Henan, Day 3: TaiHangShan and GuoLiang
Background:
Prior to the 1970s, the village of Guoliang was isolated to an extreme degree. Atop a crest in the Taihangshan mountain range, it was connected to the world below only via a walking path which took hours to navigate. With the Cultural Revolution burning around the nation, the villagers decided the time had arrived to better attach themselves to civilization. Yet, lacking high technology and government assistance, the only option was to start crafting their own road. 13 peasants, using hand tools such as hammers and chisels, began an arduous five year project to carve 1.2km down the hill. This included a portion heading through the rock: the GuoLiang tunnel.
In 1977, the road was opened.
October 12, 2015
The drive to TaiHangShan – by Lindsey, her brother and myself – begins in a regular fashion, with roads heading into smaller and smaller towns, the concrete houses and old people making up the view, the names unknown unless they happen to be on a company’s sign. When I pass these sorts of communities, with dust and dogs rolling down the street, I often wonder what it is like to live one’s life here. The world of the white-teethed celebrities displayed on fading advertising boards must seem so far away.
We’re going to GuoLiang in the TaiHang mountains, which doesn’t sound or seem arduous despite last night reading a line saying the contrary. It certainly shouldn’t be difficult, as the village’s claim to fame is the building of a road, and an impressive one at that. The tale runs that, previously just another rural outpost stuck up in the mountains and reachable only by trek, the villagers decided in the 1970s that a connection to civilization was required. Lacking modern mechanical construction tools thirteen men began to do this using hand and chisel, not merely down the hillside but incredibly through the mountains themselves. It was completed in merely five years, including the GuoLiang Tunnel, upon which the government finally arrived in order to slap a AAAAA tourist rating on the achievement. My previous encounters with China’s most decorated tourist spots have not been encouraging – there is a habit to Disneyfy for mass consumption, with plastic tat and cartoon characters, electric golf carts and countless shops – so all excitement is weighed with reservations.
Listening to some ropey Chinese hip-hop all is going well until suddenly, in another small town, an old woman shouts at us from the side of the road. Her face looks livid. Some others try to wave us down. It looks like a hicksville lynching mob, but it turns out that the gesticulations are an attempt to inform us the road ahead is blocked. The music is subdued and with great speed a woman arrives at the driver’s side window, saying she can show us an alternative route if we pay her 20rmb. This doesn’t seem too onerous so we agree. She gets in the front, directs us round one corner, points ahead, and gets out.
Alas, further trouble arrives. The new road is apparently an old road built by the Japanese, and it soon becomes only slightly wider than a single lane. Twenty minutes in a bus enters the mix, cantankerously blaring its horn at everyone in some alpha-male nonsense, obviously in a rush. It seems apt that no sooner has he got himself up towards the front than we hit gridlock. The thin road has thinned again, and it is not big enough for oncoming traffic.
Cars inch past each other, and groups of men shout advice at drivers becoming stuck in the verges and divots beside the road. To be fair the bus driver, marching around like a field marshal, is proactive, but nobody is going anywhere fast, and the hundred metres of freedom after one jam is soon replaced by more traffic. This happens a few times, with increasing ‘are you kidding me?’ moments: a tractor; a mini-bus; an actual coach. At one point the bottom of our car scrapes the road’s edge with a disturbing crunch. From on the hill above our incongruous scene of cars, in the middle of nowhere, jammed and honking, must have been ridiculous.
Eventually we’re through and away to the base of the mountain, above which GuoLiang rests. Here we encounter discouraging tourism: attendants and fences pull drivers into a car park for the purchase of tickets for an obligatory shuttle bus. And again there is a local. He says we can take another road up and then hike into GuoLiang, which seems far more charming. Armed with our new guide we double back, turn left, and then begin to ascend the adjacent mountain on one of the most dangerous roads I have ever seen. It seems that a neighbouring village is in the process of constructing their own route, winding up the mountain, with barriers an unaffordable expense and prayers the only hope against any vehicle coming down.
We stop for a while before an arch knocked through the hillside – our own GuoLiang Tunnel – and take photographs of the panorama. For all its architecturally-sinful cities, China still has some incredible countryside. The thin winding strip of tarmac flows out down the hillside, turning left and right, and large mountains stand on either side. The sky is clear blue and there are no other people. Just us 4 and a car.
Eventually the tarmac runs out, and then the road itself. 4 men with basic tools squat on the dusty ledge, on break, unafraid of the absurd drop just beyond their toes. There is a flat area by some houses and we leave the car and our guide here, ready to follow a few mountain village paths, off to GuoLiang. The scenery is immense and the solitude is rare. Crags reach up above us, untouched and strong, while the drop to our left is far, down into the valley, occasionally disconcerting but always stunning.
A large slab of rock sticks out over the edge of the ravine, and it seems right to stand on it. Next a herd of goats, meandering as mountain goats do, meets us on the path and then bounds up and around. A little further on a wood of autumnal trees grows and rustles to our right. The colour of the leaves is an incredible gold, more stunning than the synthetic version encountered yesterday at Bi Gan temple. This moment of being outside, at ease, unencumbered, is my favourite moment in Henan thus far, perhaps even in all my time in China.
We get lost. There is a sense we have gone too far and, after coming back a little, take a second path besides the sea of golden trees. This goes up, to where a shepherd woman stands at the top and tells us we are going in the right direction. She talks a lot – a lot – presumably because she seldom gets company here. We leave her behind and, within five minutes, are lost again, this time in amongst a thicket of snagging trees. Heading back to the car is a possibility, but phone calls are made to the guide, followed by a little reversing, and eventually the ‘this must be the path’ epiphany. The new direction is down, through a gentler forest and into a valley paved with boulders. Lindsey’s brother goes on ahead, leaving us two to make our way, her beginning to wonder whether this was all a terrible mistake and perhaps her legs are going to fall off, me acting like a child released from the reins.
The walk continues for a few hours, meeting only a group impressively hiking up, and 4 who catch us and walk on without a word. My camera fills with photographs of everything and nothing: trees, mountains, the horizon, general nature stuff that is all over the world but I haven’t seen for a while. Eventually a piece of tilled earth suggests that GuoLiang is close. We pass a couple of old houses and then a street forms, with residencies and a small restaurant. The owner is slightly disappointed by us not stopping for lunch, but he is still kind enough to say we are close and there is (surprise) an electric cart a hundred metres ahead. Before we make the final push there is time to rest, a time in which I remove my jacket to reveal a rather disgusting sweat-encrusted shirt beneath.
GuoLiang itself is lightly mobbed, with packs from those car park-originating buses and a few private vehicles. I feel that they have cheated somewhat, or missed out on the better experience, by not walking. There is a temptation to let on that if they want to see an outlandish road they should check out what is happening over on the other mountain. Nonetheless the scenery here is quite splendid, with hills, mountains, straie-rich faces, a mirroring lake over a waterfall, and of course the famous tunnel. Although there are crowds it is hard not to be impressed by what those villagers did. My feeling from GuoLiang is that it is grand, but that our road and our walk are the lasting memories.
Eventually our minds – or rather Lindsey’s brother’s mind, since he is in charge – turns to problem solving: the car. Another call and a plan is made, which starts with getting a couple of local buses down off the mountain. Riding these it is noticeable that amidst the tourist boom (as the present must be for this village), poverty is still a reality. Some of the passengers wear the worn insulated jackets that are a Chinese village staple, and a father carrying a baby negotiates a stroller that looks absolutely battered, with a hole forming in the seat. The old bus has safety glass, but someone has removed all the hammers. In sharp contrast, back down in the car park, a driver arrives to meet us. Our third stranger of the day, his swish machine is evidence that this man is reasonably well-off by any location’s standards.
After a brief battle against a local who makes a great fanfare about moving his odd-looking old-school tractor from the middle of the only road, we tackle the dangerous road a second time (this time at speed), and then a third (in low light). The mountains are left behind to the sunset and our route home. Curiously the road that was blocked in the morning is now accepting cars, albeit after a farcical situation in which a man tries to make thirty vehicles who have crammed into every available waiting space move backwards and form a line. A single set of traffic lights and a nice clear sign would make a fine gift for some of these communities.
There is dust everywhere on this soon-to-be highway, and in the darkness full beam visibility is often under ten metres. Most cars bounce off in one direction, disappearing into the cloud, but even when granted space there is no speed. It is painful going: at one point the GPS says we have managed 3km in thirty minutes. The pain becomes physical when we abruptly hit a massive mound of earth that makes everyone’s skull quickly hit the ceiling. It becomes difficult to imagine how long this drive could possibly take, but in the end we meet a rickety barrier constructed of a pole, a rope and a sandbag, where a car already waits and a worker does nothing. More drivers arrive, each looking at the well-made road beyond, everyone beginning to wonder whether this unmoving man has a job or is just a bloke hanging around roadworks in the night. Finally, thankfully, at long last, he is satisfied the totally unnecessary backlog is of adequate length, lifts the rope, and the sandbag pulls the barrier up.
Lindsey and I still have to get to Zhengzhou tonight, so the last hour of driving done her brother drops us off at the station in Xinxiang. After so many hours in cars today, the slickness of a train feels like a relief. As we wait on the platform, Lindsey gets shouted at for stepping over the yellow line, the first instance today of rules apparently mattering. We arrive back in Zhengzhou around 9 with a sort of delirium, a madness born of still having to work out what to do tomorrow, a frayedness that makes us unable to find the stairs down to the subway for ten minutes. By the time we get off at Erqi Square it is past 9 30, nobody has eaten dinner, and the number 6 bus is nowhere to be seen. The time has come to get some street food, get a taxi, and just get over the finish line. At the hotel a sort of brain dead effort at a plan is made until, at about 10 30, her dad calls to say he has a friend who can take us to Songshan. We’re saved and the epic day can be put to bed.