Day 13 Hua Shan
Travel is often characterized as delays followed by mad rushes. Even in this day of modern transportation it still holds true. Witness my day trying to get to the holy mountain Hua Shan about 170 km outside of Xian. Take a city bus from the hostel to the train station in the morning rush. What should have taken ten minutes morphs into 30. Find the public tourist bus among a parking lot of others. A sticker the size of my fist distinguishes it. Wait for 40 min for it to fill up. Hour and a half bus ride to the town nearest the mountain. Take a taxi to the visitor’s center. Rush onto an overpriced bus for 10 min to get to the trailhead. Wait in line for two hours for the cable car that eventually deposits you 1500m up after a five min ride. Take two hours to hike behind a pack of people so dense it’s impossible to pass them up the trail. Occasionally some stop to take pictures or to take a breather, so you briefly rush past them only to get stuck behind another group.
I’m beginning to develop a mature hatred for tour groups. In their matching baseball caps and guide leading them with a little flag they look like school children. They stick together in packs making lineups a hassle and frequently block off entrances and exits. Fuck them.
While Hua Shan is one of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen with it’s sheer, white rock thrusting out of the ground like bony limbs and vibrant greenery clinging to the sides, the human element is another story. What is supposed to be one of the five holiest mountains in China has turned into an amusement park. The cable car has permitted anyone with half-a-brain to make the climb. You see elderly fresh out of the nursing home, women in dress shoes, kids being carried up by their parents and lots of people climbing in their jeans. Souvenir shops and snack bars proliferate. You can get your name carved on a medallion to show you climbed the mountain or stop for lunch halfway. Dozens of photographers hawk their abilities promising instant photos you can carry down with you. Knickknacks, souvenirs plastic shit that break a couple miles down the road, this is now what the mountain is covered with.
Maybe I being unfair, places of beauty are there to be shared by all. But somehow the mass consumer tourism manages to diminish everything it touches.
The carnival atmosphere is actually welcome at the ancient temple at the bottom; fireworks crackle continuously, incense drifts in huge clouds, priests give out fortunes. In the streets outside, every little souvenir imaginable is being sold but there is much more than that. I see old man playing Chinese chess, one-man-band, beggars missing arms and legs and one with a grotesque growth on the side of the head, a midget and countless day-trippers swarming around. The chaos here seems right at home.
Ah yes, the tour groups in Xi'an. I almost forgot about them. One time, in the museum at the Terracotta tombs, a group came up to a display so aggressively I was pinned in and couldn't get out. They then got mad at me for being in their way!
ReplyDeleteOn Huashan itself, I wouldn't really call it consumerist tourism. It's certainly MASS tourism, but there wasn't that much being hawked -- at least when I went. But that was the middle of February and the whole place was a brick of ice. Didn't thin the crowd any though!