We had a free day, so a group of us went to a nearby park. The park is huge covering hundreds of
miles. Five students served as our
guides for the day. We started with a
hike, climbing over 2 miles up a mountain ¾ of a mile high. The guides told us it would take 2 hours, but
we climbed in less than 1. I was amazed
to see both the very young and the very old making the strenuous trip. There
was an option to take a chair up to the top.
The chair was fixed to bamboo poles and carried by two men for cost of
$25.
There were so many people on the trail it was difficult to
keep up a good pace and it was not as peaceful as a typical hike. Everyone
seemed to want to take a picture of us or say hello-this is what it must be
like to be famous. Vendors were set up
all along the mountain as well as bathroom stations.
From the top we looked out over breath-taking views. Steep striking pillar shaped mountains shot
up all around us. Before we left this
morning the girls told us they could not afford to take the tram down the
mountain. After our strenuous hike, we
decided to take the cable car and pay for the girls, so we could do more hiking
at the bottom. It came time to pay and
the girls tried to pay for themselves.
This is a frustrating part of Chinese culture for me to accept. They are students and have little money, yet
they refuse to accept us paying.
At the bottom the girls took us for a “short walk”. The short walk wound alongside the river at
the base of the towering mountains for over 4 ½ miles. The walk included a wobbly bridge, balance
beams, and stilts to entertain. The
adults acted like children on the various obstacles.
We came to a paddle wheel in the river. I watched several people turn the crank to
draw water from the river. Leah and I
decided to try it out, so we cranked the handles for about 10 seconds until
water rose up from the stream. We
started to walk away when a lady came running up to us screaming in Chinese. She did not look happy. The students translated saying she wanted us
to pay for touching the wheel. A
shouting match started between the students and the lady. Groups of people stopped to join the fight
and told us to keep walking and ignore the lady. After much commotion we walked away with the
lady yelling in our ears for a good 5 minutes down the trail.
Golden whip fish, dried and fried straight from the stream
were being sold along the trail. Lynette
told me the Chinese way is to eat the entire fish including the head, tail, and
bones. The fish was delicious and crispy
enough that I ate it the traditional Chinese way.
We were exhausted by the time the bus took us back to the
university, but we had promised to eat with the students. They took us to have hot pot where all the
ingredients cook on a burner in the table.
I sat at the spicy table. The pot
came out and the broth was red due to all of the spicy peppers. I knew I was in trouble. I sniffed my way through the meal as my mouth
was on fire.
