Mogan shan (莫干山)

Today we took a day trip from Hangzhou to Mogan shan. It was really awesome.

Getting there turned out to be a lot harder than expected. Dou Xiao (in HR) sends out a monthly newsletter to the foreign interns about what to do around Hangzhou. Her directions to Mogan shan were pretty simple: take a bus from the bus station in Hangzhou. hahaha. Well, we decided to just take a taxi to the station which was actually on the other side of the city. Then we had to take the bus to another city near Mogan Mountain, take a short $1 USD taxi ride to a minibus, and then bus up to the mountain.

Once we got there we got a ride up by another little taxi, and then started exploring! : D

Right away it seemed pretty cool. Mogan shan used to be a kind of summer getaway for rich chinese. Some notable Chinese who had homes there include Chiang Kai-Shek, and Mao Tze Dong. Mogan shan is a great place to cool off due to it's high altitude.

I have no idea whose home this actually was, so let's just assume that this was Mao Tze Dong's summer retreat.

We had heard about the bamboo forests and were very impressed by them. They're really a lot of fun. If I had drum sticks I could have made some nice music with them. They're also very flexible so when you shake them as hard as you can the entire tree bends quite a lot. 

Joerg (my roommate) and I were thrilled when we found the path leading to beautiful waterfalls and pools of water. A little ways further we found that the paths ended, but continued on a little dirt trail that went along the river crossing back and forth, much like the the PCC falls hike in laie. 

Although quite cold, Mogan shan was an awesome place to visit. In the newsletter from Dou Xiao she actually said right in the beginning that "Hundreds of springs and waterfalls make Mogan Mountain the best place to escape the summer heat." Hahaha. She sent this in the February newsletter! So we were laughing the whole time about how we got to "escape the summer heat." haha : D

Well, I haven't been doing a good job blogging about my internship, so I'll just say that it's really awesome and I've had the opportunity to make some videos for training and for a dealer conference, help with testing new products, and been having fun meeting new people here in China.