2006-08-02 - 7:04 p.m.

…So there we were in beautiful Wu Yi Shan. Let me remind you that I do not read, speak, or communicate very well (at all) in Chinese, so I don’t know much about this little town, despite all of the advertisements that surrounded us. I’m not even sure which area was “W Yi Shan”- we got off the train in what I thought was Wu Yi Shan and then took one of those electric bicycles with a huge covered wagon hooked on the back with about 10 other people for about 10 minutes to another little place, then we caught a bus for another 10 minutes to yet another town. Maybe it’s all the same place. It didn’t really matter to us at that point. This was the last stop on the bus. Hello Wu Yi Shan?

We were just happy to NOT be in Xiamen. We knew to take this course of action because I befriended a little girl named Wu wu or something like that on the train and she tried to give me a Mandarin lesson but she has less patience than a mother of 6 running on 2 hours of sleep on a Saturday morning so the only word I learned was the word for “rain”, but when the train stopped she motioned for us to follow her, and having no other immediate plans, we obliged and tagged along with her parents and brother. No one spoke English, but we all sure smiled a bunch. I have a picture of her but I am not posting it because the smelly troll with bloodshot eyes sitting next to this pretty little Chinese girl is me……I am rambling- ANYWAY- We got off the bus and our surrogate family motioned towards the mountains in one direction, and then as we turned to look, they walked off in the opposite direction. Before I had time to protest (we were thoroughly confused at this point) we were promptly accosted by men riding motorcycles, begging to give us a ride. They did everything but lay down in the street and throw tantrums like 2 year olds. They honestly would not take no for answer- partly because they were pretending to NOT understand our absolutely perfect Chinese, and partly due to good old bull-headed stubbornness. They even took our backpacks OFF of our backs, strapped them onto their bikes, plopped helmets on our heads and patted us on the backs and said , “OK, OK! OK, OK!” This chain of events took less than 2 seconds. It seemed as if we had just hired bikes for the day.

The guys were very nice, and drove all over the national park. It was a total scam because they would drive us to some ticket office, show us a picture of something, and somehow talk us into buying tickets. I didn’t care, although Moi and Tonya were a bit wary of being “taken for a ride”. (ha ha I am so funny) This is one of the places they tried to take us to, but we decided not to go. Look closely. That kid in the top picture is lighting his farts.

At this point, we were still planning on camping out, so I was delaying the inevitable as long as I could. …Oh, come on y’all, I told them…at least we’re not lugging our stuff around- AND we’re getting to see lots of cool stuff!... I secretly had no desire to hike through the wilderness carrying my gargantuan backpack, and then settle down in the middle of nowhere for the evening, and sleep on the hard ground, and wait on some sort of animal to attack because they left their stinky tuna fish can out. So I happily overpaid the driver. They took us to a beautiful waterfall,

and then we went white water rafting. It was so awesome. I was soooo in the moment I didn't take a single picture. The only protection we had were bamboo helmets, and this was no leisurely float trip down a stream. It was quite scary for about 2 minutes…these two things somehow took all day. I took lots of pictures from the back of the bike. Not the safest activity to engage in on a fast-moving motorcycle, but it was fun…

This is an old temple they were tearing down.

More scenes from the bike...

"I think I'm cute in helmets" pic 1

These ladies have been picking tea leaves. Wu Yi Shan is famous for it's tea, particularly the Oolong tea. Robert Fortune came through here in the 1800's and pretended to be royalty and stole a lot of tea for England and then sent it to India to be planted, and pretty much single handedly destroyed China's tea trade. That's mean. (Hey, I did learn something about the place after all...)

I hate smoking, but my driver was so cool. He put it out when I feigned a coughing attack.

Then came the worst part of the trip- camping. We found a spot along the Nine Twists River

( I just might have made that name up) and we watched the bamboo rafts float by.

There were SO many people passing us by, staring and yelling “Hello!” and then giggling. I stopped counting at 50 rafts. One of my friends decided she was going to set out all around her all of her money that had gotten wet on the raft trip so it would dry. So imagine a foreigner, surrounded by 1000 RMB ( a little over 100 bucks), smiling and waving at all of the Chinese people who passed by on the rafts. It was so strange.

Here's Moi right before she decided to display her abundant wealth...

As night fell, we settled into the tent at about 8:30. At 8:42, by brain began concocting the absolute most far-fetched worst-case scenarios that could possibly happen to us. One involved the people who saw Moi drying her money, returning with hatchets. Another featured a pack of wolves eating through our tent. By 9:00, I was poking my head out the tent every 2 minutes whispering, “WHAT WAS THAT!???” By 9:34 pm, I had convinced the girls that their good night’s sleep was in grave danger, and we needed to get to a hotel. By grave danger I didn’t mean wolves or hatchet-wielding maniacs- I meant ME! They were sick of me and my mild panic attack, so they agreed to give up our camping adventure and head for civilization. I lasted a total of 64 minutes in the tent. I don’t like camping.

We checked into a hotel down the street

and I slept like a baby. The next morning we went on a wild and crazy mountain expedition involving climbing, swinging, jumping, and zip-lining through an obstacle course high in the mountains. It was so awesome. There were about 15 of us, and we were the only foreigners. The course took about 2 and a half hours. The water was crystal clear and the air was crisp and fresh-it was beautiful.

This is a rock near the entrance to the course- It says something like "Happy brave people gather here." They best part was that all of the directions about how NOT to kill yourself were in Chinese.

After they gave us our life-saving instructions they made us stand in line and count off and march like soldiers for a bit.

Since we didn’t understand much of anything, we did as we pleased. The guides all started running around and yelling at us if we made a wrong move. It was quite humorous. We did everything wrong, but we made it the end of the course. One poor girl didn’t make it across this huge (ha) gap we had to swing across, and she slammed her shins into the rock and was bleeding.

(that's not her, that's Moi)
Nothing life-threatening, but from the way she acted, you would have thought she just brought life-long dishonor to her family. She was SO shamed. She kept her head down for the next 20 minutes, and wouldn’t speak to her boyfriend or anyone else. Then halfway through the course, she just walked away and didn’t come back. I felt so bad for her. Had that happened to me, I would only worry if my laughing so loud and hard was bothering the other people.
Here are most of the obstacles- they are harder than they look-and no comments about my striped shirt, camo shorts, and striped socks getup either...

"I think I'm cute in helmets" Pic 2
We spent the next 2 days sitting at the hotel, drinking tea and sometimes wine, reading books, playing cards, and fielding random questions about ourselves asked by brave, curious Chinese waitresses. We didn’t engage in these activities completely by choice. Wu Yi Shan was sopping wet- it rained for 2 days straight. It stopped raining long enough for us to go out to eat one night- here's the cool little restaruant...

And then on our last day we decided to do something- anything- we didn’t care at this point. We were going stir-crazy in our hotel. So we donned our raingear

and went on the most boring rafting trip I have ever been on.

China seems to have a lot of boring boat rides.( See a few of my past entries, particularly the one titled “Boring Boat Ride”)

Then we headed back to Xiamen by train to catch our plane back to Shanghai. We bought “hard sleeper” tickets, which meant we got a bunk amid a sea of 60 other bunks in a huge open car. The bunks were stacked 3 high, row after row, and I felt like I was at summer camp with a bunch of strangers. I had so much fun, see?

Here's some scenery right outside of Wu Yi Shan.

Then they turned the lights out at exactly 10 pm. (Just like at camp) and within 30 seconds there were 20 men and women snoring. I took a video of it. I shoved a ton (exactly) of toilet paper into each ear and tried to sleep…I woke up 8 hours later in Xiamen. We headed straight to the airport. We were supposed to spend the day in Xiamen and take a flight home that night, but we were exhausted, and those beaches weren’t too inviting. I never thought I would be SO excited to be back in Shanghai!

?lt;/P>

previous - next