Shanghai'd

Hiking.
A weekend of tu bu in nearby Zhejiang province with 17 new Chinese friends turned out to be the perfect microcosm of China as a whole: enthusiastic ideas, poorly executed by people with an unending supply of energy.

An NI colleague, Forest, invited us to join his hiking club for a trip to Long Wang Mt. (OK, so with the name. Long Wang might raise a tee-hee out of the less mature readers of the blog, but in Chinese it means Dragon King.) The 20 of us, including one leather-vested driver, boarded a bus Friday night after work. The canary yellow bus was complete with too-small-for-westerners seats, a flat panel TV and a microphone set on the 'echo' effect. That's right folks - KTV! That's Chinese for karaoke. Completely sober, the group went through introductions and started singing. When it was our turn, we opted for "Happy Birthday" encored with "Shengri Kuaile" (which you remember from previous blog is the same song). After 5 hours we pulled into an unnamed village in Zhejiang province southwest of Shanghai. We arrived at about 1am and immediately set up camp for the night in a schoolyard.

Forest's stereo provided an unwelcome 6am Chinese candy pop wake-up call and we grabbed the provided breakfast (hard boiled eggs, congee - rice oatmeal thing, tofu, seaweed, fried peanuts and baozi - steamed bread buns) at a small restaurant. The bus took us through dragon gates to the base of the hike. We were off - and FAST. It seemed to us that the Chinese style of hiking is to climb hard for about 30 minutes and then stop for a 5 minute smoke break. We knew this could not be sustainable, so we hung back taking in the gorgeous waterfall that was marked as the origin of the Huangpu River (the same polluted mudslide that oozes through downtown Shanghai). Here though it was clean enough to drink (we didn't). We were told to try and keep up, it would be a long day. We breathed deeply. We were just glad to be outside.
Some basic hiking etiquette has apparently not made it to China: the pack-out what you pack-in golden rule of leaving no trace behind in the outdoors that is (usually) religiously followed in other parts of the world is discouragingly ignored in China. The entire trail was littered with cigarette butts, used water bottles, and coke cans. The piles of trash diminished the liberating feeling of getting outside of the city and breathing fresh air for the first time in over two months. We were also able to confirm that the sky is indeed blue, not the grayish-yellow hue that pervades the Shanghai skies.

The Chinese may have invented paper, iron casting and the abacus, but the concept of the switchback never took. For whatever reason, the Chinese method of hiking to the top of a peak is to take the most direct route, and head straight up ... sometimes at a 45 degree angle in this particular case. Long Wang Mt. was not very high (1400m), but the straight, steady, steep climb was a good challenge. Going down was no different, except even steeper. With such a big group, and ridiculously steep, loose descents it took us several hours to descend what could have easily been covered in half the time with the benefit of a few switchbacks. Also, the ground on the way down was covered in 6" tall trees. We were told to put on our pants. "Mei you" we responded, don't have. So they called over a translator, and they had been understood. We only brought shorts. After 4 hours of stumbling down the 50% grade our legs and hands were scraped and bleeding. The guide kept looking at us and shaking his head. Crazy Westerners.

We had been DYING in the city to go out and get lost in the woods, but as darkness fell that seemed like exactly what was going on. Oh, we were going somewhere, but not too fast. We were at the front of the pack by now, it seemed that taking it easy in the beginning had started to pay off after 12 hours. It started to rain and we cut through a random bamboo forest until we finally found the right trail and ended up safely at camp for a much appreciated dinner of Chinese BBQ (pork and shrimp on a skewer) with local beer. We introduced the group to the American camping tradition of smores, which were greatly appreciated and instantly devoured. We tried to teach them "marshmallow" but its a difficult word to explain when the first half refers to ankle deep mud and the second has really no meaning at all. We sipped from a flask of Chivas until bedtime. Camp was a tarp on a barn floor since it was raining. 13 hours of hiking, the pork, scotch, marshmallows and beer and we were out.

The next morning was sunny again and we started off with some group exercise, typical Sunday morning style. The schedule promised "hike through bamboo forest then descending dam by rope". Well, we never really got to the bamboo forest bit (guess we covered that the night before) but there was some impressive repelling going on down a 40m dam. Tim made the trip down in the harness, but I was content to sit and watch (there is something about no western health care for the surrounding 300km that inspires one to turn down a suspicious climbing rope holding your life dangling over a bed of rocks). We trekked 30 minutes from there to the waiting bus (and lunch!) and then started home.

The people we met were all extremely nice and interesting. "Smile Doll" who took tons of pictures, "Bu Gaoxing (lit: not happy)" had a badass attitude and brought the flask, Scott was the stereotypical round guy with the kungfu movie demeanor. There was a yoga/fitness instructor who smoked, the leader in all camouflage, a 56 year old guide who was constantly 2 km ahead of us until he disappeared and we were lost in the dark, Forest's girlfriend Sunny whose English was excellent but wouldn't talk to us but could belt out Mariah Carey's HERO while descending a mountain, and more people we want to get to know even better.
Camping in China is not easy, there's really no national park or trail system. Going with a group (of Chinese at that) made it possible for us. We were the first foreigners to ever accompany them on a trip, and we are grateful they gave us the opportunity to get out there. We hope we can make another trip with them in the future, but in the meantime we need to train for the hors categorie climbs!