Nanjing: a short time in a cool city

11-8
I got to Nanjing late in the evening. I took a D train, which is one of the newer higher tech trains that go real fast.  It got up to 260 Km/h.  It was way fancy.  It was Star Trek Enterprise fancy.  And it was so convenient that the train station it arrived at it Nanjing was connected to the metro line.  Like you would think this would be common in other cities but it hasn't been.  And then things in Nanjing just got better:  an automatic train ticket dispensing machine.   Getting train tickets has been real painful up until now.  Wow, I love Nanjing!
Keeping with the "love Nanjing" mood, the hostel was really easy to get to.  It was kinda small but cute.  The staff was friendly when I arrived there, and offered me a free cup of coffee.  Then I went to some Chinese fast food place across the street for dinner.  I got Baozi, Jaozi, and soup.  I felt like I had ordered too much stuff, but eating it all was easy.  The chefs got a kick out of the spectacle.
I hung out in the bar in the hostel.  I couldn't recognize their wifi network though, which made booking my hostel in Shanghai difficult.  So i tried another network, but it was protected, "ah crap. I dunno. 1234567890?" It worked. Oops. I couldn't believe it.  I owe myself a super spy sticker.

11-9
One full day in Nanjing so I did the most touristy thing:  The Purple Mountain Park.  I thought I would just hike up the mountain, and then maybe visit some of the random touristy stuff around there, which I hadn't completely read up on, but while I was in the lobby of the hostel I kinda encountered this Chinese guy who was also a tourist, and I could tell he was asking about the Purple Mountain too.  His English was terrible, but we figured out how to agree to travel there together.  He was a Chef from Beijing.  He and I spent the day together and we communicated through our dictionaries.  It actually worked ok, and I ended up learning a lot of Mandarin along the way.
We saw a lot of stuff too--and if not for this guy, I probably wouldn't have managed so well.  First we went to the Sun Yatsen Mausoleum.  Sun Yatsen was the guy who brought about the short lived "Republic of China", so he must have been cool.  The guy I was with kept saying stuff like "Communism bad, Sun Yatsen good".  It was a real emotioal experience for him.

After the Mausoleum we went to a cultural museum.  It had some cool bugs in it.  Next we walked around some wall stuff, and maybe there were dead people buried there. Then we visited a Lake and met the Chinese equivalent of the polar beer club--maybe the Panda Bear club?  After that hit up this really tall tower with a ridiculously windy staircase .  Finally we ended it with a temple.

a wax sculpture.  Notice how ugly they make the white guy.

Wuhan: Not much to do

11-5-11-7
I decided to go to Nanjing after Wuhan, but I couldn't get a ticket for 2 more days.  I figured I would just take it easy in Wuhan, where there really wasn't much to do, but the hostel was really cool and the people that worked there seemed to also hang out there too, so i got to know them and bettered my Chinese while I was at it.  I also discovered an amazing Muslim-Chinese restaraunt where they make noodles by shaving a big block of flour into boiling water with a knife.  It was amazing, and now I can always order it by just acting out the way they shave the dough (which is pretty recognizable and has worked since).

Wuhan to Wudangshan: Impromptu Adventure

11-4
I got up and had coffee and breakfast at the bar in the lobby.  They charge way too much for their coffee.  Its probably because of the way they make it, with a bunsen burner and some sciencey beakers.  They also need an understanding of differential pressures.  I almost felt guilty after watching them make it because of the effort.  I was planing to take a bus to Huangshan, which is where the supposed "best" Mountain in China is, but upon discovering that it would be a 12 hour bus ride, and given the painful stories I have heard of the sleeper buses and people that are above 5'10'', I decided against it.  While I was inquiring another guest broke in and suggested I go to WudangShan, the mountain where Tai Chi began.  He said he was going to be going there tonight, and invited me to come along with him. I don't remember his name, but he was Korean born from New York City.  I think it was Mike, or John. woops.  I did a little reading and thought it sounded good.  It is an easy overnight train there.  We booked our tickets, had an amazing lunch of noodles and dumplings, visited the local university for a few hours, and then hopped on the train.  

So far I haven't had a chance to ride a train and have English speaking company.  This would be my first, but ironically it was a night train that was leaving at 11:00PM and arriving at 6 AM.  Then we boarded the train and I found that our bunks were next to a group of English teachers from Arkansas, Tennessee (Nasheville), and some of their students.  They were going to the same mountain, so I was excited, and given that we had no idea how to get to the actual starting point from the train station, I felt a little lucky that we now had some friends to follow.
But when we got up to get off the train, our neighbors didn't.  I don't know if they overslept or were getting off at a different train station, which made me worried that we might have just gotten off in the wrong spot.  We got off the train and went to the ticket counter to buy our return train ticket to Wuhan (the best station to reach Shanghai from).  We got tickets for another night train leaving this day.
We exited the station to be greated by the soft glow of dawn.  I was shocked at how clear the sky was.  It was the clearest sky of China.  Not a single cloud.  My amazement was rudely interrupted by the screams and tugs of the Transit Devil Mass--an amorphous blob of taxi drivers that try to scam you into paying too much money for a ride.  They have a scream that can break even the most enlightened trance and an ability to sidestep like an NFL linebacker.  It was just too early to be annoyed like this, so we pushed through, causing them to disperse slightly, and walked towards the main road.  A few drivers broke off from their pack and still persued us.  One in particular was pretty fearless, and kept getting in front of us trying to block our way.  We saw a place to eat on the side of the road and ordered some dumplings.  They were impressive, but that darn taxi guy kept talking to us.  We did need some information, because we weren't exactly sure how we would get to the mountain, which he kept saying he would take us to, but we didn't know how far it was, or if we would be able to catch a taxi back when we finished, so we still wouldn't accept his ride.  After finishing we walked towards the main street.  The taxi driver was now in his van, following us, screaming from the window!  We kept walking and then spotted some guys dressed in hiking gear on the other side of the side street we were on.  But the stupid taxi guy kept pulling up to block us from crossing, so I started to walk behind his car, and he actually started to back up.  That was it.  That was seriously crossing the line there--you just don't do that.  Up to this point I've been pretty patient with the aggressive behavior of people trying to make a living, but this was too much.  I had to give his car a good kick and then screamed at him in very threatening English.  I don't know if he understood or not, but he stopped.

Finally a bus came and we got on and asked if it was going to Wudang Shan.  Ok well basically all we said was "Wudang Shan" in a question tone and they nodded.  We got in and it took us right there.  To my surprise it was actually kinda busy.  You wouldn't have thought it given how deserted the area around the train station was.  We got some power up tea and found the ticket office.  We discovered the same girl that had helped us buy our tickets at the Wudang train station in line, so we got close to her, in case we needed more help.  Turns out we didn't, but she waved to us and giggled and kinda kept an eye our way.  She was with a group of like 8 or so; they seemed to be in high school, but sometimes I have no idea--I'm just not really sure I would have ever taken a trip to hike a mountain with my friends in high school.  We got on a shuttle bus that drove to various stops in the mountain.  One girl threw up her entire noodle soup breakfast in a incredibly see-through bag that she yanked off a dispenser on her way aboard.  I think its more common for people to lose their stomach contents in vehicles here, because noone seemed to surprised as she thrust her head in the skin taut plastic bag.  She tied a neat not and deposited it in a trash bin and continued on as if it had never happened.

Ok, so the actual Mountain.  We did the long hike to the Golden Something Summit.  It was great. It was ALL stairs.  Nice huge hulking stone stairs.  There were lots of things to see along the way up, which seemed to take longer than I thought it should.  At the top we made friends with a group of college kids and enjoyed the temple and the view.  There where these black metal poles running vertically around the temple structure that you were supposed to touch while walking around, for good luck.

We were able to take a cable car down the mountain.  I was relieved because I really wasn't into walking that train wreck of piano keys for stone giants.  Once at the bottom we found a bus back to the train station.  We decided we would just switch our ticket to an earlier time and head back to Wuhan.  Thankfully we met a kid on the way, whom we had seen on our way up the mountain giving us those "I want to speak English with you but I'm shy looks".  So he helped us switch tickets and we bough some dumpling soup and hopped on our way back to Wuhan.