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Willfully Lost in Huangshan: On the Merits of Wandering
Lessons learned after seven hours in the middle of nowhere
While little known in the West, Huangshan is a culturally significant site that is a strong draw for Chinese tourists. Located in Anhui province in central China, it is a “small city” by Chinese standards with 1.4 million people. While there are many attractions in the city, the major draw is the Yellow Mountain itself, made famous by thousands of years of depictions in art and poetry. Countless people per year come to the city with tourist groups that lead them right up the mountain in hopes of seeing the “sea of clouds” that forms if the weather is just right.
I was not one of these countless people. Rather, I went to Huangshan by myself, found a path into the mountain range, walked through the valleys for seven-odd hours and returned to the hotel by some quirk of chance and fate.
This has always been my approach to tourism — forego the hot spots in favor of idle wandering. It’s not going to be for everyone. For the kind of person who’s scared to death of traveling alone, it probably won’t work. For the one who only leaves home to leverage FOMO on their blog, I can’t promise you’ll find anything that will make your friends jealous — but that’s part of the joy of it. This sort of expedition is intensely personal. It’s a quieter way to see the world.
The road was certainly quiet that morning — a welcome break from the manic rush of the Spring Festival, the world’s largest human migration. A chill fog hung over the mountains, the clouds in the overcast sky so low that you could scrape them with your fingertips if you stretched enough. The path vanished both before and behind me — past and future alike obscured, walking in one eternal moment.
The walk was tranquil compared to what I would have faced on Yellow Mountain proper, but I was far from alone. The road winding through She County is dotted by…
