Merrell/Chong Family travels: China without the crowds

We ended up spending 3 nights in the village of Miaoqian at the base of Moganshan mountain. Although the area gets thousands of tourists during other seasons, especially summer, it was essentially deserted for us. The big snow storm probably helped. I know we were the only guests at our guest house but I'm pretty sure we were the only tourists in our entire valley. Moganshan town or some of the resorts on top of the mountain might have had some guests but we didn't come across any during our hikes. Essentially we could just start out walking down a road or snow covered trail from our resort and see what we found. In some cases we walked from one village to the next. In others we just walked up into the bamboo forest. On one trek Margaret brought along a plastic take out container she had saved from Huzhou. We ended up using it to mold bricks and build what might be the first igloo ever built in the bamboo forests of southern China. The forests were amazing. At one point we climbed to the top of a nearby ridge and it was clear that the bamboo went for miles. I think I know now where the truffula trees from Dr. Seuss's Lorax came from. Bamboo has the same jointed appearance to the trunk and the same wispy tops. Only the colors are Seussian. In one village we walked through the locals had sculpted a dragon and what we think was a pig out of snow. In another we found a little black puppy who followed us for a while. The kids named him "Vader." We went back the next day to play with him again but he wasn't around. In other villages we saw meat drying in the sun or met a shepherd clearing snow from an area so his sheep could graze

The staff of "Cloud Mirror" took great care of us. Like I said there was some sort of arrangement where our rooms were covered by the money we had already paid to Agoda for "Unique Resort". They fed us for 3 days, breakfast and dinner. Breakfast was usually 2 or 3 courses and included really good noodles. Dinner was usually 4 courses and was gourmet quality and included vegetables(bok choy, sweet potatoes, cauliflower) harvested from under the snow in their garden. We skipped lunch every day because we were too full and usually out walking. At the end our total bill for 4 of us for all those meals came to less than $150.