This weekend I visited one of China’s most beautiful sights, Huangshan (or Yellow Mountain). Yellow Mountain is the most sacred mountain in China because, according to legend, it is where the Yellow Emperor, the ancestor of the Han people who are now the majority in China, ascended into heaven. Since then, it has held a special place in the heart of china and is both heavily visited and well maintained by the millions who visit it ever year.
Huangshan is in Anhui province, a beautiful rural area that is 5 1/5 hours by bullet train from Shanghai. The train ride over passed through lush forests, beautiful green rice terraces, and sleepy towns. I love taking the bullet train because it gives a spectacular view of China outside the famous metropolises the country is famous for. We pass by burial tombs, farmers, and small villages that really highlight how a large portion of the country has lived for hundreds of years, and still lives.
Getting to Yellow Mountain from the bullet train station is no easy chore. We took 5 buses to the gate of the mountain, one of which accidentally backed into a car, allowing me to participate my first ever car accident in China. Once we actually got to the start of the hike it was already 3 and we discovered we had 3 hours of daylight to hike 10 kilometers to our hotel. Hoping that we wouldn’t be caught on a dangerous trail once the sun set, we started to book it up the mountain.
Yellow Mountain is not just one mountain, it is actually a collection of ranges. So, hiking requires going up and down multiple peaks. The trails in Yellow Mountain are stone steps, hundreds of years old, and wind up and down the peaks. The hike, although challenging and rigorous, is absolutely spectacular. Spire-shaped peaks, surrounded by mist, rise from the abyss all around you. Cherry blossoms and beautiful pine trees grow from small spaces along the cliffs, and the granite formation that makes up the peaks shine in the sunlight, basking the mountain in a golden glow. Ultimately, we ended up hiking around 4 km in the darkness, which was not dangerous at all on the well-preserved stone pathways.
Yellow mountain is so large that there are a few remote hotels built into the mountain. Although these hotels hike up their prices, they are worth staying at because it is traditional when hiking up Yellow Mountain to wake up and watch the sunrise over the peaks. So, after passing out when we got to the hotel, which was located in a small valley, we woke up at 4 am to hike back up the peaks and watch the sunrise. Unfortunately, it was too misty to actually see the sun come over the horizon, but apparently this is normal and we weren’t disappointed. After eating breakfast because we were starving, we started the trek down, however on a different path than we came up. In my opinion, the hike down was even more stunning. First, we were walking virtually alone on the path down whereas on the way up we were hiking amongst hundreds of other people. Second, the path we followed dropped down into a gorgeous valley, with mountains surrounding it that seemed straight out of a fairytale. There were no words to describe it so I’ll just leave a picture.
On the way down, we passed by many people carrying up water, food, and building supplies on their shoulders. For me, this put a damper on the hike because the hotels at the top of the mountain, owned by the Chinese government, essentially were using slave labor to get what they needed down from the valley up into the peaks. It was tragic walking by these guys, many of whom were old, sweaty, looked extremely malnourished, and seemed as if they were about to collapse. Yellow mountain is a beautiful preserved national heritage site, but it seems to also contain a dark side to it.
After hiking down, we hung around the small town at the foot of the mountain, breathing in the fresh air and enjoying our time in the countryside before heading back to the world’s biggest metropolis.
