Hiking Huangshan, one of China’s most beautiful mountains

Back when I lived in Beijing, I made a spontaneous decision one week before Chinese New Year to travel to Huangshan, one of China’s most famous mountains. In hindsight, it was a foolish decision and I learned my lesson not to travel to places at the exact same time as multitudes of Chinese.

Besides Huangshan, I also visited Xidi and Hongcun, two old villages in the area that are also UNESCO World Heritage sites. Hongcun is especially beautiful, and scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were shot there.

I had long wanted to visit Huangshan, one of China’s most beautiful and famous mountains. Its mist-covered slopes and pine trees are a familiar image in countless photos and paintings and its beauty has been paid tribute to in poems. I was going to spend several days in the area, which meant staying in Tunxi, a small town an hour away from Huangshan. Getting to Tunxi meant taking a high-speed train from Beijing to Nanjing, then taking a sleeper from there to Tunxi.

Situated in Central China, Anhui is probably best known, besides Huangshan, for being the setting of The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. Set in 1930s China, this novel follows the hard struggle of a peasant amid poverty, war and instability as he tries to move up in life. While China, and the province,  has long moved on from those terrible times, largely agricultural Anhui is still one of the country’s poorer provinces despite having rich neighbors like Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Many migrant workers in the country, especially in Shanghai and Beijing (I also had a couple of colleagues and friends from there, though they weren’t migrant workers) hail from Anhui.

But Anhui’s earthy reputation belies an interesting cultural heritage (Huizhou) that culminated in a distinct regional architectural style with black roofs and impressive wooden designs, which Xidi and Hongcun both feature some good examples of.

I went to the village of Xidi that first day, then went to Huangshan the next day by a one-hour bus to Tangkou, a village at the foot of the mountain. Despite arriving at Tangkou in the early afternoon, I learned that large crowds at Huangshan meant that going up by cable car would take hours. My plan was to take the cable car up and hike around the paths on top.

I decided to stay in Tangkou for the night, thus paying extra for another hotel, because I wanted an early start. After I found a hotel, I took a walk through the village which provided some fantastic views of Huangshan. I did get that early start but apparently 6 am wasn’t early enough, because when I left my hotel at that time the next morning, I found the street filled with tourists making their way to the car park to take the bus to Huangshan visitor center (from there, you can hike or take the cable car up the mountain). The car park itself was filled with people and the lines were crazy. Eventually I got into a line and after about an hour, got into a bus.

That felt like a relief, but it was temporary because when I arrived at the visitor center, I saw even more people than there were at the car park! When I approached the cable car station, the line was so long it started from the second floor of the station and extended all the way outside (see the photo below).

My plan had been to take the cable car up so I could hike around the top. With no choice now, I would have to hike to the top and then try to walk around the trails on the peak. As Huangshan is not that high, it took me about two and a half hours (fitter people can surely do it in less time), and while I was traveling solo, I was accompanied by dozens of Chinese. Some were in tour groups while others were with friends or family, and noone seemed to be hiking solo like me. Being in China, some of those folks just couldn’t keep quiet so there was a constant chorus of shouting, yelling, and throat-clearing, as well as music playing on little portable radios that older hikers in China and Taiwan like using.

The nearer I reached the top, the better the views got and I was able to get a glimpse of the much vaunted peaks with clouds that Huangshan is famous for. It is a beautiful mountain up close, not just from afar, with its forested slopes and rocky granite peaks. Along the way, you’ll pass well-known rock formations and trees, and these are even given names such as “God Points Road” and “An Immortal Pointing the Way” (probably sounds better in Chinese).

When I got to the top, I realized there was a lot of people there as well. I got onto a trail, figuring the crowds would thin out along the mountaintop. But no, everywhere I went there were people, and the trails were so clogged, it was impossible to speed ahead. After over an hour, the sheer congestion meant I couldn’t complete the entire trail, so I had to hurry back to the cable car station to make it down by mid-afternoon so I could get back to Tunxi.

I wish I had been able to fully hike the paths on top and I hope someday I can return to do just that in the future.

Line to the cable car station at the top

Besides the top of Huangshan, there are cable cars and a person’s face in this photo.

One of the resting places at the top