Huangshan
Carolyn and I decided to split off from the group so while the group went to do their own thing, we decided to go to Huangshan together first. Originally, we were suppose to stay in Huangshan until the 3rd but because we wanted to stay a little longer, we met up with the group on the morning of the 5th.
On the first day in Huanghsan, we learned very quickly not to flush toilet paper into the toilets since they have poor drainage there. Mr. He told us early on not to flush toilet paper, but we forgot and a few hours later, Carolyn and I accidently flushed it down a few times. That was when our toilet clogging problems began.
In Huangshan, the houses are much colder than outside. At first I thought it was very weird because I’m more accustomed to thinking that it should be warmer inside a house than outside it. However, in Huangshan it’s the complete opposite. It’s freezing in the house and warmer outside. On one day, the weather outside was relatively warm but once we got into Mr. He’s house, we had to bundle up and wear our jackets and gloves while we sat in the living room and watched tv.
Carolyn and I got to visited Mr. He’s (the teacher we were staying with) high school. Mr. He’s high school has a huge court yard and has trees and shrubs everywhere. It was very peaceful there. Although Mr. He’s high school is one of the best in Huangshan, it was lacking some modern facilities. The school wasn’t as technologically equipped as some other schools are. For example, in the girls dorm, which is either ten to a room or eight to a room (if you chose to pay an extra 100 yuan), only the girls who live in the eight to a room have electricity. The rest of the girls have to charge their cell phones during class in the classrooms.
The next day, we went to a Daoist Mountain. While we were walking up and down the million narrow steps, we noticed the many villagers walking around. It turned out that there was a village on the mountain. There were people old and young living all around the mountain. Some of them raised livestock while others ran restaurants. It was like a bustling little town up there. The most fascinating part of the Daoist Mountain was the couple of temples carved into it. Within each temple, there were huge figures of Lao Zu and other important people.
After staying with Mr. He for a few days, we met up with the group early on February 5th to climb the famous Huangshan. There was a lot of fog that day, so our view of the place wasn’t that great. There were so many stairs to walk up and down that we quickly got tired. Despite that, it was definitely worth it. When we got to the top, we had a great view of the scenery all around. We could see little buildings on the ground.
Hangzhou
To get to Hangzhou from Huangshan, we had to take a four hour bus ride there. Once we got there, we did a four hour walk around West Lake. The lake was very peaceful. While we were walking around, we saw peacocks and different kinds of tree. We went to a gated area filled with peacocks and Carolyn decided to try out her peacock mating call. Then Amy saw a statue (or what she thought was a statue) a few feet away so the group decided to walk up closer to it to get a better view of the statues. However, once we got to the statues, we realized that they weren’t statues but tree stumps covered in garbage bags. That was definitely the highlight of my day.
Shanghai
Our next and final stop of the trip was Shanghai. On the first day, we visited the Pearl TV tower. We went up 90 meters first and then we kept going further up in the tower. We had an amazing view of the river and the buildings surrounding the TV tower. Carolyn and I wanted to mail postcards to people from the tower but they ran out of postcards.
We went to many places in Shanghai. We went to a silk factory, a tea shop, and a store that specialized in pearls. In total, I think we spent more money in Shanghai than in the other previous cities but it was well worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment