Last Days of Fun and Frolics

Firstly, here's a couple of further photos from our second day in Zhangjiajie, but from a different mountain-top. Really, there was something to see everywhere you went in this place. You couldn't take a bad photo. I don't think I've been anywhere quite as spectacular.






In the evening of our second day we went to the 'Festival of Culture From Western Hunan', which was quite good fun. There were acrobats doing some pretty amazing balancing and swinging routines, many dancers and many singers, including a man who could sing with a normal male voice and then switch to sing exactly like a female soprano. It was a bit freaky, I can tell you that. He was singing duets with himself. If you closed your eyes you could swear there were two people on stage. Bit odd that. Didn't quite know what to make of it so took the opportunity for a toilet break.


Afterwards there was a demonstration of Chinese Kung Fu. It was less fighting, more feats of superhuman strength and endurance. It was amazing. Firstly there was a man who lay on a bed of broken glass and had lead weights placed on top of him. Then a second man lay on top of him and had a bed of nails placed across his chest. A third man then came and lay on top of the bed of nails and two others, only to have a massive great piece of stone placed on his stomach. A fourth man then proceeded to try and break the stone using several blows with a massive sledgehammer. When finished they all jumped up as if they'd been having a light nap.
Another man balanced two huge concrete beams and about 8 people on his chest - about 2 tonnes in total - then moved the lot of it, just by flexing his muscles. There was also a man who walked through the fire in the centre of the above photo, once it had died down a bit. He even kicked up the embers and danced around in it. Never seen that before. Incredible and well worth the price of a ticket.





On our third and final day, the hectic pace of the previous day was slowed down a touch. First was a guided tour through Yellow Dragon Cave (Huang Long Dong), which is a truly astounding cave system with an amazing array of stalactites, stalacmites and limestone flows. To enter the system we were faced with a dilemma. There was a choice of two doors - the Door of Longevity or, the Door of Happiness. Whichever you choose is what you will receive. I chose the Happy Door. It's a bit of a meaningless choice, as you can walk back through the other door on your way out!

The tour was great. We didn't understand a
thing, but it's all visual anyway. All we missed out on were the random names they give everything.

That the pace was slowed from the previous day's tour of many mountains is demonstrated by the fact we were all taken for a much-needed foot massage. Massages are big here. And excellent. This was my first, though many of my friends have them regularly. The idea was they soak your feet in this herbal medicine then massage your feet, demonstrating a few other little potions and rubs as they went. If you like the result, you can buy the products used. We
bought some for our tour guide, to say thank you - for her efforts with English, and also for being so late everywhere we went!

One thing I desperately wanted to do was go white water rafting. The area is quite well known for it and Jess and I had been dying to go ever since we found this out. Unfortunately the hectic tour schedule didn't allow us to just go off and do what we wanted, so we'd basically given up on the idea. So imagine our surprise when after lunch we were told we would be going rafting after all!
The only problem was, we were totally unprepared for it. Most of us were wearing jeans and had sweaters etc on. We were assured that we wouldn't need wet-suits or anything as we wouldn't be getting very wet, so having removed electricals just in case, off we went. It started off very boring. We were split into two boats, but only the guide at the back had a paddle. The rest of us just sat there as he paddled us round on a pond at the top of the run. Yawn. He gave us each the paddle to have a go, but in a big boat that can sit 3 across, all we ended up doing was going round in circles. Admittedly, that was quite fun, but we were dying to really get going. We wondered if we hadn't just wasted a lot of money... We did see a Giant Salamander however (in a tank, don't worry!) and it was a big beast, but hardly worth all that.

Eventually we turned towards the white water run, and went down. And got very wet. No need for wet-suits my arse. Was great fun though. Sarah was sat at the front, and was completely submerged. There were many more drops, and at each one, she got soaked. It was hilarious. The photo they took of us was even better. Her expression is priceless. Shame I can't post it. The only problem was we kept getting stuck, as one man with one paddle was hardly gonna keep us on course. Well, once we shifted, it was worth it. We all got soaked. It didn't help that we started having a water fight using the bucket we were supposed to bail out the boat with! In the end we were so wet that when we reached an intermediate pool we all just jumped out of the boat and swam around for a bit. Just for fun (The real reason was that we were all desperate for the loo, and, well, the water is hardly clean anyway...but I didn't tell you that).

After a quick change of clothes in a tent by the side of the river, we left for the train station and the train back to Changsha. Five hours of a card game with a rude name later, we arrived and dropped our stuff at the hotel. Some of us fancied a drink to relax but the only place we could find that was open was inhabited by a Texan lady we'd had the misfortune of meeting a few days before.

The Canadians nicknamed her the Texan 'Steamboat' (it said this on her sweater, and just so happens to be a phrase those guys use for some kind of behaviour, either drunken or rude, I can't remember which, but it was an unfortunate choice in her case as she was quite clearly either mad, or a drunk, or both). The night we spent with her was an interesting one. Her accent (with no offence to any Texans I know, though they may agree) was incomprehensible, and when I heard that she was an English teacher here I almost choked on my food. As if the accent wasn't bad enough, her speech patterns were something else. She said everything at least three times, 'Ah normally drink a'beer, but tonight ah haed a joose. An apple joose. I haed a joose.'. She didn't say much (we didn't encourage conversation) but still took ages to say it.

Anyway, there she was, gesturing away to herself in this bar, so we decided to leave well alone and just headed for bed instead.

The next and final day in Changsha was taken up with shopping. We bought a ton of DVDs for about 40p each and also got some cheapish clothes. It was by now another very popular festival day in China and all the shops had a sale on. This involved a lot of loud, offensive techno music, shop assistants standing on stools at the doorways clapping at you, and people ringing bells and shouting whenever anyone made a purchase. At one shop I was offered a (toy) pig as well. I don't know if it was free, or if they wanted me to buy it, but either way it would not be coming back to Lanshan with me, so I left as quickly as I could. One more stop off at Pizza Hut, of course, then it was off to the bus station to get the bus home. That was an event in itself. The journey up to Changsha had taken 7 hours. We made it back in 5. The roads may have been quiet cos it was the evening, or because of the festival, but I don't think this made any real difference on how this bus driver practiced his art.

He bombed it. All the way. In a bus. We were the fastest thing on the roads. Nothing overtook us. We overtook everything, using the hard shoulder if necessary. We were swinging round in the back like anything. There was no chance of sleep. We were wide awake with terror!! Whatever. It was cool. Any saving in time would always be appreciated and we were certainly glad to be home before midnight.

It had been a great holiday. Good friends, good places, good food, good fun.