Huangyaguan to Sweet Water Mountain village - or Blood, Sweat and Tears
Day two, As you all know, I can be a massive numpty from time to time, and as a result of my numptyness Dierdre and I had a very cold night in Huangyaguan, the night was freezing and I didn’t realise that the lovely air conditioner on the wall of our wendy house, was actually a heater as well. So we froze. After what seemed like hours of shaking uncontrollably with cold - no namby pamby shivering for me - no, I do the job right!!! I decided to get up and put socks and a thick hoodie on, after which it was much better.
We woke in the morning, half an hour earlier than we had to (my fault, I like to faff about in the morning) and we both lay in our beds saying ‘I don’t want to get up, its too cold’ and ‘I don’t dare take my jumper off’ and other things to that effect. As we were procrastinating about getting up, we received a knock on the door. It was a lady travelling with us called Merridy (isn’t that a cute name?), who had come to see if she could borrow an adapter for her hair dryer and she managed to get the heat on - thank God, I think my clothes had frozen onto my body by that point and it made it heaps easier to prize them off once I had thawed out.
Once up, we went to breakfast in the hotel restaurant and were presented with a dinner plate with jam on it, and a pot of green tea, we were just wondering what to do with the jam, when they brought a stack of stale white bread out. Now what you have to understand, is the people at the hotel (and every hotel for that matter) are very hospitable people, and they want to make you feel at home, so they give you, what they think English people eat for breakfast every day, which starts with runny jam and thick slices of white bread, Chinese people don’t eat bread as we know it, so this is their approximation of it, and it is peculiar to say the least. Nine times out of ten it is stale, but you cant hold that against them - they aren’t going to eat it, and it is really, really sweet, someone likened it to brioche, but I’m sorry. I never want to eat the brioche from your supermarket if it tastes like that. Foul doesn’t even begin to cover it. Have you ever tried to spread runny jam on bread with chopsticks? It isn’t easy.
You spread more on yourself and the tablecloth (which in all cases was disposable plastic so it doesn’t really matter) than on the bread. Then out came a plate of sliced tomato, and a plate of sliced cucumber, and the pie’ce de resistance, a massive plate OF SPAM. I said in my last instalment that I would tell you about spam. Chinese people think that English people virtually LIVE off spam, we eat it for almost every meal, and find it a delicacy, not unlike fois gras or caviar, they think that if you have a large plate of spam in front of you, that you will be as happy as a pig in shit!!!! What they must also now think, is that it is such a delicacy that you don’t want to eat very much of it, or you might well do overkill, and that would spoil your enjoyment of this wonderful processed meaty delight for the rest of your life and that MUST be why they are chucking away most of it, as it has gone uneaten. I remain true to this,- I never let a single piece of spam touch my lips (or tongue, or stomach for that matter) in my entire time in China, and I was not the only one!
After all this was carted out, we sat there looking blankly at it, ‘what am I going to eat?’ was the general cry and ‘I cant eat that’, then they brought out fried eggs, BRILLIANT!!!! Something I can eat that will give me energy to walk! I took two, and made a fried egg butty, after two bites I had to take the bread off because it was so repulsive I couldn’t eat it, but eggs for breakfast was pretty good and I felt energised and ready to go, the green tea was a godsend as well, delicately flavoured, and really tasty (great anti-oxidant too - or is that a bit girly) and for someone who doesn’t like tea, I became a convert.
After breakfast, the horrid smelling squat loo, and a sneaky ciggie, we were ready for anything - so we thought.
Now, you will remember, that at the end of yesterday’s walk I could see a section of the wall that surely we weren’t going to climb, well, oh yes we were, we walked out of the back of the hotel and picked up the wall almost straight away, at the bottom of the valley. That day we had been told we would be tackling a section called the heavenly ladder. The stretch of wall in front of us went up and up and up with no downs in sight, it was reasonable to think that this was the stairway to heaven, with no Led Zep references at all - more like, by the time you get to the top, you will wish you were dead, or you will actually BE dead, St Peters gate ’I see you!!’,
So we started to climb, after ten minutes I was well and truly getting to the back of the pack, but not quite there, which was a good thing because just there, was a guy selling ice lollies (my treat for a good long training walk in London is an ice lolly) so I bought my lolly, unfortunately it was so sweet I couldn’t eat it (sugar syrup on a stick) and I had to chuck it, but I had my fix, and time to continue up the ladder, or so I thought.
After slogging my guts out, sweating like a truck driver, swearing, panting and red as a beet, I eventually reached what I thought was the top of the heavenly ladder, there was a flat bit, where I stopped and said to my friend ‘thank God that is over‘, and she replied ’I don’t think that was the ladder’ which was returned with a sharp ’what???’
‘no that had to be it’,
’no I don’t think it was’,
‘it must have been’,
‘it wasn’t’
‘OH. MY. GOOOOOODDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!
And she was right - it bloody wasn’t, after going up a short, but extremely sharp hike up a mountain track we got to the bottom of the heavenly ladder.
You would think from the sign at the bottom, that the heavenly ladder was a rollercoaster, (I did try to take a picture but it didn’t come out)
No women with pregnancy,
No person with heart condition,
No person with high blood pressure,
No mental people, (ok, that wasn’t a real one, but if it was true, no one would ever climb it, you have to be a bit mental to do that)
The only one they left off, was no people under 1.5m.
Trust me now, when I tell you, that the heavenly ladder is NOT a rollercoaster.
It is a staircase cut into the side of a cliff, which, we were told would take about ten minutes to climb (if you are a mountain goat, or a mega fit athlete, or a stairmaster junkie, or basically, NOT ME!!) this truly was the stairway to heaven, by the time I got quarter of the way up, I was - a - huffing, half way up, I was - a - huffing and a puffing three quarters of the way up I was saying my prayers (as well as swearing like a trooper and only doing three steps at a time before taking a breather) seven eighths of the way up the tour leader was shouting ‘encouraging’ things down the stairs like ‘come on! What are you, a tiger or a mouse!’ ‘get your arse up!’ ‘what are you doing!’ ‘come on! You can do it!’. Anyone who knows me will know I do not respond well to this sort of ‘encouragement’, in fact it gets right up my nose, and about ten steps from the top, exhausted, I stopped and with my last few breaths’ yelled ’BLOODY STOP YELLING AT ME! - I WILL DO IT IN MY OWN TIME!!!’, I don’t think that went down too well, but I didn’t care. Five minutes later, I had caught my breath and was up with the rest of the group, while we waited for the people at the back to catch up.
Now I was under the impression that the wall went completely unbroken from the dragon’s head to its tail. I was wrong, when the mountains become too steep the wall stops. But the track does not. You have to follow a very well worn but very thin track to the top of the mountain, where the wall starts again. It was at this point, that I found myself very comfortably with the back of the pack.
The track that we were walking, in places was no more than a foot wide and some of that was crumbling, to the left of me was virtual cliff, and to the right of me was a sheer drop, I have never been in the situation before where I thought ‘If I fall I will DIE.’ I was imagining the phone call to my mother, and that thought of that, scared the living daylights out of me, I also had not taken walking poles with me, which I’m sure would have reassured me a bit, so I was grabbing hold of every bit of plant life along the way, which might have slowed the descent a bit. (if I had actually fallen, I might have broken a finger on the plant I had wrapped round it, but I don’t think it would have stopped me, but it made me feel better) I came out of the woods eventually and the vista in front of me was amazing. Row after row after row of mountains stretching as far as the eye could see, all in relief against the ones behind them, getting feinter and feinter off into the distance. There are few things in life, that will bring you to tears from the sheer beauty of them, but this is one of them. (I blinked them away fast, so nobody could see them - I’m Yorkshire and I’m hard - right?)
After the ascent we began to slowly descend into a landscape that was obviously being farmed, so we thought ‘Yaay lunch!’ but no, the place where we had hoped to have lunch, the farmer had decided we couldn’t eat there (probably because he wouldn’t get paid for it - we were told) but that was ok, we could smell the toilets from the track above that we were walking, so on we went. It was at that point that I noticed a Chinese lady following us, in fact she had followed us from the part of the wall that I had thought was the ladder (where the bloke selling ice lollies had been) All along, she had trekked with us, and this woman was amazing, like superwoman, she had carried a pack that was bigger than she was, all through that challenging terrain, as if it was nothing. When we eventually stopped for lunch, she put down her pack, to start selling Pepsi, lemonade and beer which had been in a metal cage on her back, containing a polystyrene container full of ice, water and a million cans of drink, and a scabby old package (also huge) containing books, t-shirts and other tourist crap. This woman was the size of the average English twelve year old, and how she had managed to carry this was beyond me, let alone, that she had walked the path we had just walked, with it on her back. She was just amazing.
We sat in the shade of some trees and ate our packed lunch, that had been given to us at the hotel, which contained - you guessed it, SPAM sandwiches, made from the horrid Chinese bread, a piece of cake - which had the texture and probably the taste, of a boots baby sponge and a strange sausage which was in a tight orange plastic skin, which when you took the skin off looked rather like a penis, (well actually more like a cartoon penis, not a real one - which actually might have been preferable!) I don’t think anybody ate the penis sausage, they went back in our packs for the bin later, we also had the biggest, juiciest, tastiest pear in the world, although our packed lunches did not vary in horribleness almost the whole way along the trek, the fruit that we were given every day was like manna from heaven, it was crispy and juicy, beautiful to look at, and wonderful to sink your teeth into, and for somebody like me, who definitely does not do her five a day, awesome! - I also bought a beer from the pack lady which definitely helped!
After lunch and singing a song in the bushes, we were off again, the pack lady started off a couple of minutes before us, and was soon out of sight. The wall at this point was so broken down that we had to walk at the side of it rather than on it, which we did for a while, then we came to a piece of track that went sharply down, and down and down. At this point we can see the pack lady on the next set of hills before us - this woman can scoot - and you think ‘can she fly??’ that is the only way she could have got there, but before long we were there too, and heading for a watch tower where the front of the pack were sitting. At this point I was near the middle of the pack, but I could see the end. At the end of the pack, something was going on, but we couldn’t see clearly, so we carried on to the watch tower to wait.
As we were waiting, the tour leader at the front got a radio message, but it wasn’t clear to us, what had happened. After a while, he got the message, take the group down the mountain and wait there, ‘there is nothing you can do right now,‘ he was told.
We went down to the top of the village, where pack lady was waiting with her wears spread out for all to see, and we waited for the others to come down, by this time pack lady had new (BIIIIIGGGG) beers waiting for us which we all bought, and because she had walked all that way with us we all bought our tourist crap from her, she deserved it, she had walked and worked so hard for it - this woman had a bonanza day!!! And also we got great deals from her!
After a short while, a motorbike pick-up came chugging up the hill. It was only now that we realised what was going on at the back. Coming down the hill, one of the ladies had slipped and broken her leg, and the truck had come up to get her.
It gets dark in China early at that time of the year, and rather than call the helicopter to airlift her off the mountain, the decision had been made to carry her off the mountain. If the helicopter had been called, it would have had to come from Beijing (150km away) and by the time they would have got there it would have been dark, which would possibly mean they would turn around and go home, so there really was no option other than carrying her down. It is a good job that one of the alzheimers tour leaders was quite a big bloke, he piggy backed her down the mountain, with another of the tour leaders walking backwards down the mountain in front of him, pushing against his chest to stop him falling, (that is what we were told later) even so, the bravery of the lady who fell and the presence of mind of the tour leaders who got her down was second to none. I admire them all.
Whilst we were waiting for the others to come down off the mountain, we got our first glimpse of rural Chinese life. This end of the village was set in a sharp ravine, but every available space had been terraced and farmed on what could almost be described a Cliffside, and a flock of small goats roamed freely up and down the terraces. The husks of the corn were waiting to be dug out and the earth re-ploughed for the next planting. A lady and a toddler came out for a walk - or a look at the funny western people and I was amazed to see that the little kid had a huge split in the bum of his trousers where the seam should be, I was thinking that maybe they couldn’t afford new trousers, until someone told me that certainly rural Chinese people (not sure about city dwellers) do not use nappies they just let the kid go out of the hole in their pants, not sure how clean that would be but the kid looked clean enough.
Eddie took us walking through the village and explained that it was the harvest time, one of the busiest times of the year for the locals, stacks of corn and heaps of persimmons lay outside almost every house and racks of sliced pears and crab apples were laid out to dry in the autumn sunshine. I was surprised to see, that almost every house was fairly new and as modern as you could imagine rural china to be. Mostly built from bricks or breeze blocks (I’m not sure what I was expecting, not mud huts, but not built from breeze blocks that’s for sure) and most of them had some form of satelite dish attached to the roof. Most of the houses had a chicken coop and small, cute, blonde somehow Chinese looking dogs yapped in several yards. I do not have any pictures of the village because we had been asked not to take pictures of peoples houses, after all, how would you like two busloads of Chinese tourists gawping at your front garden and taking pictures.
We eventually got to the houses where we would stay, and again the man who owned them must have been of some importance to the village because he owned two very large houses, which I can only assume he rents the rooms out to farm workers during busy times as some sort of hostel, because these houses sleep a lot of people - I also know that when he hosts a load of English tourists, the entire family give up their rooms and sleep in the living room - and it is a big family, but for one night every so often they have a great sleepover party!!! As soon as we got there we were billeted out into rooms, four in this one five in this one, etc. etc. I was sent to the house just down the road, and myself and a few of the girls chose a room, I was first in, so I got first dibs on the only single bed in the place!!!! (jammy cow) but all the others were not so lucky, in my room was a bed that slept five people, and in the adjoining room was a bed that slept six and a double bed, there was a shower in the place but we were told that really we shouldn’t use it, the only shower was the hosts family shower and we were told that unless we absolutely could not go one day without washing, if we paid him ten yuan he might let us use it - so baby wipes it is then - the festival shower!!!!! The toilet again was a squat, but by this time we had all become fairly adept at using them and (thank heaven for small mercies) clean.
Now before I get distracted, I should explain a little about these beds, it is traditional in china to sleep in the same bed, these beds are very large and so there is no chance you would roll over in the night and cuddle your bedmate by mistake, they wont nick the covers because you all have your own, but Chinese people do not do soft beds, (although mine was) so these big beds are nothing more than a large, low table, that has been tiled with what can only be described as bathroom tiles and covered with a thin patchwork quilt - and that is it. Great for your back. But bloody uncomfortable. In the morning some people said that their bed had an inbuilt heating system on them that was activated by the pressure of people lying on them, but the girls in my room had no such luck, stone cold all night, after going to our rooms and wiping ourselves down, we got changed for the evening and while some of the girls wrote in their journals, I had a look round the garden. The family had begun their harvest and a huge pile of persimmons lay out on a sheet in the yard, they were so beautiful that I picked one up and found the owners wife and paid five yuan for one (about 3 ½ p or 7cents) you should have seen her face, her jaw hit the floor, that I would pay so much money for one persimmon, she was absolutely stunned. Next to the persimmons was a massive pile of corn, which was drying for maize and in the garden lush green cabbagey things grew, they were definitely not cabbages and were too big for pak choy, I think they might have been some form of kale but I’m really not sure. Around the cabbage patch was planted beautiful pink and red flowers - why have an ugly veggie patch? Across the yard was a pergola (not pergoda) that had gourds hanging from it, the vine had pretty much died but the gourds were huge and hourglass shaped and of the palest green. I thought they were tied there at first, but they were still attached to the vine, and across the yard was tied bunting, I didn’t understand why at first, but was told that these were Buddhist prayer flags, it was at this point I started to notice the rubbish.
I don’t know how often - if ever the dustmen come but it cant be that often we had been told that the roads were too thin for the busses to get up, although the baggage truck could make it, so a rubbish truck would probably have no chance. I think they do compost a lot, but there was plastic rubbish strewn everywhere, all the sides of the roads were covered in it - I thought London was bad, but it is positively shiny compared to rural china. As we walked up the road there was a bin/rubbish heap that was positively minging and all the local chickens were feasting on it like rats and I’m surprised I didn’t see any of them, (mmmm garbage marinated roast chicken yummy). When we got up to the main house for dinner, they had set up loads of plastic chairs in the yard for us to sit on, and laid dinner out in their living room, buffet style, after a long days trekking we were all hungry and the food was warm and comforting. We all took a bowl and helped ourselves to rice (out at the same time as the rest of the food- amazing) and a delicious selection of dishes, a few of the old favourites were there - elastic bands etc. but I had a large steaming bowl of rice pak choy in an amazing garlicy sauce and a beautiful chilli chicken dish, it is only as I write this that I have realised this might have contained a bit of the rubbish heap that I saw earlier, ‘whatever‘, it was tasty and oh so welcome, after dinner our host lit a bonfire for us and we all sat down for an evening of silly games, dirty jokes, and good stories. The toilets were public, but thankfully clean and the host hung out with us, and although he didn’t speak any English he was a brilliant laugh and through sign language and pantomime acting, we were able to have a laugh and a joke with him.
I was woken up in the morning with a really funky cough. Where the hell it had come from I wasn’t sure, but I decided to ignore it. Soon it turned out I wasn’t the only one, we were all coughing and hacking that morning, and that is where the trouble began.
When we arrived in the village, the lovely Eddie had said to us that if we wanted, the following morning we could skip the trek up the mountain, and hang out in the village and a few of the girls had said they would give it a miss - after all we would be walking back up the track we had just come down for two hours straight up have a bit of a walk along the wall and come back down, right past the front gate of the house where we could re-join the group, they said their legs were aching and they were tired from the gruelling day the day before, now I was in two minds as to whether to go or not, after all my legs weren’t aching and there was nothing wrong with me, but come the morning I had almost decided not to go. In the morning everyone had changed their minds and were going, so I saddled myself up ready to go, we went for breakfast at the main house, which consisted of really tasty pancakey bread stuff, a thick, beautiful, tasty, spring onion omelette and a thin milky porridge that I think might have been made from rice (I didn’t taste it - I cant eat milky stuff but I was assured it was delicious) we then got to go and pick up our lunch, the components of which, were laid out in boxes outside. Again there was a box of the penisie sausages that nobody took, but one of the local blonde doggies was really loving them (my friend saw him sneak up and whip about five out of the box, at least someone likes them) It was around that time that I had a ’moment’.
I don’t know whether I had told myself I didn’t have to go up the mountain, or whether the reality of the lady breaking her leg on the mountain had sunk in, or the fact that walking such high passes had really scared me shitless, but I wasn’t mentally prepared to go, I just thought two hours straight up, I cant do it, the thought of it made me feel physically sick, I just couldn’t, I started to cry, there was no physical reason that I couldn’t do it, after all my legs didn’t hurt, I just couldn’t do it, and after a short talk with Ama, one of the reps from Alzeimers, I decided not to go.
As I watched the group leave, the disappointment in myself was crushing. I had completely broken down, and there was no physical reason for it and I was angry and embarrassed at myself, I cried as I watched them walk up the hill, knowing that I should have been with them, I felt stupid. A pathetic nobody and I was so terribly ashamed of myself.
I allowed myself to wallow in self hatred and pity for a couple of minutes and then decided to look on the bright side, I could now take my time and look around the village properly.
The weather that day was really overcast, but eerily still, the type of day where you could hear a pin drop and all the sounds you do hear seem somehow magnified, I stood alone for a long while by the chicken coop just listening to nothing, numb, listening to the silence, then the noises of daily life began to chip in, at this point although the group had been gone a good twenty minutes I could hear English voices on the mountains above, and, as I pulled myself together, I could hear the chickens in the coop scratching around, far away roosters crowing their ’good mornings’, and conversations in Chinese at the other end of the village. Birdsong twittering in the trees and from far up the mountain, the now familiar sound of someone hawking up a good one. I started to notice my surroundings, at my feet was yet another rubbish pile, on top of which was a used condom - I moved pretty sharpish. The favoured mode of transport seemed to be dilapidated motorbike pick-up trucks that were so old and crappy you would be amazed that they would still go, I took a long hard look at the village which seemed to be laid out in almost a spiral formation with the road raised up a few feet from the gardens. I should imagine the houses have a few electrical problems because all the cables were old, crappy and mostly running on the outside of the houses, a risk assessor would have never have let that through. Frankly even I, with no electrical knowledge could see they were dangerous. All along the roadside there were bunches of sticks tied together to form sheaves and stacked up, I thought they were firewood until I saw some of the people going out to harvest persimmons with huge, home made baskets tied onto their backs, that seemed bigger than they were, to put the persimmons into which had obviously been made from the sticks. They also carried long sticks some with little hoops on the end with a cloth bag sewn on, to pick the persimmons, so that they wouldn’t fall to the ground and bruise, but just land in the bag, by the looks of things this village was pretty much self sufficient. Chickens and Goats for meat and milk, veggie and fruit crops in every available space, planted sometimes almost on top of each other, they must have travelled to the nearest town for petrol and all the stuff that comes in the plastic containers that lay everywhere, but other than that, I’m not sure. A pretty sheltered life I think.
The colours were more muted today, because of the weather, dusty reds, dark yellows, rich browns all contrasting with the dark bottle green of the pine trees. A few people had started to walk past me now, and I noticed they had frightened looks on their faces, then I realised, we had been told at the start of the trip, not to ask Eddie controversial questions about china, in tourist areas, because they send government spies into touristy areas like Tian’anmen Square to listen to the tour guides and listen to what they say. If they mention the students revolt in 1989,they have been known to go missing, or be arrested on a fairly regular basis, so people are naturally pretty wary of saying or doing the wrong thing around strangers, and here was I standing in the middle of a village looking around and writing in a note book, I twigged fairly quickly, put away my book and returned to the hosts house where I waited for the group to come back, and there lies another story, but not today!!
