Huangshan Memories

This was originally an email I sent to Jon and Julie, cowritten with KP. We wrote this in an internet cafe at the Hangzhou train station, the night before we left for Shanghai.

We decided to go to Huangshan after all, so we took a bus out to the Huangshan Youth Hostel in Huangshan Si. It turns out Huangshan Si is quite a ways from the actual Huangshan mountain. Woops.

When we got to the bus station at Huangshan Si, a taxi driver got on the bus and asked if we wanted to go somewhere. We told him we wanted to go to the youth hostel so he said he'd take us for five kwai. That sounded like a good deal, so we said, "sure!"

As it turns out, we were about ten feet from the door of the youth hostel. He couldn't turn left because of the center divider so he drove us all the way around the block.

He was the first of many that tried to rip us off. I didn't believe that it was possible, but they were even worse than the money-crazed people in Guilin.

That evening, KP and I enjoyed an excellent meal. We walked down an alley behind our hostel looking for something to eat, and we happened across a little point-and-eat place, which had only one table. The proprietor was thrilled to have American business, and he quickly cooked us up some rice, fish-head soup, and stir fried vegetables while we watched. It was like having a personal chef or being on a live cooking show.



The next morning, we took a bus to the mountain. A lady on the bus started talking to KP while I was sleeping and she managed to convince her that we should get off the bus before we got to the bus station, at a hotel. It turned out that she owned the hotel and she wanted us to stay there.

She told us that we were foolhardy to want to climb the mountain, that it was too late and it was going to rain, and we were going to be doomed, doomed!!!

She told us that we should stay at her hotel for 80 kwai for the night, and that if we stayed on the mountain we'd have to pay 850 yuan.

Unfortunately for her, I knew that she was lying because Lonely Planet said the climb would only take 3 hours, so I finally got mad and stormed away, with KP in tow, yelling "ZAI JIAN!!!" at the ladies. Another lady was still chasing us with maps and raincoats, and I got mad at her and yelled "BU YAO, XIE XIE!!!" which I felt bad about later, because she looked like I'd punched her. When you are completely exhausted and people are trying to strip your pockets though, you tend to get frustrated and lose your temper, and that was really the first time I yelled at anyone in China.

After that, we went to find a bank (a pointless quest, as it turned out—there were ATMs on the mountain), but the lady that we asked directions of only wanted to know if we wanted to eat something, so we ordered two bowls of Huangshan noodles.

Then she told us it was late and we shouldn't climb the mountain, and we should stay at her place for...80 yuan.

However, when we declined politely, she pointed us towards a bank, which turned out to be a crappy Bank of China branch. However, if staying on the mountain was going to cost us 850 yuan, we were afraid that we needed money, so KP went to change some bills.

It didn't have an ATM, and inside the bank there was just one teller and there were a bunch of ladies taking out money. One got out some American money. She spent a long time staring at the 20 dollar bill, because she thought it was so cool.

Then a bunch of giggly girls came and withdrew 200 yuan each. They all gave the teller a satisfactory rating on his little star meter. By then we were sick of waiting, so we decided to give him an unsatisfactory rating if he didn't change all of our money!

When KP pulled out a hundred dollar bill the two guys in line behind us got really excited and crowded around to see it. The bank manager spent a long time studying the two bills with a magnifying glass before deciding that one of them was a counterfeit and giving it back.

However, he deigned to change the other bill and a traveler's check.

We were going to give him an unsatisfactory rating, and he knew it, so he didn't push the button to let us rate him!

Finally, we went to climb the mountain, but first we had to find a bus to the gate.

A view of Yellow Mountain from outside the Bank of China

As we walked towards the bus station, taxies kept pulling up and asking where we wanted to go, and offering us 50 kwai rides to the train station, which wasn't where we wanted to go at all.

Finally a guy pulled over and asked if we wanted to go to the gate, so we said yes, and KP negotiated him down to 20 kwai.

It turned out to be the most exciting 20 kwai we ever spent.

This man fancied himself a racecar driver, so he drove his Red Flag sedan up the curvy mountain road ridiculously fast, and passed on all the curves with tour buses coming the other direction. The seats were faux leather, so we slid back and forth on every turn, and had a lot of fun doing so.

Finally, after cheating death for 20 minutes, we got to the gate. The entrance fee was 200 kwai, but there was a student discount. I was excited about that because I had an honest-to-goodness Chinese student ID. I proudy pulled it out and gave it to the lady but when she looked at it she started yelling indignantly about how I was trying to pull a fast one on her, and finally handed it back.

It was the ID of the guy from Xi'an who had climbed Emei Shan with me and Jon!

We must have accidentally switched IDs at the Emei Shan gate. The lady saw how upset I was so she said she was sorry she doubted me and she was sure I really did have a student ID but since it was at Emei Shan, I had to pay 200 yuan. But since KP had hers, she only had to pay 100.

Then we climbed the stairs to the top. It was pretty easy, especially compared to Emei Shan. KP said, "That was easy, like eating a cake!"

KP strikes a confident pose.

When we got to the top it was nearly sunset, and we were standing over a sea of clouds. We walked to "Beginning to Believe Peak". It was the most beautiful place either of us had ever been, and it put Emei Shan to shame. It also put Guilin to shame.

And then it got dark.

A 30 second exposure at ISO 800 yields this moonlit view of the mountain with stars in the sky

We went to find a hotel. A guy came running up and offered us a room for 70 kwai. We thought that sounded good, since we'd been told we would pay 850 kwai.

We said to ourselves, "we're not picky!"

But then he led us to a concrete block building with tiny little airless rooms, each with 4 little cots and no windows.

We said, "do you have any other rooms?"

"No," he said, "they're all the same." So we decided to look around some more.

Next door was another place, that looked slightly nicer. We asked about the price and they said we could have a double for 280 or a quad for 80 yuan each. We tried to bargain them down, but the guy would only reduce his price to 240 yuan.

We said, "Tai Gui La!" which means "Too Expensive!"

But they were empty words. We went to another hotel to look, and they had 280 kwai/pp rooms that had 7 people in them, and it was a five minute walk from the main hotel. We went back with our tails between our legs to the other place and got the 240 kwai room.

Our hotel was pretty nice except for the bathroom

Then we went to find dinner. We went into the restaurant in the bigger hotel and asked about the buffet. They told us that it was 100 yuan each, so we ordered regular dishes. A few minutes later another couple came in and they got the buffet for 50 yuan each. It made me really angry but KP made me calm down. It's hard to explain, but in the tourist-trap areas, people just don't know how to get my money away from me. You see, I can easily afford to spend 100 yuan for dinner, but I want to feel like I'm being treated fairly. So whenever I caught someone trying to do that to me, I just left.

We planned to get up for the amazing sunrise, but when we awoke, we found the mountain enveloped in thick fog accompanied by a torrential downpour!

We got up and looked for a sunrise anyway, but it was too late, and pouring,
so we went back to bed hoping the rain would lift. It didn't. At noon, we left the hotel, and hiked up to Bright Summit (the third highest peak, and i think the only one of the three you can hike up to).

Me at the summit. Notice how my umbrella has been destroyed and I am thoroughly drenched.

We asked the concession stand lady if we could take the cable car off the western steps, but it was closed due to the weather. We didn't want to walk for 10 hours in the pouring rain, so we took the eastern cable car down the mountain. When we got there, we felt bad, so we went on a hike to find the nine-dragon waterfall.

We found a spectacular view of the mountain, and then a trail through a beautiful bamboo forest that passed through a bunch of cascades.

This was an absolutely unbelievable sight, and even the panorama can't do it justice, because of the massive cascades coming down the sides of the mountain.

KP walks through the bamboo forest with her umbrella. I was thrilled because a bamboo forest like this is one of the top things I wanted to see in China.

We hiked and got soaking wet, but we never found the waterfall. At one of the cascades, the trail had worn away and it was like a waterslide and a cliff in one. I told KP to be careful not to slip, and then I promptly slipped, and scared us both half to death, because it was a long way down in the middle of nowhere.

This is where I almost slipped off the side of the mountain. Photomosaic.

Eventually we stopped, because we were afraid of being stuck in the dark on the trail, so we went back. When we got back to the gate there was a taxi sitting there. We asked to go back down the mountain. He said he'd go for 50 kwai. And of course, since we had paid 20 to get up the moutnain, we said, "Tai Gui La!"

To which he replied that we had no choice because he was the last taxi.

The chinese love a little extortion!

Eventually, when nobody else came he took us down the hill for 30 kwai, if we agreed to stay at the hotel of his choosing. When we got there, we bargained them down to 80 kwai for the room, and bought bus tickets back to Hangzhou.

The drive to Hangzhou should only take 6 hours, but I guess we got discount tickets, because it ended up taking 11 hours, during which the bus driver mostly showed 1980's Chinese music videos, which just show women walking around in frumpy dresses or one piece bathing suits, leaning against light or telephone poles. Aaaaaah!

We did see some interesting things, like really old villages with only one or two modern buildings. People on the side of the road would periodically hail the bus and we'd pick them up. In China, you need sometimes need papers to travel from one province to another. You have to show them at the bus station, but not if you're picked up on the side of the road. However, at one point, it turned out that we were beign followed by an unmarked police car, and when we picked up a couple of passengers, they stopped us and dragged them off the bus. The men didn't have the proper papers, so the police let them off—with a 100 kwai going to each officer to smooth things out, thankyouverymuchhaveaniceday.

Australia

Well, it's time to post some pictures from Australia. I have had very little time for this blog lately, and I apologize. I just started working for the X Prize Foundation, and they have me 10 hours a day, with a two hour commute (round trip)...there's not much time left for anything else. It's a great group of people though, and they're a lot of fun to hang out with.

Anyway, let's get back to Australia...two weeks ago.

I'll start with the recent story from the Tehachapi News.

THS grads perform at Sydney Opera House
By Carin Enovijas

On July 9, two Tehachapi High School graduates participated in an event hailed as the largest band event in the Southern Hemisphere, the 2006 Premiering Sydney Inaugural Festival, held at the Sydney Opera House.

That’s Sydney, Australia, as in, “down under,” and “put another shrimp on the barbie.”

John Starr Dewar, 21, of Tehachapi, who is currently attending Chapman University as a film major, is also a member of the university’s wind ensemble. When the ensemble’s director expressed a need for clarinet players to make the trek to Sydney, John quickly suggested his longtime high school friend, Lauren Hirsch.

Lauren, 19, is a cellular biology major at University of Southern California at San Diego, where she is also a member of her school’s Wind Symphony.

Although she began playing the trumpet in high school and also played saxophone occasionally, Lauren decided to give the clarinet a try after John suggested she come with his ensemble to perform in Sydney.

“I can pick up a wind instrument in about a month,” Lauren said.

That’s pretty much what she did, borrowing a clarinet from a friend, and later, after discovering, “it was sort of broken,” she rented one.

After practicing under the instruction of a recent UCSD music graduate for only 10 weeks, Lauren joined Chapman’s Wind Ensemble for rehearsals, one week before leaving for Sydney.

On the third day of rehearsals, Lauren decided to tell the director about her newly acquired talent.

“He just thought I was a sax player as opposed to a clarinet player,” Lauren said, adding that he wasn’t concerned in the least about her musical abilities.

Lauren and John, a trumpet player, joined approximately 350 other young musicians from high schools and colleges around the world to perform in the world premiere of Dr. David Gillingham's “Sails of Time,” a new work composed especially for the Sydney Opera House and for the season’s inaugural event.

“They (opera house attendants) kept telling us not to be nervous and, in essence, saying that we were nervous, but that we really shouldn’t be nervous,” Lauren said about preparing to perform before such a large audience, at such a famed and prestigious venue.

John also said he had been more nervous at much smaller performances.
“When you’re on stage, the lights tend to blind you, so you forget how many people are there,” he said.

Lauren said she was happy with her performance, in spite of the difficulties associated with performing with 350 other musicians.

“I nailed parts of the performance that had been difficult during rehearsals. I think I just zoned out,” she said.

Lauren also said that after seeing the outside of the famous Sydney Opera House for several days prior to the big performance, seeing the inside was somewhat anti-climactic.

“It just didn’t seem that big inside,” after all the buildup, she said.

John disagreed.

“Some of the other students said the same thing, but there was a different architect inside the main hall and the architecture was just less timeless than the outside. I don’t think size really matters in a concert hall. The acoustics were beautiful,” John said.

This was Lauren’s first trip out of the U.S. She preferred the quaintness of tropical Cairns, located north of the bustling city of Sydney.

“Usually people go south to get warmer in the winter,” she said of her first experience with the southern hemisphere’s reversal of seasons.

While the queens’ English didn’t pose many language barriers, Lauren said she became frustrated when dealing with the monetary differences.

According to Lauren, there are no Australian one $1 bills, only $1 and $2 coins, which are the size of dimes, making them quite easy to lose and mix up.

“I haven’t had to be helped with making change since I was 6 years old,” Lauren said, “but twice I just stood at the counter while a clerk counted out my money for me.”

She described it as a very humbling experience.

Lauren’s favorite highlights of the trip included a snorkeling trip to the Great Barrier Reef and a skyrail trip into a rain forest.

“John said he found Nemo, so he was really happy,” Lauren said.

Like many foreign travel experiences, there were some unexpected historical and cultural surprises. For Lauren, a visit to an aboriginal cultural center clearly illustrated some of the brutalities of imperialism.

“It was really sad. It was like a mini-holocaust. The English were really horrible to them (the aboriginal people),” she said.

More uplifting experiences included aboriginal dancing and a traditional fire-lighting ceremony, which she described as “really cool.”

Lauren also enjoyed a didgeridoo demonstration, a native wooden instrument hollowed out by termites, that mimicked different native animal sounds, including a cuckaburra, a kangaroo and a dingo.

“It was amazing,” she said.

John, who just returned from a semester abroad at China’s University of Beijing, said the cultural differences weren’t that striking.

“From a cultural standpoint, I guess I just needed more time. The only difference between Sydney and, say, a city in Canada was that the cars drive on the other side of the road.”

Lauren and John also visited a nature preserve and the Sydney Zoo, where they saw kangaroos and wombats.

John was particularly excited about the wildlife he saw, including massive nests of large colorful spiders and giant bats with 3 foot wingspans. In these cases, however, the wildlife was not inside an animal preserve, but living outside their hotel in Queensland.

Now let's look at some more photos.

I saw a shot of the Opera House's Sails that looked like this, so I copied it as best I could.


Here's a slightly wider shot in the same style.

When we got into Sydney, the first thing we did was to take a whirlwind bus tour of the city, ending with a boat ride around the opera house. And by whirlwind, I do mean positively tornadic. We had ten minutes tops at each stop. "Bondi Beach everyone! Be back in ten minutes!" Sigh...tours.

Here's the flag flying on the back of our tour boat.


This is a pretty bird on the cliffs overlooking the mouth of Sydney Harbor.


Looking down at the water where a ship sank during a storm, and all aboard drowned except for one guy that managed to cling to the cliff face all night long.

After that we went to our hotel, which was called "The Vibe". It was supposed to be a 4 star hotel, but the three elevators didn't work so I only give it two stars. I guess I'm not very forgiving that way. Also, if you wanted to use the internet you had to pay $30, and I figure if you're already forking over $200-300 a night any establishment worth its salt would throw internet in for free.

Anyway, after a nap, we went to the University of New South Wales for dinner. There was a group there, that played lots of Australian bushdance songs. They sang "Waltzing Matilda"...and so did everyone else in Australia the whole time we were there. It got stuck in our heads, and became something of a joke among the band. Dr. Frelly, our director, kept singing it on the bus intercom, but he could only remember the words "Waltzing Matilda," so he sang it thusly: "Waltzing Matilda, WALTZING MATILDA, you'll go a waltzing Matilda with me, Waltzing Matilda, WALTZING MATILDA..." If you want to hear it, go to iTunes and preview one of the 121 different versions of the song.

Here I am at dinner.

The next morning we all got up and had breakfast. An interesting Australian breakfast food is a sort of even more westernized version of chow mein. I forget what it's called, it starts with a "K". Lauren loved it. Everyone sampled the traditional Australian spread, Vegemite. I liked it. Nobody else did. You need to use a thin layer. It definitely tastes like it will cure you of any malady that might affect you! That's good, because, as it was winter, everyone soon had the sniffles.

The famed vegemite.

We went over to Trinity Grammar school for mass rehearsal. We were playing the piece Sails of Time, which was commissioned for this event. It was nice, but it wasn't terribly original. It sounded very much like James Newton Howard's score for King Kong mixed with Harry Gregson-Williams' score for The Chronicles of Narnia.

Eventually we got dropped off at the waterfront, in a major shopping area called Darling Harbor. They have a nice aquarium and a maritime museum.

A replica of Captain Cook's ship frames the skyline. (he discovered Australia and Sydney Harbor, and there's a funny Blackadder episode about him in which Edmund hires an insane captain who can't navigate and discovers Australia.


While shopping for souvenirs, we discovered this very sad pile of wallaby skins.

Finally, the big day arrived, and it was time for us to perform. The sunset was one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

I loved the way the glass in the Opera House reflected the water.

The choristers performed the first concert, and as we waited, the night crept over the harbor. The Opera house is beautiful at night, with its gleaming tiles reflecting the moon.

Presently, it was our turn to perform. We were up first. As you read in the newspaper article, Dr. Frelly was really nervous. He kept going on and on and on about how we shouldn't be nervous. It was rather comic.

Another group performs onstage. When we were done performing we went and sat in a semicircle around the back of the stage. Then our section moved down to the stage for the performance of Sails of Time.

The next day, we flew to Cairns.

This really cool spider lived at our hotel.

I'm Back Again!

This time, I'm back from Australia. I performed in the Chapman Wind Symphony at the Sydney Opera House, and then flew up to Cairns and snorkeled at the Great Barrier Reef and then visited a tropical rainforest. It was a 7-day nonstop trip and very tiring. My roommate from China, Nick Miller, was in Sydney and he actually saw me perform at the Opera House, but I didn't get to see him, which I'm very disappointed about. There were a few other disappointments along the way, too. Sadly, my usual luckiness was mostly missing on this trip, but I guess that's the nature of luck--sometimes you have it and sometimes you don't. Anyway, I'll put up some pictures later.

This added to my travels, with about 19,000 miles covered. So far this year I have been on 18 airline flights, countless buses, two long-distance trains, and several boats.