Yellow Mountain is overrun by tourists in summer; that’s why we went there for the new year
In the days leading up to the Chinese new year, the celebratory fireworks started at dawn—that is, if they let up during the night, which wasn’t always the case. The public transport system was overwhelmed by migrant workers returning home for the start of the Year of the Rabbit, and pet shops did a roaring trade in bunnies.
My first duty of the new year was a visit to the cinema on the day that my children broke up from school. New films come out at this time, a custom which began in Hong Kong in the late 1990s, and these trips have become as traditional as fireworks. For the third year running, the popular mainland cartoon series, Pleasant Goat and Big Grey Wolf, has released a spin-off film, and it was my turn to take the kids. Thus I found myself in our tiny local cinema, surrounded by screaming, seat-kicking pre-adolescents, watching Pleasant Goat and Big Grey Wolf take on the Bitter Gourd King in the Year of the Rabbit. It is hard to think of a more hellish way to spend one and a half hours.
The story was so ridiculous it defied synopsis, but the message was clear. Life is sweet and bitter. You have to overcome the bitterness to get to the sweetness. And you might not see your Mummy and Daddy for a long time because they have to work hard. Why the story had to include a flight to the moon, a kung-fu kicking rabbit and an interminable number of captures and escapes beats me, but the children loved it.
Rich province, poor province
Our family tradition for the new year holiday is to shut up our coffee shop, which is snowed in anyway, and go on a road trip. This year we crossed the border from our home province, Zhejiang, China’s richest, into Anhui, which is one of the poorest.
We were driving along a national highway, but the minute we crossed into Anhui, it turned from a beautifully surfaced four-lane road into a potholed country lane. The villages became picturesque. No more white-tiled modern blocks; the locals can’t afford them. The better-off live in modest farmhouses, the poorer in stone shacks that wouldn’t look out of place on the west coast of Ireland. For the first time in years I saw people wearing Mao jackets (they’re called Sun Yat-sen jackets in China, after the founder of the 1911 Republic).
Anhui was dirty, its traffic chaotic, but it had its charms. One woman let us eat lunch in the winter sunshine instead of inside her freezing restaurant; a polite drunk cadged a lift and showed us the way to our destination, Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). I hear it is overrun in summer—like our mountain—but we had it almost to ourselves.
Our local administration bureau excuses the high entry fee to our village by pointing out it is only half the price of the Yellow Mountain. Having stood on Huangshan’s 1,800-metre summit, in crisp blue skies with snow all around, I must say our mountain is not worth a quarter of the price.
Goodbye to our It Girl
Just as in Britain, China has its “It Girls”: glamorous young women who are famous for being famous. Here, they are less likely to come to attention for wearing a revealing dress, and more likely to have a connection to someone powerful in the Party. Sadly, we have just lost our It Girl. She was never here much anyway, but her departure has set back my prediction that Moganshan could one day be the Chamonix of China.
Our It Girl arrived a few years ago. She wanted to rent one of the village’s 1930s stone villas. But haggling over the price would have been vulgar and involve a loss of face, so she paid way over the odds. And she rented two (one for Mum). The villas were renovated to a high standard and fitted with the latest appliances; I hear it took her some time to pay her builder’s bills. She tried to sublet one to a rich American banker, but even he baulked at the price.
She came to our coffee shop once or twice and spent the time on her mobile, speaking loudly in Chinese, throwing in English words like “hedge fund,” “options” and “bond market” at an even higher volume.
Now her villas are empty, long before the lease is up. They are in the hands of the state-run hotel again—but it has no idea what to do with them. It has placed dust sheets over the reception room furniture and is putting its guests in the bedrooms occasionally. I suggested that the villas are perfect for foreign families to rent, perhaps long-term throughout the summer. But that, it seems, is too difficult.
In the days leading up to the Chinese new year, the celebratory fireworks started at dawn—that is, if they let up during the night, which wasn’t always the case. The public transport system was overwhelmed by migrant workers returning home for the start of the Year of the Rabbit, and pet shops did a roaring trade in bunnies.
My first duty of the new year was a visit to the cinema on the day that my children broke up from school. New films come out at this time, a custom which began in Hong Kong in the late 1990s, and these trips have become as traditional as fireworks. For the third year running, the popular mainland cartoon series, Pleasant Goat and Big Grey Wolf, has released a spin-off film, and it was my turn to take the kids. Thus I found myself in our tiny local cinema, surrounded by screaming, seat-kicking pre-adolescents, watching Pleasant Goat and Big Grey Wolf take on the Bitter Gourd King in the Year of the Rabbit. It is hard to think of a more hellish way to spend one and a half hours.
The story was so ridiculous it defied synopsis, but the message was clear. Life is sweet and bitter. You have to overcome the bitterness to get to the sweetness. And you might not see your Mummy and Daddy for a long time because they have to work hard. Why the story had to include a flight to the moon, a kung-fu kicking rabbit and an interminable number of captures and escapes beats me, but the children loved it.
Rich province, poor province
Our family tradition for the new year holiday is to shut up our coffee shop, which is snowed in anyway, and go on a road trip. This year we crossed the border from our home province, Zhejiang, China’s richest, into Anhui, which is one of the poorest.
We were driving along a national highway, but the minute we crossed into Anhui, it turned from a beautifully surfaced four-lane road into a potholed country lane. The villages became picturesque. No more white-tiled modern blocks; the locals can’t afford them. The better-off live in modest farmhouses, the poorer in stone shacks that wouldn’t look out of place on the west coast of Ireland. For the first time in years I saw people wearing Mao jackets (they’re called Sun Yat-sen jackets in China, after the founder of the 1911 Republic).
Anhui was dirty, its traffic chaotic, but it had its charms. One woman let us eat lunch in the winter sunshine instead of inside her freezing restaurant; a polite drunk cadged a lift and showed us the way to our destination, Huangshan (Yellow Mountain). I hear it is overrun in summer—like our mountain—but we had it almost to ourselves.
Our local administration bureau excuses the high entry fee to our village by pointing out it is only half the price of the Yellow Mountain. Having stood on Huangshan’s 1,800-metre summit, in crisp blue skies with snow all around, I must say our mountain is not worth a quarter of the price.
Goodbye to our It Girl
Just as in Britain, China has its “It Girls”: glamorous young women who are famous for being famous. Here, they are less likely to come to attention for wearing a revealing dress, and more likely to have a connection to someone powerful in the Party. Sadly, we have just lost our It Girl. She was never here much anyway, but her departure has set back my prediction that Moganshan could one day be the Chamonix of China.
Our It Girl arrived a few years ago. She wanted to rent one of the village’s 1930s stone villas. But haggling over the price would have been vulgar and involve a loss of face, so she paid way over the odds. And she rented two (one for Mum). The villas were renovated to a high standard and fitted with the latest appliances; I hear it took her some time to pay her builder’s bills. She tried to sublet one to a rich American banker, but even he baulked at the price.
She came to our coffee shop once or twice and spent the time on her mobile, speaking loudly in Chinese, throwing in English words like “hedge fund,” “options” and “bond market” at an even higher volume.
Now her villas are empty, long before the lease is up. They are in the hands of the state-run hotel again—but it has no idea what to do with them. It has placed dust sheets over the reception room furniture and is putting its guests in the bedrooms occasionally. I suggested that the villas are perfect for foreign families to rent, perhaps long-term throughout the summer. But that, it seems, is too difficult.
