Huangshan Hot Springs

I wake up to a cold room in the villa at the undeserved four star Behai Hotel on top of Huanshang (Yellow) Mountain. With a force of will, I jump out of bed in my socks, slippers, jeans, and red parka, and dash to the washroom.

Darn! Siobhan must have shut off the hair dryer or else it's simply burnt out. I turn it back on and splash some warm water on my hands and face. Ahhhhhh, that's better!

It's overcast but light outside. I fumble for my watch. 4:30 am. Too cold to fall back to sleep, I decide quietly to type the blog entry about the climb. My sacroiliac and right knee are stiff and a bit sore.

A couple of hours later, Siobhan wakes up. By now, the room is passably warm. She quickly does her morning ablutions and decides to check out some of the peaks here on the (summit) plateau. She checks the map and then bounds off like a jackrabbit out the door. Oh, to be young and fit, again!

I continue typing. Every forty minutes or so, Siobhan checks in after completely a climb to one of the many little peaks that circle the top of the Mountain. By the time she has finished two, I am finished editing the draft and we head up to the main building of the Behai in our red parkas to use the "Business Centre", which consists of two CPU's, a fax machine , a photocopier, and a telephone.

As we are the only clients present, the staff member gives us a break. There is no wifi. At first he says we can't use our own ethernet cable, then relents and lets us. He even brings us an extra chair. Success! The entry is posted.

Now, it's my turn to enjoy the peaks. Sio picks the "Cloud-dispelling Pavilion" to visit. So, off we go along the trail of steps of going up and of steps going down over the uneven plateau of the Mountain. Boy, do they love steps around here! (By the way, I think you can rent a pallequin, carried by two porters, if you can't do steps. I saw one old woman travelling that way.)

I would say, after forty minutes of up and down staircases and along parths and various Kodak moments, we have covered an equal effort as climbing the Wentworth Street Steps in Hamilton (500 steps). But, of course, this is much more picturesque and different. It's a cloudy, cold, drizzly day so the vistas of yesterday are either muted or concealed by the mist. And the "Mist-dispelling Pavilian" does not live up to its name! The clouds do not part, the sun does not shine, the drizzle does not stop. But it has a stone parapet that hangs way out over a deep abyss with apparently nothing but air under it, just like the lookout at New Liskeard, Ontario. Vonnie is too chicken to try it, so I go out on the parapet for yet another photo op.

Close to here we buy a gold medal and have it engraved with my name and the date. My first ever gold medal!!!

We have to check out at noon, so we head back to the Behai. I have already informed Siobhan that I am not physically up to the five hour descent by the western stairs, as we had planned. That descent has the reportedly the most beautiful vistas. However, those vistas are not available today, due to weather conditions. Siobhan is being very understanding. We compromise on walking to the western steps and taking the cable car down.

The reception clerk at the Behai, however, informs us that reaching the western steps takes four hours even though, by the map it appears only to be about three kilometers as the crow flies. The clincher is that it has started raining. Neither Siobhan nor I wants to walk four hours in the rain in my plastc poncho or her water-proof windbreaker. So we opt to retrace our foosteps from yesterday and take the cable car down at the eastern steps.

The fee is 80 yuan one way (rather a lot of money for a ride in these parts) and head down with 6 other people in a very quiet, very smooth ride. Can't see much in the mist except the forest and the concrete foundations of the cable car towers sunk into the nearly vertical walls of the mountain. What a job it must have been to lay them!

At the bottom, we take the shuttle bus towards Tangkou but get off at a bridge just next to the Mountain where our bus driver, reading our itinerary in Chinese, indicates our hotel is located. We walk past a security guard and down a long driveway to the Best Western Hot Springs Hotel. Siobhan is cursing the bus driver. This gleaming, white, new, luxury hotel surely cannot be ours!

But, as it turns out, it is! The tour operator in Shanghai had charged the hostel an extra 30 yuan fee to each of us to upgrade our accomodtions to "foreigner level". For about $5 extra each, we were upgraded to luxury class wth buffet breakfast included! Sweet!

Siobhan noted that our room, with its view of Huangshan Mountain above us, smelled like Bubie's old apartment. It took a while but we located mothballs at the backs of all the drawers and cupboards. The weather was not agreeable so we wasted some time that day down below in Tangkou trying to get internet access. Unbeleivably, there wasn't any at our 5 star hotel.

Down below in Tangkou, and even along the sides of the Mountain itself, constuction cranes are rising up everywhere. A brochure in our hotel had proclaimed the launch of a 6000-luxury- bed convention centre and health spa foussed on the hot springs and its convenient location next to the fabled Huangshan Mountain. O my god! They're gonna turn this beautiful place into a tourist trap like Niagara Falls, to which legions of spectacled dentists and chartered accountants and their wives are going come to hold their conventions!

I am glad we are here before this all happens.

FACT: There are more construction cranes in action in one province here in China (Jiangsu) than in all the states of the good ole US of A combined. It is a building boom of biblical proportions, fuelled by all those dollars flowing from the purchases of Chinese-made manufatured goods that North Americans make at Walmart and Canadian Tire. Imagine the boom in Hamilton if all those dollars were spent on Canadian-made goods!

The next morning dawns misty but soon the sun appears in a blue sky(!) and burrns off the mist, except at the Mountain top. Glorious day! Siobhan are I are at the breakfast buffet bright and early and eat like recently-rescued, shipwrecked sailors. The cuisine is a mixture of North American and Chinese traditional breakfast foods including a kind of scrambled eggs with some kind of chewy mushroom mixed in, soggy bacon, a crunchy fried salty food that may be the local bacon substitute, leaf-wrapped sticky rice, cooked yams, pieces of corn on the cob, toast with jam, hard-boiled eggs, rice of several formats, dinner rolls, steamed white buns, and many, many other strange concoctions, sliced fruits and veggies, tea, coffee, (warm) milk, soup, ersatz orange juice. We try every single offering. And we pull a Lorraine Shebib by secretly liberating some hard-boiled eggs and corn on the cob for later.

We can't wait to try the hot springs, only 148 yuan per person (fifty yuan off the regular price with our room key.) At 6.4 yuan to the dollar, that's about $25, and so it's not for everybody around here.

The hot springs building is a very tasteful, big, white modern structure with a lot of marble and darkly-stained wood. It looks like a first class hotel inside and out. The top level is administrative and lounge areas and it's where you buy your admision. It a five minute walk from our hotel past a babbling brook, through stone gates, and over a hump-backed bridge, uphill.

At 11 am, we are the very first customers of the day. The pretty, uniformed receptionists can't speak a word of English so one runs for the manager who can say a few words of English more than we can say a few words of Mandarin. We are given wristbands with a big dial on them. Siobhan knows immediately what it is: the key to your locker. Like duh, Dad!

A map at reception shows that the arrangement of hot spring baths outside has been cleverly laid out in the shape of a fish. We find out why later.

Going down one level, men on one side, the ladies on the other, one arrives at the locker rooms and showers, to change into bathing suits. An attendant has to show me how the dial works to unlock the locker for repeated uses. Again, it's all tasteful marble and wood. Towels and slippers are provided free.

Finally, the third level down are the hot springs. Eat your heart out, Heidi Speck! Your plastic hot tub would not make it here.

Siobhan and I had the pleasure of touring the new Chinese garden in Vancouver some years ago. It took the tour guide about 90 minutes to explain how all the minute details of the setting of rocks, trees, waterfalls, pools of water, flowers, strctures and walks all contribute to the feng shui of the place. Ying and yang must be balanced to create harmony. The harmony, in turn, contributes to the healing qualities of the venue.

Well, we immeditely recognize that's what been created here in this latest version of the hot springs. (The Chinese have been enjoying these hot springs for centuries.)

Siobhan and I slide into the very first, white marble pool with its lion-motif spouts of very warm water. Ahhhh! Relaxing! The springs face Huangshan Mountain which looms above, lovely in all its peaks and forests. A beautiful, big, wooden pagoda sits behind this pool framing views of the mountain. The pool is set in a garden of blooming, mauve irises, shrubs, and dwarf trees. Part of this pool is separated from the rest by a low marble wall on the left which creates a small, very hot tub. Siobhan goes in. It is too hot for me.

I figure the hot springs are fed directly from the bowels of the earth into the hot tub and then allowed to overflow into the bigger pool, to create the tolerable heat of the bigger pool.

The only incongruous item in the hot springs is the big, round, analog clock hanging over the entrance to the pagoda. Is there a time limit?

Exotic birds are flitting about and so are the first butterflies we have seen in China. Dragon flies too. Chinese flute music is being piped in from somewhere. It is very restful and appealing to float back and foth on your back or merely lounge on a ledge in the pool in the sun with warm water splashing all over you. Ahhh! This is the life!

Well, there are many pools to be seen and experienced. And so, we move on different pools of size and shape. There are alcohol baths, salt baths, mineral baths, blood(?) baths. There are also baths that will restore hair (a must for me), cure skin ailments, and rejuvenate. In fact, a former emperor claimed that, by taking the Huanshan Hot Springs, his gray hair turned black, his skin was cured, and he became immortal.

OK, I am willing to try, too.

Not all the pools are full of water. Some are currently empty, a few are cold, one is completely filled with red powder. Siobhan surmises that, because it is early in the day and we are the only customers so far, it may be cost-prohibitive to run all the pools now.

What's this? Little fish in a warm pool? Oh yes, we had read something about this. Siobhan orders me to lower my foot (gingerly) into the water. It is immediately attacked by dozens of little fish from about one to two inches in length. Yikes! Thet are nibbling the skin of the sides and bottom of my foot, the cuticles of my toes. It is a very weird feeling. I lower my other foot in. Most fish attack that one. I am today's breakfast! I sit in the pool and, in seconds, I have fish on my body like silvery, yellow and green hair.

Having had the guinea pig prove the safety of the experiment, Siobhan slides into the pool. She shrieks when the fishes attack her feet. But soon is submerged. If we moved around tis pool, the fishes follow us, even into the hot tub at the end. An attendant comes by to inform us that this novel experience is going to cost us an extra 30 yuan each. What is this ! I am feeding the fish and I have to pay?!

Just kidding! When we purchased our addmittance, the receptionists collected a 100 yuan deposit each. We had heard there might be extra charges for special baths.

We linger a long time in the fish bath where we are methodically denuded of all dead, superficial skin. Siobhan can regale you with many intimate details about the biologial structure of the many wonderful and interesting layers of your skin. So, when you next see her, you can ask her about it. I am not going to go into it here.

But we don't have all day. We have a bus to catch. So we move on.

I try the hair restoring pool. She is interested in the skin restorative pool. After a while, we've done every operating pool in the place. Some are cool. Some are warm. Some are really hot.

Finally, we return to the first pool where Siobhan starts swimming lengths. I advise Siobhan to settle down and meditate on the curative powers of the hot springs. She does not look convinced. I say,"You know medicine is not just about mending broken bones and bandaging cuts. It's also about wellness. Just relax, open your pores, and let the curative properties of the spring water seep into your skin."

"And just how do I let the curative powers seep into my skin?"

"By osmosis, of course." Like duh, science daughter!

That reply at least makes her think. "And how am I supposed to open my pores?"

"That was the job of all those little fish. They nibbled off all your dead skin."

No retort... Ha! I have stumped the science grad.

I close my eyes and put myself into a self-hypnotic trance. I suggest to myself to relax and heal, heal the right knee and sacroiliac joint, and, indeed, the whole Ken. It's not hard to picture the water infusing my body wih curative effect, the harmonic balancing of my ying and yang, my melding into this beautiful environment of sun, trees, flowing water, flowers, rocks, birds, pagodas, flute music, mountain.

I have been to a lot of beautiful places in my life. This must certainly be one of the most beautiful on earth. And Siobhan have had it entirely to ourselves for more than two hours!

The magic of the moment is broken when a group of apparently well-to-do Chinese arrive as if on a collective lunch break from work. I hope they enjoy the springs as much as I did. In fact, I wish I could bring Kay and the Zimmerman's here. A couple of weeks here and they'd feel like new people!

Siobhan and I reluctantly leave the pool to get changed. I am tired but am walking without any pain in the right knee or lower back.