Increasingly Excited to Head Out

Dehang is lovely.  Fenghuang was mobbed, even in the pouring rain and no matter what spin you apply, the concentration of Chinese humanity and the amenities built to serve them is overwhelming and compromises the otherwise picturesque setting.  Dehang had some tourists, most of them seemed to come from somewhere in Hunan, and these were reasonable numbers of people.  Dehang is lovely

Arriving we had no hotel.  The one I’d heard about in my book was sold out when I rang them.  Another didn’t answer.  Driving further and further into the countryside with karst cliffs rising higher and further above us I was properly startled to see a phenomenal suspension bridge high,  high up in the clouds spanning the summit of two cliffs above.  I’d heard that this bridge was in the area but I didn’t know it was immediately above Dehang itself, or at least the town down river, Aizhai.  Up ahead we were forced to park and buy tickets before going into the Dehang village. The cab we’d hired in Fenghuang was no longer allowed to proced.  We’d need to walk up another kilometre to the town. 

Cautious, because I didn’t know if we’d find a place to stay, I took our driver’s number and checked at the first hostel kezhan that we saw.  100RMB per night.  An extra twenty if you want the air conditioning.  That was in-budget.  But the view was of another building so we suggested we’d return after looking and were duly warned that we might well loose the rooms if we returned, surly I would have said the same thing if it was my joint, and we proceeded ahead into town and found a woman who showed us up to her second story rooms at the same price that had a slightly better view of the cliffs and the clouds.  I asked about the nine dragons bridge which was something of a rendezvous point and there were more than a few kezhan signs on the far side over the steep arched bridge. 

On the corner was a three-story building packed with guests and I asked the proprietor but he was sold out.  And on to another location but they too were also sold out. A Big group had hit town this weekend.  So now, with a bit more urgency we headed back in the direction we came and found another place en route.  It was someone’s home with an open kitchen to the road and upstairs a simple gent, the father, showed us to our rooms, which had a porch and a view of he river and some drying laundry and for one hundred, plus twenty for the aircon and we were good.  He put my white wine that I’d bought in Fenghuang that morning into his fridge and we returned to the nine dragons bridge for some lunch. 

Up the steep steps and by the window looking down on the rushing river.  Chicken soup, eggplant, and rustic tofu, arrived one by one.  Our cell phones had each found a place to charge.  Sitting there we grew increasingly excited to set out and confront the big waterfall that was somewhere up the river.   The Miao proprietor’s daughters must have been about seven and nine and they served us tea and each dish with rice from a wooden bucket as they Miao do and then they all went to play on the steep dragon bridge.  Everyone in Dehang appears a Miao minority, and the older people still dress that way, in blue coats. 

The walk up proceeded magical as each turn in the road revealed one after another staggering vista up into the peaks,  hung in the air with their white sheer faces beneath verdant tuft tops.  These hills are chlorophyl, aside from the obsidian sheets of rock and they shift in shades of green as the swift moving cloud cover above blocks and reveals the sun light.  There is bamboo green, a lighter ochre that bends like grass on the hills.  Vines are darker hue and the deciduous leaves beneath, broadly occupy the hill hungrily consuming all the sun possible till the cliff faces deny them any soil to cling to.   

Follow the river we’d been told and to so we strode along a newly paved road.  Aside from a three-wheeled car or two, an occasional motorcycle, there were no vehicles on this road.  Just pedestrians ambling along.   Up ahead they were applying hot tarmac to a joint in a small span and the smell strong and oddly pleasing.  And at this point I was so thankful for that walk we’d made in the morning that had prevented any cars getting up to this point. I don’t know that rural Hunan has reached the point where they understand that the absence of traffic is a good thing, something to sell, rather than four lane accessibility.  The guardians of Nanyue peak to the east of Hunan voted for accessibility and have ruined the walk up Hengshan with a busy paved road.

To get to the waterfall we had to cross over a rock path in the water.  The price for slipping would not have been fatal, but rather annoying and soggy.  A woman up ahead stumbled on a shaky rock and then took off her sneaker so she could proceed barefoot.  I noted to our friends the irony of this stone by stone crossing beneath the phenomenal span we passed arriving on the way into Dehang. 

The waterfall itself was far beyond expectations.  Turn the final corner, past the tent selling water and stare all the way up at the straight drop of what must have been nearly 250 meters of a full-throated river’s worth of power driving downward.  The spray was refreshing and there was a trail that went up behind the falls which we carefully made our way towards.  Watching up close you gain a sense for how water actually, falls.  It isn’t just a straight flush of liquid, some fingers ride straight, others digits shoot off into mist and seem to never reach the rocks.  

We were all glad that this place was as beautiful as it was and that it had yet to be ruined.  Quite content really that this place was still requires a slippery stone pathway across the river to access.  But the paved road is nearly done.  And the mighty span above this small Miao Minority river village suggest how pervasive China’s development is and how swiftly this fragile little setting will change forever, like the rest of the country.  A couple wants to take a picture with us and the falls.  They are also from Hunan. 

Sunday 05/13/18