17 April 2019
AAAAA tourist mountain experience
Getting to and hiking over Baiyun mountain from downtown Guangzhou on foot
There is really only one mountain in all of Guangzhou, Baiyun mountain, and it is an official ISO 9001 and 4001 AAAAA certified tourist experience. This means accessible to people in wheelchairs, western toilets, entrance fee, cable car, defibrillator's, electric buses.... the works. If you choose to walk from the South gate to the West gate, it is at least 15km. It is a relatively easy 15km because its all on a little road that electric buses take people around on. I glared at all of them as they went past, to demonstrate my disdain for their laziness.
There were actually a lot of people doing the walk just like me, a lot more than I expected, so this was refreshing. As was the lack of rain, but there was fog, and therefore no view. So todays photos of the view will be disappointing, but I have taken too many anyway.
Of course to get to the mountain park gate, I walked. This was probably overkill, I have ended up with just over 40,000 steps, completed without stopping. Thats quite a lot!
My path to the mountain took me through many other parks, the parks themselves were very nice, and full of people doing the full range of Chinese activities, the problem was getting between the parks. Often there seemed to be no way to cross major roads, for many miles, I did not include this in my guesstimate of how long it would take.
Then I kicked a woman.
While sitting and drinking some water and eating some roasted nuts before starting my hike along electric bus mountain road, I was reading the news on my phone. A woman handing out flyers advertising a tourist restaurant I had no interest in approached me, she tries to hand me a flyer, I say I dont want it in Chinese. She puts it on top of my phone. Rude. I hand it back to her. She snatches it back from me, and puts it on top of my phone again. I was sitting on a low step, so I just kicked her, hard, in her shin. She was very unhappy about this and pretended to be injured for a while. Onlookers were highly amused, I pretended to film her and started explaining I was live streaming her on facebook and twitter. Within a few metres of me at this time were both the regular police and the special park police (they have special police that look after AAAAA tourist spots). They never even seemed to look up from there mid morning siesta.
First up, I walked through the peoples park. My hotel overlooks it, last night I got into bed at about 9:55pm and the music from the park for the ballroom dancers was still blasting at full volume. It thankfully stopped at 10pm exactly.
The park was full of dancers, tai chi, badminton, hacky sack with a badminton shuttlecock thing, opera singers and of course, sword fighters. You really do have to watch where you are going at times!
It was both foggy and sunny all at once. The haze ruined most of todays photos.
I thought I could just walk straight from the peoples park into the next park, but standing in my way was the city government building, with razor wire and police with serious looking guns and the metal stick with the spikes. I dont actually photograph them though!
Behind the government building was the next park, the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum. There is a Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum in nearly every Chinese city I have been to, the biggest I recall is in Nanjing, and theres one in Taipei as well. So did they hack his body up and send bits of it all of the place to be stored in separate buildings? Also wasnt he the main competitor to Mao for greatest Chinese person ever? How did all these places not get destroyed when Mao took over? Am I causing offence by deliberately remaining ignorant about history? Hopefully.
Behind the Mausoleum there is a very large surely man made hill. Almost a mountain. The stairs up are twice as long as pictured here.
I dont actually know what the point of this hill was, other than to have a huge morning tai chi class with a crap but very loud speaker system, however heres the thing on the top, its almost impossible to get a clear view of whatever it is.
Descending man made mystery mountain takes you into another garden area, with an old fortress wall I could not find. There is also this sports stadium, built in a hole.
Apparently a wild panda is climbing one of the trees!
This extensive park had everything, lots of people running backwards, slapping themselves, and croquet. There was a cheating scandal unfolding on the croquet court, lots of yelling and a stick was thrown. Unfortunately I missed it all and by the time I set up for a shot they agreed to play on. Serious business.
Last nights dinner.
Possibly tonights dinner.
Whoever set up this Winnie the Pooh light up theme park restaurant is missing, presumed to be in Xinjiang for re-education.
To give you an idea of the difficulty in getting between park areas, this is one of the crossings, after walking about a km along a highway into oncoming traffic.
Just before getting to the main Baiyun mountain entry gate, I came to a market that had no electricity. It was much darker than depicted here, they have all hung battery powered LED lights. My camera boosted the shadows massively here to make it look like you could see but it was dangerously dark. I have no idea how you would know what you were buying, people were looking into their wallets to get cash using mobile phone torch mode.
The road leading up to the mountain has a children's theme park. There were actually some working rides, but if you look at this one closely you will see it is sitting in about a foot of green water.
I continued on past a lake. Safety first here in Guangzhou, everyone fishing is wearing a bright orange life jacket.
The garden areas around the lake were very nicely curated. Great lawn.
Just before getting to the entry fee collection point, yet another garden. It was while sitting near here I kicked a woman.
The Chinese government recommends 6000 steps per day. Pfffffffffffffft. I have already done 40,000 today without stopping. I can defeat all of China with the power of my steps alone.
This area is actually quite near the top of the mountain park. Due to the cable car and buses there are little cafes and restaurants everywhere.
And a kfc... and a mcdonalds... no dicos though? I havent seen dicos at all in Guangzhou?
Here we have the singing pavilion. I belted out a rendition of Hammer Smashed Face.
Lack of view.
More lack of view but I still enjoyed peering into the smog / fog / mist. Probably not mist today actually.
There is a giant aviary called parrot paradise. I think its free? Not everything is free, some of the temples have an extra admittance fee. The actual fee for the park entry is about $2.
View of the main city area where I am staying... I think? Most of the day I had no idea which way I might be facing.
My lunch came from here. The mountain had everything. Toilet every hundred metres, all with an attendant. From family mart I got red bean bread and pocari sweat. I drank about 9 litres of various fluids and visited 19 separate tourist mountain toilets, I had to get the full value of my entry fee.
You cant see it I dont think, but there is a little waterfall. Fake.
I gave my camera to another guy and took my turn on the zip line. He did a pretty good job of taking my photo as I went across the 400 metre ravine.
After recovering my camera from Mr Lin, it was time to head back down the mountain, here is the descending view. Still no good.
The far side has a bit clearer view, and I think about an hour after this the sun came out. That usually happens to me.
The path to the western gate is very long, 3km at least, but very developed, in addition to gardens like this there were a few tea houses and terraces of tea bushes / trees / vines. I dont know what you call them. Plantations.
More lakes, more fish.
A LOT more fish, emphasis on LOT.
And another lake... it was a much longer walk than I thought it would be.
The final part of the path out of the place was a nice shady canopy. A welcome relief from the recently arriving sun.
Now, most people stopped at the gate, and took a bus. Not me. The map showed a subway station about a km away, so I thought I would just walk to that. How hard can it be? Quite hard actually! I had to circle around a few war zones.
Eventually I got to the subway station. This is it! Its in a muddy field. Of course I could not get a seat, it was a long journey back, but I got to ponder that I had actually walked that entire distance above ground, making many diversions and going over mountains along the way. My million steps for April goal is back on track!