An Airport Is Still Around Me

Beginning to Believe: Huangshan Mountain and Hongcun Village

 

July 25, 2015

By Sarah Ann

 

We were planning to spend the first half of the day hiking some more. My dad set his alarm early so we could get up and see the sunrise, but when he looked outside all he could see was more white clouds. So he went back to bed and didn’t wake us up.

 

After breakfast, we got ready to hike. Our shoes were wet and gross so we tried to blow dry them but the blow dryer only worked for about fifteen seconds at a time. We put on our wet shoes and our rain ponchos and went hiking. We were hoping for better views but it didn’t start out that way. We were trying to get to a certain overlook but because we’re always a little bit lost, we ended up somewhere else – at the entrance to the West Grand Canyon. We hadn’t wanted to go there because of what the photos online looked like – a boardwalk thing nailed to a straight, tall cliff. Not a good match for our family. We all walked the first part. It was almost a cave – a very narrow walkway between two cliffs.

 

The entrance to West Grand Canyon

 

We walked together a little more and then we saw the trail we had seen online – the boardwalk nailed to the cliff. The boys didn’t want to do that so just us girls went a little further. When you looked down, you could just see white. It was cool but a little scary because if you dropped, you would die for sure. Rachel said it was her favorite part of our trip so far and the neatest hike she’d ever been on.

 

Rachel and I on the trail at the West Grand Canyon

 

After that, we checked out of our hotel. We still had a little more time for hiking so we decided to go to one more lookout called Beginning to Believe Peak. We hiked up the steep, winding trail through the rocks and trees to the lookout. Someone took my picture as I walked and we made jokes that we were beginning to believe we would see something at last from the viewpoint. When we got up to the top, we saw a sign that said this peak was the best place to take photos on all of Huangshan Mountain. We looked out and saw….white. Nothing else. We started walking back as it started raining kind of hard. Suddenly we heard Rachel yelling, “Hey guys! Look!” We ran back up and looked out. The fog was clearing up and we could see. The view was amazing! It was crazy because there were these huge, steep, beautiful cliffs right in front of us that we hadn’t been able to see at all before. In the other direction, we could see green, lush mountains. The hike and the rain and everything was worth it to see this view. We finally had to go because it was raining super hard and the clouds were coming back anyway. The view was gone.

 

The view at Beginning to Believe Peak

 

We walked to the cable car and went down the mountain. As we were going down, my ears popped. Ying, our host, met us there and we took a bus down a super winding road to get off the mountain. My mom got really motion sick but surprisingly, I didn’t get sick at all. A driver was waiting for us to take us a cute village named Hongcun, a world heritage site. Our driver was crazy. He cut other cars off and honked every twenty seconds. Lots of drivers are kinda crazy in China, but I’d never been in a car with a driver that crazy.

 

We arrived and went to our hotel that was adorable. The buildings in town were white with the traditional styled layered roofs and everything looked old.

 

 

At dinner, Christian was kind of bored so he, my mom and I went exploring the town while we waited for our food. We walked down a narrow alleyway and found a duck tied outside of a restaurant. The duck was supposed to be an advertisement for the restaurant so people would see how fresh their meat was. I didn’t think it made the restaurant seem appealing. Dinner was delicious because there were dumplings and I love dumplings. I ate nine of them and would’ve eaten more except we ran out of them.

 

Here we are with the poor duck who is going to be someone’s dinner

 

Also, thank you for posting comments on our blog. They get emailed to my mom so we can read them. Because we can’t actually access the blog here (it’s blocked), we can’t respond though. But we wanted you to know that we love reading them.