关于五大连池的美好印象--------外籍友人的文章－替缥缈之风代发

张崴

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dear friend:thank you very much. One of my students is a member of an internet travel group, and last weekend the group went to a small town called Wudalianchi. In case you wonder what an internet travel group is, well, it was new to me as well. It seems they all like to travel, and various members of the group get together to organize potential trips each weekend. The trip to Wudalianchi was by bus, and said vehicle was to be met at a location I only had on a piece of paper—hand written—in Chinese. And I can only read a hundred characters, and only then if they are very nicely printed.
! w1 R" p' g0 c  E3 e  zSo yes, at 4:40 am I was out on the street looking for a taxi, and wondering where it would take me. At five the taxi dropped me off in front of the main administration building of the communist party in Harbin. This was a little disconcerting, especially as there was no sign of anyone other than a grumpy looking security guard. Within five minutes a large red bus tooled by with Claire, the student, waving madly from beside the bus driver.
$ o3 S: Y( b: u! P. kWe then drove around Harbin for half an hour, at which point the driver parked the bus and began looking at maps. This did not bode well for the trip. We soon headed out of town, but almost immediately pulled into a gas station. You all know what gas stations look like. Here is the country version of a Chinese one. They all look just like this one, except their roof is not warped. That comes from the computer refusing to deal with the image properly when making a panorama. I tried several pieces of software, and this was the least badly damaged image, so don't complain.
9 ^* M# h3 t7 y  Q2 ^; tThat is Claire on the right, and others from the group are on the way back from what passes for a toilet in a Chinese gas station. The less I say about that topic the better!

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You can tell from the picture that the road is pretty quiet. Heck, even the main highways can be pretty quiet. To say the Chinese are overbuilding for the current level of traffic is an understatement. 花果山户外休闲网" R/ Q6 X  o9 `( k; ]+ o: y8 o
The driver continued to study his maps and I was told it was because the bridge on the best road was being replaced, so we couldn't use it. We took the route less travelled, and it made quite a difference. We started on a really nicely maintained small road—and yes, the flowers on the side of the road are typical. So are the types of vehicles. However, all too soon we ended up crawling along on roads like the one below. 花果山户外休闲网. U# y. @0 [7 v, F! v( _
In case you are wondering, yes, those trucks were stuck in the mud, but they did eventually get out of the way and our driver made it up the hill.  I had thought it would be fun to take a video of the bus and passengers bouncing along on the horrible road. At one point the driver was nearly bumped out of his seat—but by the time I got the camera set up, the road was smooth again.

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After about seven hours on the road we pulled into a hotel where I took a bunch of pictures with the camera accidentally on video, so the only evidence of being there is this curiously curved panorama of their nice, straight dock. It turned out the reason we went there was to check the maps once more—and try out the toilets. Chinese busses are not equipped with toilets. At least not the ones I’ve been on.哈尔滨|徒步|登山|穿越|宿营|滑雪|户外|黑龙江户外|黑龙江自助游|哈尔滨自助游|花果山|花果山户外休闲网|好运花果山|* P/ ~9 {& H  U% q! u; b9 C- ]

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So the next 'event' I got to take pictures of was the ice caves. Now you have to understand that in China, all tourist attractions are rated on a 'star' system, and out of five possible stars, Wudalianchi has not managed to earn itself a single one. So here are pictures of the famous ice cavern in the lava. Right. It is a cold place, maybe fifteen meters underground, with lots of ice sculptures, mostly lit by LED Christmas lights, with a few colored fluorescent bulbs frozen into the sculptures. The picture looks a little foggy as I had to increase the brightness to stop details getting lost. 哈尔滨|徒步|登山|穿越|宿营|滑雪|户外|黑龙江户外|黑龙江自助游|哈尔滨自助游|花果山|花果山户外休闲网|好运花果山|, _! W- j$ \3 A' C6 E6 E
If you look at the roof very carefully, you will see it is at strange angles, and lots of heavy steel bars are reinforcing it. Natural it is not. The uneven surface is because it was created by the contraction of a lava bed, and I haven't figured out how they got the floor so smooth. Probably just flooded the place. The average temperature down there is minus 5. 友谊、沟通、交流、共享,流金岁月,情感交流,子女教育,真情互动'花果山,1968年猴,60年代,70年代,哈尔滨猴,1980年猴,属猴,5 _% E. a' Y3 p1 G9 N2 i2 d
9 _% O- X* N# ]You may also notice that everyone is either clutching a camera or a water bottle. These are the two essentials for travel in China! Since water is so important, naturally the next thing we did was visit a cold spring. This area apparently has the third largest cold spring in the world, as the lava flow trapped most of a river system underground, and blockaded the rest. The name of the town roughly translates as ‘five long stringy lakes’ and they are what is left of the river. 友谊、沟通、交流、共享,流金岁月,情感交流,子女教育,真情互动'花果山,1968年猴,60年代,70年代,哈尔滨猴,1980年猴,属猴,( ?! f5 f' b  c  O  j4 N3 J$ L  h
So we had to visit the spring, and here is how the water is described, in all its curiously translated glory. In case you are wondering, the text is cut into polished stone and is reflecting all of us tourists. 哈

张崴

Tourist attractions often like to provide something extra. You can see below that this spring had a well dressed, but slightly aggravated monkey, which is with Jiang Xiaofan, a girl who is brave enough to pose with a monkey and to use her Chinese name with us foreigners. Why do I say brave to use her real name? Because foreigners invariably butcher (and easily forget) Chinese names until we get reasonably good at Chinese. I’m not nearly there yet.- W1 B9 U8 p6 l5 V, C
; N7 B. T* N" B+ `; P) Z1 c4 \The monkey did NOT like having its picture taken, and was continually trying to jump off whoever was paying to get their picture taken with it, and get back with its owner. I hope Ms. Jiang doesn’t mind if I tell about her experience. After dinner she described its misbehavior, and its claws, which were unbelievably soft. I couldn’t resist explaining that birds have claws, cats and dogs have paws, but because a monkey is so like a person, we call those appendages hands and feet. She was mortified, wailing apologetically that she hasn’t spoken English for three years. I was stunned, as she is finishing her BA in English! (In case you wonder, that was the only mistake I noticed in her English….)www.hyhgs.com" l7 {# k5 r, a  V
On the right we are fulfilling the purpose of this park by filling our containers with medicinal water. We were told it could only be kept for 4 hours or it would oxidize and become poisonous. Hmmm. This slightly seedy building has taps around the outside for filling your bottles. Don't ask me what that thingy is inside it....

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Of course the reason to go there was to see the strange things the lava did, so here is a small waterfall off a ledge of lava. Is this exciting, or what?

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Yes, that’s Claire again. The amazing thing is how the Chinese patiently wait for their 'photo op' There were at least a dozen people waiting to stand here and have this photo taken! We then headed out to a mountain. OK, a large hill, but by the time we got to the top it was already dusk, so no great photo ops. This being a place full of springs, there is one there as well, and part of our group chose to camp there overnight. Unfortunately I decided to take a picture of the springs while standing in front of the dragon’s head that the water flows from, and you can’t see it in my picture. One of the guys on the trip was smarter and took an excellent picture, but then put the picture up on the internet in a way that when I tried to download it, it failed to arrive. So you don’t get to see a cool stone dragon’s head with water gushing out. Instead, here is one of the temple, nestled in a small valley near the top of the mountain. It must be doing very well as the building under construction on the right is a pagoda for the temple.

so have a huge Guanyin Pusa on the other wing of the mountain. If you study this picture carefully you will see it is obviously a woman. Many Chinese appeal to her for anything to do with health, and particularly to have a child. The bottle in her hands contains medicine, although some say it is just water. Spoil sports. Interestingly enough, Buddhists generally insist that all Pusas are male. I have yet to be satisfied by their explanations, but in the interest of fair play dug up a quote which touches on that mystery.

"She is one of the most popular deities in all of Asia. Her name in Chinese roughly translates as "The One who Hears the Cries of the World". She is the most beloved and revered of the Chinese deities. Guan Yin is the Divine Mother we all long for: merciful, tender, compassionate, loving, protecting, caring, healing, and wise. She quietly comes to the aid of her children everywhere. Her mantra is 'Hail the Jewel in the Lotus.' Many believe that she is the female representation of Avalokitesvara, who is the Tibetan and Nepalese God of Compassion. In Asia, statues of Guan Yin can be found in front of, or on the grounds of, many Buddhist temples."

张崴

And back to more prosaic stuff, here is the town itself, at night. One thing this town did right, they have a speed limit of 30 kph in town and many of the sidewalks are elevated boardwalks set in from the road. Quite charming. And yes, that is it. There just isn't much there there.

张崴

Once back at the bottom we filled up bottles from the spring, then went searching for our rooms for the night, which I'm sure you can guess took some time as the driver had no idea where to look. It was a fairly typical rest stop for Chinese travelers. Builders have been throwing up far too many apartment blocks but far too few cheap hotels. People buy the apartments and stick a bed or two or three in every room, then rent the apartment out to cheap tours. I got to share a bed with Claire's nephew. We started the night with him watching TV and me sleeping. We finished with him thrashing around the bed and me dodging while trying to push him back to his side. It was a futile effort, involving the barest minimum of sleep.

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The next morning we  headed for breakfast at some ungodly hour, and then got organized to climb another large hill. We stopped at this lava field to get a feel for the place. Yes, the unpromising bump is the volcano.

The green flag is for the group, and on other trips they have one with their URL so you could visit their site. Sadly, this one doesn’t show it.

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I’m leaving out the hike up as it was pretty standard stuff. Lots and lots of stone steps to walk up, and not much to see. We climbed perhaps 200 m to get almost to the top, where it opened up and seemed as if there was nothing more to see.

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Here is that spot, and the building in the background  is a typical public restroom in a park. Pretty decent. You can’t see that there are lots of signs warning us not to take souvenirs. It seems to be the first thing everyone does the moment they reach this area. In case you were convinced China is a nation of obedient sheep, the Chinese do not seem to be very interested in doing what signs tell them to do!

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Most of the tourists climbing the volcano were Chinese. I think I was the only exception, even though the town is full of Russian tourists. I didn’t talk to any, but suspect they are just there to take the water cures and enjoy those deep, painful, and effective Chinese traditional massages.

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We wandered a little farther, not really expecting much, and abruptly came to the first real viewpoint at this zero star park:  

I was feeling just like the girl on the left. It was pretty jaw dropping. In case you are wondering, the eruption that created this crater began around 1710, with the most recent eruption around 1790. Lava from those and from other, much more ancient eruptions is found over a thousand square kilometer area. The diameter of the crater is around 350 m and the depth is 145 m, but it has been filling in as the soft rock it is built from crumbles into the hole. Needless to say the slope is incredibly unstable and highly dangerous to stand on. So what do you see?

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This is almost half way around, and one of dozens of pictures of people doing something crazy so their friends can get a good picture.

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