Midnight Mountaineering

So our last destination in the Xian area was Huashan (华山）which is widely known as the most dangerous hiking trail in China. It's about two hours drive away from the city of Xian. The popular thing to do is to get there around midnight, then hike through the night so you can reach the peak in time for the sunrise, so it’s about a five hour hike. Since this is what the ballers do, we decided that we were ballers as well. So we took off from the station around 8:30, got to the mountain around 10:30 and started hiking around 11pm.

One thing we noticed about China was that there are little vendor stands everywhere. You would think that on this crazy mountain they wouldn’t bother building little shops and lugging stuff the mountain. However…

The hike was not nearly as dangerous as people here make it out to be. “It’s very dangerous!” 非常险！！they would constantly tell us. But when we arrived and started hiking, we noticed that there were hand rails accompanying every steep part of the trail, and the entire trail was comprised of stairs. So in fact it would be very hard to slip and fall.

However, difficulty was another category altogether. This was probably the most arduous hike I’ve ever gone on. It felt like a hike that was twice as long as Nevada falls, but instead of all the switch-backs it’s as if the park staff decided to build a trail straight up the side of the mountain with stairs. Some parts were basically like climbing a stone ladder.

Roundtrip was basically a 13-hour hike with some breaks in between. At the top the views were beautiful though. Here is the sunrise we saw at 5:00 AM

Some parts of these mountains looked like El Capitan’s Chinese cousin.

Notice that little line up the mountain, those are stairs

The scenery was nice

No explanation necessary.

One of the stone staircases

It was an awesome trip but by the end we felt like our knees and joints were all about to give way. We were sad to leave Xian and say goodbye to George and all of our friends we met there. Now we’re off to Shanghai where much awaits us.

Night of Adventure

So we experienced our first adventure in China trying to catch our train from Beijing to Xian. (Btw, I'm really behind on these blogs, we're 4 days into our Xian trip currently) So as strong J's, Jasper and I planned out our time carefully. We did some work at a cafe the whole afternoon, and left just enough time to get to the train station (the correct one, presumably) 20 minutes early. perfect! However, as we got off at our subway stop walking towards Beijing train station, I took out the ticket and noticed that on the ticket it said 北京西站，which is Beijing West Train Station. Although I knew that there were two train stations namely Beijing Train Station and Beijing West Train Station, we somehow just assumed that our train tickets were for the main station. Basically it was totally our fault. So we absolutely rushed (like full on sprint) to make it to the other train station which is all the way on the other side of Beijing, notice below:
Although it looks close, it's basically on the other side of the city. As we got off of the right subway stop, we took a taxi to the train station since it's a bit of a walk from the subway station. We then proceeded to sprint around the entire train station trying to find where we were supposed to go. One we found out and got to the gate, it was like chariots of fire to the train gate. The train left at 6:58. We got there at 6:55 for the ticket officer to tell us that we were too late.

Uh oh, not good. The next morning we had an important appointment with George Hu in Xian, and he was coming to pick us up. So we needed to contact him. At the same time my family in Shanghai is worried about us, trying to contact us.

Then...Jasper realizes that he's lost his phone. He left it in the taxi on the way there. hurting! okay, at least we have my phone, i thought. I then realize that my phone is out of battery. Hurting! So we go around trying to find an outlet, none to be found. We finally find one and we plug in our phone, just long enough for a one of the worker ladies to come and shoo us away. Apparently, you can't use the outlets for free in China. But after some haggling (begging) she let us use the outlet. Eventually we contacted George, bought tickets for the next train, and was on our way. I feel like I burned three days' worth of calories in that two hour period.

Starting the day off with DT again, we found another cafe. The cafes here are different. There's no concept of a cafe where people just come in to use the facilities. If you go into an establishment, it means you're going to buy something. So when we went in they seated us and gave us a menu....in true Chinese fashion we got the cheapest thing on the menu, plain black coffee.

Below is the Great Hall of the People, where every few years 2000+ communist leaders come together to discuss plans for future development. You can just feel the power of this place when you're in front of the building...very imposing. Actually the theme of Beijing, especially Tiananmen square was...Big and Imposing.
Below is 天坛，temple of heaven it's called. It's where the emperors went to worship the gods for good harvests since ancient days ~2500BC. Ancient cultures have a very consistent theme when it came to worship. They sacrificed animals there as well at a facility called "the animal killing facility" and were cooked at a place called "the divine kitchen," someplace I would have wanted to visit in its contemporary.
This mural was part of the exhibition at the temple of heaven. The images are of people doing grain worship. Interestingly, they had a conception of 上帝，the highest deity.
This was at the center of the temple, a really intense deity, apparently god of grain and harvest. People were still there praying to it, a bronze statue whose shiny surface was half worn and destroyed. I was reminded of John 6 and the bread of life.



In our next days we will be going to Xian!

The Great wall and culinary adventures

We began the day with breakfast. We just went to the first place with alot of people that we saw. Food is dirt cheap! We got breakfast for ¥12 for the two of us, which is like $1.50. Jasper got 羊肠汤，or lamb...gizzards soup. It looks like a concoction out of a witch's cauldron. It's amazing our stomach's haven't revolted against us yet.


Then we went finding a place to do DT. We stumbled upon a familiar sight. So it seems that the prices at Starbucks is the same as the US, ¥20 for a grande Americano, which is about $2.85. Only foreigners (who go to starbucks in their home country anyway...like us) visiting China can afford to get Starbucks casually. After that we took public transit to the Great Wall.

Pretty amazing sight, but it would've been better if the sky hadn't been thick with....smog/fog. We couldn't figure out what it was, but as you can see in the pictures the sky is one giant cloud...(of China's growing prosperity!)


The climb up the Great Wall is actually quite arduous. I don't know what the elevation change was, but the climb reminded me of upper Yosemite falls.



Finally, we ended the day with a meal from 全聚德, apparently the OG of Peking Duck places. It was actually pretty expensive, but oh was it good.

Beijing

So we arrived in Beijing this morning via train from Shanghai. The train wasn't too bad, it was quite comfortable actually. When we arrived in Beijing we checked into our hotel and then used google maps to find a public transit route to the Summer Palace. Google maps is very clutch. We're starting to learn the public transit system here in Beijing. It's alot more crowded than back home, as you can see for yourself below.




We rode public transit from our hotel across the city to the Summer Palace, the place where the Empress Dowager went to hang out during the summer. Jasper decided to show off his skills at the Palace.

going to the great wall tomorrow, stay tuned!