Weekend Trips in
South-Eastern China
Anhui, Jiangxi, Fujian and Shanghai Provinces
China
May 24th - July 1st, 2024
This is my blog post about a couple of lovely weekend trips with Rosie in south-eastern China. I flew from Hong Kong to Shanghai, from where we started our first trip to Anhui. It was my first time back in mainland China since 2017. Since late 2023, German nationals no longer require a visa to travel to China for stays of up to 15 days, which has made visiting China a lot easier.
Anhui Province:
We took the high-speed train from Shanghai to Xuancheng, which is about a 3 hour train ride at 300 km/h. We were picked up by Rosie's friend Li Yan, who first took us to a local restaurant for lunch. We had a big lunch with lots of very good local food, although the duck feet and heart wrapped in intestines are an acquired taste.
Anhui Province is located to the west of Shanghai. The province has a population of 61 million, and covers an area a little less than half the size of Germany. Its beautiful mountainous landscape is dotted with ancient villages, many of which go back to the Tang dynasty. After lunch Li Yan and her friend drove us 2 hours south to Chaji village, which is a particularly beautiful example of the many historical villages in the region. Many of the buildings and temples in Chaji go back to the Ming dynasty.
We joined a tour group of local official, and spend about an hour walking through the village along the canal, and visiting a number of temples and residential buildings.
Anhui province is home to the distinctive Hui culture, which has a rich tradition of literature and art, and developed a unique architectural style involving intricate wood carvings.
After Chaji we drove a short distance to the famous town of Taohuatan. Taohuatan is famous in China, because it is featured in a poem by Li Bai, who was the most important poet during the Tang dynasty.
Taohuatan is located on the Qingji River, which is one of the main tributaries of the lower Yangtse River.
We stayed overnight in the beautiful hotel across the river from the old town, which Li Yan had kindly booked for us. She also organized a traditional Chinese dinner, for which she had invited several of her friends, who drove the two hours from Xuancheng to join us. It soon emerged that she had specifically chosen the best drinkers among her friends, so they could test how much that German guy, Rosie had brought along, can drink. I think their stated goal was to get me drunk, so the Baijiu came out before the dinner had even started. It began fairly harmlessly with small shots and formal well wishes and cheers. But it didn't take long, before they switched to drinking it out of larger water glasses.
Baijiu is a clear spirit, which is usually distilled from fermented sorghum, but can also be made from rice or other grains. The one we had was 42% alcohol, and we managed to finish 2 large bottles among the six of us that night. Turned out these guys could really drink, but I had to defend German national pride and managed to hold my own in trying to keep up with them. None of them spoke any English, but that didn't seem to matter after the first few shots, and we had lots of fun communicating in sign language.
The next morning, still a bit hung-over, we took the little ferry across the river to see the old town with its ancient buildings and narrow alleyways.
Jiangxi Province
After spending two days in Anhui province, we took another high speed train to Wuyuan, in Jiangxi. Jiangxi Province has a population of 45 million and is located to the south of Anhui and north of Guangdong. The landscape is very mountainous, and the train seemed to spend more time in tunnels than outside. Rosie had booked a beautiful resort for us located to the south of the city along the river, where we stayed in this futuristic looking tree house.
The area around Wuyuan is famous for its beautiful landscapes and ancient villages. The next morning we had a driver pick us up from the hotel for a full day of visiting several of these villages. We started at Huangling, which is clearly one of the most famous villages in the region, as there were several thousand Chinese tourists there with us. To get to the village you first ascend the mountain by cable car, and then walk over this glass-bottomed bridge.
Huangling consists of three to four story houses nestled along the hillside and surrounded by steep mountains covered in forests and rice terraces.
Huangling village is also famous for its chilies, which are sun-dried on bamboo sticks attached to the balconies and roofs.
There is a small river cascading down through the village. I took me a while to get this shot with almost no people in it.
I feel something may have gone slightly wrong in the translation here.
Although a bit touristy and it was fairly crowded, we really enjoyed Huangling. It is a beautiful and interesting place, and definitely worth a visit.
After taking the cable car back down, we asked our driver to show us other villages, and he recommended several, that are not as well known and don't get many visitors. We first stopped at Jiangwanzhen village, whose white buildings are lined along the river. There is a very precarious looking bridge, consisting only of a couple of wooden planks, which does not stop the locals crossing it on motorbikes with significant speeds.
Our next stop was our drivers home village at the Duanshen River.
And then he found us the perfect place for me to try out my new drone at Longwei Village.
Here is a short drone video:
Our last stop was Qingyuan, which is a very remote village located high up in the mountains. In stark contrast to Huangling, there was not a single other tourist here.
A paved two way road up to Qingyuan was only built last year. This is the view of Duanxin Reservoir from the road.
We initially had plans to visit the famous Yellow Mountain in Anhui Province on Monday. But when we woke up to heavy rain the next morning, and then read about several injuries that had occurred due to bad weather on the mountain the previous day, we decided to cut our trip short and get the highspeed train back to Shanghai instead.
Chongming Island, Shanghai
I was back in Shanghai a couple of weeks later, and since it was a holiday weekend, we decided to go on a short trip to Chongming Island, which is a large island located in the mouth of the Yangtze River just to the north of city. It is a beautiful and relaxing place, perfect for a weekend getaway. You can reach Chongming Island by car from Shanghai in about 1.5 hours. Just to cross the southern channel of the enormous mouth of the Yangtze River, you first drive through a 9 km long tunnel and then cross this 12 km long bridge.
Chongming Island is huge, covering an area of more than 1,200 square kilometers, and it has several nature reserves, forested areas and wetland parks. We visited the Dongtan Wetland Park located at the north-eastern corner of the island.
Since we came here by car, we were able to bring Macchiato with us.
We went on a long walk around the whole park, which is criss-crossed by wooden walkways.
The wetland area is also famous as a bird sanctuary. In fact, this year it was included in the UNESCO world heritage site called "Migratory Bird Sanctuaries along the Coast of Yellow Sea-Bohai Gulf of China". It also houses all sorts of other interesting wildlife, including alligators, but we didn't manage to see any.
Quanzhou, Fujian Province:
A week later, Rosie and I decided to meet up half way between Hong Kong and Shanghai for a wonderful long weekend in Quanzhou, located in Fujian province along the shore of the Taiwan Strait. Quanzhou was once one of the most important and largest cities in China. During the Song and Yuan dynasties (10th to 14th century), the city was China's main trading port and its gateway to the world. Both Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta came here in the 14th century, and praised it for being one of the most beautiful and glorious cities in the world. Quanzhou was inscribed as a UNESCO world heritage site in 2021. Today, Quanzhou is a major and modern city, and with a population of 8.8 million, it is the largest metropolitan area in Fujian.
The Quanzhou Maritime Museum tells the fascinating story about the vibrant and multicultural history of this city. Due to its importance as a trading hub, Arab and Persian traders travelled to Quanzhou along the so-called "Maritime Silk Road" starting in the 7th century. Owing to the city's openness and tolerance, many of them settled here, and introduced Islam to the area. Quanzhou has the oldest mosque is China and there are many Islamic tombs found all over the city.
Founded in 685, during the Tang dynasty, Kaiyuan Temple is the largest and one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Fujian province. The two incredibly impressive and elegant 5 story stone pagodas were built during the Song dynasty in the 13th century. The ancient Chinese builders used a similar technique (namely large earth ramps to lift the stones) in building these pagodas, as the Egyptians used to build the pyramids.
The original ‘Monkey King’ image was first created on this pagoda, which later inspired the "Journey to the West", one of the four masterpieces of classical Chinese literature. (The other three are: "Outlaws of the Marsh", "The Romance of Three Kingdoms", "Dream of the Red Mansions".)
The roof decorations at Kaiyuan Temple made of colorful tiles. The area around here also used to be a center for the production of ceramics.
Many of the tourists here were dressed up in traditional clothes and flower crowns. We learnt that traditionally the fisherwomen in the region wore these elaborate flower head dresses, in order to distract from their "large feet". Small feet (created by the practice of foot-binding) were considered beautiful, but working on a fishing boat didn't allow you to bind your feet, hence the focus on the flowers on your head.
The 1200 meter long Luoyang Bridge was built in the mid 11th century. Being the first and longest stone bridge of its kind, it is known as one of the four ancient bridges of China. The Luoyang bridge is part of the UNESCO World heritage inscription.
Fujian Tulou
The Fujian Tulou are a fascinating type of large residential building, unique to the mountainous areas of the Fujian province in south-eastern China. These, mostly circular, multi-story structures were built between the 14th and 20th century, and typically housed a family clan of up to 800 people. The construction used wood and bamboo for the inside dwellings and had thick outer walls of earth and clay for defensive purposes. The Tianluokeng Tulou Cluster has 4 circular tulous surrounding a square one. They range in age from the early 17th century to the 1960s.
There are still more than 30,000 of these buildings in Fujian today. 46 of them were inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site in 2008. Most of them have a large inner courtyard, where communal life takes place. The majority of the Tulous are round, but there some rectangular ones, specifically among the older buildings.
The drone view of Tianluokeng Tulou Cluster. In the 1980's US intelligence services saw these circular structures on satellite images, and mistook them for missile silos. Ronald Reagan sent secret CIA operatives into the region to investigate, but all they found were centuries old wooden structures.
The region is very mountainous and many of the hills are covered in rice terraces and tea plantations.
Yuchanglou Tulou is the oldest of all the Tulous in Fujian. It was built in 1308, and people still live in it, as they have for more than 700 years. Some of the larger tulous, like Yuchanglou, have small temples or as in this case a school buildings inside.
Taxia Village is one of the most scenic villages in the region. The S-shaped river flowing through the village with the two round Tulous at each end, makes it look like the Yin and Yang symbol from above.
Our last stop was the beautiful and scenic Hekeng Tulou Group. I just managed to get this shot in, before we were surprised by a sudden and heavy thunderstorm.
We departed the next day on our respective flights back to Shanghai and Hong Kong. It was fascinating visiting these areas of China. Prior to 2017, I did a lot of trips in China, but usually to the large cities, where it's possible to travel and get around without any Mandarin skills. These trips to the countryside would have been very hard to do by myself. Having a Chinese girlfriend to travel with, who organized everything, makes trips like this not only very easy but much more enjoyable.
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