Quick update - Huaihua, Hunan

I was "deprived" of proper internet access for a number of days now, and am realizing that I haven't put on any update whatsoever for a while - not to mention that I probably didn't really write anything proper since leaving Kunming.

 

I'm kind of stuck in a city called Huaihua for a few hours - a train-hub city, but nothing more - although I randomly explored a bit, and found a huge market, and a street corner with some interesting old-China people passing time.

 

I'm trying to find my way to the Dong villages in south Hunan/ north Guangxi, but transport from my last stop to that area seems to be non-existent, so I'll have to burn a few good hours here, then skip to a place callen Long-sheng (Entry to the "Dragon's backbone rice terraces"), and later get back to the Dong villages before moving on to Guiling and Yangshuo.

 

I'm somewhat fearful of that part coming (Guiling/ Yangshuo) - as however I'm trying to plan things - it seems I'll land in these overly-touristy duo smack at the worst time possible - the Chinese golden week - a week in which 1 Bn people take their longest vacation during the year ... it's going to be somewhat of a nightmare.

 

Going through Hunan was surprising in a few ways, wonder if I should write about this separately, but might as well write something while I'm into it.

 

A lot of people asked me when I was planning the trip why I would be wasting valuable trip time on Hunan. My guide book as well, while giving a Hunan chapter, managed to make Hunan sounds uninteresting, and avoided many of the exrtreme superlative used for Yunnan.

My main reason though - was the food. Hunan is supposedly giving a good serious competition on fiery-spicy food to better-known places such as Sichuan and Chongqing. So I could not give this one a miss.

The legend was enhanced during my short stay in Shenzhen - we were entertained by Phoneix, a Canadian that runs a chain of restaurants in Shenzhen, feeding 10,000 mouths a day together with his Chinese wife's family. Apparently his first success in the world of consumer-food was getting rich by collecting dropped fish-heads from the garbage-cans of Canadian restaurants, and then shipping them to be sold in China.

When I mentioned heading to Hunan for some spicy food, he had a story for us - he apparently went to visit Changsha (the Hunan capital), stayed in a nice hotel, and wanted a nice quiet non-spicy breakfast. He asked the staff to prepare a simple omelet - he specifically said - just fry two eggs without any spice. "No problem", they said and then brought him his eggs. When he got the eggs, he asked the waiter what is that red color floating on his eggs. "That's just for a bit of flavor, not spicy" ...

 

Spiciness is quite disappointing.

As I arrived in Changsha on a plane striaght from ShenZhen, I was ready for the big challenge, but ended up staffing myself with an overdose of food, as I kept trying different restaurants, with repeting disappointment.

 

Later on, I gave up on the food-marathon, and settled on just eating, but kept on trying. Things can at times get spicy - as I now tend to be quite extreme when I ask for food. It now goes something in between: "Can you make that EXTREMELY spicy?  I mean REALLY spicy, and not 'foreigner' spicy ..." (I gave up on using the word "Very", as it didn't get the desired effect), and between (earlier today): "what's your spiciest dish here? Please make it with extra chillies".

But even then, it's spicy, but no killer-spicy. Nothing like that Habanero-sauce we got in the Mexican joint in Shekou-Shenzhen ...

 

Anyway, despite of the spice-issue, I'm super happy I came through Hunan. This place is super not given the proper credit.

Changsha is admittedly easy to give up (although it has quite a nice museum), but some of the places on the west side are killers: Zhangjiajie, Dehang, Fenghuang - really nice places all of them.

 

Zhangjiajie is apparently the place in which they filmed Avatar - while it's overpriced - it's definitely amazing. (and although you can see there was a lot of effort put into the place, they still managed to do a really louzy job with signs and maps - maybe you're meant to come on a guided tour).

 

The real shit though is Dehang. Most people will completely skip this one, but that's THE place to go and see. If Avatar was filmed in Zhangjiajie, that it was conceived in Dehang - it's a much smaller scale, but all the better for it - you feel like you're inside the thing. Every turn and step you make, you stop and say "wow". Maybe before "Avatar", you'd imagine the creatures leaving in the forest, and the birds on the top of them cliffs a bit differently, but you'd still just know that they're there.

There are a couple of hiking routes from the village, and into the gorges between those cliffs and forrested hills, running along villagers, rice fields, cows and water buffalos. At the end of the second little hike I made (these are much more worthwhile then Tiger Leping Gorge to my opinion, and with much much less effort - completely paved routes, almost zero climb, but wonderful wonderful surrounding), or just when I thought I have reached the end - getting to the waterfall, the path seemed to continue, but changed to a more significant climb - stone stairs. I thought they'd go a few meters to get a view of the waterfall from another angle, but they just continued on and on. I looked up - but you couldn't tell at no point where they were going, you could only see up to the next flight of stairs. After about 10 minutes, I seriously thought I should give up - looking back down, I was dreading the way back on the slippery stairs (indeed, I slipped twice when eventually making my way down), and I was in no mood for massive stair-climbing (did the 4,000-steps climb in Zhangjiajie a couple of days earlier). But then, I figured there's nothing to really do once I'm back in the village (all the Chinese tourists come to the town for the "folk-dance-show" in the early afternoon, go around shopping, and then head away - the previous night the only other foreginers in the village seemed to be a gay couple from Valencia), so I thought I'd give it a bit more.

After about half an hour of a climb, I reached it - and it was worth it for sure - you get to stand on a peak of one of them columns (or at least you feel like it - it's actually connected to a ridge on one side, or they'd be no way really to climb up to it).

Amazing.