A Weekend in Taizhou, Day 1

12 people, 9 sleeping bags, 6 tents, several small backpacks, and 2 overly large backpacks (one of which was strapped to my back for the majority of the trip) all aboard a bus to 台州 (Taizhou).

Last weekend was the small group travel weekend. The school program encouraged all of us to get away (although maybe not for as long as we actually went for, considering at least 6 of us--the American ones--still had homework to do when we got back). All of this stemmed from a picture hanging in one of our dorm's classrooms. Where should we go for the weekend? Do you know where you're going for the weekend? What are you guys planning for group travel? The same kind of question plagued us for a week and a half prior. No one knew where to go or what to do. But one day we were sitting in the classroom "doing homework" when someone said "I want to go there!", pointing to a photo of a bunch of happy looking students congregating in a pool of water by a waterfall. Why wouldn't you want to do that?

The problem was that we didn't know where "that" was. Well, actually, it wasn't really a problem since no one really cared. The goal was to get to a waterfall and go swimming, regardless of which one or where. So, while we were all studying our little buns off, our roommates were scurrying around asking each other the same questions that had been going around for days. Miraculously, about 2 days before our departure, at least the Chinese roommates knew where we were going...even if we didn't.

We got bus tickets, packed our bags full of the most useful things we could think of for a weekend that entail just about anything, and headed out onto the road. About 2 1/2 hours later we arrived in Taizhou and hungry for dinner.

Dinner, though, being the latest meal of the day, tends to happen around the time the sun starts to put on her pjs and hop into bed...which makes it very hard for 12 relatively inexperienced campers to pitch tents so that they too can put on pjs and hop into bed. So, despite our very best intentions to "eat quickly" we had something of a 2 hour meal with food enough for 20. It was pitch black by the time we finished.

Luckily, though, as I mentioned before, hiking in China is not what an American with any hiking experience at all would tend to picture. So we "hiked" up a very long, windy, and uneven flight of stairs to get to the "top" where we would "camp" in what turned out to be a very nice lady's home/a Buddhist temple. Uh, what? Yeah, I know. It's very hard to explain, so you should probably consult the visual aids.

When we got to the top, however, the door was locked. And this is not exactly a mountain where you can dig your tent stakes into the ground, sit around a campfire, and pee in the woods. The mountain's really not that big, and to be honest it would have been weird peeing all over a mountain that seemed so connected to religion... So we had to try to get into those doors to where we could sleep.

However, about 10 minutes of increasingly loud knocks--progressing to bangs--by several different people led us to believe we were out of luck. That is, until, one fearless roommate decided to climb off the railed trail and monkey his way up and around the gate on the other side. This does not sound that hard. But believe me, with only a few distant rays from the flashlight aiding your vision, a total lack of knowledge of where you were going or if there would be any promise of success when you got there, not to mention the sheer skill it must have taken to climb, maneuver and haul yourself up over the other side we were all pretty impressed. We were more impressed when, about 10 minutes later, he opened the door from the inside.

As it turns out, the nice old lady who lived there was simply watching TV too loudly to hear the 12 of us yelling, banging, and climbing around right outside.

The view alone was worth all the fuss.

So was the nice, flat surface on which to pitch our tents and sit around for games, and the brilliant breeze that cooled our faces and rustled our hair. Once settled in, we broke open the mound of packaged tofu, sugared peanuts, candied fruit, crackers, teensy Chinese fruit roll ups that put fake American ones to shame, and all the other junk we'd bought to tide us over for the weekend. We snacked as we played a Chinese card game. This is no average card game. Its basically a Chinese version of truth or dare. To set up the game you put out the same number of cards as there are players, ideally with no repeats. There's only one magic card: the King of spades. Whoever pulls this lucky card has the cruel honor of forcing people to do something. The fun part is, though, that the King doesn't know who has pulled which numbers until AFTER he has spoken his commands. This way, when the King commands that "#8" gets up at serenades "Ace", the King has no idea who he's requiring to do so, which leads to some very funny situations and unconventional gender matching.

After a night of fun, we peacefully fell asleep under a red crescent moon... until the 4:30 a.m. wake up call to see the sunrise the next morning.