May 1st is Labour Day in China which is a public holiday. It fell on a Wednesday this year and in a feat of logic that only makes sense if you’re Chinese we had to work the weekend before to get Monday to Wednesday as ‘holiday’ and then go back to school on Thursday which deprived us of a possible five days off in a row. Still, myself and ten of my friends made the most of it by going to Shaoguan.
Shaoguan is a city in northern Guangdong Province and, whilst it wasn’t helped by the torrential rain that fell for most of the day, I didn’t find it to be a particularly attractive city although it does have a lot of tree lined riverside walks. The Dajian Temple joins the long list of Chinese historic buildings which I’ve visited and have turned out to be only a little older than me because whilst the site is ancient the buildings aren’t. This one had a temple on the ground floor and what looked like flats on the three floors above it. Maybe that’s where the old woman who ran a shop across the road selling any kind of scales you could think of lives.
The real reason to go to Shaoguan is not for the city though but for the amazing countryside it sits in the middle of. Our hotel had a glossy brochure about all of the nearby natural wonders and the most famous of these is Danxia Mountain. Sadly it’s too famous as it’s a UNESCO world heritage site and thousands of Chinese tourists had descended on it at the same time as us. I’ve never seen an area of countryside so busy before, it was ridiculous, but the views from the peak in the centre of the park were well worth it. A river with gently sloping forest covered hills on either bank which after a time turned to red sandstone cliffs with tree covered tops and other stunning rock formations.
The day before we’d hired a minibus to take us to Lingnan National Park but sadly the rain arrived at the same time as us. Our driver thought we were stupid to climb the 1600m Little Yellow Mountain in the rain and that was before he saw the different levels of bad weather preparedness that the eleven of us exhibited. This ranged from a few people with absolutely no rain protection to my flatmate with a waterproof coat and rucksack. I was fine with my umbrella and even my friends who got wet said that the view from the top was well worth it. The tops of the dark, tree covered ridges were visible as they poked through the very low cloud which gave a classic misty Chinese mountain effect. As we were watching the sun came out and the wind blew the clouds away which revealed the forests beneath them.
The driver told me that the walk would take three hours and he was amazed when we came back in just over two. After we finished the walk past the waterfalls in only one hour instead of the two he’d thought it would take he refused to believe that we weren’t running! The driver was also amazed by my Chinese, as were the staff in the restaurant that evening when I was able to read enough of the Chinese menu to order plenty of dishes for eleven of us. I’m not fluent and I know how far I’ve got to go but being away forced me to speak more Mandarin and gave me a confidence boost. It certainly meant the holiday went much more smoothly than otherwise; I felt like a school teacher in charge of a load of kids at points because I had the best Chinese so it fell to me to organise things, buy the tickets, find out the information, ect. I really enjoyed the trip but in a way I was glad to get back as my ‘responsibility’ was over. The last part of this responsibility revealed a weird quirk in Chinese transport prices.
We’d covered the 275km to Shaoguan by bus but we returned by high speed train because not only was the journey a lot quicker, 50 minutes instead of four hours, it was also cheaper, £10.50 compared to £12. Try and work that one out!
