nanjing.

After two days of socialiting in Shanghai, Stephanie and I took the train to Nanjing. It would be both of our first visits to the historical capital, located 300 kilometers west of Shanghai, in neighboring Jiangsu province. ('Jing' is Chinese for 'capital'; Nan-jing = 'Southern Capital', Bei-jing = 'Northern Capital, and the Chinese word for Tokyo is Dong-jing - 'Eastern Capital'.)
We booked two nights at a hostel perched on the periphery of Fuzi Miao , an ancient site of Confucian worship turned, like so many other Chinese historical temples, into a glitzy nighttime bazaar.
We spent the afternoon first noshing on street meat, and then checking out the expansive, dauntingly, -almost inappropriately- hip Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum. A modern sculpture garden snaked between the stylized, industrial edifices that housed everything from Japanese wartime propaganda to excavated mass burial sites.


Following the museum, we scooted to the ancient city wall ruins to the north. Each brick - dating back ~600 years to the early Ming Dynasty - is engraved with a seal bearing the name of the bricklayer and the supervising inspector, allegedly so that should invading marauders break down the wall, the emperor could punish the responsible parties. My personal partiality towards accountability enjoys this story.


From there, we walked to Hunan Road, near Nanjing University, for dinner.


We took a break from Taiwanese fare - ancestral inclinations ruled Shanghai dining decisions - and opted for a more traditional mainland meal of stewed melons, noodles, salt-water duck, and a piquant peppercorn chicken dish that caused Stephanie to chug her tepid soda.



We strolled along the bustling pedestrian lane, sipping mango blackcurrant milk tea, until late, and dutifully retired.
We spent much of the next day taking one long, paved hike along the Purple Mountain Scenic area. Here there were temple courtyards and nine-layered pagodas offering vistas of various reserves:





It also featured several Sun Yat-Sen museums and memorials (including a hilly mausoleum), the founding father of Chinese democracy.


We'd just about had enough of sightseeing, but the promenade along the Ming Dynasty imperial tombs too fun to pass up. Stone effigies of impish dragons, lions, camels, elephants, unicorns and horses had been erected some six hundred years earlier to guard the deceased royalty, although we agreed that the visages were too cute and smiley to ward off any evil spirits.





We settled in for an earlier dinner of Taiwanese diner staples - you tiao (resembling a salty churro), shao bing (sesame flatbread), niu ro mien (spicy beef-flavored broth noodles) and xiao long bao (itsy soup dumplings) - before calling it a day and catching an early train back to Shanghai.

huangshan.

The great outdoors and I have never been on intimate terms, broadly speaking. A matter of upbringing, I suppose; despite growing up steps away from the expansive splendors of the Northern California's woods and waterfronts, I've still never been camping, and, only atop the Puerto Rican Yunque, at the un-tender age of eighteen, learned that 'hiking' was simply what white people termed 'walking', when practiced away from cement curbs and crosswalks.
In the years since moving away from California, I've rubbed shoulders with Mother Nature more frequently, though I still struggle to grasp the sense of - reward, is it? accomplishment? - that hikers seem to educe from an elevated vantage point following miles and hours of tromping through mud and insects. I'm always a little puzzled, internally, when folks stand back to take it all in, breathe a sigh of exalted satisfaction, appearing to have found God.
Still, I enjoy the exercise, if nothing else, and I do feel that there are certain things I ought to see before leaving China. So when friends from high school, on a pre-grad school vacAsian, invited me to Huangshan this past weekend, I agreed immediately. I thought vaguely that six months of loafing and chain-smoking in Shanghai could be cured with three days of mountain air and strenuous exertion.
We set off on Friday morning (after Thursday night's brief and violent ravaging of De La Coast's frat-astic open-bar). The five-hour bus ride from Shanghai took us to Tun Xi, about thirty kilometers from the foot of the mountain. Candace, David, Joyce and I checked into our hostel, and spent the reminder of the afternoon exploring the village, before turning in early to catch a 6AM bus that would take us to the base.
Wikipedia says:

The Huangshan mountain range comprises many peaks, 77 of which exceed 1,000 m in altitude. The three tallest peaks are Lotus Peak, nearby Bright Summit Peak (Guang Ming Ding, 1,840 m) and Celestial Peak (Tian Du Feng, literally Capital of Heaven Peak, 1,829 m). The World Heritage Site covers a core area of 154 square kilometres and a buffer zone of 142 square kilometres. The mountains were formed in the Mesozoic, about 100 million years ago, when an ancient sea disappeared due to uplift. Later, in the Quaternary, the landscape was shaped by the influence of glaciers. In many cases, stone pillar forests were formed.

So it wasn't going to be easy. Fortunately, I had packed my cousin's hip outdoor gear (for lack of my own); looking like a NorthFace ad does something for one's confidence in times of athletic apprehension. It was still cool when we set off. We started off with three small, warm-up hikes of about two kilometers apiece on the eastern side of the range. A rather charming tourist tradition, we learned, is to purchase a padlock, engrave it with your and yours' names, and affix it to the chain-link guardrails lining the highest peaks. Thousands of preserved romances greeted us upon reaching each destination:



The first small hike ended at a lovely freshwater stream, where we soaked out feet:


The second hike was Lovers' Gorge, originally made famous for its seamless series of beautiful streams and waterfalls, and currently known (and named) for being the natural backdrop of the 2004 film 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon'. We were not, however, able to take any reprieve from the hot mid-morning sun in the water:


I love this. Analogous advisories: 'No eating the hot and delicious food'; 'No fucking the loose and limber Brazilian pageant queens'.
After Lovers' Gorge, we stopped for lunch. We sampled five local teas, and some ambiguous mountain vegetation swimming in grease, before continuing on.
The third warm-up hike was the Nine Dragons Falls. Nine slim columns of rapids, descending vertically, proved to be a challenging ascent, but we finished without the aid of external manpower.


I thought, 'if I had such a job, I'd never solicit customers and would attempt to appear as disagreeable as possible.'


Caution, commie-style

Four hours of moderate trekking was the prelude to a three-hour long stretch up the remainder of the east side of the mountain. The first stretch was shaded in bamboo forests:



As we ascended, the air grew cooler, and the foliage changed. Strange, cropped-top pine trees resembling tropical drink umbrellas grew staunchly out of rocks. We began to catch glimpses of granite pillars, cascading steeply towards treacherous precipices. We eventually reached our accommodations for the evening, situated in a clearing high (1,650 meters!) enough to see smatterings of distant lightning storms, illuminating patches of far-off forest pink and purple against the otherwise still and silent night sky. Our private July 4th fireworks spectacular, we mused.
We were exhausted, from an early morning and many hours on foot. After a brief dinner and a seemingly brief but peaceful slumber, we rose to watch the sun rise:



It, too, was brief, and subtly spectacular, to the delight of the spectators. We jostled to the convenience store and picked up hard-boiled eggs and chocolate bars for the rest of the day.
We hiked down the western side, which we discovered was a sprawling Geopark, on account of its pretty special display of geological curiosities. Prehistoric fault lines had evolved into verdant valleys. I feebly recalled my rudimentary college geology class vocabulary -intrusion here, bedding there, I think that's some coarse-grained granite- and wished a lot that I'd been better equipped to understand the landscape, which was really quite special. The weather was inarguably perfect; clear, temperate blue skies allowed us panoramic views of the area (although we admitted that we'd hoped for a little morning mist, for art and drama's sake).
We returned to Shanghai by bus that afternoon - a cramped, five-hour, air-conditioning-less ride with forty other proud and sweaty Huangshan conquerers. It was a familiar relief to see the smog and skyscrapers of Shanghai; I enjoyed myself, but am (I reluctantly suppose) conditioned to the city. I hailed a cab, and rode it pointedly to a late-night massage parlor, where I treated myself to a luxurious ninety minute rubdown and rosewater bath.

it's strange, but. . .

. . . lots of locals have not yet internalized the Chinese diaspora (or the white or black diaspora, for that matter). Visual cues are the sole determinant of ethnicity, and ethnicity is the sole determinant of cultural identity. It is presumed that white people are from Europe or the Americas, speak English, and exist within that ethereal caste of Western power and politics under which scuttle and cower Eastern features and feet.
Prior to arriving in China, I'd always felt like a bit of a black sheep physically in Asian communities. In Taiwan, local vendors looked upon me as an American. I was too tall; my shoulders were too broad and too dark from too many swimming seasons; my hair was cut funny because I'd insisted on cutting my own hair in college. I wore the wrong clothes. Taiwanese girls, despite living in a sweltering, tropical climate, didn't wear tank-tops, didn't wear flip-flops, and definitely didn't wear college-issued running shorts.
Shanghai, however, seems to have less exposure to ABCs. They're more familiar with Europe and Europeans than Americans, and China has that whole chip on their shoulder about being at odds with the West. If your face - as mine - is Chinese, it's assumed that you are from China. If you give yourself away - as I frequently do in vernacular - it's assumed that you are from Greater China.
Cabbies can generally tell that something's a little off about my speech. It confuses them because it's not in the accent or in my ability to express and converse. One shrewd driver commented that I articulated myself perfectly (he concluded that I wasn't Korean or Japanese) but that my choice of wording was too peculiar to be local (He eventually correctly guessed that I'd be reared in a Chinese-speaking household in the States).
In any case, people rarely, if ever, guess that I'm an American. When it is revealed, they ask me if my English is any good. I clarify that I was born and raised in the States also, so yes, I'm a native English speaker. This frequently perplexes people, as they consider the apparent incongruity between my appearance with the information I've just supplied.
What Chinese people have internalized though, is the glass ceiling. Racial profiling, therefore, gives foreign visages an incredible advantage. I'm full of confidence when I'm in the company of white people; I feel invincible alongside a white man in Shanghai. (No reservations? No problem! Don't want to pay the cover? Don't have to!) Chinese people, through commitment to some obstinate pride, are embarrassed of communicating in accented English, and will readily adhere rather than attempt to argue in non-native English. I've started this dirty habit of speaking in veryfast and pronounced English when I'm not getting my way. It works like a charm; the language of oppression (sadly?) is more cogent than articulate Mandarin.