Hua`shan, or Mt. Hua, is one of China`s five great mountains that one apprantly has to climb during a lifetime...one of them at least. Like all other great mountains, the Qing dynasty has taken the bother to car or schissel steps into it, so you can walk to the weirdest places in high-heels, often to worship Buddha at the top, just next to the little kitchen selling noodles and pickled duck eggs. No, I am not kidding you...
Odd camping and food aside, my trip to Hua`shan was wonderful. Arriving there I asked a Chinese woman my age for help with getting tickets, and she suggested we`d make the trip together.
Jane turned out to be an English teacher at a college in Chengdu, and we made friends rather instantly. We cheated a bit and got a cable car to 1640 metres--then we spent some 5 hours wandering from the north, via the south and to the east peak of the mountain, with a max height of 2154,9 metres. It was gorgeous! During the day we saw numerous staircases and walked an endless amount of steps, chatted to Chinese families, hd random photo shoots with Chinese people who like to have photos with random foreigners, ate a cucumber each, met a lovely cat, and got so swaty our pockets were soaked and our money got wet... At the end of the day we literally had to run down the whole mountain (some 45 minutes in stairs) to catch the last bus back to Xi`an, agreeing to meet up again in Chengdu.
Odd camping and food aside, my trip to Hua`shan was wonderful. Arriving there I asked a Chinese woman my age for help with getting tickets, and she suggested we`d make the trip together.
Jane turned out to be an English teacher at a college in Chengdu, and we made friends rather instantly. We cheated a bit and got a cable car to 1640 metres--then we spent some 5 hours wandering from the north, via the south and to the east peak of the mountain, with a max height of 2154,9 metres. It was gorgeous! During the day we saw numerous staircases and walked an endless amount of steps, chatted to Chinese families, hd random photo shoots with Chinese people who like to have photos with random foreigners, ate a cucumber each, met a lovely cat, and got so swaty our pockets were soaked and our money got wet... At the end of the day we literally had to run down the whole mountain (some 45 minutes in stairs) to catch the last bus back to Xi`an, agreeing to meet up again in Chengdu.
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