This past weekend was our school organized trip to Wuyishan, or Wuyi Mountain. It was described to us as a very beautiful place with tons of things to do. At least half of this proved to be true. We took a 30 minute flight to the northwest of fujian province to arrive at Wuyishan, and once we got off the plane we were herded onto a bus, and handed hats. This was bad sign, around Xiamen I always see large groups of people who have on the same hats, they are usually following a guide who holds a small flag on a pole high above his head so that everyone can follow them while yelling things into a megaphone. Sure enough, after handing us these hats our guide grabbed his megaphone and proceeded to yell. I felt chinese, and headache coming on, because I was sitting a bit too close to the guide.
Wuyishan was a pretty place though, except for the part of town we stayed in, which our guide described as "developing" it's kind of sad to think that this town is being transformed into a tourist dump, with every store selling the exact same thing, and losing some of its chinese traditions in the process. The places we hiked through in the mountains were not the secluded nature hikes I had hoped for, and instead were replaced by paved paths loaded with people pushing from in front and behind while watching the yellow flag sway back and forth above the heads of the crowd a few feet ahead as our guide yelled things, and we followed the flag. This picture illustrates this perfectly, although I can't figure out how to turn it right side up.
The trip started with a bamboo raft ride however which was pushed down a river by two guys with long poles while the guy in front pointed out various famous rock names and things to us along the route. The pic shown is from when we were just leaving shore and about to head into the rock formations in the background.
This ride was a fun time, althogh due to the river level being low it took an hour and 45 minutes. The best part was that we sat on bamboo chairs, and had to raise our feet on bamboo blocks because 4 inches of water seeped through the raft.
After this we went on an hour long hike to see this:
What these are, are 5 DaHong Pao or Rock tea plants which are considered to be the mother plants of this tea plantation. DA They're over 350 years old and are supposedly worth $10k a piece. Exciting huh? Yep, plants.
Here you can see how the tea farmers have adapted to the rugged terrain by terracing the hillsides in order to increase their plantation size.At the end of the hike we were told was a beautiful waterfall. Although since we had been hiking along a dry stream bed for an hour we were a bit suspicious about the size of the waterfall, when we reached it, we saw this. Ah, as it turns out we are in the dry season our guide told us. The saving grace of this is that this cliff face was at least 200 feet tall, and that building you see in the picture was a small buddhist temple which is actually behind the water when the falls are running, too bad it was the dry season. Sorry about the pic, once again I can't figure out how to turn the image right side up.
That about sums up my trip to Wuyishan, sure there are some more tales to tell but I am not writing a novel here. Anyways I need to get back to grading exams and popping vitamin C tablets as I try to kick this cold which has beaten me down for the past few days.
Once again, thank you all for your emails and I hope you have an amazing Holiday wherever and whoever you spend it with, myself I will be working on Christmas day, I do get Christmas morning off however. Before I forget, last week I received a care package from my family, and inside it was 2 toy helicopters which can shoot each other down with lasers. I have not stopped playing with them since and people love watching them. Truly the single greatest gift I have ever received, well that might be pushing it, but they are pretty awesome.
Have a great holiday everyone.
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