Month #2 in China
大家好！你们都还好吗？Have you all gotten into a study routine by now? 你们的八月假期是怎么过的呢？Here in 中国 we had a one-week holiday to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China...however we still had to attend classes on the weekends before and after that week to make up for lost lessons.
Considering how 忙 we are with classes and the amount of 作业we are given, a group of us decided to make the most out of this holiday by going somewhere quite far. 有一天 we all got together and decided our 目的地 would be 湖南省，张家界
Zhangjiajie is a city in the province of Hunan, situated in southern-eastern China, where the 天气, 食物, and 人们 are all different from the northern people of Tianjin.
This city is famously known for its peculiar scenery as the movie Avatar was shot here, hence why one of the main attractions are the Avatar Mountains: 阿凡达山
As this was our very first experience of traveling within China, we booked our tickets quite late, which meant our only option to get from Tianjin to Zhangjiajie was to take a 24hr+ train journey on a heard seat. This was an experience that had been encouraged to us by the previous scholars, however unless you have access to a bed (which we didn’t), once is more than enough.
On arriving in Tianjin, our lovely host 唐静 and her mother prepared for us a delicious dinner full of colour and taste!
After such a long and uncomfortable journey, you would think to jump straight into a REAL bed, instead 唐静 mentioned there being a 瀑布 near our accomodation, and so within 15mins we were in this secret heaven, hidden away in the mountains where there were no other tourists but us Scottish students diving into the freezing water and sitting underneath the waterfall.
The next morning, we were asked whether we would like to have 鸡汤for dinner. At first, we agreed without giving the question too much thought. Then a few minutes later, we were presented with this…here are the before and after pictures:
We will admit, it was a delicious chicken broth. One of us had the courage to eat the chicken’s 脚as well as its entire 头, supposedly the 眼睛were salty.
On our first excursion we headed off to see the famous Avatar mountains. Seeing them in person, standing on a viewing point and realizing that in that moment you are in the middle of the mountains, in the middle of China, in the middle of 亚洲, is a feeling that can’t be fully explained.
Our entire day consisted of us traveling through this enormous national park (by 爬山and 坐索道车) in order to move from one viewing point to another, where we would then take no less than 100 photos.
The 客栈in which we stayed in was right outside the park, which gave us not only easy access every day but also a beautiful scenery just outside our bedroom window.
On day 2, we visited yet another area of the park where the shape of the mountains was even more evident:
There were also a few friendly faces up in the mountains…this picture is neither zoomed in nor cropped, the monkeys were so used to us foreigners that they would walk right past you or sit next to you while they munched on food
Day 3, we had to say goodbye to our lovely host and her mum to then go back down towards the main city where we would stay at another accommodation (whose host was another lovely Chinese lady along with her teenage son).
Here we explored 天门山 the Heavenly Gate Mountain where because of the weather it was impossible to see far ahead or even the road one had just walked:
The humidity at such high altitudes created this very spooky effect where we couldn’t see any beautiful scenery, nor the famous Gate of Heaven (a massive hole in the mountain which looks like a gateway to heaven). We almost got lost on the mountain as we hadn’t realized how quickly it got dark, so we found ourselves strolling around with torches and illegible maps until we finally found a line of tourists waiting for the buses that take us back down the mountain:
Yes, we drove down THOSE roads, if they can be called roads…
One final characteristic of Zhangjiajie that we loved was its people, as it is home to the 土家小民族 Tu Jia Minority, whose culture is celebrated through performances and food culture, as well as in its fashion. The clothing of this minority is very different to the typical ancient Chinese clothing that comes to mind. It is much freer and comfortable, as well as being very radiant and almost tropical in the way the colours are used and mixed into one piece of clothing…needless to say, we all bought something from a famous shop shown to us by our first host 唐静
After such an adventure, what awaited us was a 28hr journey home, our 朋友 who are now 家人, and a lovely mountain of 作业for the next day.
I hope you guys enjoyed this month’s blog and as always let me or Miss Wang know if there is anything you would like me to discuss and show you guys about life here in China! 谢谢!
