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A
dignified people
6.10.1990
Five o’clock in the morning. We land. It’s
dark. After sleepless hours I shiver in the cold and wet night. We’ll go to the bus stop at daybreak. In the large waiting
room of the port, travelers, lying on benches, stay up and come near us. It’s a group of strange fellows with a silly
air, dressed poorly but warmly: padded jackets and boots. They seem examine us like two extraterrestrial creatures. Hesitating
hands touch our bags, our clothes…their comments are articulated slowly and gutturally. They don’t look aggressive.
Perhaps we are the first Westerns they see!? We don’t say anything and
don’t move. Here we have no chance to be informed about the bus and go outside. A lugubrious environment. A wide earthy
place where walk some similar fellows like those inside. We go towards a dilapidated motor tricycle and his driver. We say
“Huang Shan”; smiling he invites us to sit on his “self-made” trailer. It’s a non-sense we think
– 180km - on this way! Time past, soon 7’oclock. Despaired we are because “no bus in the horizon”;
then suddenly appears a lady dressed officially. No English but Milan draws a bus and the calligraphy of Huangshan. Now she
add “5km” between Huangshan and the bus! No more questions. We “jump” in the self-made taxi surrounded
by a merry sympathetic company.
It’s very cold sitting in the open trailer; no matter we are too glad to feel
it. At the bus station our driver help us to buy tickets. He looks very satisfied and vehement refuse to accept the pourboire
(drink-money) we insist to favor him. I can’t believe it, infinitely helpful and dignified.
Our minibus, a ruin. Our seats are pretty good but the others are rather holes than seats!
Windows: no glass. The bus is full as an egg but nobody looks angry or nervous. On the way when we stop some more succeed
to enter with enormous baskets and other. It’s a circus! Under my seat I can hear a sweet gossiping duck. I wonder how
our poor vehicle holds out on these abominable roads. The spectacle of the encumbered roads is fascinating. Sometimes we pass
over a carpet of spike of corn, farther they sweep the grains away. Surprises on each corner! On this trip I have he opportunity
to experience the traditional Chinese toilets. In a village we stop. I follow some women I suppose going to the toilets. Several
of them enter together in a small edifice and entering myself I am in the company of these “ladies” squatted side
by side above a channel doing what they have to do! Jeanette wanted to live like the common Chinese….here she does!
Anyhow after this experience I don’t feel badly.
We arrive in the afternoon (130km. – 7 hours) at the base camp alt. 670m. A nice comfortable
room at the Tao-Yuan Hotel (=Thermal Springs) is welcome. Indefatigable and impatient, we explore the neighborhoods from where
will start the conquest of the famous mountain sang by so many poets since centuries and centuries.
Comment jeanette@sbb.co.yu
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