Shanghai Surprises: Moganshan

I know it's been a LONG time since I've posted but at least I have a good excuse. The Chinese government has blocked blogger.com, as well as facebook, twitter, and youtube to name a few. So, it makes it extremely difficult and time consuming for me to update my blog. For now, we seem to have found a way around it so I'll try to do as many updates in the next few days as I can.
We recently celebrated a week long holiday here in China, collectively known as "golden week" or October holiday. It's China national day (kind of like our 4th of July) and moon festival all rolled up into one long party week. Since the government is still making stupid rules about H1N1, they decreed that any child leaving the country for this holiday had to stay out of school for an additional 7 days to prevent the spread of swine flu. And yet, it seemed to be OK if you stayed in China and exposed your kid to the massive crowds of people here in town- whatever. We decided to stay in the area and take a roadtrip to a mountain town about 3 hours west of Shanghai. My general rule of thumb is not to go anywhere near Chinese tourist areas during national holidays (see very early post about the crowds in Hangzhou, 2007) but the town of Moganshan is not well known even to the domestic tourists. It is, however, growing in fame and popularity with the expats in Shanghai since the book "China Cuckoo" was published. In a nutshell, a British guy came to China in the late 90s and started up one of the first english language magazines in town. After a very successful run, the government came in and took it all away from him without offering him a penny. So, instead of leaving China, he moved himself and family to the small village of Moganshan- known for it's bamboo forests and clean air- but especially known for the beautiful old villas that were built there in the early 1900's by Shanghai's wealthy expats and locals looking for a summer getaway to escape the heat. During World War 2, the villas were abandoned and fell into disrepair. Anyway, this British guy moved to Moganshan, opened up a little coffee shop and wrote a book about his experiences.

We thought this would be a great vacation for the kids, lots of places to explore and run around, but it turns out our kids don't really like to hike so we ended up carrying them around in our backpacks most of the time. Overall, it was still fun although the town was very "local". Meaning, they don't have too many restaurants with english menus (two chinese places and one western by our count) and other than The Lodge (the coffee shop started by the British guy that left Shanghai), nobody speaks any english. Oh well- that's part of the adventure. One night, the Chinese family dining next to us ordered snake. That's not that unusual in Chinese restaurants but I've never actually seen them kill the snake before- until now. The owner of the restaurant brought out a big snake, proceeded to use a pair of garden shears to cut it's head off and drain the blood on the stairs next to the restaurant, and throw it's wriggling, headless body into a pail where they dumped boiling water over it. In front of our kids. Nice. See video at the end of the blog for proof of this episode. I was sure it wasn't a poisonous snake but that was a wrong assumption as it turned out to be one of the most deadly snakes in China- the 5 step. If it bites you, you can take 5 steps before you fall down dead. And yet, after two years in China, we just laugh about it and take it all in as part of the experience of living here. Now, who's up for a visit??

The old Assembly Hall- this is where the expats held their gatherings and Christmas pageants in the 1920's. Now it sits vacant and decaying in the forest.

House 23- a restored villa, now a bed and breakfast (also owned by the guy who wrote the China Cuckoo book).

A local woman laments to us about how tough life is in Moganshan. "Yes, the air is good, but life is hard here" she said. No kidding- she's carrying water back to her home since her house has no plumbing.

A quintessential scene- Audrey having a fit, a Chinese man and his child staring at the white kid which they have probably never been this close to before, the owner of the restaurant smoking a cigarette which is about to ash on me while he explains the menu.

On one of our hikes in the bamboo forest, we came upon several workers cutting bamboo to make brooms.

One of the bamboo cutters smiling at the foreigners.

Our hike to the tea plantation and our steaming glasses of fresh green tea- it was delicious!

The view from the tea plantation.

A typical mountain view.

G & A admiring a myna bird. By the way, this was taken at a restaurant and the kids were pretty much standing in the kitchen (there was a dead chicken waiting to be plucked just off to the side of the picture).