New Year a la Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Trip Start
Oct 19, 2007
1
3
70
Trip End
Ongoing
Wudangshan National Park,
Hubei,
China
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
cold steps
.Secondly, and more to the point, Wudangshan is the place at the end of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. The one with lots of mist, temples, endless steps and such. I can vouch for the fact that the steps may as well have been endless because they left me just about crippled, the same as those darn steps of redemption in Egypt did. What is it with holy mountains and their flipping steps?! Anyway, if you have seen the movie, I think you'll probably understand why we were keen to go there.
Ever since I saw Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon oh so many years ago, I have wanted to go to Wudangshan. Well that's not entirely true... I actually thought all those stairs and the temples and the valley and stuff at the end of the movie were computer generated. It was only when I was reading up about Wuhan, after I decided to come to China, that I found out Wudangshan existed. But once I knew that the place was real, the proximity of Wudangshan was one of the reasons I decided to come to Wuhan to work. This seems laughable now because it is 5 hours away by train (in Taiwan, I could be at the other end of the island in 5 hours), but in Chinese terms (keep in mind some journeys take days), this is very close considering the train is an extremely slow regional thing.
The first day started with a really early, extremely cold morning start. I had (as usual) not packed until the last minute. Despite this, I would still have been running on time, had it not been for a most inconvenient delay caused, yet again, by spicy food consumed the night before (honestly, I have to kick myself here, I mean the train to Shanghai incident had occured but a week before...what was I thinking? Why oh why, when they ask me if I want it spicy, can I not say "no"?!?) thus I had to come downstairs half-dressed with wet hair to wake up the guard in our building to unlock the front gate to let Mum in, so that she could leave a bag in my room and wait in relative warmth while I finished blowdrying my hair
sunny steps
. How embarrassing.Anyway, so we got to the train station (way too early because I am always too anal about time after the missing the plane the first time I went to Hong Kong incident many years ago) and then (when they finally let us on the platform) barged through the crowd quite nicely. Mum is way better than me at stuff like this. I don't know why since I am the one who lives in China and I am much bigger than she is, but she'd give any Korean granny a run for her money and those Korean grannies are probably the pushiest people I've come across. So she went first and I just hooked an arm through a loop in her backpack which worked like a charm. Unfortunately we ran down the platform in completely the wrong direction which defeated the purpose of bowling everyone out of the way, but ended up being ok because the train left late anyway and we had assigned seats.
The train ride was 5 hours of being stared at and having people try and sneakily take photos of us. I entertained myself my making stupid faces and waving my water bottle at the baby sitting opposite me (after all, if I am going to be treated like a monkey in the zoo, I may as well behave like one too) and Mum fumed at the horny old sleazebag sitting opposite her. Little did I know, he was trying to sexually harrass my mother right under my nose, otherwise I'd have shoved my bottle straight up his nose instead of waving it at the baby
locks and mountain
.We arrived at Wudangshan town and that is when what shall hereafter be know as the accomodation debacle began. An old lady told us there was no running water on the mountain because of pipes that had been broken for 3 days. We assumed (rotten untrusting doubting Thomases that we are) she was trying to fib us into going to her place which had no hot showers. With the excuse of needing to eat, we said we'd catch up with her on the mountain. I called one of the guesthouses listed in the LG who said they had hot water. This was because I asked the wrong question. They had boiled water in thermoses that could be used to wash your face. This led us to believe that old lady had tried to diddle us. We caught a motobike taxi thing to the park entrance but had to run off when we refused to pay the inflated price the driver demanded (I should mention that we did pay, just not the amount he wanted).
While we were buying tickets for the park at the tourist center, I decided to double check what the old lady had said about the water pipes being broken and there being no running water which, if true, would have inclined us to spend the night in the town and go up the mountain the next day. The tourist info worker said, and I quote: "Of course there is running water
ice next to the path
. Do you really think we'd leave the pipes broken for 3 days?! That lady was lying. She probably wants to trick you into staying at her hotel." Lies, lies, ALL LIES! She looked me straight in the eyes and lied. Of all the lying prats I've come across in recent history, she was the nastiest of all because she was wearing a uniform and her job is supposedly to help travellers like me. She was lucky I had jelly legs when we came pass the next day on the way back from the mountain or I'd have walked in with the express purpose of bitch-slapping her. Tempting though it was, I figured half frozen, tired, hungry, with jelly legs and a big pack on my back, the best I could have done was piddle on the floor at her feet.When we got up the mountain, the staff of a couple of guesthouses confirmed what the old lady had told us. The water pipes had been broken for 3 days, there was no running water. The locals were even less impressed than I was. For those who have not thought that far ahead, this means not only no showers (hot, or cold), but also no flushing of toilets. Mum forbid the production of anything solid in the dunny. Fair enough. But when you are as regular as I am, this is a big problem. At 8 am the next morning (after Mum and I had consumed a lot of red wine in a half-arsed attempt at celebrating New Year's Eve/keeping warm, only to fall asleep a good hour or 2 before midnight..
locks and a view
. regular party animals, not) after trying to ignore cramps and making whimpering noises worthy of a kicked puppy, in a pathetic and unsuccessful attempt to gain Mum's sypathy and permission to poo in the bathroom, I had to put on 5 layers of clothing plus scarf, hat and mittens (remember this is the coldest winter to hit China in a century) and scurry up the icy road to the public squatties to poo. It took a long time for circulation to return to my butt. I felt extremely sorry for myself. But the good thing about the cold was that it probably lessened the stink. Public squatties are never sweet smelling things, but 3 days without out flushing?! Blah! When I made it back to the room, I fixed Mum with a rather venomous glare.The hike itself was beautiful. Wudangshan is a lovely place. Really. Unfortunately a couple of things tarnished the experience (ie, other than my bitterness at getting a numb bum first thing in the morning). What with temples and forests you'd think the mountain would be a serene place and maybe it was, before the advent of loudspeakers from which the temples blare obnoxious music down the mountainside. Wudangshan also possesses the filthiest of portasquatties I have ever had the misfortune of having to pee in. On par with that thing that looked like a camel had exploded in it (that haunts me to this day) at an Egyptian bus station we visited a couple of years ago
spying on other tourists
. Finally I am not a big fan of paths up mountains made entirely of steps. Yes it makes it easier for silly bimbo ladies who go to mountains wearing high heels (believe it or not, these women do indeed exist...I've seen them with my own eyes), but the repetitiveness of it is hell on the legs. I like natural trails, not concrete ones. There were more than enough steps in the first place. Sadly, Mum and I went and did something most tragic. We started to go down the back of the mountain, since we'd already come up the front. Then halfway down, we realised there was too much ice on the stairs for us to go any further without wiping out and dying of hypothermia as a result. And so had to go all the way back up to the peak and come down the front. Plus we were worried about missing the bus down to the town and then the night train back to Wuhan that we had tickets for, so we went hard. By the time we made it to the road, our clothes were drenched in sweat and we were half dead.
A couple we met offered to drive us to a city called Shiyan where we could catch the train. They suggested we change our clothes in the bathroom of a ritzy hotel opposite the train station. Doubting this would work, I explained our situation to hotel staff. They hesitated. I said we'd eat dinner there if we could get changed first. That worked. The woman at the front desk marched into the staff room/security office and kicked out a guard and a cleaner by trumpeting "Out, out. These woman need to take off their clothes. Get out right now!" Was too grateful to feel embarrassed. Mum and I had started to shudder with cold and with all the shaking we were doing and all the layers that needed changing, we were in there for a long time. We went upstairs for dinner (which was not expensive at all) and then got on the bus, where I fell asleep in 5 seconds flat, despite the cockroaches busily rushing back and forth on the luggage rack at the foot of my bunk. Mum was not so lucky. She couldn't get to sleep that night and when we got off the train the next morning she was feverish with the start of a bad cold that stayed with her for weeks after.
