Wudangshan Day 2
On the second day, Ted decided to stay in town while I tackled Jin Ding on my own. Armed with an umbrella, a bottle of water and an iron will, I hopped into a mini-bus and was whisked away to the front gate of Wudangshan, bought the men piao (gate ticket), transferred into another bus, and was driven up to trailhead directly by a younger driver who was a little more careful about staying within the lines and making the journey a little easier on the stomachs of his passengers.
The mini-bus system is interesting. The drive from town to anywhere in the park costs 10 RMB. You start by hopping into a mini-bus in town, which fits about 6-10 people and takes you up to the front gate. At this point, you still haven’t paid anything. You then buy a ticket to get into the park (park residents pay nothing, an ID gets them in for free), and transfer onto another bus which is allowed into the park. This bus gets a receipt from a college-age girl in the parking lot that lists how many people it is carrying. About halfway to the first attraction, or about 15 minutes into the drive, the mini-bus comes across a checkpoint, at which the driver produces the receipt and each passenger is asked to pay (or not, for residents). The bus then proceeds further into the park. The process is similar in reverse on the way back into town. I figure that at some point there is a redistribution of money back to the drivers. This whole system struck me as being a particularly interesting example of economic coordination.
I reached the beginning of the trail at about 11 AM (late sleeper by default). A lot of people take the road further up to the lan che, the cable cars, which will take you up to the peak for a fee, and then they walk down the trail. That’s the wimpy way, and since I was looking to, as my friend Lu Tian said, tiaozhan ziji, to challenge myself, I started the three hour hike from the bottom, planning to take the cable cars down from the top to allow time for another temple or two. Like I said, the park has permanent residents: many of them are farmers, but many tend to the souvenir stands that dot the trail to the top. At the bottom, these are solid structures that double as houses and sell kitchy medals, back-scratchers, and towels. Further from the bottom, these shops disappear and are replaced by blankets spread out next to the trail offering tepid bottles of water (lifesavers, I must have drank five or six), orange-ade and soda, and snacks like cucumbers, hard candy and sunflower seeds. Near the peak are ladies and girls selling medicinal plants (fake, Tian claimed). In fact, nearly all of these items were sold by girls, women and elderly men. Where were the men? They could make more money serving as porters; some heckled tourists, trying to convince them to let themselves by carted up and down the hill for 100 RMB (3 hours of steep stairs, I would say it’s a fair price); others shouldered bamboo or wooden bars with sacks of sand hanging from each end and carried these up the hill to spots where concrete was needed for trail repair.
To Be Continued…
permalink | Micah/Hubei/Wudangshan | 2004.08.17-23:34.00
