For a long time, I used "one must have both a body and a soul on the road" as a signature. At first it sounded deep. Later it was mostly just something I kept using.
Over the years, I have been to quite a few places: jumping on sand dunes in Dunhuang with colleagues, walking into the fairy-tale scenery of Jiuzhaigou with my mother, leaving footprints on Phuket while holding hands with a girl. I also collected a lot of firsts along the way: the first time my sweaty hands clung to an airplane seatbelt, the first time I chased camels in the desert, the first time I spat out seawater and yelled, "Wow, it's so salty!"
With each trip, travel became a little clearer to me. Not because of the "body and soul" phrase, and not because I wanted to look impressive on social media, but because it pushes me out of my own world and makes me see a little more. I like the unguarded part of travel: strangers helping each other, people telling stories without much polishing, and those small kindnesses that only become obvious when you are the one receiving them.
1. Departure
I have always liked loose trips more than tightly packed itineraries. If I have time, I would rather wander and adjust on the fly than rush from one sight to another just to check boxes. This trip was five days long, which gave us enough room to be lazy. Apart from the train tickets on the way there and the plane tickets on the way back, I did not book a hotel, read a guide, or do any homework.
The first day was mostly travel. The most memorable part was the driver who took us to the station and sang revolutionary songs the whole way. By the afternoon we had arrived in Huangshan City. It was a brand-new Huizhou-style town, but for someone who grew up in Anhui, it did not feel especially novel. I walked through the old street, saw tourists taking photos everywhere, and felt a familiar, slightly lazy sense of "hometown."
[Image: A relatively famous old street]
The first day was mostly train and city time, nothing dramatic. What surprised me was how friendly people in Huangshan were.
Huizhou always makes people think of Huizhou merchants, and that image had made me a little cautious before coming here. But after a day of wandering, I changed my mind. People were willing to help, and when I asked for directions, they usually smiled and explained things carefully. I did not meet anyone who simply said "I don't know" and walked away.
Many of the sellers were older men and women. They were obviously there to make a living, but when you bargained with them, they usually smiled back and kept the prices very low.
There were still quite a few human-pulled rickshaws around, usually driven by older men. They did not overcharge and the prices were quite reasonable. We took one from the old street to the supermarket, a ride that took about 20 minutes because there were some uphill roads. The fare for the two of us was only 6 yuan. Seeing the driver's sweaty back, I could not bring myself to pay exactly that, so I gave him 10 yuan and told him to keep the change. He was clearly happy and kept saying, "Thank you, thank you."
2. Huangshan
On the second day I got up lazily at around nine. Since we planned to spend a night on the mountain, there was no reason to rush. After breakfast, we took a taxi to the bus station and reached the foot of Huangshan after about an hour on the road.
As soon as we arrived, Robin switched on his excellent chatting mode. Because of that, the two days on the mountain never felt lonely. We first met a mother and daughter from Shanghai who were staying in the same hotel and walked a long stretch with them. Later, we met a girl who had started climbing before dawn. By the time we were still heading toward one scenic spot, she had already seen most of the major attractions. In the afternoon we ran into a couple in their forties from Beijing. They had originally planned to stay only one day, but quickly realized that one day was too tight. After meeting us, and with Robin doing his usual recommending, we helped them book two beds at our hotel through Baidu Maps. We also met two girls from Guangzhou, and because our routes were similar, we ended up going to Hongcun together.
Robin really wanted to climb, while I was much lazier. Before going up, I asked some locals around and eventually decided to take the cable car.
The cable car looked ordinary at first glance, like many other scenic spots, but once you sat down, you could feel how huge the project really was.
Huangshan felt most amazing from the cable car. The first time was on the Yiping cableway on the way up, the second on the Cloud Valley cableway in the West Sea Grand Canyon. Both times I could not help feeling amazed. Deep valleys below, waterfalls dropping through the cliffs, dense jungle changing constantly - what kind of force can build iron structures in terrain this complicated and dangerous? At times, we even wondered whether this kind of engineering would be possible with current technology.
The sense of wonder and danger was the strongest feeling I had on this climb. The route itself is not especially complicated, though a single-day trip would feel rushed. If conditions allow, staying one night on the mountain to see the stars at night and the sunrise in the morning is well worth it. Along the way, the textbook-famous sights like "Welcome Pine," "Monkey Watching the Sea," and "Dream Pen Blossom" can all be seen one by one. And beyond those famous spots, the West Sea Grand Canyon is absolutely worth seeing. It is too beautiful to explain cleanly.
Me and Robin being cute under the Welcome Pine
The track cable car in the West Sea Grand Canyon takes only about seven minutes to go down from the top, but climbing back up by stairs takes around two hours. The sensible choice is to walk down and take the cable car up. We did the opposite, which made the experience feel pretty intense.
After getting off the cable car and looking back up, it felt like another small miracle.
The stairs going up from the valley have an average slope of around 70 degrees, which is enough to wear anyone out...
After hours of climbing, we had to stop and rest every so often.
On the way up, Robin kept cheering for descending travelers and telling them, "Come on, you are almost there!" Most people responded warmly, so the atmosphere felt friendly. Then we passed one group that completely ignored us and did not even look up, which made things awkward for a moment. Only later did we realize they were Korean and that they were traveling as a group. After that, whenever Robin saw people coming down, he stopped saying "Come on" and started saying "fighting!" instead. That turned out to be a much safer universal language. Some older Korean ladies even laughed and answered with "fighting! fighting!"
We met an elderly couple on the road. While Robin was taking their photo, the man said, "Take it, take it. We won't be able to take many more later. I am already 75. This will be my last time climbing Huangshan."
On the early morning of the second day, we watched the sunrise from Bright Top and were lucky enough to catch it. Wrapped in bedsheets, we stood there with everyone else in all kinds of strange outfits, all staring at the same sky.
Besides Huangshan, we also spent two days in Hongcun. I originally wanted to write about it together, but the post would get too long, so I will save that for another time.
The two days on the mountain felt just right: climbing uphill, sweating, watching the sunrise, and slowly observing life. That is also a kind of journey worth taking.
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