May Day!

So, I had a post started that talked all about class schedules and stuuuuff, but I don't want to deal with it, so I'm starting a new one.

At the tail end of my "vacation" now. We had a whole slew of makeup classes last weekend (and a few more this weekend), and then starting Tuesday and going until tomorrow, we've had days off. Not gonna bother checking back over the grammar of that one, so whatever. Currently doing laundry, which is taking predictably forever.

It's been a pleasant enough week. Tuesday, May 1, was a big deal, but one which thankfully didn't produce any fireworks. We'd been planning on hitting "the mountains" but were at kind of a loss as to which/where/how the hell to get there. Dave and I grilled some of the high school students about Meiligeng, which he'd somehow heard about, but most students said just not to go there. We didn't really know of any alternatives (weren't even really sure what Meiligeng itself even entailed), so Russ ended up asking one of his students, Ann, who ended up taking us to Meiligeng anyways, which ended up being gorgeous.

Tuesday morning, we met up at the walking street at 8am, and piled into a car. It was a taxi-ish car, but slightly bigger, nicer, and black. That ride cost us Y150, which I thought was pretty steep. We split it 3 ways to treat Ann, which honestly was unexpected... I don't mind saying that I thought we were gonna do 4 ways. Whatever though, not a huge loss (except then I might have considered taking a cheaper car... I can be an assy skinflint when I want). Apparently when locals go, they take a bus or even just their bikes. So yes, we were just basking in luxury in that car. It was the first time I'd gone to the east side of the city... I remember asking Alice during Chinese New Year if she wanted to walk that way, and she adamantly declined, saying pretty much that it's disgusting cuz the only thing there is Baogang. Well, she was sort of right. The sky turned outright gray, and the streets were crowded with coal trucks and other trucks, and so on. We had to drive a ways before the sky cleared up again. I started taking photos at that point, where you could just barely make out the outlines of the Qingshan range in the smog, and photographed the progression from that out to the countryside. There, garbage lessened, civilization was spread a lot thinner, and the sky turned an amazing crystal blue. You could see the mountains pretty clearly after that.

The drive wasn't even an hour, so I guess that means we were ripped off a bit on the ride. But you know, we got there fast, comfortably, and relatively safe, so... yeah I'm not really sure how much that's worth to me exactly, so I'll just leave the whole topic of money cuz I sound stupid when I talk about it.

Since most people take May 1st off, we were expecting a good number of people to be at the mountain, one of the few (but proud) places of interest around these parts. Alice had to go to the monastery again with her company, and reported that it was crowded there also. But since we got there early, the population was still pretty manageable. We really lucked out on the weather, which was absolutely perfect: few clouds, bright sun, slight breeze, warm, not hot.

Not sure what I was expecting when I heard "mountains," but for some reason it didn't occur to me that there'd be admission. It was only Y20 though, which is less than half the price of the monastery, and really for triple the chance for enlightenment. Alice told me that back in the day, it was a dangerous place to go, and people died in ways ranging from falling to drowning. She didn't say that this happened regularly, but that's the image I got in my head. Anyways, since then, it's been "cultivated" into a tourist-friendly sort of trek, through the addition of steps and railings, and a few well-placed "no-climbing" officers with walkie-talkies. Once you start up the path though, you're given a choice every now and then of the safer, easier route, or the "more dangerous and more exciting" one. Of course we took the latter, which consisted of railings plugged next to footprints carved into the rockface, some set for strides much wider than my own. To its credit, the "wilder" paths really did make things much more interesting than, say, Taishan, which is just stair after stair after stair. There was a surprisingly slim margin for error in some places, and people stumbled fairly often.

For the number of people at the mountain that day-- there were some bare areas where folks literally looked like they were meandering through an ant farm (I have photographic evidence!)-- there was still quite a bit of unobscured view. In all I took about 250 pictures of... well, more or less the same thing. Blue sky, gnarled pines, scrubby bushes, and rock. Mountains of beautiful frictive rock. It's the kind of landscape you really just want to clamber all over.

The attractions of Meiligeng are usually listed as the following... "green" and "water." People were in various states of denial over whether or not there'd be either at this time of year. Fortunately, there were both. The waterfalls and creekbeds were already flowing, in a very benign and non-lethal sort of way. The trek up the mountain passes a lot of smaller waterfalls, all unique and interesting in their own rights, to a tall gusher at the top. The volume of water was much less than, say, Taughannock-- people were skipping across the pool to stand on a rock just in front of it without getting so much as sprinkled-- but it was still pretty impressive. If you hold out your right hand in front of your face and turn it 45 degrees counter-clockwise, you have the rock formation that the waterfall's nestled in. It's called the "hand of Buddha" or some such, and the water flows down the crook between the thumb and index finger. The resemblance really is there too. I have a semi-detailed record of all the waterfalls, having been inspired by the h2o pictures on Drew's website. I could really sit around and take close-ups at the same stream of water for like... an hour or something. Of course, the outcome is different every click!

All around the "summit" as it were, are the people who got there before you, staking out rocks and other hard places for their families and friends. You see things like picnic blankets draped over boulders, heated card games, and cans of beer cooling in shallow pools (cuz that water was freeeezing!). People of all ages start at the foot of the waterfall and scramble downwards on the rocks to find a place to settle down. Uniformed guards stand here and there saying goodness knows what into kschhhhking radios while also taking photos for various groups of people and occasionally yelling at others to quit climbing stuff.

I ran into two students up there, which was vaguely awkward, but we took some photos and said "seeya" and moved on. I sat around a while, a ways from Russ and Ann (some interesting, but ultimately confused observations there) and ate a quick snack. Dave had marched on ahead of us long before and spent 30 min or so at the waterfall before heading back and bumping into us along the way. I took more photos. Eventually the three of us started picking our way down the rocks to go back.

Actually, going down was the hard part. It was only about 11, but more people had arrived by this time and were making their way up. Meanwhile, a lot of folks who had already been sitting around were making their way down. Here and there, both groups must use the same narrow path/bridge/stairs/footprints. Then there are the people who think they can take shortcuts but going off the path (I participated at times), and while that does get you there faster, it's still sort of at the expense of others. I have the utmost admiration for the parents who carried their babies/small children both ways.

We met up with Dave and headed back to the front to get some food. There's one restaurant there, and I guess it's part of the Meiligeng resort. Yeah, there's a whole litter of villas where dwell large parties of vacationers. Actually, I think the restaurant was booked mostly full of them. We may have been the only ones there who didn't live on-site. That food was expensiiiiive, but I have no complaints about flavor or any of that. I mean, service was slow, but it's cuz they were also taking care of 3 full tables next to us, and it ended up giving us time to just unwind. The most interesting dish was the last one... chicken and mushrooms, where the mushrooms were like... big honking mushroom caps and stems. Very chewy and, uh, resilient, but I got a kick out of them. They held the sauce pretty well.

Afterwards, we started the long walk back. Meiligeng is actually at the end of a long road along which there is nothing. It's apparently around 8km long, but we figured what the heck, we like walking, and just went ahead. We were like the only people walking at the time, even though I know we saw a whole bunch of people coming the other way that morning. It was maybe 2:30 at that point. We walked a real long time, but it wasn't the least bit tiring or anything. The sun felt good, but my right hand and wrist were turning gray and totally mummifying. I couldn't really wiggle my fingers so well because of how dry my skin was getting. Also my fingers had swollen quite a bit. When I finally looked down I was all like "holy crap!" On either side you could see piles of scree, some last trickling vestige of the waterfalls and streams, scrubland, boulders, and weird animal tracks. Every now and then a vehicle would come literally screaming by. There was a temple on the side of the road, but it was gated and quiet. Also there was a small colony of abandoned tourist yurts, which intrigued me.

The end of the road fed into the road home, and the mouth was clogged with people waiting for the bus. Ann had planned for us to take the train back, so we walked a ways further away from town to a totally deserted train station. I didn't even realize there was a train station there. Anyways, the first thing I thought when we got there was how much like a computer game it felt to be on a totally empty platform and to be staring at signs but at no people. Very Myst-like, or at least Syberia-esque. Despite that, we went inside to inquire about tickets and the employees informed us that the schedule had been changed and the train now comes at 3 instead of 4 or 5 or whatever we thought it was. Aaaand it was 3:30. So we turned around and decided to hail a cab. But the road wasn't really a happening place either, and most vehicles coming by were 3-wheeled cars and cargo trucks. Otherwise you'd see cabs that already had fares or which the owners were using to take their families out for the day.

We walked back past a mian jing restaurant (how much business could they possibly get out there?), where a woman standing outside started asking us if we were looking for a taxi. She said she could get us a car. We took her up on the offer of a van for Y80 and went inside while she called whoever it was. He wouldn't do it for Y80, but Y100 was about what we expected, so we offered that instead. Then we waited around for the van. The woman looked sort of like how you'd expect Natalie Portman to look if she were Chinese.

We went back in a nice white van along the very bumpy terrain of Liuyuan district (or something to that effect). Suspension on these vehicles is really, uh, springy (I don't even know if suspension is what i'm talking about), so a lot of bumps sent me bouncing off the rear seat to the degree that all body parts lost contact with all car parts. Getting air that way was pretty fun. Got some more pictures of the drive back. I kept dozing off and smacking my head against the window.

He dropped us off at the far end of the walking street, so I walked back home via the north gate of our xiaoqu (uh... small district/living district/apartment complex/subdivision/what have you), and took pictures! So now you can see what my neighborhood is like.

I got home at about 4:30 maybe, and fiddled with pictures until almost dinner time. Alice and I took the bike back over to her place and I took pictures along the street too. We posed with the bike a bit, and her mom took pictures of us. Then we had a nice fairly light meal. I ate mostly xiancai (pickes) and this tofu rind(?... i'm just calling it that)-cucumber salad cuz it was goood. We made fun of the tv for a bit, and came home to watch It's a Boy/Girl Thing.

I don't know why I've never heard of this movie, but actually it was... cute. Parts of it were really dead-on in the humor department... others, not so much. It's weird that after all these years since Freaks & Geeks and The OC, Samaire Armstrong is still playing a teenager. Anyways, it wasn't the best movie experience cuz Alice was QQing with some pilot the whole time, but whatevs. I then decided to sleep, and I did.