words from the world

17 hours by train from Guilin to Tunxi, beside the yellow mountains. We only have 3 berth tickets and we thought we could travel together inside the sleeping car. But the inspectors watch out at the entrance of the restaurant car, this one makes the link between the sleeping cars and the normal carriages. And inspectors prevent everybody from going from a kind of carriage to another one. We drop our idea. One of us will travel into a normal carriage trying to find a seat among the crowd and Pierre, the unlucky one, will do it.
We arrive at 5 am and take the station nearest hotel. Outside, minivans commute from the city to the park entrance of the yellow mountains, 1h30 from here. A lot of Chinese tourists arrive by train and directly carry on with the coach journey. When the last seat is engaged, the driver moves off.
At the park entrance, buses leave to reach the both ways (east or west) that lead to the top. Each of them has a cable car which allows to skip the morning and exhausting stairs stage. We opt for the west trail and for going up by cable car despite the impressive 3-hour wait. The yellow mountains massif is the most famous and the most visited in China and we experience that among the turnstile-accumulated crowd. Around 12 o'clock, we take off towards the summits of the massif.
The poets in the pursuit of their lost muse or the painters harnessing the impressions of the secret alchemy between the lifeless rock and pine trees draw their inspiration from these mountains and then spread their works of art throughtout China. At some time of the year, a stratus bed bathes the peaks and complements the symphony of the massif.










The staircases pace the place up and go towards the most majestic peaks. The peculiar shape of the pine trees and their tiered branches pop out and gush out from the rocky heaps. The opposition between the round and smooth lines of the stone and the knotty branches of the trees draw the notes of a symphony. Our eyes mark the rhythm and the cameras immortalize a few great moments. I haven't taken any easel, brushes and gouache tubes but my memory will keep the impressions of this savoury blend of colours.











Like a good movie, you cannot summarize it, you must see it and live it in. Forget the extraordinary wait for the cable car, Clear away the exhaustion of a whole night spent in a overcrowded train, the yellow mountains don't only raise the senses of painters and poets and bring serenity and happiness to anyone who paces them up.