This is it, guys! We’re up on Huangshan and it’s magical!
50 photos below!
Month: August 2024
Cable car up Yellow Mountain
We arrived at the entrance to the Yellow Mountain park in the afternoon of a cloudy day. There was no queue. We presented our (digital) tickets and ID. We presented more tickets and ID again to get on a shuttle bus. The shuttle bus (30m) took us to the bottom of the Yungu Cableway. Mom, Dad, Siqi, and I got a gondola to ourselves. We soon found ourselves not just among mountains, but inside a raincloud. Still, even though visibility wasn’t the best, the scenery was amazing! See below for 13 photos of our cable car journey up Yellow Mountain.
Mild Spring Boutique Hotel, Huangshan
Our plan for visiting Yellow Mountain was:
- arrive in the city and stay overnight at Mild Spring Hotel
- be transported to Yellow Mountain (leaving the car and most of our luggage behind)
- enter the park, walk to a hotel inside, and stay there overnight
- walk back out of the park, be transported back to the city, and stay in Mild Spring Hotel overnight again
- leave to drive back to Hangzhou.
Transportation to/from Yellow Mountain and the overnight hotel stay inside the park were booked together as part of a package. I chose Mild Spring after looking at various hotels online. This one seemed to have an interesting character… and I was right! I’m happy with my choice and would definitely recommend it to any English-speaking foreigners looking for a place to stay in Huangshan. The only caveat is that your car/van/taxi can’t pull up to the front of the hotel directly, because it’s in a rather interesting retail pedestrian zone (called Liyang Old Street). Fortunately, the staff can help bring bags over from the street or parking garage if necessary.
There are way more and way better photos of Mild Spring Boutique Hotel on Booking.com, Tripadvisor, and Agoda. But here are 19 of ours:
To Huangshan
Our shopping in Longquan finished, we left town after lunch to drive to Huangshan City. See below for 22 photos of bridges, tunnels, mountains and some amazing clouds on the way.
Longquan celadon swan
Item description / significance
I saw swans like this for sale on Xianyu, the Chinese second-hand marketplace app, then I saw one in person in when my colleagues and I went to Xixi Wetlands to have tea. But I decided I wanted to buy one in Longquan itself if possible. I succeeded!
Bought where
in a shop in Longquan, where they make this kind of porcelain stuff
Age and origin
new, Chinese
What I like about it
It’s a bird. I think I’m generally less interested in water animals than I am in land and sky animals, but water birds can go wherever they want. I like anything with wings.
The color and texture. I find celadon porcelain soothing: it’s smooth and detailed at the same time. I picked the greener of the two color options in the shop.
See below for product photos of similar swans for comparison.
Japanese wooden bear
I bought this wooden bear carving while shopping for celadon in Longquan, Zhejiang Province on a road trip with my husband and my parents.
I’d seen a lot of these wooden bears on Xianyu, the Craigslist/Carousell app of China, and wanted one because I collect animal figurines. I liked this particular bear carving because unlike some of them, it isn’t too scratched, and unlike a lot of them, it isn’t eating a fish. (I prefer animal figurines that are just the animal, not multiple animals, and not the animal standing on something or engaging in an action.)
I had a suspicion that “vintage Japanese” might have been added to the descriptions of the wooden bears for sale on Xianyu for the sake of search engine optimization rather than to actually communicate their origin, because I’ve definitely seen some other things mislabeled. But now that I’ve done a Google search, I’m pretty sure these are actually Japanese.
History of kibori kuma
The internet informs me that farmers in Hokkaido (the northernmost island of Japan) started making them in the 1920s based on Swiss folk art wood carvings. The carvings became a famous type of souvenir. I have no idea how old mine is. Possibly not very. And of course it’s possible some place in China started making them too. But this kind of wooden bear folk art is firmly associated with Japan, specifically Hokkaido.
» Wikipedia article about kibori kuma (Japanese wooden bears)
» article about the wooden bears museum in Yakumo, Hokkaido
» website of the wooden bears museum in Yakumo, Hokkaido
Longquan Old Town
We wanted to do some shopping before we departed Longquan. First, we visited a shop that was literally downstairs from our hotel in the same building. After that, we drove to an old section of town and walked down an old street with mainly houses in one direction and some shops in the other direction.
See below for 32 photos from our time in Longquan!
Longquan celadon plum blossom bowl
Item description / significance
This is a blueish Longquan celadon rice bowl with a flowering tree pattern on both sides.
Bought where
at the gift shop in the sword factory in Longquan during the road trip I went on with my husband and my parents
Age and origin
new, Chinese, from Lonquan, Zhejiang Province
What I like about it
The pattern. I grew up with a blue-and-white porcelain bedside table lamp that had this kind of pattern. It is variously known as meihua, hawthorn, prunus mume, or plum blossom.
The shape. I collect small little bowls. I like some shape profiles better than others; I tend not to like rims that flare out like a bell. This is a good shape!
The color and texture. I find celadon porcelain soothing. It’s smooth and yet also detailed.
Longquan Sword Factory
Swords are the other thing that Longquan is known for, so Mom, Dad, Siqi, and I visited a “sword factory.” Didn’t look much like a factory to me! It was a bit like a theme park, and would normally have involved demonstrations by craftspeople. Unfortunately, nobody was making anything, I think because it was supposed to rain and they weren’t expecting many visitors. To be fair, they didn’t get many visitors, so we walked around and enjoyed the gardens, the architecture, the displays, and the shop in remarkable peace and quiet. Entry was free. And we didn’t get rained on. I call it a win.
See below for strangely few photos of swords but lots of photos of a sprawling complex of Chinese buildings and gardens.
Longquan Celadon Museum
I went with my mom, dad, and husband Siqi to visit the Longquan Celadon Museum, which tells about the history of celadon, a type of green-glazed porcelain or stoneware.
Off to the museum we go to be tourists!
See below for 14 more photos of our visit to the celadon museum.
