Wednesday: 09/02/2011

After recovering on Monday, a few of us were off again! Emily, Alek, Isaac, Tori, Bailey, Jordyn, Daniel Stubbs, Grant, Mike Lorenz, Jacob Fritschle, and myself piled into the bus early Tuesday morning. We got one-way tickets to Anji in the hopes of hiking in the bamboo forest most of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was filmed in. We had a hotel for the night, but nothing else figured out… We knew it was going to be an adventure as soon as we arrived when absolutely nothing was in Pinyin! (Hanyu is the character form of Chinese, and Pinyin is the adaptation into Latin letters that allow westerners to semi-read these words.)
Goal Number 1: Get return-trip bus tickets. SUCCESS! After half an hour of wandering around near where the bus dropped us off, finding a place to buy bunnies. (We have since changed our quantification of cost into bunnies and bao zhi. A bunny is 30kuai, and 2 bao zhi totals 3kuai.) We ended up walking onto and over the roof of some building, entering on the 3rd floor, coming down, essentially through the janitor closet, and ending up in the ticket-buying area!
Goal Number 2: Finding our hotel. FAIL! Well… not a complete fail. We did eventually find it. After asking about 10 taxi drivers if they could help us find this place, we finally got one taxi to call the hotel and get them to give him directions and he said he’d drive us. After getting two of his friends to tag along, we were off, and… about 30 seconds and a U-Turn later we were at the hotel. Unfortunately, someone mentioned we were from Shanghai, so not only did we have to pay the initial fee for a Taxi, but he charged us the 10kuai per cab Shanghai price instead of the 5kuai Anji price. Oh well. You live and you learn. We got settled in, paid our deposit (520kuai) and paid for our rooms (35USD/room/night x 3 rooms).
Goal Number 3: Get to the bamboo forest. FAIL FAIL SUCCESS! Failure number one was assuming the hotel staff (who spoke about 100 words of English total) had any idea what we were talking about when we kept saying “zuzhi”… It’s about the equivalent of some Chinese person coming up to you in New York and saying “Tree! Tree! Tree!” in order to get directions to Central Park. Either way, we had them write the characters for what we thought was the bamboo forest… we get in a taxi… we do not end up at the bamboo forest. Instead we were at some sort of outdoor museum with fake bamboo that cost 65kuai to get in. Needless to say, we were not amused. Fortunately, while in the little village in front of the museum, Tori found someone who we thought knew what we wanted. She asked us if we “want bus” to take us there. After making a call on her cell phone and everyone in the village yelling at each other, two janky looking vans pull into the parking lot. These vans are pretty much like an off-brand version of the Camry that has had the roof raised an extra 6 inches and a bench thrown in the back. So, after squeezing 11 people into 10 seats and paying this random lady 260kuai, we were off! We rode for about half an hour on fast highways and bumpy construction roads until finally arriving at our destination. Regardless of the mistakes along the way, it was definitely worth it!

We spent the day in the forest, not wandering too far in. We climbed the first hill, and went up the look-out tower, got Jordyn to ride the sketchy roller coaster back down the hill, and went off searching for food. (The roller coaster is individual carts in which you control your speed with a hand brake. Terrifying! It was just something this father/son put together and cost 1 bunny and 5 bao zhi to ride.) When we left the park to get food, it was getting dark, buildings were sparse, and we had no transportation… so of course we decide to run down the road until we find something. Once again, fortune followed us and we found a family restaurant with a menu entirely in Hanyu. After saying “ji rou”, “tang”, and “zuzhi” a delicious meal greated us. The bamboo was well cooked and seasoned, the meat and rice were perfect, and the chicken soup was incredibly fresh. There is no doubt about its freshness because after ordering chicken, the cook yelled down the street and five minutes later a lady walked by the restaurant door holding a live chicken by the wings. Not long after, we had a salty soup with an entire chicken cooked in it. 很好吃！(How delicious!)
我们的美奴 (women de mei nu… our waitress) was able to again make a phone call to these local “bus drivers” to pick us up. At this point, the second “FAIL” from goal #3 can be explained. The waitress only charged us 140kuai to take everyone back to the hotel… almost half our previous price. We had been swindled. Either way, we had a good night of sleep and were able to arrange a pick-up in the morning for the same price to return to the “bamboo sea”.

Wednesday blew Tuesday out of the water as far as outdoor adventuring goes. There were only about 4-5 hours of actual hiking, but it was wonderful. Rolling hills continued to get higher and higher until it finally broke out into open air a few miles in. When the thick leaves, parted a Buddhist temple was standing right at the end of the path. Under a roof stood three huge statues and a burning fire. In front of the building was an unbelievably blue lake that must have been snow-fed by the mountains surrounding it. From there, was a pretty waterfall, and stone steps leading further up into the mountains and snowy pathways. After continuing a little further and soaking in the beauty, it was time to head back (and ride the rollercoaster!). After this trip, I’m very excited to see the Yellow Mountains and have even more adventures.

Just for good measure, here is a little video of the waterfall we found!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/purduesjtu2011/5444204772/