10/1/08
Becky
Maoxian! Adventure! It’s been a very hard couple of weeks for me with work stuff and I decided that the family needed a short relaxing vacation. Relaxing? No way, Maoxian! The kids are on holiday Wednesday thru Friday so they aren’t missing any school. Zhang (our driver) showed up at our apartment at 8:00am today and we loaded up the van for our overnight excursion out of Shanghai. On the way there we drove on the Hongzhou Bridge that is 22.2 miles long! The bridge just recently opened on 5/1/08 so we’re probably only the 20 millionth car to cross over it in 5 months. We arrived at our hotel in Ningbo at about 11:00am and as the van door opened it dawned on me that we (Darrell and I) had forgotten our passports. Remember how I said “Maoxian?” China may be a little 3rd world at times, however since the Olympics they have cracked down on foreigners and are very strict. We could not check in to our hotel and we were at a loss. Zhang said to me in Chinese, “I’ll find you a place to sleep tonight.” Then he said, “Ni dong?”, which meant, “Do you understand?” I said yes, and then followed up with ”let’s go play” which means, no more looking for a hotel, let’s go see things.
We drove for another ½ hour and stopped at a beautiful lake, Dongqian to take a break. I watched the kids and Zhang skip rocks in the water. Zhang talked to some locals and asked them how to get to the top of a mountain I had been pointing to earlier. He told us time to go and off we went to this mountain. I envisioned parking at the bottom of a hill and then going off for a hike just like in the US. Well, Maoxian! We found out you just don’t go hiking in eastern China unless it is organized in a park or some sort of tourist area. And when I say “tourism”, this isn’t foreigner tourism, this is Chinese tourism. So we parked the van and Zhang told us to take the bus! I’m thinking, “Oh man, what is this all about?” So we bought tickets and hopped on the bus with cigarette smoke and all. At this point I was decided I was in a third world country. Oh yea, did I forget to mention that there was a girl on the bus with a bull horn telling us all about the tourist area in Chinese!
As we wound our way up the hill on the one way road, the bus driver honked at every corner to let the downward bound vehicles know he was there. The further we climbed in elevation it became more and more beautiful; there were very lush trees and a lot of underbrush. After about 15 minutes of switchbacks we stopped and everyone hopped off the bus and we followed since we couldn’t understand what the bull horn was telling us. We walked up a carved stone path with lots of steps up and then we climbed up this viewing tower for an amazing view overlooking the Dongqian Lake and the whole valley. It was a little hazy so we couldn’t exactly see the mountains in the distance, but I have to tell you the view was breathtaking, similar to being up in Cascade Mountains except a lot more tropical.
We continued our journey up the mountain and then came upon tea fields all over the mountain! Wow, I can’t tell you how magnificent it was. We learned today that the Zhejiang province is very famous for growing tea plants in China and we happened to be on the famous mountain, “Wutai”. The family hiked through the tea fields and really enjoyed ourselves.
Maoxian! Adventure! It’s been a very hard couple of weeks for me with work stuff and I decided that the family needed a short relaxing vacation. Relaxing? No way, Maoxian! The kids are on holiday Wednesday thru Friday so they aren’t missing any school. Zhang (our driver) showed up at our apartment at 8:00am today and we loaded up the van for our overnight excursion out of Shanghai. On the way there we drove on the Hongzhou Bridge that is 22.2 miles long! The bridge just recently opened on 5/1/08 so we’re probably only the 20 millionth car to cross over it in 5 months. We arrived at our hotel in Ningbo at about 11:00am and as the van door opened it dawned on me that we (Darrell and I) had forgotten our passports. Remember how I said “Maoxian?” China may be a little 3rd world at times, however since the Olympics they have cracked down on foreigners and are very strict. We could not check in to our hotel and we were at a loss. Zhang said to me in Chinese, “I’ll find you a place to sleep tonight.” Then he said, “Ni dong?”, which meant, “Do you understand?” I said yes, and then followed up with ”let’s go play” which means, no more looking for a hotel, let’s go see things.
We drove for another ½ hour and stopped at a beautiful lake, Dongqian to take a break. I watched the kids and Zhang skip rocks in the water. Zhang talked to some locals and asked them how to get to the top of a mountain I had been pointing to earlier. He told us time to go and off we went to this mountain. I envisioned parking at the bottom of a hill and then going off for a hike just like in the US. Well, Maoxian! We found out you just don’t go hiking in eastern China unless it is organized in a park or some sort of tourist area. And when I say “tourism”, this isn’t foreigner tourism, this is Chinese tourism. So we parked the van and Zhang told us to take the bus! I’m thinking, “Oh man, what is this all about?” So we bought tickets and hopped on the bus with cigarette smoke and all. At this point I was decided I was in a third world country. Oh yea, did I forget to mention that there was a girl on the bus with a bull horn telling us all about the tourist area in Chinese!
As we wound our way up the hill on the one way road, the bus driver honked at every corner to let the downward bound vehicles know he was there. The further we climbed in elevation it became more and more beautiful; there were very lush trees and a lot of underbrush. After about 15 minutes of switchbacks we stopped and everyone hopped off the bus and we followed since we couldn’t understand what the bull horn was telling us. We walked up a carved stone path with lots of steps up and then we climbed up this viewing tower for an amazing view overlooking the Dongqian Lake and the whole valley. It was a little hazy so we couldn’t exactly see the mountains in the distance, but I have to tell you the view was breathtaking, similar to being up in Cascade Mountains except a lot more tropical.
We continued our journey up the mountain and then came upon tea fields all over the mountain! Wow, I can’t tell you how magnificent it was. We learned today that the Zhejiang province is very famous for growing tea plants in China and we happened to be on the famous mountain, “Wutai”. The family hiked through the tea fields and really enjoyed ourselves.Dinner, Maoxian! OK, so we really went Chinese tonight with our food. Good thing Zhang was there or we might have starved, especially since we didn’t have lunch. We had various meats with some vegetables. My driver is very competitive and we challenged each other to eat the fish eyes. Of course he had no problem because the Chinese don’t believe in wasting food and the Chinese women fight over the fish eyes because of the vitamin E. I thought it was disgusting, very salty and chewy. 
Mioxian!
Remember how we didn’t have our passports? Well, we still didn’t have a place to sleep so Zhang suggested we drive south to Ninghai and try to catch a place down there. Basically it was my driver and me trying to get two rooms in a 2 star hotel. You can only imagine what people thought. Then they were probably even more confused when my family walks in. I’m pretty sure some illegal activity was going on at this hotel, but hey, who cares it was a place to sleep and very cheap. I’ll let you know how I feel tomorrow after sleeping on a traditional Chinese piece of plywood, I mean bed. Oh, I can feel the Advil calling my name now! Too bad it’s sitting next to our passports.
Mioxian!Remember how we didn’t have our passports? Well, we still didn’t have a place to sleep so Zhang suggested we drive south to Ninghai and try to catch a place down there. Basically it was my driver and me trying to get two rooms in a 2 star hotel. You can only imagine what people thought. Then they were probably even more confused when my family walks in. I’m pretty sure some illegal activity was going on at this hotel, but hey, who cares it was a place to sleep and very cheap. I’ll let you know how I feel tomorrow after sleeping on a traditional Chinese piece of plywood, I mean bed. Oh, I can feel the Advil calling my name now! Too bad it’s sitting next to our passports.
2 comments:
I love reading your stories! You guys always have the best adventures. This will be great to turn into a book and read again someday.
-Jaimee
So...what's the ancient Chinese proverb for "up a creek without a paddle"?
Lucky for you, you had Zhang and didn't need to find out!
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