Mountain Tops and Tea Fields

Nov 1 & 2

Very early Thursday morning we flew  to NanChang, a one hour flight west of Nanjing.   From the airpot Gerald and a colleague head off in one direction for work and Sid, Jyl and I have a tour to The National Park of Lushan.  

The driver name is  Xing (Xing is code for not really sure what his name is) and the tour guide's name is Parker. 

  This Parker is not nearly as cute as Adam's puppy Parker , but both have a similar comprehension  of the English language.

Lushan is a two hour drive from the airport and is an UNESCO heritage site.  We are on the freeway for a bit and then off to a very long and really winding road up the mountain. At a washroom stop we find this useful offering:

Thankfully Xing is a pretty good driver, the terrain is mountainous and very beautiful.  It is the first time that we are out of the China 'urban ness.'  -  and we can see blue sky ! 

Parker gives us an over view of our 2 day excursion and says we are staying at the Lushan International Resort - 5 star accommodation.

We arrive at the resort around 11 am.  Well the Chinese must be using different stars for their accommodation guide, we think 2.5 at best. We do have a beautiful view from our room.

We have lunch on Kuiling Street in the town of Guling. I ask for forks for Sid & myself - Jyl is a chopstick expert, and....no forks to be had!

  Parker takes us to scenic spots in the Park area and we take several treks enjoying the vistas. 

  It is sometimes difficult to understand Parkers explanation of sites, but we make the best of it.  

We come back to the town site of Guling and do a walk about.  There is live entertainment in the town square.  There are many street vendors with a variety of offerings - including bbq'd chicken feet (one of the few things I was able to recognize)  most cooked food I could only imagine their origin!

Sid buys a hat and chats up the local shop keeper. 

  Sid chats in English and the shop keeper chats in Chinese - they somehow establish a price!  So far the only caucasians we have seen on the mountain are ourselves.

We head back to the Hotel for Happy Hour - Sid bought beer and wine in one of the shops - never found anything resembling a pub.  We have supper at the hotel (a one star experience).  The menu has no pictures and no English, we call Parker to help us out. We close the evening with a bottle of Great Wall wine, while channel surfing for anything in English.  Jyl and I finally got an internet connection, but I am unable to check on the affairs of family and friends as my facebook connection is not working.

On Friday we have breakfast at the Hotel.  Sid takes what looks like carmalized onions, boiled eggs and some noodles.  I have fruit and a bun.  Sid asks if I would like to try the onion looking things, he said they were not that good really.  I picked one up and saw a beady eye looking at me, the 'onions' were tiny crisp fried fish, the size of minnows.  Oh My!

We tour a couple of historic summer homes that housed Chinese leaders including Mao and Jiang.

We stop at a tea museum (that is what Parker called it but it wasn't really a museum) , where we see a tea tree and have a tea tasting. 

  Tea tasting, as it turns out, is quite a bit like wine tasting,  we had a tea party! 

  It was about 10;30 when we got to the tea museum and I think this is the first morning in the past 40 years that I have not had a coffee by noon - so tea tasting - well it certainly wasn't coffee!

On the drive back to the airport we stop and have a look at another tea field and notice several cotton fields - all being picked by hand!

We fly back to Shanghai tonight.