Family in Town

I left Pennsylvania on February 11^th and haven’t seen any of my family since I parted with my aunt in Wuyishan on February 24^th. Up until this week, it had been about four months since I had seen my mother and sister, and three and a half months since I had seen my aunt.

This past Tuesday, my mom and sister arrived in Shanghai. They are in China for two weeks and leave on Tuesday, the 19^th. We spent Tuesday through Friday morning together in Shanghai. Then on Friday morning, we headed to Huangshan, where we met my aunt. My aunt and I then left to go home on Sunday afternoon, and my mom and sister are headed to Beijing on Monday. We will then all meet up again in Xi’an on the coming Friday and stay there until Monday, when we head back to Shanghai in the morning. On Tuesday, my mom and sister fly back to the states and I will begin to take my finals.

On Tuesday, I picked my mom and Maea up at the airport around 4 PM. We took the Magnetic levitation (Maglev) train from the airport to downtown. It goes 300 Km/H, or about 185 MPH. We then went to their Airbnb and dropped off bags. We had Indian food for dinner, explored the neighborhood, and then parted ways so that they could get some sleep.

On Wednesday, I had a meeting at the U.S. consulate to discuss my options for surrendering my U.S. passport to the Italian consulate in Mumbai while I was in India. It wasn’t a very productive meeting. Then I headed back to Fudan to go to class. During this time, my mom and sister checked out the Shanghai Municipal History Museum to learn about why Shanghai is the way that it is. After class, we met up and I showed them Fudan and my apartment. We then did a food tour on Daxue and Wudong road, getting hand grab cakes, roasted lamb wraps, margaritas at Togo Taco, and Xiao long bao and steamed pea buns at Hsu Xiao Lu.

Following our food pilgrimage, we took the metro to the fake market, where both Maea and I got new sneakers. We then headed to Jing’an to walk around. We saw the temple and several of the cool streets. We ended up grabbing drinks at the Shanghai Brewery before heading to Lost Heaven for dinner. Lost Heaven serves Yunnan food, from the Yunnan province in Southern China. This was probably the best Chinese food I have had. It is also close to the Bund which was super convenient and allowed us to go walk around after dinner.

On Thursday, we met each other in Pudong to walk over to the Park Hyatt for breakfast. We had breakfast in the restaurant off of the lobby, which is located on the 79^th floor of the World Financial Center, aka the bottle opener. Breakfast was decent, but the view was pretty incredible, and we were able to see for miles (we could see Guanghua towers at Fudan). After breakfast, I headed back to Fudan for class, and my mom and sister went to explore Yuyuan gardens. At 6, we all met up again, along with my girlfriend, Nadia, for drinks at Logan’s Punch. Afterwards, we headed next door to Tomatito, a Spanish restaurant, for tapas. The food was good, but the Sangria was much better. After dinner, we headed home to go to bed.

On Friday morning, my mom, sister, and I took a morning train from Shanghai to Huangshan. We arrived in Huangshan around ````````1 PM and met up with my aunt. We headed to our Airbnb, which turned out to simply be a hotel that we had rented every room of. It was kind of a weird situation. After checking out the property, we explored the town and grabbed lunch. We then went back to the Airbnb to relax, before going to hot pot for dinner, my mom and sister’s first time having the Chinese staple. After dinner, we returned to relax and sleep.

On Saturday, we left the house at 8:30, with the destination of Mount Huangshan in mind. Unfortunately, my aunt put the wrong address in and our Didi took us a few miles in the opposite direction of the mountain. Fortunately, we were able to quickly renavigate and make our way to the entrance of the national park. On arrival, they decided to go to the hot springs, instead of hiking, and so we took a bus to the hot springs. We spent the day lounging around, breaking up our time between the pools and the cover of the pagodas (it was raining). After a few hours, we headed back to our apartment to grab dinner and relax. We ended up with western food for dinner (kinda, sorta pizza), and then got cake at a small bakery. We ate the dessert at the house and then passed out.

On Sunday, we had breakfast in the apartment before grabbing a Didi to Tangmu, an ancient town that was near the train station. We spent about two hours walking around and exploring the old, historical houses and structures. They even had a “west lake” that claimed to be the sister lake to West Lake in Hangzhou. It was very pretty and was a nice way to end my time in Huangshan. After Tangmu, we grabbed a taxi to the train station, where I was dropped and caught my train back to Shanghai.

We will all meet up later this week to explore Xi’an, but for now we are parting ways to go and have three very different weeks.

Avatar Mountains

This past week has been very eventful. In an update to my plans for the rest of the year, I will be going to Milan, Italy this fall, instead of London, England. I will then be returning to GW for the Spring semester. While I had been very excited to go to London, due to the classes that were offered and the classes I need to take to graduate, it did not make much sense for me to go. In Milan, I will be taking Italian classes every day, as well as a fashion design class and a few business classes. I am very excited to get to experience Italy.

On Wednesday night, Nadia and I left Shanghai to spend the rest of the week in Zhangjiajie. Zhangjiajie is a national park with column-style mountains that inspired the setting for the movie Avatar (The one with the blue people). We flew there on Wednesday night and arrived just before midnight. We took a Didi to our hostel and were welcomed to find out that since the shared bunks that we had booked sold out, we received a private room that turned out to be very nice. Before heading to sleep, we found a man serving up delicious noodles, and bought snacks for our impending days of hiking.

The next day, we woke up and took a bus to the national park. We were staying at a hostel in the park for the rest of our trip. I texted our owner and asked which bus to take in order to get to the hostel. Unfortunately, we could not find a bus going to the destination that she had described, and so we simply took a bus to the national park. This mistake turned what should have been a one-hour bus ride into a one-hour bus ride, four ten-minute shuttle rides, a fifteen-minute hike, and then another ten-minute walk, all in the rain. This series of travel methods finally led to us arriving at the hostel. It wasn’t exactly what was advertised online, but it got the job done.

We stayed at the base of a cable car station, and so that evening we took the cable car up to the top, then walked to a lookout nearby and saw our first real view of the mountains. It was pretty spectacular. Unfortunately, at this point, it was nearly 7 PM and so the cable car had closed, and we had to hike down. About halfway into our descent, the sun set, and we hiked in darkness. We got back to the hostel and enjoyed a dinner of green peppers with fried pork, potatoes and pork, and rice while chatting with a Canadian who was studying in southern China, and a girl named Maggie who was from Texas and was simply traveling. We passed out shortly after this. Step Count: 18,796, Flight Count: 59.

On Friday, we woke up and had the house breakfast of noodles, steamed bread, a fried egg, and tea. It wasn’t as good as the dinner, but if filled you up and kept you going for a few hours. We headed out around 9 AM and hiked up the trail that we had previously gone down the night before. As we got close to reaching the top of the cable car station, we decided to veer off and hike to a “mansion.” After climbing up and down 4 rather sketchy metal ladders, we reached the peak. It turned out to be much less of a physical structure and much more of a lookout. Unfortunately, it was pretty rainy that day and so the clouds prevented us from seeing too much. We headed down relatively shortly after arriving due to the large crowds and tried to head to Tianzi mountain to go hiking.

Tianzi mountain has one of the best lookouts, but we were going to go on a lesser known trail that was near it. When we arrived, we saw a sign for McDonalds, and wanting ice cream, we headed there. When we arrived, we ran into Maggie, one of the girls who was staying at our hostel. We decided to hang out and enjoy our ice cream and talk. While there, the rain picked back up, and not wanting to brave the conditions, we ended up spending three hours at McDonalds. Eventually we took the shuttle back to the cable car station and then the cable car down to our hostel. That night we had pork, vegetables and rice again for dinner. We also watched Avatar, so that I could gain some context for the park. Step Count: 14,047, Flight Count: 179

On Saturday, we got up at 8 and headed out at 9 to spend the full day hiking. We decided to take a longer and more scenic route up to the top of the cable car station. In the process of finding the trail, we ran into Maggie again who decided to spend the morning hiking with us. The hike was very pretty but took about three hours to get to the top. Granted, there were a few very nice scenic lookouts along the way. Once we got to the cable car station, we took a shuttle to Tianqao which had several of the pillar-type mountains that the park is known for. When we arrived, it was rather overwhelmingly busy, in comparison to our hike in the morning where we saw nearly no one. We spent about two hours walking around, looking at different peaks and just taking it all in.

After this, we took the shuttle to complete the hike that we weren’t able to do the day previous. When we arrived, we realized that it was more of a road than a hiking trail, but we still followed it for about an hour and a half before hitching a ride back to the bus station. From there, we took a shuttle to Tianzi mountain, found a quiet spot, and did yoga for about a half hour to help stretch out our muscles. It had been a long day and we were both sore. Exhausted, we took the shuttle back to the cable car station and spent an hour hiking down before reaching our hostel around 8:30 PM. We showered, ate, and fell asleep very quickly. Step Count: 34,208, Flight Count: 238.

On Sunday, we slept in until 9. We then got up, ate the breakfast of steamed bread, noodles and an egg, and then headed back to Zhangjiajie city. Our hostel owner got us a car to take us back, which seemed like a much better option than the bus. However, it ended up being one hell of a ride. The van driver continued to pick up more people until there were eight of us and a large basket of vegetables in the car. The mix of smells was pungent, and the road was incredibly bumpy. Overall it was a pretty miserable ride, but he took us right where we needed to go, so that was a plus.

We spent the afternoon at Tianmen mountain. We began by taking a bus up one of the windiest roads in the world, then hiked up 999 steps to get to Tianmen cave. It is a very famous sight in China. We then took seven escalators, all located inside the mountain, up to the top of the mountain. From there, we walked around, taking in the views and even walking on a glass bridge. It was slightly tacky but still cool. We

finished off Tianmen mountain by taking the longest cable car in the world (5 Miles, 25 minutes) down to the ticket office where we had picked up the bus.

We then grabbed dinner at a local restaurant before heading to a coffee shop to do work for a few hours. Around 9:30, we headed to the airport. We had a flight back to Shanghai at 11:30. The flight was fine, although the legroom was incredibly tight. We ended up landing in Shanghai at 1:20 and getting back to our apartment at 2:30. It was an exhausting last day, but it allowed us to truly take full advantage of the day. Step Count: 19,397, Flight Count: 137.

Zhangjiajie was a truly amazing place. The mountains are unreal, and I would recommend it to anyone who is spending at least two weeks in China. It could be done in as little as a day, or you could spend a week there. I have felt a true yearning for nature since being in Shanghai, and Zhangjiajie really helped fulfill these desires.