the strength of the chinese people

i spent the last 2 grueling days climbing huang shan (yellow mountain) with 2 new wonderful chinese friends. for background, huang shan is one of the 5 famous mountains in china, and quite heavily visited. the entire mountain consists of miles and miles of STAIRS that go up and down and up and down. some parts are extremely steep! i will never think about stairs in the same way again. for me, it was challenging, so i was amazed at some of the people i saw climbing the mountain just the same as i was.

this little girl's father carried her down into a canyon, one of the hardest portions of the hike. i don't know how he did it, and why he didn't have some kind of thing to strap her on his back. it seemed to be a pride thing, but to me it was also very dangerous. i guess one day, she can tell people that that's how she first climbed huang shan.
so many little kids were climbing up the mountain. some of them were fine, some were crying, and some, like this boy, were screaming to their mother that they were scared!

there are a few hotels on the mountain with restaurants so food needs to be brought up. well, what better way than to get some poor old men to carry them up in the most antiquated way possible? they were so out of breath. i can't even imagine, it's hard enough just getting yourself up the stairs.

i can not believe this old lady was climbing the mountain. her daughter was helping her all the way down and they were moving pretty slowly, but still...she would have had to have done a lot of walking to get to the point she was at. what strength!


they had these chairs here for anyone who wanted to pay to be carried up the mountain. as you can see, the guys are not very busy- the first guy is even asleep! during my hike i did not see one person using this service.

so just a few of the people i saw on the way up and down