We only stayed in Chongqing for another day until we embarked on our piece-meal adventure down the Yangtze River to explore the Three Gorges area. Yangtze is the 3rd longest river in the world. There are many organized tours to go down the river on mini-cruiseships and stop at several temples and other tourist sites along the way. But we wanted to have more freedom and stop at only a few spots, but at our own pace. So we took a bus from Chongqing to Wanzhou, then boarded a locals boat down river to Wushan; where we stayed the night. The next day we took a smaller boat to check out the Smaller Three Gorges (on the Daning River). All the gorges were quite scenic, although not as amazing as I was hoping. We were going to do some hiking in this area as well, but found that the likelihood of manageable paths was extremely unlikely.
From Wushan we took a faster hydrofoil to Yichang. Yichang is where they just finished the largest power-producing dam, which has huge benefit, but has also drastically changed the landscape of the river gorges forever. The dam was cool to see for a minute because of its significance, but was rather boring visually.
There was not much to see in Yichang beside just another city, so we decided to head straight out. Since we didn’t get to hike around Wushan, we decided our next stop would be Zhangjiajie, which is home to a magnificent National Forest, of the same name. The Zhangjiajie NF has magnificent limestone karsts towering out of the earth all over the place. They are such an unimaginable sight that it was used as the backdrop for much of the Avatar film. They digitally removed the bottom half of the karsts to create the floating jungle islands. For natural beauty, it is up there with the Cliffs of Moher for my favorite. Unfortunately, as with most things in China, they have stripped some of the natural wonder of the area by making it far too touristy by littering the area with concrete pathways, buildings and vendor stands. I have found the Chinese do not understand the concept of hiking in nature. Andrew and I were constantly fighting our way around thousands of Chinese tourists in their everyday work clothes and dress shoes strolling along with no regard for any other people they may be impeding. But other than that, and the fact that we nearly missed our bus out of town because of the terrible maps of the park that were provided, Zhangjiajie NF a wonderful day trip.
Luckily we did not miss our bus and were on our way to Yangshou that evening. It was a nice escape after a few weeks of constant Chinese culture. The area is a popular tourist stop, and therefore is very westernized. It was possible to find actual breakfast food, burgers and pizza; not to mention the constant beer-pong games being played at Jungle Jane’s Rooftop Bar. But my real reason for the visit was to get some much needed rock climbing in. And there is definitely some nice climbing there. Not to mention meeting some really cool climbers.
After a few days of R&R in Yangshou it was time to say goodbye to China and see why Hong Kong is so adamant to be separate from China.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
The Great Wall Experience
One of the main reasons tourists flock to Beijing is to visit the Great Wall of China. I am no different, as my first stop in China is also Beijing. Obviously the city is rich in history and culture, providing me many additional memories as well. I visited the Forbidden City, Tian’Anmen Square, the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace; all of which were quite amazing. I also ate some interesting cuisine from the street market and night market, like whole little birds, sheep kidneys, squid and eel. But all of these are fairly common experiences for Beijing tourists. My Great Wall trip, however, was not.
I couple of fellow travelers had heard about a specialized Great Wall tour, that I decided to join in on. It allowed us to camp out over night in one of the towers of a desolate section of the Wall. While most people snap afternoon pictures of a restored section, with thousands of other people filling their photos, we took sunset and sunrise pictures with no one else around for miles. Plus, our guide/chaperone had no interest in being there with us (even though I think he was supposed to stay), so he left and we had complete run of the Wall to go and do whatever we wanted. It was undeniable that I must take advantage of this situation to do what any self-respecting climber would do….scale up the Great Wall of China…from the Mongolian side, of course.
The sunset, although not the most extravagant in colors, was brilliant to see over the rolling hills of stone covered peaks. Then we hung out in the tower for the rest of the night; drinking a few beers and some other traditional Chinese liquor, talking, listening to music, and even a little live guitar playing. The sunrise the next morning was slightly disappointing because of heavy fog, but it didn’t damper the experience. We still spent the morning hiking a closed section of the Wall that had been intertwined, and sometimes completely overgrown, by the surrounding nature.
The simplest was to say it is that this experience was absolutely Great.
I couple of fellow travelers had heard about a specialized Great Wall tour, that I decided to join in on. It allowed us to camp out over night in one of the towers of a desolate section of the Wall. While most people snap afternoon pictures of a restored section, with thousands of other people filling their photos, we took sunset and sunrise pictures with no one else around for miles. Plus, our guide/chaperone had no interest in being there with us (even though I think he was supposed to stay), so he left and we had complete run of the Wall to go and do whatever we wanted. It was undeniable that I must take advantage of this situation to do what any self-respecting climber would do….scale up the Great Wall of China…from the Mongolian side, of course.
The sunset, although not the most extravagant in colors, was brilliant to see over the rolling hills of stone covered peaks. Then we hung out in the tower for the rest of the night; drinking a few beers and some other traditional Chinese liquor, talking, listening to music, and even a little live guitar playing. The sunrise the next morning was slightly disappointing because of heavy fog, but it didn’t damper the experience. We still spent the morning hiking a closed section of the Wall that had been intertwined, and sometimes completely overgrown, by the surrounding nature.
The simplest was to say it is that this experience was absolutely Great.
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