My New Favorite Place in Town

My new favorite place in (or maybe just very near) Fenghua is a park on the western edge of town, the entrance of which is about a mile from my door. At night you can easily see a radio tower stung with lights that stands at the top of a steep hill, it kinda reminds me of the Eiffel Tower. The steep base of the hill is precisely where the city stops and the fauna starts. The terrain here is very flat, like the Mississippi delta, and the hills are generally abrupt and very steep. The park is covered in trees with the exception of an old mansion and a couple of old style gazebos. Though it’s not a long run it is still quite a challenge to make it to the top without stopping. It took me a few tries to find my way up through the maze of paths, up the endless stairs. On the far side of the park is a saddle where I usually continue my run by climbing over a wall to get on another trail up long ridge traveling north.

The first photos is from the park looking up the ridge, the second is a photo from part of the way up the hill on the far side of the park looking down on the park and the city. While I’m aware that this isn’t the most beautiful spot around I was thrilled to find a place so close to town, where I can so quickly be away from everyone, get some fresh air and a real challenge.

The trail up the ridge was probably first made by porters carrying the components for power line towers up the ridge. The second time I ran in the park was early in the morning and I found out why the trail looked so worn, when, during my previous trip in the afternoon I hadn’t seen anyone else there. From before dawn until after 7:15, the latest I’ve been there in the morning, it is swarming with old people. They are walking quickly and pacing about, doing high kicks, taichee, stretching etc. Every low wall in the park had a few people with one heel propped up on it stretching their hamstrings. They’re considerate and it was very different from the dreaded hoards of school children I occasionally encounter, I’ve since learned to avoid the schools. I didn’t see anyone there I would guess was younger than 40, and everyone was polite. On another trip in the afternoon a group of five or so adolescent children followed me around as I tried to figure out the trail systems (they don’t go in straight lines, otherwise I would’ve only seen them once) screaming to each other and yelling “lao wai” pointing and generally loudly trailing me. I had been trying to discreetly loose them, but I finally made a deliberate turn to them and said, “please be quiet/peaceful", using a phrase I hadn't used before. If that hadn't worked, I was ready to say “scram”, but they, without any indication of being insulted said okay and stopped following me. It was suprisingly effective and seemingly polite.

From the ridge you can get a great panorama of town, I’ve discovered a running track, and some roads I previously didn’t know existed.

I marked North, South, my apartment and the top of my company about 10km away behind some small hills, but I think photobucket downsampled the image too much to clearly see the marks. It still might give you an idea of what Fenghua looks like. My apartment is in the white building close to the center of the photo in front of the very tall, dark building. The end of my apartments, I noticed from here, look like big upside down U's.

This is the sunset from one of the points on the ridge. The trail is very rocky and steep, but has been cleared enough to offer a great view during the entire traverse. If you look closely, though maybe the down sampling from photobucket obscures it, you may see two spires on the horizon in the right center of the photo. I saw these on my attempt to ride to Xikou, but from the other side and have been trying to figure out how to get there ever since. I was very interested to notice this from the other side. It’s tough to keep your bearings of these features when w/o a map. It is quite distinct, and I’m really looking forward to climbing there.

This bare rock section of the ridge requires quite a steep hike to reach abut there were still four others at different points, chatting, stretching and meditating alone on my first morning run along it. I use run loosely here. When I first moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas I had a running goal of making it all the way up Mt. Sequoia without stopping. That’s my goal for this ridge, but I think it’s going to be a while. From an athletic standpoint it’s great to have places like this, especially when I don’t have anyone to run with to challenge me, because trying to get up this hill is guaranteed to put me in the 90% zone any day.

I later noticed from in the valley through which I view the sunset that the far side of the ridge is steeper than I thought having many bare rock faces and boulders. I'll be posting photos of that later this weekend.

This morning while running to the park I took a road up that I don't usually use, I think it's a service road, but let's me get into the park faster. All the lights in the park, including the tower, were off, it was still quite dark, but the usual older crowd was already there and grounds keepers were out. A set of double doors in a concrete wall I had never noticed next to the road were open. Because of the stark contrast between the early morning darkness the light from a square tunnel was quite noticable. The tunnel about 5' tall and wide had been cut into the rock straight into the base of the hill. It slowly curved out of sight about 80' away. I would have gone and looked around, but a man was sleeping on a cot just inside the door and my coworker, who I met for the hike up the hill wasn't interested in going in. I'll have to take a picture next time. Now that I've found cool places to run and bike, stopping to take pictures of all the cool sights seems to be my biggest slowdown. I asked her what it was used for and she said it was for safety from fires, but I suspect it was a bomb shelter, maybe that was just lost in translation.