It has been hard to organize my thoughts around last weekend. It is one of the most unforgettable weekends of my life. I honestly cannot ever remember feeling so many disparate emotions in one short time period: excitement, disappointment, fear, joy, happiness, fatigue, understanding, relief, awe…you name it, we experienced it. This is a long one…make sure you have a cup of coffee or something to drink before you start reading.
My friend Junie invited me to join a group called SISU on a bicycle weekend outing. Without doing any research, I went down to the SISU office, met a guy nicknamed “Crazy Bill” and gave him 3250 RMB and was fitted for a bike. He raved about his awesome bikes and the incredible accommodations on all of the SISU trips. He also expressed that it would only be a four hour bus ride to Taiping Lake, where we would be staying. After his description of the trip, Junie and I were planning how many bottles of wine we would bring and wondering if we could fit in some spa time at the hotel. A relaxing getaway in the mountains…what could be better?
We began to experience a little bit of apprehension about the details of the trip when I asked Bill numerous times in emails about our hotel. I wanted to get a contact number to leave with Andy. Finally, he sent a name and number. I went looking on the web for the hotel and as far as the Internet was concerned, the place did not exist. I figured it was because many people do not go to Taiping Lake since it is in a more remote part of China.
We departed Shanghai Thursday evening around 6pm. As we began to introduce ourselves to the people on the bus, we began to realize that we were with a really fun group and became even more excited about the trip. Bill’s itinerary had said that dinner would be provided on the bus. Lucky for me, I have a very proactive friend in Junie who had volunteered to pick up food for us from Element Fresh in the event that the food was not healthy or good. We were hoping that our proactiveness would be wasteful, but it was not. About an hour and a half into the bus ride, Bill announced that we would be pulling over at the next KFC. We were wrong to think that because it was a bike trip, we would be eating healthy. The only other thing on the bus to eat was potato chips and white bread. Junie and I attempted to stealthily eat our tasty food, while taking some flack from our fellow group member Kevin about not bringing enough for everyone (he was joking).
At some point after dinner, I feel asleep on the bus and woke up and looked at my watch. It was past 1am and we were still driving. From the little scenery that the bus’ lights would illuminate, we were definitely in some kind of forest area and it suddenly stuck me that I had no idea where we were even going.
The destination finally arrived around 1:30am. It didn’t take us long to determine that our “4-star accommodations” were really a Communist Government dormitory on a dam that was built initially by the Russians and then later finished by a Chinese woman. After we lugged our heavy luggage up two flights of stairs (no elevator) Junie and I entered our shared room which was no larger than a college dormitory. In fact, it looked like a dorm room from the 1970s. So much for our spa time. We unpacked, complained a bit, tried to avoid touching the dirty carpet and blankets on the bed and fell asleep.
Our "4-star accomodations"
I had an early conference call for work the next morning at 6am that I called into and then was disconnected from for an unknown reason. I think my cell phone ran out of minutes and the yellow and red phones in the “hotel” room beeped like a siren when I tried to dial out. It was strange having a red phone in a Communist-run dormitory.
We decided not to shower in the moldy bathroom and went down to breakfast. During the meal our fellow travelers expressed that they were also less than impressed by the accommodations. Crazy Bill told us that we were staying in different rooms than they stayed in last year and that we would be moving hotels later in the day. After choking down some white bread (brought by CISU), a hard-boiled egg, some rice and watermelon, Junie and I headed back upstairs to pack up our things and prepare for the day.
The agenda for Friday was a boat ride and swimming in Taiping Lake. We all boarded the boat and were immediately impressed by the mountains surrounding the lake (which is really a man-made reservoir). After taking a bunch of pictures, trying to understand how the tee-pee-like fisherman nets worked, getting to know some of the other people on the trip and some swimming, we motored over to a floating building which would serve as the provider of our lunch.
The restaurant had about four rooms, one of which was the kitchen. The cook inside the kitchen quickly whipped up many incredible local Chinese dishes, all of which were prepared with items taken from the land in the surrounding area. The chickens were butchered on or near the site, a dish with fungus that grows on area trees was served, etc. It was quite cool. A few of my trip-mates went into the kitchen to take a picture and could barely take all of the oil, steam and spices in the air for even three seconds let alone to be standing in there cooking in the middle of it.
The restaurant we ate at for lunch
Small Floating Kitchen
After lunch, a few of us visited one of the first really gross bathrooms (a later one would contain maggots) of the trip. Its location was literally shared with a pig. Then, a few of us walked back in time to a fishing village that has barely been touched by the outside world. It was really incredible to see a man milling his own wood, families drying food that was grown on the mountain behind them, and basically just living off of the land.
Eventually, we all piled onto the boat and headed back in the general direction of where we had come from, hours ago. Maybe 20 minutes later, we stopped at an island to swim again. It was quite apparent that a storm was brewing and the captain of the boat actually said to Crazy Bill that we should keep going because of the storm. This concerned me, but apparently not Bill because he encouraged everyone to swim for 20 minutes. Junie and I abstained, but the rest enjoyed the water while I started to worry about the storm a bit.
Just as Bill called for people to get out of the water, the storm hit with a vengeance. The lightning was followed closely by thunder and we could see it striking the mountains all around us. Buckets of water began to fall from the sky. I was concerned until the captain of the boat ducked behind a cove created by an island and we all remarked that this was the first safety precaution we had seen someone in China take.
The storm
Our island refuge was quickly abandoned by the captain and before I could register a protest, we were out in the open water with lightning crashing all around us. I began to become very scared. I quickly found my way to the bottom part of the boat and tried to find someone who could give me some logical reason why we might not be struck by lightning and why the captain might be doing what he was doing and ostensibly putting all of our lives in danger.
Kevin, a member of our team, is a scientist and offered up some reasons why I should not be concerned. He also kept reassuring me by saying, “it’s going to be okay…” and he really seemed to believe what he was saying. The fact that his wife was not believing him made me a little bit more nervous, as did the relentless flashes followed by booms. I started asking questions about Kevin’s reasons and I am quite certain looked petrified. Here was my text message that I sent to Andy:
Friday, 4:42pm “I AM IN THE MIDDLE OF A LAKE IN A LIGHTNING STORM I LOVE U AND AM SO SCARED”
I could really go on and on about how I thought it was quite possible my life was over, the fear that I felt, my yoga breathing on top of a wood table (which would hopefully ground the lightning), etc. Needless to say, it was the longest hour of my life. At one point, the wind really picked up causing the captain to turn the boat around to seek refuge behind a cove, since he could not control this type of boat well in high winds. As he turned the boat, a giant surge of water looked like it might engulf the boat, and for a moment, I think many of us thought the boat was going down. Kevin and Bob had been calling Junie and I “Thelma and Louise” since we were on an adventurous girls weekend, and suddenly the name wasn’t as funny knowing how the women ended up in the movie.
Long story, just slightly shorter, we did make it back to shore. The captain was right, the mountains took the lightning strikes rather than the boat (even though we were literally in the middle of the lake). Little damage was done except to some of us psychologically. I had lost faith in Bill due to so many undelivered promises and the fact that I found him to be an irresponsible leader, taking us on a boat with no life preservers and then choosing to swim rather than try and outrun the storm.
Junie and I were happy to be alive and back in the bus. We drove about an hour to a town which I now know to be Jingxian. Bill tried to check us into a new hotel, but the power was off from the storm so we decided to go eat dinner first. Half way through dinner, the power in the restaurant went out. The waitress serving us looked really scared and I couldn’t help but thinking, “you think this is scary, try a lightning storm in the middle of a lake.” The wait staff quickly procured candles and we enjoyed a candlelit dinner.
The power was still off when we went back to the hotel. We checked in anyway and started lugging our luggage up the stairs (with head lamps on) to the ninth floor. I probably should have questioned more vocally why flashlights were on our pack list. Soon after, the power was restored and we were pleasantly surprised by our nice rooms.
By this point though, Junie and I were exhausted. We had had so little sleep the night before and then to experience the extreme stress and adrenaline we had had earlier in the afternoon, we discussed whether we wanted to go home early and then passed out, leaving our decision for the morning.
I had talked to Andy and had him work out having Rocky, our driver, come and get us on Saturday. So when we awoke on Saturday morning, the topic of conversation was whether we should stay and continue with the adventure or go home. The pros for staying were the awesome people, the promise of seeing more beautiful scenery, the fact that we would actually be doing some biking that day and just that we didn’t want to chicken out. The cons were that we had lost complete faith in our leader, the agenda had two items that we didn’t know if we actually needed faith in him for (river raft trip and cable car ride) and that we were exhausted and really just wanted to go home. After agonizing over the decision we decided to go down to breakfast and here the chatter of our group before making a final decision.
At breakfast, it was strange, because both Junie and I had a physical reaction to being back with the group and listening to Crazy Bill talk. Both of our hands were slightly trembling as all of the fear from the day before reentered our system. Despite this physical reaction, we talked it through and decided to stay on with the trip. With this decision, everything became exponentially better. Saturday was an awesome day of cycling and visiting a remote village. We met up with a local bike club and they hosted us in this village and we really felt so honored to be there, seeing such things.
The Mountain Bike Ride
After biking and lunch in the village, we road on bamboo rafts, guided by an oarsman down an incredibly scenic river. The trip was so relaxing and the only bummer was that we didn’t bring our cameras for fear of getting them wet. It was so great to be experiencing such a beautiful part of China that was devoid of tourism. That night, we again, went to dinner and then finished off the evening with some karaoke. When in Rome…
Sunday morning we checked out of the hotel and then drove a couple hours up to the Yellow Mountains. These mountains had been on my list of things to see for quite some time due to the fact that any time I mention I miss nature from back home, people ask me if I have seen the Yellow Mountains yet. It was quite apparent why, as we were surrounded by farmland and then mountains all around.
Gondola in Yellow Mountains
Once there, we took a gondola-like tram to the top of the mountains and hiked around for awhile. There were many Chinese tourists experiencing the mountains as well, as they are supposedly one of the four sites (along with the Great Wall, the Yangtze River and another river I cannot remember the name of) every Chinese person should see before they die.)
Crowds in Yellow Mountain
We followed up our trip to the spectacular mountains with lunch and then were quickly back on the bus for the ride home. I came through the door of our apartment around 10pm and spent some time explaining to Andy some of the details of the first day. He had initially thought that we were considering coming home because we were not having fun. It was hard to explain that while we were having a blast and hanging out with awesome people, we felt like we needed to leave. Anyway, we were glad that we didn’t as Saturday and Sunday’s activities were so incredible.
That’s it…you made it through…my weekend in all of its juicy details.
A brief update on Andy’s version of the weekend. Andy had taken last Friday off as well, and therefore was able to spend three days sailing (aka heaven for him). Needless to say, he had a fantastic time. The weather was perfect on Friday and he was able to learn some sailing tips from some more experienced sailors (that is what is happening in the video). Saturday, he and some other Red Dragons sailed over to the other side of the lake to visit another sailing club (see photos in “Sailing.” Sunday, was a short race day as they got into some nasty weather where at least three boats had to be rescued. As advertised, the red dragons remained strong and all made it back to the dock without any problems.
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