A little bit over a week ago I (Outi) went to Huangshan with four Finnish students. Miika stayed in Shanghai to celebrate Labor Day. Huangshan is a town approximately 400 km’s from Shanghai. There is a village called Tangkou really near and we were in a hostel there. Huangshan is famous because of its mountains. The mountains are called Mt. Huangshan. We arrived there on Saturday and it was +30 degrees. We rested the first day because we planned to get up early the next morning. We woke up at 5.00 am. and left to the mountains. It was a very foggy and humid day. We took a scenery elevator to get to a higher place in the mountains. We started climbing and the first goal was to go to the Lotus Peak. Lotus Peak is about 1860 metres high and the stairs there were really small and difficult to climb. It was foggy so we didn’t get very good pictures or see the beautiful scenery from the top. It was still a great feeling to climb there. After that we started walking to the Fairytale Bridge. The bridge was quite small and modest and not worth walking several kilometres for. We had to turn back from the bridge because there was no other route. Then it started raining and it rained the whole day. Luckily we had equipment for that kind of weather. We walked around the mountains and the last challenge was 6,5 kilometres of stairs downhill. It was really hard for our legs. When we reached the exit, I was really happy. It was a quite hard walk. We walked over 15 kilometres and took 20000 steps during that day so you can say we were a bit tired. I think my legs are still sore from that trip… The next day we went to hot springs and spent the day resting and relaxing. The hot springs were nice – there were different kinds of springs, for example a red wine spring and a green tea spring. On Tuesday we left to Shanghai with sore legs and nice memories. Totally worth the pain!

I (Miika) spent my Labor Day in a Finnish way – hanging out with friends and drinking. The Chinese spent their Labor Day with family at home. They don’t actually celebrate like Finns. We went to a restaurant and ate well and then we went to a bunch of night clubs. We also went to a park and spent time there with other Finnish students. The night was really nice and warm and we had a good time. It wasn’t the same thing to celebrate Labor Day here than in Finland. There was no “sima” or donuts. I think that the Finnish Labor Day is more cheerful than here. The Chinese don’t use any graduation hats here. Shanghai seemed so peaceful because everyone was home celebrating or had travelled away from the city.