It hap­pens in any city. Every city. We become so con­sumed in our daily lives and become so cyn­i­cal about peo­ple, pol­lu­tion, pol­i­tics, what­ever. But you know what? Recharg­ing is easy. I learned this past week­end that all it takes is a train ride (and a bot­tle of Mak­ers’ Mark mint julep) to get from this:

and this:

to this:

Boom. Instant recharge.

Zhangji­a­jie (张家界) is a small city in the Hunan province of China, an easy 14-hour night train ride from my GZ home. Our first des­ti­na­tion off the train was a fun, “fan­tas­tic” (as described by the tour com­pany who we con­tacted), raft­ing trip down the MaoYan river.

I don’t have the pic­tures to prove it, but our raft was two banana boats tied together. Yep, I rode that river strad­dling an over-inflated tube. Oh, and instead of pad­dling down­river as I had nat­u­rally assumed a raft­ing trip would require, we were pro­vided with an old weath­ered Hunanese man who, upon review of Barrett’s pho­tos, was wear­ing an old brown sport coat, and sat at the back of the dou­ble banana boat guid­ing us down with a motor strapped to the back.

Despite this com­i­cal out­door adven­ture, and the con­stant, shrill roar of the motor, the scenery was indeed fan­tas­tic, and there were sev­eral tiny rapids that got us wet enough to call it an adventure.

After refu­el­ing with a late lunch, we tack­led the moun­tain. We decided to con­quer Huang­shizhai (黄石寨; yel­low stone moun­tain vil­lage), per­haps the main attrac­tion of the old­est National Park in China– undoubt­edly a must-see within our quick trip. A short but very steep gon­dola ride brought us to the top what seemed like a huge, densely forested rock plateau. A series of con­crete trails pro­vided us an easy DIY tour around count­less scenic points.

Every­where we turned were these mag­nif­i­cent lime­stone giants.

Each scenic point had its own unique (and very Chi­nese) names, like “Five Fin­ger Peak”, or “Six Won­ders Pavil­ion”, “Star Gath­er­ing Stage”,“Remaining Piers of the Heav­enly Bridge”, “Clouds Drift­ing Cave”, or “Golden Tur­tle in the Clouds Sea”. I promise, they sound much more poetic and enchant­ing in Chi­nese. And these pic­tures don’t do them justice.

At the top, in the com­pany of friends, there was no men­tion of other peo­ple, pol­lu­tion, or pol­i­tics. Some­thing to keep in mind as I make myself back at home here in a city of 12 million.

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