Further Wanderings

For the days leading up to and after Chinese New Year, we’d been expecting to experience travel chaos. To be wrestling with people on train platforms. To be packed into buses like sardines. To be shoving our way onto vehicles we’d already reserved tickets for.

We’d been careful to arrange our travel to minimize this, but even so we’d been surprised with how simple, straightforward and comfortable our journeys had been. Finally with our train trip from Huangshan to Fuzhou we got a taste of how difficult travel around the Spring Holiday can be. We’d only been able to get one sleeper bed on the 15 hour overnight trip, and had flipped a coin to see which of us would get it. Sarah won, so at boarding time we went to our respective cars with plans to meet in the dining car in an hour.

Parrots at the Fuzhou Lantern Festival
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I’d planned this second Huangshan entry to be a nice short one, but we actually did an awful lot while we were there, so it’s turned out to be a pretty big one as well. Out of our seven days in the Huangshan area we actually only spent two on the mountain itself.

After returning from our hike we still had a bit over three days in town. The day after arriving back we headed out to the bus station again, this time headed for the Huizhou village of Hongcun. We picked up our tickets, but had a bit of time before departure, so headed back outside the station to check out the travel food selection.

We sidled up to the cart and ordered our meal, sitting down at one of the tent-covered tables beside it. In a moment our fried dumplings showed up (completed by soy sauce and black vinegar in bottles on the table) and were soon followed up with the noodle soup (bamboo shoots, mushrooms and a bit of pork) which was supplemented by chili sauce (from one of the series of almost empty jars at the tables.) Great meal, even better value at 8 yuan (about NZ$1.30) for the lot.

It doesn’t look like much, but YUM! It’s a tough call, but I think the fried dumplings (on the coal fired hotplate near the top right) were the winner of the two dishes they served.
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We'd headed south for Chinese New Year in hopes of spending the Spring Festival somewhere a bit warmer. (Spring Festival is the two week holiday following the lunar New Year when long distance travel is difficult in China.) However if ... [Continue reading this entry]

Sorry for taking so long between posts. Believe it or not, it's not entirely my fault. I am a bit behind on writing, true, but it's mostly due to the fact that the 'blog host was having some ... [Continue reading this entry]

As with our previous trips, short minute ticket buying meant taking the high speed train, which meant arriving fairly early. In this case we got to Shanghai around noon, and by 14:00 were at our host Brian's flat (the ... [Continue reading this entry]