Xiangfan to Wudangshan Mountain

I'll start with the good thing. We were met by our guide from the tour company and the driver. Our "guide", who is now a partner with me in a plan to make Wudangshan and Duluth sister cities ( more later ), told us his english name is Victor. He was certain that we could not pronounce his chinese name and we left it at that. Victor is one of the only english speakers in Wudang county...yes I said it, Wudang County. So he tours people aound the Wudang scenic and cultural heritage area...He also owns a book store in Wudangshan along with his newly reconciled wife, Julia. He is one of the founders of the Wudang Taoist Culutural Center. Providence and Zhengwu had crossed our paths. He is a sweet, interesting and knowledgeable man. Along with our enigmatic driver Mr. Sho, Victor scooped us up at the dimly lit Xiangfan airport/tire reclaimation centre and unto the newly constructed Xi'an to Wuhan expressway in Mr. Sho's volkswagon sonata (not availble in the us).

Oh, the flight.... The Beijing airport is where we made two mistakes...er had two important learning opportunites..

1. Dont let strange men "help" you. As we approached the ticket counter (for domestic flights) a guy came up and hustled us up to the counter. He took our tickets and began to talk to the lady at the desk. We thought he was an Air China expiditor or some thing so we went with the flow. He certainly expedited the process and with him we hurried around to the entrace to the gate area. we stopped to tip him. I had no USD so I asked P to get some and he saw our money and literally grabbed a 100 yuan note and vaproized. Lesson learned, DO it yourself if you can...and actually we could have. Especially in Beijing, the counter staff at hotels and the airport are used to forigners, not the band, and will help you through.

2. Exchange USD at the airport before heading to remote areas. We did not do this and spent the next few days relying on Victor to accept USD for extra things not covered by the price of the tour. I would now be the proud owner of a Wudang sword if we had been smart this way. The nearest BOC(bank of China) was in Shi'yan 1 hour away and not in the cards so we're were stuck with our capitaist green backs...as a matter of fact, as of this post, we still hvent been able to exchange our traveller's cheques as it's sunday.

Okay..after making through chinese travel security..I got held up for a second because of my laptop battery looking like an brick of boomy on the scanner screen...we got to the gate to wait for CA1385...which was late 1 hour...so we tried to carve a spot for ourselves....people,people,people,people,people,peoplepeoplepeoplepeoplepeoplepeople
peoplepeoplepeoplepeoplepeoplepeople and they ALL have cel phones. You can call from the golden top of Mt. Wudang and order a pizza (just DONT EAT IT!) if you want. FInally after a gate switch we got on the Air China 757 with others going to Xiangfan for the big tire re-treading symposium and trade fair. The flight was ok...we actually declined an inflight peejio. Dark when we landed at Xiangfan and there were locusty grasshoppery flat black jumper flier type bugs everywhere...we waited for our luggage and we hear a voice TCHRIS! PAT-REECE!..it's Victor -- he's smiling.

Drive two hours and a bit of conversation with Victor...getting to know each others story....He says he very much respects our plan to adopt...has many questions about it. We get to the ancient stone gate now guard house at 10:30p, the mountain is closed and there is some tense back and forth ... victor gains us entry...now we take a 1/2 hour twisty turn hold the handle ride up the mountain...they've just come off of two weeks of rain but we see stars in the sky...P can tell that there are trees and woods here and she is tired but happy. We get alomst to the top part where the hotel we've booked is and there is a gate across the road. Two huge bolders are just about to dump down the mountain from the rain just up the road. A few weeks ago in another nearby park, a bus was crushed by falling boulders, killing 5, so they are taking no chances here. Victor makes some calls and we stay at a hotel that we past a half a mile back. As it's after 11 now, we have to wake up the attendant and find a place for our heads to lay down. At this point, due to a combination of terror, excitment, travel, and jet lag we have had only 5 hours of sleep in the last week. The room is low grade motel and VERY MUSTY...you'll find out why when you read the next post....