Dong Ting Lake and Yueyang

Thursday, August 28. I've set my alarm clock for 5:15 a.m. because we're taking a 7:07 train to Yueyang to see Dong Ting Lake. It's been cloudy, cool and rainy the past couple of days so this is the first time a cold shower has been painful!

Tiff, David and I take taxi to train station to meet Ashley and Kelly. We manage to negotiate the train station, finding the entrance (you think this is easy? actually, the characters for "entrance" are about the only thing I can "read" here) and get our tickets stamped. The train personnel, for some reason (!), point to indicate which stairway we are supposed to use. Upstairs is a huge room with rows and rows of seats, divided into different waiting areas by train number. We find ours and sit down. There are not many people waiting as we are very early. However, by the time the train is ready to board, there are swarms of people, all pushing to get ahead of everyone else!


We finally get through and onto the platform and hurry to find our car. Although we have "standing" seats, everyone is assigned to a particular car so that reduces some of the madhouse scramble.

It is about a 2.5 hour train ride to Yueyang. The view out the window is partially obscured by low-lying clouds/fog and rain (which actually is comforting because in Zhuzhou, we thought perhaps this was smog but apparently it's just the weather). The landscape is much the same as we saw the other day: rice fields, squash growing, small hills rising abruptly from the surrounding terrain. A nice young man gives me his small, plastic stool to sit on. How sweet is that. When he gets off the train in Changsha, he tries to leave the stool for me but so many people get off here that we are actually able to get seats. Between chatting with Tiff and reading a book that I have brought, the trip passing easily.

It is still raining when we arrive in Yueyang. There is a big outdoor map at the train station which we photograph for future reference. Digital cameras are very useful in this way: once, Ashley and Kelly went into a restaurant that had a picture of something like popcorn chicken outside but not inside; so Ashley took a snapshot of the photo outside and took it inside to show them what she wanted!

We start walking to Confucius Temple but after we've turned a corner, we decide to check with someone if we are going the right way. So we accost a woman with a pink umbrella who appears to be waiting for a ride. The way we ask is by pointing at the characters for "Temple of Confucius" that Ashley has copied out of Lonely Planet guide book! The woman indicates the way we are going so we continue walking. However, a minute later, she is running up to us and trying to tell us something in Chinese. Then she writes something on a piece of paper and points at the street (is she trying to tell us we should take a taxi?). We manage to ask whether the Temple is "far or not far" and she says "very far." While we're discussing the taxi situation and what to do, her husband (we assume) drives up in a small van, she starts to get in and then motions for all of us to get in the back - so we do! And they drive us to the Temple of Confucius! This is typical Chinese behavior. They could not be more helpful and kind to confused foreigners. But in the US would we get in a car with two people, that we not only do not know but also cannot communicate with in any reasonable way? Absolutely not. :) As we get out, I tell them that we are English teachers in Zhuzhou (this is one of the few complete sentences I can say in Chinese!) and we thank them profusely.

The Confucius Temples (there are two) are lovely but interiors are being restored so not open. We walk down a set of stairs beside the second temple and discover a lovely walkway (more a linear park) along the lake shore. We think we are heading in the direction of the Yueyang Tower which is another sight we want to see. The lake is very misty which seems to add to its beauty. Although we can't really see out-lying islands, it is very atmospheric.

After climbing more stairs to get up from the lakeshore, we eventually reach Yueyang Tower Park. You cannot get to the Tower itself without going in the park which has an entrance fee of 46 rmb (yuan), about $7. Most people want to do the boat trip to Silver Needle Island which costs (we think) 60 yuan, but I really want to see the park because it looks quite lovely, and this is the first day I feel as though I have seen some of the "old China" (even if some of it has been restored/recreated). So everyone else decides to explore little shops while I go in the park.

I'm so happy I do this because near the entrance are five bronze replicas of the Yueyang Tower from each of five dynasties: Song, Tang, Ming, Yuan and Qing (the current tower). They are spectacular, and the signs are in English as well as Chinese so for once I actually know what I'm looking at. There are lovely pavilions in the park, including a long one with engraved stone tablets (even though sign in English, it isn't quite intelligible so I don't know more about this). There is a replica of a traditional courtyard house. The tower is at the far end of the park, up yet another flight of stairs but definitely worth the effort. It is a triple-eaved construction built without a single nail.

I meet up with the gang (now including Suzanne and Christa who have joined us) to have lunch at noodle shop. This is a "chain" noodle shop run by (we think) Muslims (Uighers?) as we have seen the same thing in Changsha and Zhuzhou. Afterwards we go to a "drinks" stand where I order a vanilla milk tea.

We go back to the park entrance to purchase tickets for the boat trip to and tour of Silver Needle Island. Instead of costing only 60 yuan, which we thought, it turns out that it is 60 yuan for the boat and another 60 yuan is the entrance fee to the island. But we decide we're here and this is something we should do.

Leaving the park, it is a longish walk north of the tower to the pier. We get on a small boat with 6 Chinese gentlemen who have snagged all of the comfortable seats on the boat while the 7 of us are crammed on little benches and a stool in the back! No chivalry in China. :) It is about a 30 minute ride across the lake to the island and, because of the fog, we can't see much.

The tour of the island takes us through a lovely area where we can see terraces of green tea growing. Silver Needle Island is most famous for Silver Needle Tea, which is only grown here but shipped all around China and the rest of the world (Suzanne has had it in Oregon). There is a little tea shop where we are able to sample the tea. When boiling water is poured on the tea "leaves" (they look a little like pine needles), about half of them float to the surface and stay there. I thought it tasted bitter but it could have just been over-brewed.

We continue our walk through a forest and arrive at what can only be described as the de rigeur gift/tea shop, complete with high-pressure sales girls (I'm sorry, neither the word "women" nor "ladies" works here.) They try to get us to buy the most expensive tea. "Make nice gift." We try to explain that we won't be going home for 10 months but try saying that in Chinese. Finally, I say to our guide, in what I have figured out is the best way to communicate with someone whose English is poor, "no want buy tea." (This is similar to Chinese sentence construction which helps.) OK, so then one of the sales girls leads us next door to a fake Buddhist temple and tries to get us to burn (read: buy) incense to Buddha. We all but scream and run out of the place.

We continue following our guide, who suddenly looks at her watch and starts saying something like "find Chinese men" (the Chinese men on the boat with us had another guide). We can't figure out exactly what the problem is but she turns around and starts going the other way. It starts to look like we are running out of time to get back to the boat. So we are hustling as fast as my weary body will go (if we haven't been up and down a hundred flights of wet, stone stairs today, we haven't been up one!). Finally, we see the dock, hurry onto the boat, and of course the Chinese men have all the best seats again!

I'm sure this excursion would have been better on a nicer day (then again, maybe not), but if I ever go back to Yueyang, I will definitely go back to the Tower Park but I will skip the boat ride to Silver Needle Island. :)

Once we are back to the Tower complex, we walk back to the Confucious Temple through a row of shops (tourist) and restaurants. We stop at the "drinks" stand and this time I get a mango smoothie. It is divine.

Taxi back to train station. Buy banana to eat on train. On the way home, we actually have reserved seats but the train is not very full so it wouldn't have mattered if we didn't. Arrive in Zhuzhou about 10 p.m. Taxi home and to bed.