changbaishan - paekdusan

selling eggs boiled in hot spring water

 for some mysterious reason it is not possible to buy train tickets in china more than 4 days in advance. you can imagine the scenes at the railway stations a couple of days before one of the 3 chinese holiday weeks. i was told to come to the station at midnight, when the tickets would go on sale. after waiting for 2 hours in a queue in front of beijing station my line suddenly collapsed into a 3 dimensional queue focused on a tiny little window. i really got the impression the chinese people were enjoying that chaos. when i was my turn one hour later, i found out no more beds were available on my 25hr train, but refusing to surrender i got a hard-seat ticket, hardly realising what discomfort that would bring.
in fact once on the train i noticed many people were even less lucky and did not get a reserved seat. the corridors were packed with people and luggage and for hours i was immobilised on my seat. however, the service trolleys selling food and drinks were still able to make their way through the train, because of course one has to eat. while the garbage was piling up on the floor, after 10 hours people slowly started to get off the train, i still did not get any sleep on my hard seat. when i was finally able to move to seat with a table in front, i laid down my head and dozed off. my train was heading for tumen, a city on the chinese-russian-korean border. we got off at yanji, the capital of the korean autonomous region in china. it is quite a strange city, completely bilingual and very well connected with south korea. i immediately had my favourite fast food shrimpburger at lotteria. while the sun was rising we boarded a bus for the final 4 hour trip to changbaishan, the famous mountain on the chinese-north korean border. both the koreans and the chinese manchus trace their history back to this ancient volcano, with the heavenly lake in the crater, and many south koreans climb the mountain from the chinese side. they arrive well-prepared, ready for the everest, and in fact it makes sense because the weather was quite rough. chinese people apparently did not dress up; wearing city shoes, ties, the odd high heels and skirt- some did wear those green army coats.

autumn colours

slippery steps

queuing up for the tunnel and all the way up

 the national park is huge, but unfortunately everybody has to pass through the same narrow valley to get to the lake. we had to walk through muddy car parks full of tour buses and honking cars before we were able to enjoy some fresh mountain air. and even then it was a frustrating experience having to queue again on the narrow path up. in the good chinese tradition, their is a concrete stairway all the way to the top, quite steep in some parts, and unfortunately also covered, so byebye scenery and fresh air! it seemed that the stairway to heaven passed through hell first. this tunnel smelled like a beijing taxi, garbage piling up everywhere.

enjoy the fresh mountain air

as the old chinese proverb says: the way up is also the way down, there were traffic jams all the way, with grandmothers being pushed up by their relatives, and exhausted people sitting down drawing heavy breaths. the snow made the steps slippery and in fact going down i did part of the way on my bum, not on purpose that is. after about of hour of this circus, we finally got to the top, where the lake waited in all its tranquillity. of course there was also a tent selling instant noodles. unfortunately mountains on both sides blocked the way around the lake, so there was no escape from the masses. in the distance across the lake, the north korean side seemed a lot more peaceful.

october 2003

the food menu at baihe railway station