帽儿山 - Hat Mountain

Hello all,

Yesterday the planned activity for CET was a dinner out, and I didn't think that was exciting enough, so a friend and I got about 9 of us together and rented a bus to drive us out of the city to go mountain climbing. I'll back up to mention that our teacher helped us rent the bus, but Li Laoshi (the teacher) didn't come, so we were mostly on our own.

We drove about 2 hours out of the city to a place called Maoershan, or Hat Mountain. Most of the drive was on the highway. China's in the middle of building a highway system similar to the US, and in less than 10 years the system is expected to have more miles of dived highway than the US (yikes), this road was certainly one of the earlier ones built and looked about the same as a US road. Combined with the fact that we were driving through a hilly, wooded terrain with tilled fields in the narrow-ish valleys. It felt like Vermont, which is a nice feeling after not even getting to the outskirts a Chinese city for 3 weeks.

We then had to navigate the dirt roads of the 农村 （farming village) at the base of the mountain, asking directions frequently until we arrived at a dirt parking lot next to the cleanest river I've seen in China - about like the Green river or the Ausable river looks, for reference. We walked over the bridge, but you could also drive on a concrete ford that the river flowed over. This was designed to drive your car onto and then you got out into the 4 inches of flowing water and washed your car in the stream. (Luckily I didn't see anyone using soap).

Hat Mountain does not have a ticket price, and considering it has a cobble stone path the entire way I'm not sure why they don't charge. But the hundreds of well dressed (skirts, dress shoes, etc) and well off Harbin'ers wandered up the muddy and at times very steep cobblestone path. There were only a few people selling water or snacks along the way, and no built stalls. There were three guys at the top selling bottle water and poloraid photos, and we chatted with them for a while about this and that. Taiwan came up somehow and I agreed with him that America had been interfering in that aspect of Chinese affairs for 57 years. (note, I don't know what I really think about this issue so I say that here to be polite). He beamed a huge smile and then told me that if I ran for president of the US he would vote for me. He also told me about the town building the cobblestone trail a year ago (presumably to attract more tourists which it certainly has), and how the mountain is being developed, with Chinese characteristics of course.

The mountain itself, geologically speaking (warning: my less than expert opinion), is interesting. It has a very distinctive shape, getting steeper and steeper all the way up to the top which is flat but only about 60-80 meters across. The last 100-200 vertical feet are cliffs or near cliffs. The path used lots of chains bolted to the rocks and steps cut in the rock, and they were definitely necessary. Now if I had to guess, I'd say this might be the core of a fairly old volcano, the lava tubes in the center being of a somewhat harder substance than the older mountain left to stand in this fairly vertical way. Devils tower is the best example of this if you want to picture it. That's the limit of my expertise, next topic.

On the way down, we were taking our time and one of the Korean students came up with the idea of making a CET kungfu movie, so we did. He and I 'fought' in a few different spots, including on a cabble suspension bridge. Then instead of going out last night we stayed in and edited it. If I can figure out how to put it on Youtube.com I will, after I make English subtitles for it of course, and post the link. But for now, we're planning the sequel, to be filmed next weekend when we take our long trip to Changbaishan.

That's all for this condensed version of our Saturday. You can see the facebook.com for photos of course, and drop me a comment here or there to harass me and tell me what you want to hear more about.

Hope you're all well,
-古木军-
-morgan-