Days 84 – 85: Zhang Jia Jie

Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2053193&l=7d3af&id=1101094

I arrived at Zhang Jia Jie airport at 11pm, and the bus that traversed the 40km from the airport to the village had stopped running hours ago. As I walked into the parking lot and saw a host of greedy cab drivers’ eyes light up, I remembered the surest way to get screwed in a foreign country: arrive in a new place late at night when public transportation has stopped running, require transportation to a far-off destination, and don’t speak enough of the language to bargain or make any convincing effort to prove to the cab drivers that you know what the right price is. Sadly, I accepted my fate, and agreed to pay ¥150 (just short of $20) for a cab to Zhang Jia Jie village.

I directed the cab driver to one of the many cheap, unattractive hotels in the town and spent the next fifteen minutes stumbling through enough Mandarin to bargain my way down to ¥175 per night for a room. Even that was overpaying, I’m sure, but by this time all I wanted to do was get my pack off my pack and get some sleep. Unfortunately, the hotel room was freezing (the Chinese government determines when heat is turned on, and apparently they didn’t think it was cold enough yet. I beg to differ.), and it took me over and hour of squirming around in bed before I was able to fall asleep.

So, what was I doing in this place, and how was it suddenly cold? I had ventured from the sweltering humidity of coastal Hong Kong into the interior of China, to the northwest corner of Hunan province, site of China’s first national park. This mountainous region is known for its stunning karst landscapes—over 3000 huge sandstone towers shoot hundreds of meters out of the ground, seemingly teetering over the treetops below. As I would find out over the next two days, the landscapes really are impressive, but they’re also no secret to 1.3 billion Chinese, and so the place is swarming with newly-rich Chinese tourists from Hong Kong, Shanghai, and closer cities like Chongqing and Chengdu.

I spent the first day hiking up to Huangshizhai (Yellow Rock Village). The trail was mobbed with tourists (although I was the only Westerner in sight), and they grew even more crowded when groups of sedan chairs, carrying the old, the disabled, and the lazy, squeezed past. And the overlooks at the top of the mountain were ever more crowded—I had to wait fifteen minutes just to get to the railing where I could take a photo.

But when I ventured off the main trail onto a side trail that looped around the peak of the mountain, I suddenly found myself in total solitude. Of all the thousands of Chinese tourists on the mountain that day, not one had chosen to stray off the main path, despite the fact that some of the most impressive rock formations were seen only from the side trail. This is a phenomenon that I would observe multiple times over the next week, leading to my first gross generalization about the Chinese: they like to stick with the group. Not many deviants in this bunch.

The second day I hiked along Golden Whip Stream, and if the highlight of the first day was rock formations, the highlight of the second day was monkeys. The furry creatures were everywhere along the trail, and though plenty of signs said “Do Not Feed the Monkeys,” just about every group of tourists that walked by tossed them an orange, or some popcorn, or some potato chips. I hurried past the well-fed primates and hiked up a steep trail to what was labeled “The #1 Natural Bridge in the World.” The bridge was cool enough, although I’m not sure it warrants being called best in the world. But I get the feeling that the Chinese aren’t too concerned with the authenticity of such claims.

Perhaps the best part about the park was that smoking was prohibited and, for the most part, people obeyed the rule. Knowing what was coming in Shanghai and Beijing, I was more than happy to catch a breath of fresh air while I still could.

In the end, I was very happy I had visited Zhang Jia Jie, despite the throngs of Chinese tourists. And by the time I left, I almost enjoyed all the middle-aged Chinese folks. At the very least, it’s a lot more fun to say “Ni hao” over and over again than “Hello.” Many thanks to Allison Lee for suggesting I come here.