I woke up at 7 this morning when our door was knocked on without trouble. I was one of the first down to the lobby of the hotel, waiting for everyone to congregate with the tourguide to start the day. Various people had complaints about their rooms that were dealt with first; Steven said his rooms was too loud, and wanted to move to something on the second flour, and rebecca had had mice in her room and wasn’t particularly happy about that eventuality.
It was a bit past 7:30 when the hotel situation was settled successfully, and we went out for breakfast. We went to the back of a small local restaurant after it was decided that their prices weren’t unreasonable. There was porridge which was appropriately tasteless, along with bread buns. The group seems to have a mind of it’s own, and kids for whatever reason decided that they were going to be hungry for the rest of the day, and so kept trying to hoard buns for later, which seemed pointless. Eventually the chaperones were able to get everyone out of the restaurant, and we headed to our destination for the day. We walked past the temple that we had visited yesterday, and continued up the road as an occasional car whizzed past us. After a couple turns the road branched, and there was an outpost of whatever company was providing transportation to the area, as evidenced by one of their signature bright yellow busses parked in front of a shack. It looked like tickets for the bus were about 5 yuan/person, and we quickly loaded on the bus which took us further down the road. The road quickly was enshrouded in fog, and at worst we were able to see only about 20 or 30 feet in front of us through the fog. The road was sharply twisting back and forth and weaving along a fairly steep cliff, and it was a fun ride.
Eventually we reached the end of the road at a ‘tourism sub-service center’, which we ignored and walked a bit further past a barricade. THe road curved and went up slightly and ended at the cable car. The thing looked almost exactly like a ski gondola loading area. (Replete, perhaps, with the chinese tourists.) The guides payed a ticked fee, and we were hustled into a loading building, without ever really getting to see where the gondola headed because of fairly thick forestation.
I was at the beginning of the group, and so was on our first group up the gondola. The group in front of us were to tourists from beijing, and were quite impressed by our level of chinese proficiency. A bit behind us were a group of monks who were very impressed by Joe’s dreadlocks.
Loading the gondola was about the same as anywhere, with a slight exception that since it was a fixed rope, they just slowed the whole thing down each time people loaded. (the deal was the cars were in groups of 3, with a total of 6 of these groups on the rope, so as you rode up, the car would stop briefly two times as the other sets unloaded and reloaded. The Poles on the way up looked pretty sturdy, and the views were nice although pretty shrouded in fog. We were dropped off at a top station in a bit of a valley, after passing over a couple ridges.
We regathered, and let everyone catch up, and then walked basically over to a temple area. (called the sky platform). It was pretty, and it was impressive how high up we were. None the less, there was a booming industry with many shops to sell food to tourists, and other guys standing next to seats that you could pay them to haul you up to the top of the mountain in. We took pictures on the platform, and looked in at the Buddhist imagery throughout the area before starting the climb up to the peak. The guide assured us that the temple we could see above us was the highest point in the area, but just before the last set of steps there was a branch with the other path saying that there was a peak 80 meters and a trail that looked less worn. as the head of the group I sprinted up that and found that this path went up just as far as we could see and ended on a ridge, with a nice view. Before I could come back down the rest of the group decided they too wanted to see, and followed me up.
The guide wanted us to go over to the main path, but we could see a that the path we had started on continued on the ridge, and asked if we could head over to the peak. Prof. Wang said we could, so I took off down the path, which was a bit longer that I was expecting before ending. There was nobody else on the path, and after going a while, and getting to what seemed like a hummock that had a lovely view of where we’d been I figured it made sense to regoup and turn around since we weren’t really going to be able to get to the summit. Once the other guys that had followed me showed up and started taking pictures, jeremy continue on a bit and found that the summit was really just up ahead, so we migrated there and took some more pictures before heading down. On the way down we passed prof wang and some of the others who also were hoping to get pictures, and let them know it was worth it.
I waited back at the junction for a while with bags, for the rest of the group that had gone towards the peak to re-appear, and was shortly joined by a bunch of old women who walked up the other side with baskets of kiwis. they gave me one that was really sweet, and then headed over to the main path to start selling them.
I explored the top temple briefly, it was essentially what I had expected, and it’s location was especially grand, perching precariously on the top of the mountain.
Eventually we all had our fill and began to head down. A bunch of people bought bags of the kiwis, which were really good, I got a peeled cucumber instead to snack on, and we went back to the platform for a break and for people to relieve themselves.
The way down was cool, something like 4000 stair steps. Me and max were in the lead for the whole way down, and talked about various things like how we were ruining our shoes. The most interesting part were the workers we’d been passing the whole time. There was a big industry bringing needed goods up to the temples, and the accepted way was on peoples backs. They had the system figured out pretty well, with the goods typically in two equal loads connected by a bamboo pole over a shoulder, and then a piece of wood they could periodically replace their shoulder with to rest.
by the bottom we stopped for lunch at a little place to the side of the path. once we were done with the climb, we ended up in a little village that had nunneries, and supported the upper temples. The place was good, with fresh eggplant that they picked from their neighbors garden being some of the best, followed by some fish (whole), a dish that was just hot peppers, and a plate of bamboo that was quite good.
After lunch we followed the trail back to the sub-service center we had started at and took another bus back to where we’d started. The walk passed through some farming that we were told was tea cultivation.
Back at the hotel everyone was tired, and they gave us the option of going to the temple across the street from our hotel as a end to the day. I walked fairly quickly through the three buildings before returning to the hotel. the sculptures in them were huge, the largest I’ve seen yet, I came up not even to the top of the lotuses that the figures were sitting upon. I took some pictures and then retreated back to the hotel.
In the hotel the power wasn’t working, but I was eventually able to find out that the one to the tv did work, and so plugged in my computer, in a somewhat overly hopeful attempt to do some math homework. Yu miao came in and requested that we watch the space walk at 4:30, and so I vaguely though about math until then while he napped, and then we watched the tv for about 20 minute.
The space walk was interesting, they basically just went out, waved a chinese flag, and went back into the rocket. The whole ordeal took about 20 seconds, with the camera only cutting out once. He seemed pretty happy about the event, although was confused as to why it was only 20 minutes instead of the 45 that the government had been saying it would take.
Afterwards I finished my chapter in the book i’m reading (future of ideal by lessig, for my Intellectual property independent study) and napped for a while. I got up, wrote most of this, from 6-7 ish, while there were noises outside of people discovering and being unhappy about the discovery of additional mice, and then headed out to eat. I ended up grabbing some snacks for dinner since We’d had a big late lunch and I wasn’t really hungry. I got one of the local exports, which are very reminiscent of almond bark or pralines (but with peanuts). THe have the name of the mountain on the box, which makes them local. I sat with a group from the program for an hour or two discussing various subjects, and then retired to take a shower, solve a math problem, and go to bed. We don’t have to get up tomorrow until 9 or 9:30, but I think the day after we need to get up at 5 or 6, so I’ll just stick with waking up at about 7 and not mess up my sleep schedule too much.