火车 (huǒchē) - Train

I'm pleased to say that we all returned to Beijing from our five-day tour of Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), Huangshan City, Qiandao Hu (Thousand Island Lake), and Hangzhou safe and sound - I even brought back a lovely strand of the common cold as a souvenir! One of my Traditional Chinese Medicine professors is now trying to convince me to take some of her herbal medicines for my relentless cough... a friendly reminder that I am, in fact, in Beijing to study global health in China. Heh.

And so we began our trip-within-a-trip with a 20-hour journey on a hard sleeper train from Beijing to Huangshan City. How does one entertain him or herself on the world's slowest train through the Chinese countryside? Read Harry Potter out loud, of course! It was our own little way of celebrating the release of Deathly Hallows/mourning the end of an era.


Despite discovering someone else's discarded chicken wing bones on the shelf next to the top bunks (I had the pleasure of sleeping in one of these beds for the night), and disregarding the fact that we would be spending nearly an entire day on this train, our journey south turned out to be quite pleasant! The bathrooms were nothing more than squatter toilets that emptied right on to the tracks, eliminating the horrific smell that usually comes with public squatter toilets, and as slow as the train was, we were lucky to enjoy a smooth ride all the way to Huangshan. When it got dark, we built ourselves a cozy little fort in our cabin and read some more Harry Potter before going to bed.

A cozy six-bunk cabin - our humble home for 20 hours.

Though we received a complete itinerary before we leaving Beijing, we didn't really know what to expect on this trip because it was all written in Chinese. We put the itinerary through Google translate the day before we left in hopes that it would give us some idea of what we would be doing for the next five days, but needless to say, there were a few minor details that didn't translate well...including the fact that we were required to take an 8-hour hike up the Yellow Mountain in order to get to our hotel at the very top.  

Our tour guide, Michael Peng (of no relation to me, unfortunately) greeted us at the Huangshan City train station and informed us of this surprise hike. Having just spent an entire day on a train, we were a little less than enthusiastic about the prospect of spending the next eight hours climbing a mountain. But, after realizing that 1) our dinner and 2) our beds were going to be waiting for us at the top of the mountain whether we liked it or not, our delirious selves kind of shrugged it all off and prepared ourselves for a hike up the Yellow Mountain.

A quick restroom break and a frantic repacking/rearranging of luggage later ("DO YOU THINK I NEED TO BRING MY SHAMPOO?"), we were ready for our climb.

Our luggage sadly watched from under its net as we abandoned it in Huangshan City.

And so we began our adventure.