Month: March 2010
Fuxing Park Pensioner Devils
Whenever I get back to Shanghai after a trip, I like to wander around Fuxing Park and check that all the usual stuff is going on in the ‘hood. Backwards walking, check. Ballroom dancing, check. Inspirational Communist singing, check. There are thousands of activities taking place. Personally, I’m always impressed by the mature-age diablo fiends. You know what a diablo is, don’t you – a brightly coloured dumb-bell shaped plastic thingy, beloved of kids and hippy wannabe circus performers in other parts of the world. But in China, spinning the diablo is a retirement activity. Their primary coloured diablos whizz around them making an extraordinary noise, and they can do all sorts of incredble tricks. But today, as with every day in Shanghai, I saw something I’d never seen before. Masked, multi-diablo masters. A whole bunch of the devils.








Not Heaven For Pigs
The Pig’s Heaven Inn, Xidi
Xidi Village
ph +86 559 5154555
zhulanjiuba@vip.sina.com
This is one of a series of posts about Huang Shan and its stunning surrounds. Read about climbing Huang Shan and then coming down Huang Shan and about the local specialty – salt pork – best eaten in the delightful village of Hongcun.
Huang Shan – Coming Down

Love Locks, Huang Shan

Huang Shan, Going Up
There are two ways up Huangshan, you can either walk (steep, long, requires stamina beyond mere mortals) or you can take the cable car. Let me tell you about the cable car, because I would have to pretend I knew something about the walk.
Hongcun

Hongcun, a tiny rural village near Huang Shan, got forgotten as the rest of China marched purposefully towards modernity and a gleaming capitalist future. Thank heavens – now Unesco has recognised it, and nearby Xidi village, as World Heritage sites.After arriving in the dark, with just the sliveriest sliver of a moon in the sky, we were led from the road down a narrow alleyway to our guest house, Hongda Tingyuan, set behind a high stone wall. I had no clear idea of my bearings, or of what the village would be like in daylight. At night, it was too dark to see anything at all.
The early morning revealed a clear sky, and a beautiful and ancient village centred around curved Moon Lake, around whose edges the villagers were washing their clothes, their vegetables, and their hair.
The high-walled village alleyways unwind from two giant central trees – a poplar and a gingko, and lead outwards through a maze of twists and turns to a small rushing river, and fields of vegetables and flowering rapeseed. I could feel Shanghai’s noise and crush falling away.
Huang Shan – the Great Yellow Mountain

St Patrick’s Day in Shanghai
