Mist opportunity
The cliche is unavoidable: it's like climbing into a work of art; Oriental art to be precise because that's where you've seen this place before. Ginko trees and wizened pines, azaleas and rhododendrons, the seamless hulk of the Purple Peak: it's idealised China brought to life by the whispery hustle of a terraced waterfall and the shouts of stallholders peddling sedan chair rides for those who've bitten off more of the western steps than they can chew. Up ahead, strung along the trail, a necklace of panting tourists trudge ever nearer to the heart of Huang Shan, China's fabled Yellow Mountain.
All we need to complete the archetype are some serene-faced monks - and once upon a time the spiritually inclined would have been a common sight on this iconic slab of southern Anhui province. These slopes played host to Taoist pilgrims, who came in the belief that the region's unique environment presented a perfect balance between the opposing forces of yin and yang. The abundance of chi, or life force, generated by this equilibrium was said to have restorative powers. Mao's Cultural Revolution put an end to all that and the 21st century finds the vibe less reverential. Nowadays, Huang Shan is a Unesco world heritage site welcoming 1.5 million visitors each year, many of them in groups of 200.
A scrimmage of cameras swells into focus through the fog. The tourist paparazzi are taking aim at a particularly asymmetrical conifer with two boughs stretching out to one side like arms going in for a hug. This is the Welcoming Guest Pine, the most famous of the many so-called Huang Shan pines that contort out of every cranny. It could well be the most painted tree on earth, one of countless Huang Shan motifs of Eastern art that have shaped conceptions of rugged China for centuries. Today isn't the best for watercolours, however. Engulfed by the low cloud, the 1,500-year-old celebrity looks more creepy than hospitable: a decrepit spectre cowering from the flashbulbs.
The pandemonium continues at Jade Screen Pavilion, termination point for the cable car that ferries the less energetic up from the forests above the town of Tangkou. It marks the start of the circuit over and around some of the national park's 72 peaks of more than 1,000 metres.
According to legend, it was among this forest of pinnacles around the third millennium BC that the mythical Yellow Emperor, Huang Di , bathed in the hot springs at the base of the western slopes before taking a swig from an elixir of immortality and rising up to heaven. More than likely the founding father of the Han Chinese nation selected the 1,864-metre Lian Hua Feng (Lotus Peak), the range's tallest, as the departure point for his celestial ascent, but there'll be no similar stunts performed today - the authorities have closed the peak to help it recover from the ravages of the tourist hordes.
Starting to resent the all-encompassing clouds, I remind myself that in Huang Shan they're part of the attraction, providing a fluid backdrop that accentuates the ageless stasis of the landscape about which they eddy and swirl. The tiptoe down the sheer staircase known as the Ladder in the Clouds is like descending into a netherworld.
In reality the world at ladder's end is an idyllic one. Beyond Turtle Peak the crowds disperse as the path jackknifes uphill under a shadow of knotted pines, each slab dappled by spokes of light that cut through branches soaked in dew. I'm starting to understand what the Taoists were on about. Compared to the manicured feel of China's urban parks, where things are controlled by shears and pesticides, Huang Shan offers unfettered greenery in a country where natural respite can be hard to find.