We are in the midst of the latest Fake Public Holiday here in China.
I call it fake because the government policy is to 'make up' for lost days by taking your weekends away. You largely don't get days off, they just re-arrange them so you're hugely inconvenienced before and after the fact. I just had a 6-day week working Sunday, while next Saturday will also be at work.
Well, it is what it is.
During these holidays, 1.4 billion people are all scrambling to do the exact same things across the country, so you can either join the crowds and have the air taken out of your lungs queuing to see a generic rock with a face carved into it with the possibility of death-by-stampede, or you can stay home and wait to take a couple of days personal leave at a strategic later date and hope for the best.
There is... one more option, though: Visiting non-touristy areas. Translation: Go to crappy places or, if you're smart, hidden gems.
My girlfriend and I had a plan for a hidden gem by meeting her parents at a certain place in Guilin, a place which was pretty hard to get to and therefore pretty tranquil. Unfortunately due to the aforementioned stampede culture of vacation time, the parents were unable to grab any flights for many days until it was essentially too late.
So we cancelled that and planned a day trip with our two-remaining friends still in China - and their dog, Theo.
This place was so off the beaten track that I can't even remember what it was called. I can tell you it was in the vague vicinity of a tiny sub-city called Shaoxing wine, home of a rather decent kind of yellow wine used often for cooking.
In theory, it wasn't too far away - a 3 hour trip with a rented car. In practice those 3 hours felt like a lifetime of traffic and over-heated car air, as the A/C wasn't remotely effective and it was an unusually hot 31C day, broken up only by one of the worst restaurants on the planet.
This was the best, most recommended place available for miles around. As you can see, it's bustling with customers. It was the loudest room known to man. Not because it was busy - I've been to far busier places. No, the loudness was simply because it was apparently required that you physically fight for your food, rather than have a menu or make order in any capacity. The two of us who were Chinese had to march into the kitchen and yell what they wanted above all the others until they were heard.
If the food was made, they had to reach for it through the crowd whenever they could and bring it to our sticky table themselves. The walls were peeling, covered in black mold, the chairs were dirty, the food was too gross even for the Chinese among us. We ended up collectively eating about 5 bites before departing to our final destination.
Upon arrival, it... wasn't what we expected based on the online information we could grasp. For a start, there were a TON of stairs up a mountain, something that me and one friend were fine with, but the other two (including my girlfriend) were... less prepared.
It started off rather pleasant and flat. Just being among the trees and bamboo was more than enough for me:
It wasn't the most natural getaway, to be fair. In fact parts of it looked like it was in the midst of a deforestation project:
But nonetheless, there was some neat little wildlife we otherwise wouldn't see in Shanghai:
After the unexpected trail up steps that nearly killed off half of our team, we reached the top to find... a road, with cars on it.
However, the direction the lake was blocked off for cars, and it made for a decently peaceful, if not a bit artificial, slope back down to our expected destination. Here, we did get some nice views on the way:
The problem was, the more we walked and the more the winding road continued ahead of us, we started to wonder if we were even doing the right thing. We checked the map route and the closest route to the lake was almost an hour of this road walk.
There was nobody else, with the exception of one presumably insane jogger going uphill from god knows how many kilometres away in 30C temperatures, breathing like they were his last breath, but with the idea of going back uphill and then back down that Stairway to Hell being presumably vetoed at the mere suggestion, we decided to simply keep going.
And so we walked... and walked.
And walked...
Until we came across an old man who was casually walking uphill too, for whatever curious reason I was too polite to ask about.
By this point we had already been in nature with some failing heartbeats long enough, and decided if we couldn't get to the lake, we would just find a route back to the car.
To our dismay, the old man told us there was no typical route to the lake OR back to the parking lot this way. But, being wise as he was of the area, he told us of a little secret path: when you find a wooden gazebo, turn right into it and through the trees there will be a path that goes down to the original trail.
Sure enough, this is what we found and we decided to go for it. It looked like it would definitly close off or trap us after a few minutes down, but we had little choice at this point. Theo the dog was handling things surprisingly well for his little size, but we were also rather cautious of his little back legs and overall stamina (I had my backpack to carry him in if that need arose, with plenty of water, and my gym progress made me more than capable of hauling a 5kg puppy around).
So down we went, with the hopeful knowledge that it also passed the lake on the way to the parking lot:
As you can see, there were some kind of mud steps built in, and the decline wasn't too steep.
That is, of course, only because I was too busy trying to survive to take photos when things got tricky. Those wooden steps disappeared on a number of occasions, leaving nothing but a slippery pile of mud at 80 degrees.
A couple of us fell, not me thankfully, but nobody was hurt or even grazed. Falling simply meant going on your back on a hill that was already pretty close to you at that steep angle.
It was made more difficult for me as I had to guide my girlfriend to safety by walking backwards down the hardest parts, holding her hands and finding sturdy rocks to land my feet - but as a manly man, I was pretty happy with the success of it all.
To be honest, this was the most fun we had had. It was a bit of adventure, a bit of a sense of danger, and most importantly downhill.
It certainly checked the boxes of 'off the beaten track' that we were looking for.
And sure enough, on the words of the wise man, we came across the lake!
...It was closed off for massive construction. Anything worth so much as a dismissive glance in China is subject to massive construction and development. The above photo was taken through a metal wire fence we could not pass, and so our dreams of any success on this trip were totally evaporated.
Nonetheless, we started to see civilisation, which was a relief, even if it wasn't exactly what we had in mind:
Ahh... welcome to China, I guess!
The parking lot was just a few minutes from this point so we just called it a day, found another slightly less awful, but substantially louder restaurant, and headed home.
All in all, we spent a good 6 hours driving for what was probably 1.5 hours of actual day trip. All of which was an abject failure.
OR was it?
Ok sure, the least fit of us had a pretty bad time with their heart and legs, but as he said, it was a 'wake up call' to get back to the gym. I had to suppress my own words of enthusiasm for exercise as by the time I got to the top of the hill of death, I felt great.
Honestly, If all this was simply for an excuse for me to do a measly little trek, then it was personally worth it.
And to top it off, I was with my girlfriend, which means whatever we do, it'll be a good time. And as expected, she and I left with smiles on our faces.
So I suppose we could call it a semi-success?
Either way, next time I think we will avoid unbeaten tracks and go for something a bit less shrouded in rumour and mystery XD