Crouching Tiger is a no go...

02.10.2017 - 02.10.2017
View Nanchang 2017-2018 on baixing's travel map.

All of us woke up crazy early and Shylo noticed some blood droplets on her sheets! We immediately started looking for bed bugs, but found none. When her dad woke up, we saw he had a large, fresh cut on his elbow. Definitely the cause of the droplets, mystery solved.

We had breakfast with a couple of exchange students living in Hong Kong for a few months. The German one was confused about which mountain she had hiked and wasn't useful at all. She was also telling me my Chinese should be better, and didn't believe that Chinese people eat candied hawthorn, not tomatoes, on sticks at every street corner. I've only eaten a million of them, I can't imagine anyone would even try to assert anything about food they've never tried, but I digress.

We wandered around until we found our way to the trailhead. The stairs by our farmstay were sternly guarded by elderly women under umbrellas. Another woman at another entrance also told us the mountain was closed for National Week, because it would get too busy. We walked back dejected, but then found a group of people in a van who also tried to talk their way onto the mountain. We followed them back to the coiling dragon trail when all their attempts also failed.

For a while, we walked with them, my "nose rag" in hand, sopping up the horrible mucus dripping out of my face all day long. Shylo and her dad wanted to hike from end to end, but I just couldn't do it, so I waited in a dusty tower for them to return. I did however, manage to keep up with them to the other end of the trail. An endless serpentine path of repetitive watchtowers and hills, until we found ourselves back at the parking lot. I was completely drained, but surprised I made it. On the other hand, there was no way to really make a short cut back, so I didn't have a choice but to slowly tromp on, and finish the entire thing anyway.