Walking In Wuhan

Sorry we've been tardy with the updates. There will be plenty in a few days. Yes, we did return from our jaunt to Zhongjiajie and well, it was, a good vacation?

In China, there are two big traveling holidays. The first occurs in October and the other is the May holiday. You know China has a population of 1.3 billion. During these two weeks, it seems nearly every person in this country is going somewhere. So, knowing that, we booked a package and joined a Chinese tour group for our trip to China's most famous national park area.

First off, the area is gorgeous. It's known for it's limestone mountains and big caves. But I'll probably remember Zhongjiajie for different reasons. We boarded a train on Tuesday night for a 10 hour train ride to the National Park, and played cards by iPod light after the train workers turned out the lights early.

We awoke the next morning to a guy screaming DAOLE! (we've arrived) at us. We got off the train and our wild ride began. It's important to note that we've had nothing but good luck about 99 percent of the time when we've traveled (the only setback being Nanjing which is detailed in the other blog) the weather has been amazing, we've met cool people and everything's worked out for the best.

That thought lingered in my mind as we boarded our tour bus at 6 am and departed along with about 30 or 40 other tour buses. We first hit up a minority village for a tour and what would be the first of many crappy meals on our two day jaunt. After walking around for a bit, we headed to the National Park -- entrance fee 245 yuan per person (roughly $30 US) -- and started fighting the crowds. I've ridden the Beijing subway system during rush hour and strolled Lang Kwai Fong in Hong Kong on New Year's Eve, but this place was packed. Our first stop was a line for a cable car that was supposed to take us to the top of the mountain and back for about 95 RMB. Estimated wait in line: 3 hours.

So this guy from our tour, who we started calling "Camera-guy" grabs the six of us and leads us up the mountain. Two hours later and after passing lots of slow climbers wearing dress shoes and loafers, we reached the top of the mountain -- then waited for our group to show up. Same story when we walked back down the mountain.

Other highlights from the weekend:

• A Wild West style brawl at lunch the first day where a chair hit a woman in the face, men threw punches and then everybody started throwing their plates on the floor. No word on any bottle related stabbings.
  
• Sitting at dinner, foodless for about an hour while two families saved face by yelling at one another and holding each other back. If you've never seen saving face in person before, it's quite a sight. Basically, the loudest yelling wins, so there's lots of spewing Mada (the Chinese version of the 'F' word) and holding people back. We then enjoyed a fairly craptastic dinner.
  
• Finding out that the hotel we were supposed to stay in, had run out of rooms and then being taken to what appeared to be a half-way house of some kind. Then listening as the two Chinese guys talked to one another and then tried to tell us that our arrangement (no hot water, towels, doors was the same price as the hotel across town that we'd already paid for. Though it was fun watching them backpedal and change the subject when they realized that we knew they were trying to screw us.
  
• Getting up at 4:30 the next morning so we could be at breakfast on time the next day. Then sitting there by ourselves for an hour until the others started showing up.
  
• Spending two hours in line for another cable car. Getting to the top of the mountain, then proceeding immediately to another bus that took us halfway back down the mountain.
  
• Having every person we passed on a trail or sat next to on a bus point out our races and nationalities by saying "hello" or "lao wai" or "waiguoren."(foreigner). Then laughing at the look on their faces when we pointed back at them and said, "zhongguoren" (Chinese).
  
• Paying five bucks to ride in a giant elevator that was built into the side of a mountain. Quite possibly the most overrated elevator since the Tower of Terror opened in Florida.

The scenery in the park was really quite beautiful. It was just really difficult to get a good look at any of it because some 70-year-old woman likely had her elbow in your side trying to push past you or the guy was taking 50 pictures of his girlfriend in dramatic poses in front of a ledge.

Sorry there aren't any pics to accompany this post. Our laptop is fried and the State-issued desktop is rejecting our camera. More posts in the days to come.

MB