Changbai Shan Part I

Most of my May holiday (a forced week’s holiday) was spent up in Jilin Province, in Northeast China. The main destination was Changbai Shan (长白山), which is a nature reserve. We were told that the place would be cold, so we reckoned that there wouldn’t be that many tourists there. I think it paid off in one way!

I teamed up with Rob for this trip. I had travelled with Rob during the winter holidays in Shandong/Zheiang/Jiangsu. As usual, we didn’t plan anything, that’s the way we like it. The Lonely Planet guide said that access to Changbai Shan was mainly via Baihe (白河), a town around 20km from the park or Yanji (延吉), a city 4 hours away. We decided to head to Baihe. You can get there via train from Tonghua (通化).

People say that it is impossible to travel in the May holiday (as they said during Spring Festival) unless you book tickets a long way in advance. Well, they were right about the train ticket part. No tickets from Dalian to Tonghua. Plan B came into effect. Get our asses to Shenyang (Liaoning province capital) and find transport to Tonghua. No trains to Shenyang, so bus it was, which we managed to catch in the nick of time!

We got to Baihe with little effort really. Got a bus from Shenyang to Baihe (buses go from near Shenyang North station, out station door, turn right, right again and first left. You will hear people shouting for Tonghua). From Tonghua, we booked a train to Baihe for that evening. No sleeper tickets but when we got on the train and waited 20 or so minutes, we were able to upgrade our hard seats to hard sleeper tickets! Thank God!

The train gets you into Baihe around 5:30ish in the morning! There are lots of hawkers outside to take all your money! We proceeded to the nearest eatery to get brekkie. During peak tourist season (June-October I think) there are tourist minibuses that run to Changbai Shan. When we went, there seemed to be no such thing. We knew we would be at the mercy of the touts and taxi men. We decided to join a couple of Chinese guys in a minibus to get up to the park. The guy said 80 kuai for a return trip, which didn’t seem too bad.

Arriving in Baihe was great: fresh air and clean skies! Nice cool weather. As we drove the distance to the park gate, the snow thickened and it started to snow heavily! Not a good sign. You have to buy a ticket to get into the park, which I think was 80 yuan. Then as you get into the park, they were trying to push their “waterproof” shoes for us to rent for 30 yuan. No thanks.

Since we came all the way from Dalian, we wanted to stay the night on the mountain. Not a cheap exercise. Stuff ain’t cheap here. We did get a room for 10 kuai. Although it had no shower, it seemed ok. Until I decided to take a dump and realised that the toilet didn’t work! Not a pretty smell or sight!

Onwards to the mountains! The place is called Changbai Shan or 长白山 in Chinese, which means “forever white mountain”. Rob read somewhere that it’s called this cos the tops of the hills are white all year round: from snow in winter and because the rocks are also white cos of some volcanic stuff.

Anyways, in the summer months, the place is a big draw cos you can hike and walk around the area. We were sort of limited in our scope, since the whole place was covered in thick snow. So, we just mainly planned to see Heaven Lake (天池). Other interesting things about the area: it is located on the Chinese-North Korean border and the area contains hot springs!

The climb up to Heaven Lake was interesting. OK, there are something like 900 steps. Fair enough. If you are unfit, you’ll suffer, but you’ll get there. For us the whole thing was compounded by the snowy and icy conditions! It was tough getting up those slippery slopes. Thank God they had some ropes in some places. For a good long section, they have a tunnel going up through the mountain, which made things easier.

Reaching the top, we walked through a fierce blizzard in arctic conditions to reach Heaven Lake! And lo and behold: nothing to be seen. Snow falling so heavily that you couldn’t see the hills on the other side! D’oh!

This part of China, close to the North Korean border is home to a lot of Chinese-Koreans or 朝鲜族. Since this is close to North Korea and the mountain is steeped in folklore, a lot of South Koreans also come here. So, a large percentage of the people visiting Changbai Shan are Korean tour groups. They are not unlike Chinese tour groups: loud, hurriedly rushing around from photo-op to photo-op! They don’t seem to savour the place!

Met some interesting people on the mountain: a guy from Northern Ireland who is teaching in Changchun and the best were the lads in the coffee hut, who taught us a multitude of swear words and dirty talk in Chinese!! They also told us of the multitudes of prostitutes they’d been with! Ah, isn’t it handy having learned Chinese so as to communicate with classy blokes like these!

After slipping and sliding our way down the mountain, we opted for some overpriced Korean food for dinner and got half pissed on soju! Went to bed hoping the next day’s weather would clear up so we could have another bash at the mountain.