Our journey to the Yellow Mountains started at Shanghai East Rail Station—the same station we’d arrived at that morning.
Hundreds of travelers waited for the escalators, which crisscrossed between three levels of platforms.
Beside them, an empty stairway climbed toward the departures’ hall.
We looked at it.
Then at each other.
Then we got in line.
Above us, the corridors all looked the same: people, signs, stairways, another corridor beyond that.
Dani checked the departure board.
“There. Huangshan. Track 47. Ten minutes.”
We scurried across the station and collapsed into the waiting-room seats.
We were out of breath and out of time.
Cold air blew in from the tracks. The waiting room smelled of instant noodles and something fried. A family beside us was asleep across three seats, a child draped over her father’s lap.
Cold air blew in from the tracks. The station was warm.
Dani leaned back and closed her eyes.
“Are you ready for another adventure?”
I pulled out the guidebook.
“Okay.”
I found the page.
“Inundated with tourist traffic.”
“Rains two hundred days a year.”
“Dizzying entrance fees.”
I turned the page.
“Endless stairs.”
Dani opened one eye.
I found the next line.
“The hard way up, or the harder way.”
She laughed.
“Seems like a lot of effort for mountain air.”
A rumble grew beneath our feet.
“Yeah. We just have to get there first. But tomorrow night, we can watch the sun set over the Cloud Sea.”
Dani looked down the platform.
“Do we have to? I mean, we don’t even have maps for half the legs”
I shrugged.
“What do you want to do then?”
She didn’t answer.
The train arrived, screeching to a stop, and opening its doors.
“What do you want to—”
Her head turned slowly to look at me.
Her eyes looked … hopeful.
She was looking past the train. Past the platform. At the city still visible through the station’s far windows — familiar streets, the hotel we’d just left, the dumplings we’d found that morning.
Then I saw it too.
“Oh …”
We picked up our bags as doors began to close.
By the time the train pulled away, we were already halfway across the lobby, heading back into the city to find a hotel.
One problem, the Fish Hotel couldn’t take us.
Our reservation didn’t begin for another three days, and on this Saturday night every room was full.
The receptionist apologized, then offered us a room for the following night at nearly three times the price we’d paid.
I showed her our reservation confirmation.
She looked at the screen, then at me.
It didn’t help.
We stepped back into the cold with our backpacks still on.
Shoppers carried umbrellas. Bright storefronts and neon signs rose on both sides, their colors reflected across the pavement.
We’d been awake since before dawn. Every step hurt.
We kept moving.
A few blocks away, we stopped beneath a tall building whose neon facade advertised several hotels.
Surely one of them had a room.
The woman at the ground-floor desk shook her head.
We turned to leave.
“Seven.”
The security guard pointed toward the elevator.
We hesitated.
He repeated himself, stepped inside, and pressed the button.
The seventh floor was a youth hostel.
“No beds.”
The clerk sent us to another hotel on the fifth floor.
“No beds.”
They sent us down to a budget hotel occupying part of the fourth. Our bags had never felt heavier despite the short walk.
The receptionist checked her computer.
She paused, then nodded.
One room.
No window.
Walls thin enough to hear everything beyond them.
The shower stayed hot.
The bed was wide enough that we could turn over without waking each other.
At night, the room became completely dark. In the morning, it stayed dark enough to sleep.
We had planned to move to the Fish Hotel two nights later.
We didn’t.