Meeting Amy started a special something in my life.
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The test of whether I was a good guy began a few weeks later, without my knowledge whatsoever. For the May holiday week, the 2 of us jumped aboard a southbound train for a mountain retreat in Anhui province. 
Visiting locations of several gorgeous scenes from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon certainly excited us. Also the ancient villages we stayed in, were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in late 2000, the same period when the film was released. I have to admit I was more than a little surprised to find the name of the first place we visited, is Lovers’ Valley.
Here, everyone is surrounded by it, drenched in it, soaked in it. Love is everywhere
It’s not only written in the gardens but also painted on the rock floor – of course in red, the Chinese colour for love!
But wait, there’s more! Not only chock-a-block full of love, the valley also has gorgeous waterfalls, a sea of bamboo, and a free show of the sky high trapeze trio!
We’d spent such a long time in Lovers’ Valley that the third destination for the day had to be cancelled. Onto the second place we visited, The Phoenix Source. Since the main Chinese symbol of womanhood is the phoenix (whereas the dragon is the male counterpart) this relentless gushing could easily be thought of as an ongoing re-birth origin of water. A day in China inevitably involves that water turning to tea.
An insanely early wake-up time lead us to a just-as-crazy queue for the gondola. Worth the wait though, the Cloud Valley Temple cable car hoisted us up the Eastern Steps in just a few minutes and with spectacular views the whole way. And here we are among the heights of Huángshān 黄山.
Despite being on a rather populated summit, we discovered a phenomenon whereby we would ask others to take a photo of us, males would pan the camera until Amy is almost out of the frame and I would appear as the main feature – not what either of us really wanted. (Often we would resort to simply taking the shot ourselves.)
Cruising around from summit to summit, the stairways were so narrow, high and precarious, we were crouching and clasping on to safety rails, full of fear. From Brightness Top (1840m) we walked past the Turtle Carrying Gold Turtle and climbed up the Ladder On The Clouds to Lotus Peak (1864m), then steeply down to the narrow brink of the Jade Screen viewing balcony and finally down through a cave to the Standing Horse Bridge.
Despite being carried all the way up, Amy and I still found it rather tiring to only descend so many stairs. The next few days were spent stumbling around on tender calves and aching Achilles’.
