Saturday June 13 - Kontong Shan

We drove about 60 km through the clay, teraced hills and wondered at the number of people who would be required to establish and maintain all the terraces. It is a labour intensive agriculture. The houses and communities all snuggle into the rocks and crannies of the hills unnoticed because they are camaflauged by their mud brick construction which matches the colour of the ground. Most of the roads in this part of China seem to wind up and over mountain passes or around gorges and canyons. Inevitably there are road works somewhere which can delay travel times from a few minues to a few hours. The road we travelled this morning had all of the foregoing. Around lunch time we reachd Ping Liang, population 105,300. The city appears modern and economically sound, although for a Saturday we found it quiet. It is located in the hill and ravine region on Loess Plateau - whatever that is!~ with rivers, mountains, valleys, plains and tablelands. It used to be the second key post on the Silk Road. The city is split into many nationalities including 73.4% Han Chinese, 25.5% Hui, and the rest including Mongolian, and Tibetan and tons of others. We spent a couple of hours in town wandering around the streets and market. The makets are always fun, and here there were all kinds of food stalls with exciting things to eat - mainly fried, or at least containig a lot of fat/oil. The two fun dishes were all the skewars of meat, potatoes and veg that you can select from the various stalls to have stir fried, and the steam boat containing pieces of ham, broccoli, noodles, sweet peas, crevettes, etc. simmering over a table burner in a pot of water. The highlight of this area is Kontong Shan which is an important mountain peak in the Taoist religion. The hilltop has dozens of picturesque temples to the summit of over 2100m. Unfortunately we arrived there about 3:30 allowing only 3 hours till closing. Access was ridiculously expensive having increased only recently, It was Y120 entrance, minibus Y15 or cable car Y90. We chose not to do the climb because it was hot and we felt that including the hike yup we would once again be rushing ! One person from the group went and seemed to enjoy it. In restrospect, we probably should have gone, "seized the moment" and all that!! While John went off up the mountain the truck drove to the reservoir at the bottom of the mountain and our Chinese guide managed to convince the officials to let us camp up in a picnic site overlooking the reservoir, and Kontong Shan. The view was spectacular and we sat along the edge of the retaining wall with our legs dangling over the road below drinking beer and taking in the beautiful scenery including the breathless gondola ride over the reservoir and up the mountain. 4 of the group (Dave, Jack, Maeve, and Renate) were brave and walked down to the Reservoir, braved the cold water and swam over to the opposite bank. We had a visit from a very smart gentleman, his wife, and daughter. They were all mezmerized by the Truck ,the tents, the fire making, and the food preparation. It turned out that our visitor was the chief of the cable car operation! We had a great dinner of pork kebabs and rice (Ray was on cook duty) in the daylight for once. Around 9 pm (its dark now then) Dave set off some Chinese crackers. They were fun especially since they are illegal in Canada - I was concerned the Chinese army would come rushing up to find out what was going on -- a strip of sparkle and fizzle, and lots of noise. After that most of us retired to our tents although I am sure some remained up.