Yellow Mountain Part I: Tunxi

Sunday night I found myself in the strange predicament of facing 5 days off. I had forgotten that I had annual-use-it-or-loose-it leave to take before the end of the month and my boss had booked me off this week. But... what do to??? I went home and talked to my roommate and he suggested Yellow Mountain. I'd heard good things about it and I needed to get out of the city for a while so off I went.

I took an overnight train to the town of Tunxi where I stayed at a youth hostel for about $7.00 a night. Nice place but not much heat! When I arrived at the hostel I couldn't help noticing that the staff were wearing their winter jackets... indoors. As I walked around the town I realized this was normal. People in the grocery store, the department store, all decked out in cold weather gear, at work. Also, every available woman seemed to be busy knitting a new winter sweater. Yikes! I need a bit of heat!!

I figured I would spend a day in Tunxi, then go up the mountain the next day. The highlights of Tunxi included a food street (yum!) and a street I think they called the old street. It was kept in the old traditional style, no cars, nice old buildings. I bought lunch, did a bit of shopping, then went for a walk around the town.

There was a nice old stone bridge and being a bright sunny day, everyone was out doing luandry. Many people seem to still wash their clothes in the river that runs through the town. Not sure how clean the water was!

The street running along beside the river had clothes and bed covers all out drying and airing out in the beautiful sunshine.

I’m not much for nightlife and the town seemed pretty quite at night, except for the ubiquitous KTVs (karaoke bars). There was a small park in the center of town in which one group of ladies were doing a fan dance and another were practicing. In front of one of the banks another group of ladies were doing a traditional dance. All dancing was done to traditional Chinese music. Cool!

This pagoda, that was very nice during the day, looked even better at night. It had red lanterns running up and down the inside that were all lit up. Hard to catch it on film with my point and shoot. Sorry the picture is so dark.