tea

Not the best of starts to a holiday when it all the travel agencies take the day off for chinese new year's eve; and hence had no tours available -so i left Nanchang quickly for Wu Yi Mountain to meet 2 Japanese Girls and spend New Year's Eve letting off fireworks in the street and drinking beer on a bridge (in the drizzling rain).

Then followed 2 days of fantastic hiking -some times following hundreds of people up steps, sometimes alone on paths that were not just fun but also difficult -cut out of the rock in crazy ways (if there were no handrails, it would be almost impossible) and sometimes trying to follow footpaths that do not exist. Chinese people tend to only go to an attraction, then back to the bus (and then onto the next one). Hence, though a map hints at paths between 'sites' they actually do not exist really... just lots and lots of paths used by the farmers during the harvest to 'harvest' (or whatever you do to tea when it is ready to sell!).

Anyway, after carefully leaving my GPS behind in the hotel the one time when i could actually use it, I wondered off finding a house (and some maybe crazy guy in it) hours from the nearest road and 4 hours later i managed to crawl down an embankment on a main road to hitch a ride on a motorbike back to town (the driver complained i was too heavy for his bike!). It was, though, a great trip.

Many of the real signposted paths were also pretty and full of waterfalls/ I splashed out 5 pounds to drink some supposedly amazing tea (supposedly, i can't really tell the difference) but thought 'what the hell' -bringing on another bouth of hundreds of people staring at the white person drinking tea. To be honest I was looking very confused, trying to understand the lecture the tea woman was giving me about the history of the tea and traditions of pouring, drinking etc... not understand a word.

For some reason, though I am in south-east coastal China (which has been growing fast in the last 20 years), everyone is more suprised to see a foreigner than in the back waters. Or, maybe the parents are just much more vocal about telling their kids about the 'laowai', whilst the teenagers are braver in shouting 'hello'. I do try to reply hello back.. but after hundreds of times in 5 days my mind is saying other things, much less polite (though i do keep my mouth shut, just).