Mount Sanqingshan [三清山]
Mount Sanqingshan [三清山] is a very special mountain located at the north part of Jiangxi province, roughly 200km away from the much more famous Huangshan [黄山] mountain in Anhui province. At the end of March, Max, Miles and I travelled together to visit this mountain for the first time. We took the train to the Quzhou [衢州] station, and rent a car from there. Luckly we were helped by a friend of Helen’s father for having a big Buick car instead of the tiny and unreliable Santana that we were supposed to rent…
The road from Quzhou to the Sanqingshan scenic area isn’t far, about 100km only, but serpented around a few mountains and getting there by the rainy dark night wasn’t exactly relaxing, but we got there safely and on schedule, despite my first time driving in China! We stayed at a hotel just underneath the cable-car entrance, so we were able to get there very easily and early at the next morning.
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The cable-car took us to the middle height of the mountain, it was a thick foggy day. Then we started climbing the stair, which is neatly built and maintained, making the matter much easier than I’ve expected. I brought a tripod and big lens (70-200mm F/2.8L IS) beside my regular camera 5D Mark II and the 24-70mm F/2.8L lens. I’m glad to have two healthy colleagues with me to carry the extra equipment in rotation. An hour later we were able to get to the point of pretty scenic view but the omnipresent thick fog simply hide everything of 50m away from us!
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Following the excellent open walk way like a long balcony literally hung at the middle of the mountain, we walked and walked and walked, then suddenly the fog cleared away, showing the tip of a far away mountain. By the time I took the camera out of the bag and powered it on, the fog had already gotten off half of the mountain, fabulous and astounding are just too mild to describe the feeling of seeing such wonderful natural view, and such “fog play” at such amazing speed. After about 5 shots the fog started to cover up the mountain again, and before I had time to find another angle (or get away from the tourists who insisted to be shot together with the view) the fog had already covered up the mountain entirely, then we were back to the same thick white view everywhere again…
Walking another 15 minutes we got another “fog play” at another place, we learned to be very quick and decisive. No more waste of time framing and adjusting camera settings, just clack click clack and move on to another angle! We got about 2 hours of luck that day. After that it started to rain badly, and we were hungry, and tired, and legs hurt, wet, geez, it was truely painful by moments… But whenever the fog cleared out and show some mountain, we instantly forgot about the pain and immediately got into action.
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In overall, it was a truely memorable day seeing such wonder of this land, it reminds us of how this world is filled with little wonders in every corner of Earth to be discovered.
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