Head for the Mountains with the YRC!

It's Friday and time for another rollicking Yellow River Chronicles. Here at the YRC we know how busy Fridays are for our readers as they frenetically get ready to rest on the weekend, so we truly appreciate the visit!   We hope you will be pleased that you stopped by because today, just like the old beer ad, we Head for the Mountains.

We're bound for Silver Dragon Village located on the borders between Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, southeast of Shanghai. It's about a four hour drive and we rolled PRC style in a bus. It was loaded with Shanghai-weary expats, beer, hiking gear and mountains of tasty but mysterious Chinese snacks.


Zhejiang, (which means "winding river") province is about 70% mountains and Anhui has the famous Huangshan mountain range, so the area is in stark contrast to the flat lands of Shanghai.


I will continue this episode of the YRC with the usual amount on candor and clarity.  The highlight of the weekend trip for some was the fact that while stargazing and cocktailing on a moonless night, I fell in the ditch shown on the left.  The details of my entrance into said ditch will only bore you, so my testimony reads as follows:  it was dark, I took a right out of the doorway to avoid a group of beer-ponging ne'er-do-wells blocking my route to see Cassiopeia (the constellation), In the inky darkness of the Inn at Silver Dragon Village, I stepped off the stone bridge and plunged into the ditch.


As you may remember, the editorial staff here at YRC make an extreme effort to avoid travelogues, factual narratives and hard physical labor.   Our contribution to the literature is to look for the connective tissue that seems to bind all cultures together.  So, it seems that in all cultures represented at this event, Pakistani, Chinese, Irish, English, Dutch, Indian, German, Canadian and American, it is considered to be extremely funny for someone to drop headlong into a ditch while carrying a vodka tonic and discussing astronomy.  We are glad of this unifying discovery and we will now leave the topic behind us.  No one was seriously injured in the making of this topic.

Do you remember the amazing Coppola film "Apocolyse Now"?  During the famous  'napalm in the morning' scene, as justification for taking a beach in the Mekong Delta, Colonel Kilgore (played by the admirable Robert Duvall) utters the line "Charlie don't surf!"  


After spending a long weekend hiking the beautiful hills and valleys of this are, I think I can say with confidence, Well, the Chinese Don't Hike!  They are fond of climbing sacred mountains. For example all of the Five Sacred Mountains have many paths to the top. But to walk in the back country for recreation is something low on their list, close to mountain biking or waiting in line.   My impression is, why do something for fun that you have to do anyway?   Let us leave it at that for the time being and I promise to report back when I have deeper observations. 

Family Tomb

Amjad, left, Farmer Chang, right.

Rice pasture

The trip was organized by the redoubtable Amjad as part of his EsXape Shanghai tours.  We stayed at the inn/hotel/hostel constructed recently by the equally redoubtable Farmer Chang.  Mr. Chang led us on the hikes while cheerfully puffing on a cigarette and gathering wild flowers for the ladies on the tour.  In the off-season, rumor has it he grows tea and rice.


Quick Facts:  China's population density is 362 people per square mile (compared to 4 per square mile in Mongolia, 72 in the United States, and 1,188 in South Korea).  China's density is three times the world average of 91 people per square mile. In Shanghai there are almost 100,000 people per square mile, which makes it one of the top ten cities in population density in the world, and a tough place to get a table in the good restaurants.


Silver Dragon was a dramatic and thankful shift from the frenzy that is the 'Hai.  In contrast to Shanghai's virulent growth, one has the sense that Silver Dragon village is winding down, and gradually receding back into the Tang Dynasty.  Like many other parts of the world, the young are leaving and moving to the cities, leaving the old ones behind to fend for themselves.  Farmers plant rice, pretty much the way they have for the past 100 years, using direct seeding and raking the soil with wooden rakes.    It's the kind of place that inspired the traditional Chinese poet Li Bai: 


Thousands of feet high towers the Yellow Mountains
With its thirty-two magnificent peaks,
Blooming like golden lotus flowers
Amidst red crags and rock columns.
Once I was on its lofty summit,
Admiring Tianmu Pine below.
The place is still traceable where the immortal
Before ascending to heaven made elixir out of jade.
Now you embark on your journey there alone---

Silver Dragon Falls.  Actually, I don't really know the name...