Xidi and Hongcun, Huangshan Town

Every journey, every adventure has its own exciting and unique story – interesting, dangerous, frightening, funny, incidents which bring tears to your eyes, etc.

Here was what happened on the night when we were supposed to travel by train to Huangshan town.

On the way to the railway station, the person who was keeping all our train tickets realised that she had lost all the tickets! We could not purchase new tickets because it was sold out, except for ‘standing’ ones. We were not prepared to stand all the way and through the night! And there was no long-distance night bus. We had no choice but to look for alternative.

Fortunately we managed to get hold of the van driver whom we hired for the day to help us get a van for us. He did. But did we realise what we were exposing ourselves to – nine ladies in a foreign land, on the deserted highway at night? We did not have time to worry too much at that time. Anyway, the van driver and co-driver came and we were on the way…

As we journeyed along, much as we tried not to sleep in order to keep guard on what was going on, tiredness overpowered us and we all fell asleep. Each time the driver stopped at the toll, some of us would wake up only to find the driver take out the map and ask the toll-tellers – which way to Huangshan? (Well, he commutes only within Suzhou and he was not familiar with places beyond that.) In the zombie state, I must have said a silent prayer (and perhaps my fellow travellers too) – God, has mercy on us and that we would arrive at our destination safely!

And much as we avoided a toilet stop, we could not help it sometimes and in the middle of the ‘wilderness’ and the night, nine ladies went off to the toilets at petrol stations. No single other person was in sight except the nine of us and the two drivers!

We were thankful that we arrived at Huangshan town safely.

Xidi(西递) (below)






Hongcun (宏村) (below)





Tunxi Laojie (old street) (屯溪老街) (below)