Foiled again:

There are Five Famous Mountains in China, storied in song, and the nearest one, Eternally White Mountain, is only 5 hours away- tantalizingly close. From all accounts I heard, now is the best time to see the mountain, and if I were to wait any longer, I run the risk of running into winter. So after a couple foiled attempts to arrange passage to the storied mountain, my incredibly sacrificial and generous friend ChunHua gave up some of her precious weekend to get up at 3 am and arrange for big-nose me to go to the mountain. A new friend, Josh Kwan, a journalist doing a piece on Chinese Koreans hitched up with us (even though he had already been to the mountain) for the long ride. The lake is spectacularly gorgeous, with steep mountains, crashing down into the crystal azure waters of the crater lake, verdant beaches sweeping around the azure pool of blue, the stalwart rampart of North Korea on the other side of the lake. The fluffy clouds reflect in the water like a mirror as you look down on the lake from the crater rim, some 1,000 ft above the lake.

Unfortunately, all I saw was this:

Yes it was pouring rain, and frigidly cold, and the visibility was about 10 meters. So I had a 5 hour long bus ride, got completely soaked and freezing, basically for nothing. Yet I still had a great time- it was really fun talking to Chunhua and josh, seeing the foggy countryside of China, seeing beech and tamarack forests at the peak of autumn colors, and even seeing a waterfall in the mist.

Although my plan to gaze at yet another “axis of evil” power (I viewed Iran from Armenia in June) was foiled, and the most beautiful lake eluded my view, well I still got to eat corn cooked in a hot spring, see real mountains, drive up a windy road, try lots of fun foods, and spend some good quality time with ChunHua and Josh. We topped it off by eating some AMAZING bulgogi (a Korean BBQ kind of thing, eaten inside of lettuce leaves with chili bean paste and rice) and noodles. My stomach was a bit upset, perhaps from the donkey dumplings I had the night before, but the long day, despite the rain, the crazily loud and horrible Chinese variety shows inflicted on us unmercifully on the zigzaggy bus ride, turned out to be all-in-all a pretty good one. Sometimes my foiled plans, turn out to be OK after all… (as per the very first entry on this blog)

You can see more pictures of Changbaishan at my Flickr page