Up Nanshan Mountain

     Nanshan is a landmark in our area of Shenzhen.  It's a tree-covered mountain a few miles west of our apartment, visible as soon as we begin walking away from this cluster of high rises.  A few times when I've gotten sort of lost on one of my walks, I've used Nanshan to orient myself.  Today I finally climbed to the top of Nanshan Mountain, taking advantage of favorable weather.  The last two days it's been cloudy and much cooler, in the low 70's.
     My Chinese friend Yan met me here on the plaza at our apartment complex at 10 this morning.  She pedaled up on her bicycle and suggested that we should bike to the mountain and save our walking energy for going up.  That sounds good, I said, but I don't have a bike.  No problem, she said.  I could ride sidesaddle on the rack behind her seat.  Here I thought we'd be taking a bus or a taxi to the mountain--this would be way more exciting and way more Chinese!  I see people here riding two to a bike all the time, three if there's a child.  But it didn't quite seem fair for Yan, hardly 90 lbs.,  to have to pedal my dead weight around.  Again, no problem, she said.  She bikes every day and is used to having someone ride on the back.
     Yan hadn't had breakfast, so the first stop was for dumplings out of a bamboo steamer from one of the  vendors on the street.  She bought 4 dumplings the size of small apples for 4 RMB ($.60) and offered one to me.  I declined because I'd just had my oatmeal, but the veggie one she bit into smelled really good.  I often see people getting dumplings-to-go in little plastic bags like this in the morning.
     We walked the rest of the way to the foot of the mountain, where she locked up her bike in a rack right outside a business place with a big 3M sign.  I just had to point out that this company is based in the city right next to my home--and that this is the company that invented sticky notes, which I know she uses because she gave me her phone number on one!
     There are 5 paths up Nanshan.  The one we picked had winding, well-maintained steps all the way up and plenty of places to stop and rest and admire the views.  The trees and shrubs were gorgeous and seemed to scrub some of the city out of the air.  All the way up we had lots of jovial company, many people on their Golden Week holiday taking advantage of a cool day for the hike.

This was the view looking east from Nanshan Mountain today. (Actually that's redundant because "shan" means mountain in Chinese.)  Peer through the haze and find the forested mound in the middle of the photo.  That's a small mountain near our apartment complex.  Our building is to the right of this low mountain, nearly all the way to the water of Shenzhen Bay.  Leah's school would be  located just off the left side of this photo, near the swath of trees a thumb's width from the bottom of the photo.  It's been hazy most of the time since we arrived in mid-August, sometimes more than this.

We came down the mountain a different way than we went up.  You can just barely see the path we took in the bit of mountain that shows between the two trees in the foreground.  Once at the bottom, we walked by a long strip of what looked like park land.  Several people were getting set up to sell some honey along the way here.  Yan said that she thought there was a small farm somewhere in the trees along this strip and that the honey came from bees at this farm.

After our hike up and down the mountain, our legs felt a little like noodles--so of course we had to go find some noodles for lunch.  Yan suggested a simple Muslim restaurant not far from where we live.   What a coincidence!  Terry and I had stopped for some takeout noodles at this very same shop a few weeks ago, the only time we've been to a restaurant in our neighborhood.  In most Chinese cities it's fairly easy to find noodle shops like this one, run by Muslims who migrate from western China.  Our soup was simple, but delicious.  Halfway through my bowlful, though, I made the mistake of adding a very tiny bit of the spicy red pepper condiment at the table.  The first bite or two was OK, but then my throat suddenly seemed to constrict and I found myself wheezing and gasping for air.  I took my cup of tea, got up and went outside, where I sipped tea and paced in respiratory distress for a couple minutes.  I've never reacted like this to spicy peppers before, and I will not be tempted to dress my food with them in the future.