Bingyu Valley

Yesterday, Saturday, we took a trip to a place called the Bingyu Valley. It was about 2 1/2 hours away by bus, so we left Dalian at 7:30am. This meant we had to leave our house at 6am to make sure we were at the station at 7:10. The bus we took to the Bingyu bus was jam packed. We call this bus Ernie, because another bus we take is called the BRT or Bert. Bert and Ernie take us almost anywhere we need to go in Dalian, only Ernie is usually more crowded and for some reason the drivers can't shift gears without sending everyone flying forward or backward. not too fun when there's 85 people in a bus with 35 seats.
Anyway, the ride to Bingyu Valley was nice. Got some beautiful agricultural scenery with peasant farms and housing. Nice to get some more rural exposure. We stopped at a "restroom" stop, which consisted of a wall near the highway. Then we stopped for lunch, at 10:30am, in a random little town where everyone on the bus was served a traditional Chinese lunch. Fish, chicken, veggies, rice, soup, and nothing to drink. There was a man outside selling some very interesting roots and other sorts of healing herbs, not those herbs. Oh yes, and during the latter part of our bus ride we were told the entire history of the Bingyu Valley by our tour guide!!! incredible story.. oh wait, it was all in Chinese and we didn't understand a thing. so we listened to music. Our friend Harry said something about dragons living in the park. neat.
The park is basically Karst rock formations with a river running through it. The brochures say it is "as exquisite as the scenery in Guilin" and a "fabulous choice for a weekend getaway." Well, it was a great choice, but from what we've heard Guilin (south China, where The Painted Veil was filmed) is much more spectacular. hopefully we can go there on our next break. We were given a 3 hour free time during the tour and Amanda and I went for a beautiful hike up steep stairs to the top of one of the karst formations. On top was a Chinese style gazebo (best comparison I can think of). The view was great, the hike was exhausting, and the trail kept going. We decided that rather than go back down the way we came up we would see if the trail ended up near where we were supposed to meet. A risky gamble considering that we only had so much time, and if we were wrong we would have to return. We took the risk and immediately the trail plunged straight down the side of the mountain, some of the steepest steps I've seen! (sort of like the Lord of the Rings trail that Gollum takes sam and frodo on....nerd reference.) we got to the bottom very quickly and ended up in a clearing with a bunch of horses tied to trees. 5 or 6 Chinese men dressed in army fatigues stood in the distance.oh crap. we cautiously approached them and one of them gestured for us to ride one of the horses. we realized it was a horse riding tour place and not a secret high altitude off limits to foreigners military base (with an outdated calvary). whew! we pointed to our watches to indicate we didn't have enough time and continued on to meet up with Harry, Josh and Ashley. We met them at the edge of the river where there was basically a cheesy little theme park styled approach to crossing the river. We've come to realize that China loves spoiling beautiful scenery and views with cheesy little plastic sculptures of animals or carnival like games. there was seriously a place to shoot darts at balloons for 1 of 2 remaining stuffed animals in the middle of this beautiful outdoor park. Imagine that halfway up the trail to half dome!! oh well. they'll learn, hopefully.
So, we had about 6 different options to cost the river, all ranging in price from 1-10 yuan. There was a zipline, a tight rope, innertube boats, a path (for the feint of heart), a rolling ball, and two suspension bridges. I chose a suspension bridge and the others all decided to do the tight rope. Pretty fun, and ridiculous. INteresting way to end our trip in the Bingyu Valley. All in all it was a fun trip, with beautiful scenery and we just may return sometime. It looked the trees were just about to turn color, so it may be worthwhile to head back in a month or so.

for more pics of our trip follow the link at the top right of the page under Pics and Videos titled Bingyu Valley. Thanks for reading!!!