The most fun you can have for twenty kuai
Jul 26, 10:53 AM
I had been planning to head out from Changsha today and to visit Heng Shan, but the nagging desire to have a second attempt at trying to get a ticket to see the Hunan museum and the Mawangdui Zhouyi manuscript won out, and so I decided last night to stick around for another day or so. As the museum was closed today, I headed instead up Yuelu mountain (岳麓山), which is just behind where I am staying here in Changsha. The mountain is a pleasing mix of good old tourist fun and interesting temples to visit, with some lovely walks through forests filled with black and iridescent blue swallowtail butterflies. I opted to take the cable car up the mountain, which was sedate, somewhat rickety, and offered wonderful views of Changsha.
I spent most of the day at the top of the mountain visiting the various temples. I rather liked the somewhat scruffy but very lived-in fifteenth century Daoist temple (云麓宫). Not many folks seemed to want to pay the 2元 entrance fee, so they had to run to get somebody to take my money. Inside they were friendly and welcoming and the place had a ramshackle charm to it.
From there I headed on to the Buddhist temple some distance away – a rather more impressive and elaborate affair but, like the Daoist temple, also a functioning building which houses the Hunan Buddhist college.
The next door restaurant offered good tea and somewhat bland vegetarian food, which I perked up with a bit of chilli sauce. People in Hunan are proud of their ability to eat ferociously hot food, although my extensive training on the Narborough Road in Leicester has made me more or less immune to all but the fiercest of dishes.
I only bought a one-way ticket on the cable-car, as I intended to walk down the mountain, stopping off on the way at any interesting places, but I came across a much more entertaining way to make my descent, a kind of toboggan run or slide (滑道 – a useful addition to my vocabulary, I think). I spotted this on my way up: from the cable car the toboggan run looked like this:
I was not entirely sure that my university insurance would stretch to mountain toboggan runs; but it looked far too much fun to resist. So on my way down, I stopped off at the head of the slope. There was nobody there, although there was a phone number posted on the door, and a family from Nanchang who turned up at the same time gave the number a ring. While we waited, they told me about all the interesting Mao Zedong pilgrimage sites that I could go to in Hunan. Eventually some folks arrived and unlocked the small hut, dragging out some precarious looking wheeled carts that they put into the toboggan run. I paid my 20 kuai, they gave me a shove, and I was away. Here’s a picture looking forwards:
And here’s one with the camera pointing the other way:
The little cart had a brake on it, but where’s the excitement in that? And whilst the pictures at the top showed people dressed in protective clothing of all kinds – helmets, elbow pads, that kind of thing – this was purely for show. All in all, it was about as much fun as you could possibly have for twenty kuai, and I think that sacred mountains worldwide should, by law, all be equipped with such a thing. Imagine the fun you could have on Mount Athos, for example, zooming down one of those things with the wind in your beard (I assume that beards are almost obligatory on Mount Athos, but I don’t know for sure).
Just as I was thinking that things could not be bettered, then close to the bottom of the mountain, I came across the Five Tone café, which probably serves the best cup of coffee in Changsha. It is relaxed, friendly, deliciously cool after the heat outside, and serves excellent brownies with ice cream. I spent an hour or so with an iced cappuccino, reading my simplified Chinese version of 西游记 or “The Journey to the West” – which, in the English translation by Arthur Waley, is one of my all time favourite books. Then I made a few more notes towards the novel, and caught the bus home, reflecting on the way that research should simply not be this much fun…
#1 · Harriet
Jul 26, 01:15 PM
That toboggan run just looks so much fun, Will!
#2 · Elee Kirk
Jul 26, 02:36 PM
WOW! Now I’m jealous!!! It sounds like your changed plans weren’t such a bad thing after all! x
#3 · Amy
Jul 26, 02:53 PM
Awesome! Are you going to attempt a Mao ‘pilgrimage’?
#4 · Will
Jul 26, 03:38 PM
If a Mao pilgrimage involves more toboggan runs, then I’m up for it.
#5 · Dave
Jul 29, 04:06 AM
People used to ride the logging flumes — waterslides — down mountainsides in the Sierra Nevadas. I’ve never heard of a dry toboggan run. Cool!