Dehang Day 3 (14th of September)

Despite the Lonely Planet dismissing the cultural performance in the village’s outdoor arena we thought we really should go and see it while we were here. We’d gathered from the noisy music we’d heard on previous days that it must start at 10.00 a.m. with a later performance around 3.00 p.m. There was only a local lady with her small child waiting, but a swarm of Chinese tourists soon joined us. It was interesting, although at times painful to watch due to the lack of organisation and synchronisation, leading me to think I was watching a performance by a pack of Brownies. We hadn’t seen many teenagers around the village, but it seemed we had found them, perhaps pressurised into carrying out the performance. The older ladies looked more professional and in time with each other. The show is apparently a demonstration of a wedding ceremony. There was a lot of dancing, drum banging, dancing while drum banging, a procession and a bit of audience participation (luckily we had seats in the middle).

Planning a lazy day we went exploring up the narrow alleys, but then spotted a man leading his water buffalo up a valley we had not yet been to. The apparent promise of 'waterfalls in large number’ and a cave ‘famous in both China and abroad’ was too good to resist and we set off along the paved path. Not a lot of rice growing or harvesting was happening in this gorge, possibly because it was quite shady. As we progressed the rice stopped and there were just a lot of weeds growing on what terraces there were. The man with his buffalo was stripping the bark off lengths of bamboo and seemed very happy to see us. This path seems to be very neglected and the weeds are fast encroaching upon it, while the stepping stones over the river have fallen apart which makes getting across a bit of a trial at times. We almost turned back, but were glad we persevered as we happened upon a lot of movement in the trees. There were quite a lot of wild monkeys, but not being dependent on humans, like those of Wulingyuan, they were far away and hard to spot. We did find the waterfalls minus the water, but gave up on the cave hunt since even the path was hard enough to find.

Dehang Day 2 (13th of September)

From the village we headed up another branch of the river- Jade Spring Stream to what may have been Jidou village, passing first through the rice fields and then through some shady, cool, rainforest. As usual the path was paved all the way and there were loads of steps (about 2000). We saw plenty of lizards, some butterflies and a praying mantis en route. After forcing my dodgy knees upwards we came to a lookout platform and a really beautiful, peaceful village. Rice terraces teeming with frogs surrounded the village, as well as a few patches of maize. Corn cobs, corn kernels and chillies were once again being dried on all the flat spaces, and chickens roamed around the narrow paths. This beautiful village is soon to be ruined though, with the same road building project we'd seen before under way just beside it. Huge bridges had been built across the valley, and just one lorry passing along the road brought much noise to this still and peaceful valley. Things will never be the same for the people in that valley. We're privileged to have seen it before the road was completed.

Dehang Day 1 (12th of September)

The people of Dehang may go to bed early, but they certainly get up early too. All manner of noises drifted up to us, people washing their clothes, some banging, lots of voices, cooking and by the time we looked out the window the lady opposite had already laid all her mats of rice on the roof. The tour groups were set loose in Dehang at 9.00a.m. and had to pose for a photo on the steps of the bridge outside our window. One man, with his crisp and clean white trousers was so worried that sitting on the steps would make them dirty that he had to hover in a squat at the back while everyone else sat down.

Walking up the river our inn was on led us along the main tourist trail, but we’d left early enough to avoid most of the Chinese tourists for a while. The local folk were already hard at work cutting the rice down, putting it through their wooden threshing machines, carrying sackfuls back to the village and making little haystacks with the remains. At the end was a large waterfall where some tourists were splashing about in boats on the lake and local entrepreneurs tried to entice us to take photos with them in costume or purchase cucumbers on sticks. Pulling our raincoats on we took the short but very slippery walk behind the waterfall before heading back towards Dehang.

We stopped off at 'Shi peng's' waterfall path (15RMB), which he created and carved beside a series of steep waterfalls. There were a lot of fig trees beside the path. A Chinese woman, who thoroughly enjoyed getting her husband to take our photo, was clambering through the rough terrain in her high heels. At the top the path became a flimsy looking ladder and some slippery steps carved into the slime covered rock. Rather predictably 'Ape afraid to climb cliff' stayed at the bottom while the wood family monkey climbed up the steep ladder and made its way up the slippery steps carved into the side of the waterfall and into a cave.

Back at the bottom we ate watermelon purchased in a barn and went back for more. The high-heeled lady had plucked up the courage to take pictures herself and took numerous shots of us and our watermelon. The rest of the day was spent in admiration of the rice harvesting process and marvelling at the scenery.

Vegetarianism in China

Being a vegetarian in China is not an easy business we have found, especially one that does not want too many additives, to feast on monosodium glutamate or food that tastes like a chemical concoction. We can’t understand how you can even make bread that tastes that horrible, and we wonder if they’d think our bread was disgusting too. It is very sugary and oily with a hint of coconut/banana/whatever. By our third day in China bread was definitely off our menu.

There are a lot of unnecessary ingredients and what you might think tastes pretty good on its own obviously doesn’t to the Chinese. Even the cashew nuts have chicken powder on them. Thankfully there are many products with English ingredients listed, without which we would be very hungry or just very clueless.

A particular problem for us has been that most accommodation doesn’t have cooking facilities so we’ve been left to cook our food on the street or just eat noodles semi-cooked in warm water, far too many dried soya beans (these tasted good to start with), pineapple sandwich cakes, ocassionally strawberry sandwich cakes, ‘hawthom’ (hawthorn) sticks (a bit like Pam the Jam’s fruit leather) and ketchup flavour crisps along with some fruit when we find it. This is not the healthiest of diets, but thankfully after the small portions in Mongolia we don't need to eat a lot.

I am actually looking forward to being in the United States. I never thought this would be a sentence I could produce, but there it is. The relatively normal food there and the familiarity of it all is bound to be comforting.

Fenghuang and in to Denhang (11th of September)

Being in the middle of a ‘we can’t get going phase’ we half packed our bags before deciding to stay another night in the hostel. Unfortunately, or as we came to realise later –fortunately, there was no space. There was no running water when we woke up and it was starting to smell rather vile. The lady in the hostel told us that the bus station was just along the road near the bridge and the Lonely Planet map seemed to have the bus station in the wrong place. Neither was particularly useful, but luckily we thought we’d seen the bus station when we were dropped off. We headed upstream and along a road, which rose up to the height of the large bridge. This part of town was not frequented by the tour groups; not a street cleaner in sight and rubble and rubbish piling up by the roadsides. One exciting shop sold the large solar panels you see on lots of the houses and I couldn’t resist having my photo taken next to it.

The bus to Jishou was at full capacity plus a few children on laps. It was a bit of a squeeze and the boy next to me could not stop searching his two pockets. I could have told him after the first five minutes that he had definitely lost whatever it was. We needed to go to the railway station to buy tickets and thought the station would be just along the road from bus station, as we’d seen it from the Zhangjiajie-Fenghuang bus, so we walked down the road to where we thought the station was. We were however at a different bus station. The street cleaner couldn’t read as we pointed at ‘train station’ in our guidebook, but another lady could and indicated it was left then right and we’d need to get a taxi. Pretending to be interested in the fruit stall after drinking some water we let her disappear before contemplating our next move.

We have now come to realise that if you wander around looking lost in a Chinese city for long enough a student majoring in English will come to your rescue. This time it was not one but two female students, who had plucked up the courage to talk to us. These two were handing out fliers for a shop opening the following day and were usually too scared to talk to the foreigners, but today had each other for support. Sophie and her friend were pleased to practice their English. They told us the station was quite far away and after asking some fruit sellers which bus to catch took us (and carried our small rucksacks) to the bus stop, told us how much it cost and asked the bus driver to tell us when to get off. What a service!

At the station we got train tickets to Zhangjiajie for the same train we had already booked from Zhangjiajie to Shanghai. Very pleased with our purchase of these two train tickets for 40RMB we later came to realise she’d given us standing seats, which means we’ll very likely be standing in a cattle wagon for 2 hours being smoked at and spat on (as the Lonely Planet puts it). The bus for Dehang left from outside Jishou station with five people on board, but by the time it had left the city it was packed with standing room only. Two small boys were returning to their village with half empty baskets of pomegranates and were given a hand hoisting the baskets onto their backs when they got off. Up above us we could see further signs of the massive road building project we’d seen on our bus trip a few days before. Wires went right across the top of the beautiful valley where soon the sight of a concrete bridge, noise of beeping horns and vehicle traffic will blight this lovely spot. By the time we had completed the journey to Dehang there was just us and a Chinese tourist left on the bus. He had been trying to communicate with us aided by his mobile phone, which could translate Chinese into English, but not the other way round. At the village entrance we had to pay the entry fee of 60RMB per person. We weren’t sure if we had to pay more to stay longer than a day, but since there was nothing in English we went for the cheapest option.

The bus had difficulties getting into the village square, because it was covered in woven mats with rice lying on them to dry. A lady was spreading the rice out with a pole, which in English terms might be called a rake. There was rice, as well as some maize, out to dry on the rooftops, on top of the bridge, in another square and outside people’s houses. A man was sitting on the bridge making a basket out of bamboo. Maize was also hanging up to dry outside houses alongside chilli garlands. We weren’t sure where we would be able to stay, it being a Saturday and probably quite busy. The sign to a hostel didn’t yield anything, but a lady outside a shop mimed sleeping and pointed up the river. In the Jielong Inn we found ourselves a single room with large bed, fan and television that buzzed like it might soon explode for £2.50 each. We wandered across the river and upstream marvelling at the rice harvesting process and spotting some frogs lurking in the muddy rice paddies, egrets and a bittern. For the first time in two weeks, be it previously due to smog or humidity, we saw patches of blue sky and we let ourselves believe that there still might be a sun up there. By 7.00 p.m. it was beautifully dark and the locals were wrapping up their day.

Fenghuang (10th of September)

Sometime in the early hours of the morning the racket outside our hostel had ceased and at 6.00 a.m. it was remarkably quiet for a town, no beeping horns or barking dogs. But by 7.30 the noise had begun again, it was as though there were people surrounding us. I really thought I was missing something lying in bed and went downstairs to look. A flotilla of the small fishing boats were making their way down the river and their occupants were singing. On the bank the early rising tourist were already taking pictures and the locals were getting their stalls ready coming along with their baskets on their backs. A man was painting a picture of the houses on the other side and a lady sat at the side of the path making wreaths out of flowers. Otherwise there wasn’t much to see and I couldn’t really understand why it had seemed so noisy.

We spent the day in exploration of Fenghuang, walking up and down the river. Just seeing the locals go about their daily business was fascinating. Every day must be wash day and the ladies were washing bed sheets, which they would bang with a wooden paddle and then wash again. Outside one inn there was a washing machine that they’d brought out to the river where they could fill it with water. Downstream of people washing their sheets you would see people washing cabbages or chillies. Three men in boats were cutting riverweed with sythes on the end of long poles, but they were just leaving it to drift down the river. Everyone seemed to be very busy, well apart from the three men asleep on the bridge crossing the river. Before we turned back we saw a kingfisher and the locals were puzzled as to why we were photographing it. In some shops a local ginger sugar sweet called Jiangtang was being made. They had big hooks on the side of their shops, which they pulled a mass of shiny golden gloop over. The man making it loved us apparently.

Downstream there were a lot of boats waiting for passengers, which everyone tried their best to get us on. Going back along the other side we got into the heart of meal town where there were all manner of doomed animals outside the restaurants. There were snakes, frogs, lots of fish, honeycomb containing huge maggots, shellfish, chickens, pheasants, ducks, fluffy muskrat type animals and even a ginger cat. None of them had very big cages and they all looked as though they knew what was coming. Hanging from the ceilings of some shops were flattened pigs heads, two with cigarettes coming out of their mouths, presumably the Chinese find this very funny.

We managed to escape the tourist throng in places as we walked down any old street. Here was the less touristy China with old houses, carts, a man selling chillies, furniture being made, old people sitting around or playing badminton and children making paper flowers which they would take down to the river to sell at nightfall. Sadly it wasn’t long before we were amidst all the tourists again and the stalls lining the river. Along the wall you could try on a range of different costumes and have your picture taken, one lady looked very pleased with herself as she posed in a soldier outfit. Since we wanted to take a few pictures of the night-time Fenghuang we sat on a bench and waited for dark. It was all happening where we were, some men were fishing and then the ladies aided by their children were setting up shop to sell their paper flower lanterns, which people could buy and let float down the river. The ladies arrived with huge polystyrene boxes of paper flowers on their backs as well as baskets in their hands. Some children were sent off to sell the flowers elsewhere, but they were far more interested in trying to catch shrimps in their hands. As it got darker more of the illuminations came on and the music got louder and louder, every bar trying to outblast its neighbours.

We took our pictures, saw some bats, some rather fancy pig and mouse lanterns and tried as best we could to persuade the ladies that we didn’t want to buy a paper boat. On our way back a girl reached out to touch Jenny’s arm and looked positively overjoyed to have touched a white person. Outside the hostel two small children were playing cards like only the Chinese know how to while their mother tried to sell paper flowers. Back in the hostel a man seemed to have purchased himself a kitten (alive, not dead) and was sitting in the communal area stroking it wildly and cleaning its bottom. Since he was in the room next door to us we heard a quite a few outbursts of kitten meowing during the night.

Zhangjiajie to Fenghuang (9th of September)

Having planned to leave Zhangjiajie city at 8.30 a.m. we got the bus out at 2.30 p.m. On the no. 3 bus from the hostel we passed our note written by the Chinese student to the ticket lady, which said something along the lines of ‘Please tell us when we are at the bus station, thank-you’. After points and smiles and ‘xie xie’s we got to the long distance bus station. Producing another note, this time written by the man working at the hostel, we got two tickets for the four hour trip to Fenghuang for 60RMB each. A man standing near the counter kept saying Fenghuang and a lady pointed at him and said Fenghuang. He then pointed to himself and mimed driving, so we had to presume he was the bus driver. He picked up my rucksack and rushed out the door. Thinking I might never see it again I darted behind him with Jenny following behind. In the process I knocked a lady’s hat off and didn’t notice, but thankfully Jenny was there to act out an apology.

Being the driver of a bus from one tourist hotspot to another he had clearly had practice in hand signalling to foreigners. He managed to communicate to us that:
-It was hot in the bus and we should stand outside
-There was a toilet to our left
-If we were hungry we should go and buy food at one of the stands
-We could open the window but would need to close it when the air conditioning was put on (although I thought he might have meant when it started raining)
-We should sit at the front for the better view (even though we had tickets for seats 15 and 16).

As the bus got going we realised we had put our lives in the hands of yet another crazy bus driver. He was eager to overtake absolutely everything (even on bends) and beeped his horn all the time. The horn was extremely loud and we wondered if we’d get off the bus deaf. Thinking about it the driver’s brilliant hand signalling skills might have been partly attributable to deafness he brought upon himself.

The countryside was lovely though and it was really interesting to look out the window. There were puppies everywhere, most of them beige coloured and of course very sweet. One puppy was lying at the edge of the road its tail stretched out behind it and its head in the ditch drinking water. The villages were pretty and so different from home. We passed through the watermelon-growing region where there were polytunnels in the fields and stalls of melons at the side of the road. Later we went through the tea growing area with tea bushes rising up the hillsides and a giant teapot monument. Outside the houses chilli peppers were being dried in the sunshine, as well as rice and maize. There seemed to be a big road building project underway, with half built bridges towering over the villages and lots of noise.

After a hot, noisy and rather hairy trip through the Chinese countryside we approached the riverside town of Fenghuang, (another) hotspot for Chinese tourists. Not entirely sure where we were, let alone where to go we attached ourselves to a Chinese couple who helped lead the way to the riverside area. It was very lively and picturesque in the town. All the buildings were lit up, music was pumping and people were everywhere. Along the noisy alleys by the river were shops and stalls selling all sorts of colourful things from shoes to animals woven from grasses.