There's a McDonald's
in the little square at the end of Old Street, so we went there for
breakfast this morning. In China, breakfast is the one meal of the
day where we struggle a little to find something to eat – the
locals tend to opt for something more akin to a lunchtime meal for
their breakfast and the girls generally aren't keen, so we usually
just have some crackers and jam or, if it's available, a good old
McDonald's breakfast.
There was a very
light rain falling as we walked up to the main road and got a taxi to
the bus station. Our plan today was to visit one of the 'ancient
villages' located not too far from Huangshan. We had opted not to
visit either of the two most popular villages – which are both
World Heritage-listed – as their popularity can mean that they get
very busy. There are also entrance fees to all of the villages and
those for the two main ones are pretty steep (£10 per person). At
the bus station, we asked about getting the bus to Shexian, the
larger town/city attached to the village. The woman at the counter
held up a typed sheet and pointed to a line of text telling us to go
to gate 6. When we got there, our bus was ready and waiting, so we
climbed aboard – Zoe getting into the front seat beside the driver.
He offered the girls some little orange fruits and showed them how to
peel them.
The bus trip took
about an hour and when we arrived at Shexian bus station we hired a
little three-wheeler cab to take us to Yuliang village. At the ticket
counter we got a shock, as the woman wanted us to pay 100 yuan – as
much as it cost to go into the expensive villages. She didn't speak
English, so getting to the bottom of the sudden price hike was tricky
and eventually we gave up and walked away to figure out what to do
next. While we thought about it, we watched a big group of young
schoolchildren busting some moves in a car park across the road.
When we went back to
the ticket counter we managed to sort the problem out – the woman
was trying to sell us a tour of the village. The tickets to just go
in and wander around were actually only 30 yuan – as we had thought
– and we were soon on our way, tickets in hand. The village is
located beside a river, which has a 1,000-year-old stone weir built
on it. The main cobbled street runs parallel to the river for about a
kilometre and a half and the inhabitants often leave their front
doors open, offering lovely tableaux of village life through the
doorways. Many of the houses have bird cages attached to the wall
beside the doorway, each containing a medium-sized brown bird with
blue rings around its eyes and a beautiful melodious voice. We were
pretty much the only tourists in the village – a small Chinese tour
group passed us as we entered and that it was it - and I think we
were as fascinating to the village's inhabitants as they were to us.
We slowly wandered
to one end of the village and then slowly wandered back again. When
we made it back to the beginning , we walked down some stairs to the
river and then up the stone path beside the weir. Looking down, I
noticed that there were lots of skinny little fish in the pools of
water that had formed in the cracks between the stones. We then
walked down onto the stony beach on the bank of the river, where we
discovered that there were loads of perfect skimming stones, so we
spent a while launching them into the river.
Eventually, we
walked back out to the main road and headed towards the bus station,
hoping that we would be able to catch a local bus back there. We hadn't been walking for long when we spotted an unusual sight - a women pushing a her baby along the road in a little trolley with a seat and table in it. A little while later, we came to a supermarket, where we bought a few snacks. Back
when I was growing up in Sydney, we would often go in to Chinatown to
have a big yum cha lunch. As kids, we were always slightly horrified
by the fact that people were ordering – and eating - chicken's
feet. Now that we're actually in China, we've discovered just how
popular chicken's feet are with the locals. In this particular
supermarket we came across an extensive selection of shrink-wrapped
chicken's feet snacks (we resisted the urge to buy any ourselves).
Continuing on, we
found a bus stop and stopped to wait for a bus. Looking up, I spotted our second unusual sight – a whole leg of ham hanging with the washing on
someone's balcony. While we waited, one of the little three-wheeler
pedicabs drove past, so we hailed it, but unfortunately, we couldn't
get the driver to understand where we wanted to go and after a while
he gave up and drove away. Not long after, the bus we were waiting
for arrived and we hopped on. It took us down into the heart of the
city and then started heading out the other side. When we reached the
big river that passes through the city, the driver turned around and
told us that we should get off. He pointed across a bridge over the
river, and although we followed his directions, we couldn't find the
bus station. After we had been walking for quite some time, Kate went
into a shop and asked some guys for directions. They were extremely
helpful and took us out to the main road and flagged down a bus for
us.
When we finally got
back to the bus station in Huangshan, we got a taxi back to the
hotel. It was early afternoon by now, so we decided to see what was
on the other side of the bridge outside the hotel. We found a fruit
shop, where we bought some lychees and mangoes, a bakery, where we
got some little pastries, and a 'general store', where we bought a
little fan and some plastic ponchos.
While I was waiting
for the girls to choose which fan to buy, I checked out another
bridge over another river and came across an extensive tourist
development, and when the others came out, we went in and checked it
out. The 'marina' has numerous restaurants, an amazing boutique hotel
and some really sweet little shops, as well as some extensive fish
ponds with bridges over them. There were even sprayers to mimic the
mists on Mount Huangshan. Many of the buildings were clearly very
old. We came across one that was obviously being developed as a
museum. The front door was open and there was no-one around, so we
eventually worked up the courage to go in and have a look around. It
was remarkably well preserved, full of gorgeous wood panelling, but
in areas the roof was open, so the floor was covered in moss, and
swallows were nesting inside, creating huge mounds of guano beneath.
After doing a big
circuit, we made out way back into town, stopping first to buy some
more of the orange fruit the girls had been given in the bus. It
wasn't quite time for dinner yet, so we looked around for somewhere
we could have a beer and play some cards. Everywhere we found was
either too expensive or too charmless, but we finally stumbled across
a little place selling little souvenir nick-nacks and... beer. They
had some tables out front, so we bought a couple of cans and sat and
played a bit of gin rummy. The locals and the Chinese tourists
obviously found this sort of behaviour fascinating as they would
shout out to us, point, smile, laugh as they passed, or just walk
over and stand right beside the table and stare. Beers downed, we
walked up to our restaurant for dinner. It was raining when we left
and we hurried back to hotel, arriving in time to watch the rain turn
into a proper downpour.
