We’re now moving into the dry season here in Eastern China. Some how I had foolishly hoped the wet season here would be the same as back home in the Southeastern USA, the winter. Our wet season here happens to be more convenient for kayaking, the summer months is when we receive most of our rain! Alas, this is many, many months away.
I have taken a job teaching English and I work five days each week. My days off are Sunday & Monday. The Sundays are great since this is when the hiking clubs usually take a trip. This past weekend my friend let me borrow his SUV for the weekend since he was going to be out of town Saturday - Monday.
The weekend got off to a terrible start when I came outside ready to hit the road and found one of the back windows had been smashed. The thief had seen an empty sports bag my friend left in the back, reached in, found it empty and left it. *sigh* I spent 550 RMB (nearly $75) to replace the window. The car was ready about 5pm, so I decided to try again on Monday.And just to let you know I used common sense about parking the car, I parked on a lite street with other cars, beneath a security camera. I wasn’t aware that the camera was a fake until the next morning when the police arrived and questioned the security guards. I should have checked the car for any left over items but as I was empty handed when I received the car I assumed it was empty. Assumptions tend to kick so many of us when we’re down.
I had been planning to go alone but one of my friends, Angel, expressed concern that I was going alone and I was happy to have her company. I met Angel on a hike a few weeks before and she is the one who so kindly took me to the outdoor adventure stores in Wenzhou. I met her again the previous weekend at an orienteering competition. She is a little older than myself with an 11 year old daughter. Angel works for an American company and works out of her home, so she sets her own work hours.
In my excitement to be traveling on my own (almost) I forgot to bring along food, water and *sigh* my camera. Angel proved more prepared than myself. She had brought a little food and and a bottle of water. When I mentioned lunch at some point she suggested she could go shopping for us. She doesn’t trust the healthyness of any food made along the streets and even prefers to avoid established restaurants in small villages and towns. She found a grocery store with sealed food packages, carefully checked expiration dates and brought the goodies back to the car where I waited.
I had entertained myself by watching the people passing along the street; students, parents or grandparents with little children, some people carrying huge loads of items hung from poles over their shoulders. One little boy noticed me in the store next to the car. His parents and I thought it was pretty funny, he wouldn’t stop staring at me. I tried some Chinese and English on him, his parents encouraged me but he wouldn’t try saying hello or waving. He just didn’t know what to make of the foreigner. 
Angel and I hit the road again. I was driving very conservatively, buses, cars and trucks all passing me. At some point I realized we had been driving for more than three hours and we finally reached the headwaters. If my brother-in-law Liu Jian had been driving, no doubt we would have arrived an hour earlier. Here you must use your horn. If people walk in the road and don’t hear the horn, they don’t move. I think using a horn is a rude thing to do but I am now convinced that it is a necessary tool.
The headwaters area looked beautiful (Angel was sick of how many times I said, “I wish I had my camera.” but I’m saying it once again now). The valley we had been following upward now broke into three valleys that climbed steeply. The road took us to the right and we had nice views of the left most valley. There were huge slides of rock faces with just a little bit of water trickling down ward. The valley straight ahead had a number of car sized rocks piled in it and I couldn’t really grasp how the water may flow down here without numerous undercuts and tiny pools. The right valley was very narrow and creeky. At a curve in the road we crossed over the creek and saw a trail. This is where we finally hoped out of the SUV and had our lunch. We hiked up stream and ate sitting atop of a rock. I felt confident there must be a dam further up at the top, there was a steel water pipe running the length of the creek that we could see.
I believe there was likely a dam at the top of the straight ahead valley. The road seemed to lead in that direction so we mmight soon know but we had dinner plans back in Wenzhou and with the long road in front of us back home we decided to stop our all too brief exploration. My confidence in driving in the mountains of China had been greatly encouraged and I made the trip home much more swiftly, however once on the city streets we hit a traffic jam that had snarled everything. We sat for 45 minutes waiting to go two blocks.
The steep valleys are no place for me to be kayaking alone. They are far steeper than anything I’ve ever tried and usually more of what I see in the magazines and rarely in a video. The Tellico Ledges and Little in the Smokies are more my style for creeks. There appeared to be some sweet buggie water in the valley below these steep creeks and when the water comes again I’ll be there for the fun.
My friend with the SUV offered it to me again anytime I want so perhaps next weekend I’ll be better prepared for the adventure and take my camera. There is a rather more popular river to the West of Wenzhou that my friends all recommend I go try out. There are stories of a news team who went there with 9 members and came back with only 8. Another friend of my tells about his wife becoming stuck in a whirlpool eddy for two hours (sitting on a ducky raft or a tube, I couldn’t decide). Two hours on a cold water stream just feels like too much of an exaggeration to me but I must take the story of a death seriously. I’ll hope to go check it out soon. The stream is dam controlled and I was warned that someone called and they are not doing releases now.
Ahh, so much to look forward to!
Chuck
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