Shenyang Team Miller: 2016 May: Huangshan mountains, Tea farming and Chinese Fengshui

Greetings!
As I type this, its the 14 of June and we're in French Lick, Indiana enjoying some beautiful Americana in America's heartland...but that's another blog to be done in the future! Again, I am taking advantage of good wifi signal and some rest time to post this blog.

Continuing from our trip to the National Parks, in May 2016, the next part of the week was our trip to Anhui province and see Huangshan mountain. Our tour guide as experienced and told us that he at first wanted to be a teacher. According to our guide, there are 3 good jobs in China: (all have to do with ability to get money on the side!), Gov't official, Doctor , Teacher (not high salary, but very good schedule and get a lot of money in the side from parents to get special treatment for their child!)
To be a teacher, in addition to grades, he had to have some interviews to pass..and he evidently didn't pass the interviews, so today, he is a tour guide!

One of the interesting things he shared was how the map of China is described in terms of Feng shui:

The map of the Peoples Republic of China

The map of China, for Feng shui : shaped like a rooster. Dongbei (东北） (the purple area in the upper right area, where we live) is the head of the rooster, (when the dingbei People are angry, the feathers come up) The tail is Tibet, Yunnan and Xinjiang, (the big orange area on the lower left) very poor, but beautiful. Sichuan and Gansu are the wings (green area in the middle) -always moving and have earthquakes), shanghai and eastern area (orange area on the bottom right) is the breast which is the rich area, Hainan and Taiwan (islands on the south side) are the legs to hold up the rooster.
When Mongolia used to belong to China, China was shaped like a mulberry tree leaf, and Japan is shaped like a silk worm, so China had very bad Feng shui because the silk worm (Japan) would eat the mulberry leaves (China)..probably one of the reasons they gave up Mongolia...but I didn't research that!

In Anhui province, Huangshan (yellow mountain) (in the orange area on the lower right of the map) is an Agricultural area : famous for teas (the tour guide's parents are tea farmers), specifically
Maofeng (green tea) 毛峰 and Taipinghoukuai (black tea)

As I have written before, Rod and I have both become tea drinkers and we appreciate all of different types of teas. This was the first time we ever visited a tea growing region. There is really no difference in the tea plant itself..it's all in how the tea is processed. Similar to grape vines for wine, the tea bushes changed after 50 years. In Anhui, the Green tee is picked 3 times in spring. The first and 2nd picking is all still done by hand and they are trying to get 2 leaves and 1 chute. The best money is for the 1st picking. By the 3rd picking they use shears because the bigger the leaf, the less the money, and the 3rd picking is not going to bring much anyway. Anhui has mountains and lots of humidity, so it's a good climate for tea. The higher the better on the mountain (600-800 above sea level is best for tea).
They also grow jasmine and crysanthemum to put with tea.

Rod in the tea plantation

Sarah in the tea plantation

Sheared tea in Anhui province

Picking tea in Anhui province

Up close and personal to the tea picker

back breaking work to pick the tea!

Freshly picked tea in the basket

Love the tea basket...but not the backbreaking job of picking tea!

Taking a break to pick tea

Tea picking in Anhui province

Anhui province(used to be called Huizhou) is very poor ;but history is very rich area due to proximity to Hangzhou that was very prosperous. 2 types of trees Camfer and ginkgo tree grows well here, but the camfer trees were all cut down and after that, they planted tea plants. The other big business is the black ink (from ground up balc stone that is here).
The town of Huangshan is small by China standards at 120,000 population and they are mostly the Han ethnic group.

In China, there are three areas famous for silk production (Suzhou, Guangzhou and Huangshan). Here in Huangshan there are many mulberry trees to feed the silk worms. They actually have mulberry trees trimmed like small fruit trees, but they Harvest the leaves instead of any fruits. We learned about silk processing although we didn't see it. We did see many mulberry trees. There are 3 cocoons for silk worms (spring, summer and autumn). Farmers buy the cocoons then feed them mulberry leaves. The butterfly emerges and lays eggs on rice paper and they are incubated. The worms emerge and then they are fed the mulberry leaves. Leaves changed every day. After 1.5 months, the silk worm makes the cocoon. Then the silk factories boil the cocoon to get the silk out to prepare it in threads.

A farmer with mulberry trees in the background

The Huangshan mountain area is also beautiful. Lush and green and more strenuous hike than Zhangjiejia. The Chinese say there are 4 wonders of Huangshan mountain:
Pine trees, Sea of clouds, Hot springs. Grotesque rocks. We saw everything except the hot springs. The park itself is 1200 sq meters around Huangshan mountain, it is a UNESCO geopark. It's not called Yellow due to the color or reflections. During the Tong dynasty the Tao
Huang di (yellow emperor) is said to have ascended to heaven from the top is this mountain while he was still living. The Yellow emperor's mountain is where it got its name after this Ascension.

Below are some pics of the beautiful mountains. We took a cable car up part of the way, then climbed the rest. There are hotels on the top of the mountain and we stayed the night there. All of the supplies and food for the hotels are brought up by porters...we saw them with big loads of vegetables going up and garbage going down.

Huangshan mountain in the fog

Huangshan mountains and pine trees

Huangshan mountains and pinetrees

Rodney with a pinetree in the fog on Huangshan mountain

A porter carrying up lunch

Some muscles on that porter!

Beautiful Huangshan

Rhododendrons on Huangshan

More trees and mountains on Huangshan

Sarah and Rod on Huangshan

Another heart on Huangshan

Part of the Grand Canyon of China in Huangshan

Grand Canyon of China

More Grand Canyon of China

Grand Canyon and Rhododendrons!

A light mist on the mountains on Huangshan

Grand Canyon of Huangshan

Near and Far trees in Huangshan

The beauty of China, Huangshan park, Anhui province

More Grand Canyon in China

The Grand canyon just before the rain

A resting spot for the weary hikers

Some Solomons Seal growing wild in China

Up on top of the mountain, in one of the hotels, there was an artist with beautiful water color paintings of Huangshan...had to have one!

In addition to the beautiful scenery on the mountain, there were some outstanding villages in the area. One of the villages we went to was the Xidi village: UNESCO site in 2000.

A rainy day in Xidi village

Xidi village

Lots of not so secret courtyards...I just loved them!

A hole the rock provides a good frame for this photo of a plant!

Door way to some more dwellings in Xidi

During the Cultural revolution, anything that was seen as art or represented wealth was either destroyed or dismembered...even in this small village.

Sorting honey suckle for making tea in Xidi

Making stuffed tofu in Xidi

Sorting more honey suckle for tea in Xidi

Rod negotiating with a lady in the village!

Then we also saw Guan Lu Town and it made it's money by being the place that controlled the pass to the mountain. A rich merchant built 8 houses all hooked together. WANG family. Still 400 people live there from Wang family. Went to tea factory in this town and saw the tea being processed.

Tea drying on the road and being raked up

Up close with the tea drying

Sarah and Rod in the tea drying area (The road!)

Tea laying out on the "factory" floor prior to being processed.

Sarah with Tea laying out to dry on the floor (this will become black tea...which is why you are always told to wash black tea before making tea out of it...I can see why now!)

Rod and Sarah carrying tea after processing.

Another old village we visited was Nan Ping. The Movie "crouching tiger hidden dragon" was filmed here (after awhile, the villages start to look the same!) We visited Lu Cun (village next to our hotel) and it is a Beautiful village beside the river. I visited there early in the morning and just Watched the local people doing their daily morning chores. Washing the clothes, preparing food beside and in the river.

Harvesting rape sead

Village of Lu Cun in the early morning

Lu Cun by the river

Lu Cun river..peaceful as can be!

Lu Cun village...cleaning lunch chickens in the river

Laundry and lunch in the same river..each chore has his place up and down stream!

Everyone meets and greets by the river

More lunch and learn on the river

Walking home after doing her morning chores by the river

Life on the river is good in Lu Cun

One more clean river in Anhui province, China in Lu Cun

The last village we visited was Hong Cun village , UNESCO site . Rained most of the afternoon! This Village was Built in shape of water buffalo (due to fire in the past, Feng shui master told them to rebuild in This shape to avoid fire)
1000 people still live there.