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Monsters, Mushrooms & Mountain Lakes

Esteemed Environment

For decades Scotland’s Loch Ness has lured hordes of expectant tourists, each hoping to catch a glimpse of the lake’s sup-posed prehistoric inhabitant. Now it appears the elusive Nessie may have oriental cousins. With a mixture of cynicism and childish curiosity, I read about the so-called monster of Changbai Shan National Park’s Heavenly (Tian Chi) Lake, in Northeast China’s Jilin Province. Regular sightings of a creature with “the body of a dinosaur and head of an adult ox,” living contentedly in the azure alpine waters, piqued my interest and provided me with the perfect excuse to check out one of Northeast China’s natural wonders first hand.    

Changbai Shan, meaning “Ever White Mountain,” is China’s largest nature reserve, a collection of craggy peaks encircling Heavenly Lake, which occupies the crater of a long-dormant volcano. Plunging to a maximum depth of 373 metres, one-third of the lake lies inside the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Changbai Shan and its environs are considered sacred by both the Chinese and the Koreans. In Korean the area is known as Paektusan, and the Korean leader Kim Jong Il claims it as his “birthplace.” The Man people (the Manchu), who wrested control of China and established the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), revered Changbai Shan as a holy land and the cradle of the Manchurian people.

Heavenly Lake’s cross-border status demands careful hiking. As recently as 1998, a British tourist was incarcerated for a month for accidentally wandering into Korea across a poorly demarcated international line. While this undoubtedly provided good material for a fascinating, once-in-a-lifetime travelogue, I had no plans to stray too far off the tourist trail. Notwithstanding its hidden dangers, however, Changbai Shan’s rich and varied ecology means that armies of scientists head to the region every year to conduct research, and the reserve was recently included as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Biosphere Protection Zone.

Hardships Endured  

Despite its varied claims to fame, Changbai Shan is not an easy place to get to. After protracted negotiations through a well-connected Chinese third party, I procured two hard-sleeper train tickets to Tonghua, the nearest place to the park with a direct link to Beijing. Having been warned about the perils of travelling to Northeast China in mid-September, which according to different people was either in the middle of a monsoon or about to enter an extended deep freeze, I had packed serious quantities of warm and waterproof clothing. With bulging rucksacks, my friend and I boarded the ten past two to Tonghua, claimed our beds for the next 17 hours, and began to better acquaint ourselves with our neighbours.

The journey to Tonghua was long yet surprisingly relaxing, and we pulled in to the station at the civilized time of seven in the morning. Breakfast is the meal which usually makes me yearn for western food the most in China, and Tonghua’s array of budget restaurants, with their obligatory al fresco towers of steaming jiaozi (Chinese dumplings), did nothing to allay my usual cravings for a frothy cappuccino and freshly baked croissant. However, I’m not a big fan of foreigners who complain about how local fare compares poorly with that back home (not such a problem when you’re English), so I tracked down a sachet of instant Nescafe, ate my youtiao (fried bead stick) in silence, and headed back to the station for the second leg of our train marathon.

After an hour on a local “express,” moving at a pace of such extreme slowness that we were overtaken at one point by an old man on a three-wheel cycle, Chinese Irritable Train Syndrome (CITS) started to hit me. The first signs of this nasty ailment are an inability to find a comfortable seating position, despite severe bodily contortions and regular expletives, and an irrational anger at the dense overhead cloud of cigarette smoke. A tragicomic attempt at cross-cultural communication usually marks the end point, when kindly Chinese passengers seated nearby will repeatedly try out their three words of English at variable speed and volume. Luckily my companion’s Chinese is far superior to mine, resulting in his immediate elevation to near god-like status within the carriage, and constant favourable comparisons with Da Shan (China’s most beloved Canadian Mandarin speaker).

Back to Earth in Baihe

Eight backside-numbing hours later we finally reached the town of Baihe, self-styled “gateway” to Changbai Shan. On disembarking the train I was immediately surrounded by a rowdy bunch of hotel touts, each vying to hold a soiled, laminated picture of their hotel’s most luxurious suite closest to my nose. Fighting the urge to run after the slowly departing train, we selected a hotel at random, walked a hundred metres across a market square, and collapsed in a state of near exhaustion in our newly acquired room. Our lodgings, not surprisingly, differed remarkably from those that our tout had been so desperate to show us earlier.

The sun was low when I ventured out into Baihe for a quick tour of the town and bite to eat. Baihe is renowned for being the only part of China where a species of tall and elegant pine tree called the Meiren Song grows. As the sun dipped it threw a nearby row of these pines into sharp relief, creating beautiful silhouettes etched onto the indigo shades of the cloudless sky. Beckoned by a friendly owner I entered a local eatery and sampled some locally harvested wild mushrooms. Their rich, earthy flavours were sensational, a culinary treat that more than compensated for the unappetizing dishes served up on the train.    

Prelude to an Ascent

Rudely awakened early the following morning by the sound of over-revving engines and the collective clearing of throats, I quickly donned my thermal gear and snacked on jiaozi and green tea. Then it was aboard the shuttle bus for a quick trip through virgin forest to the park entrance.

Swiftly spurning the ranks of four wheel drives on hand for ferrying hordes of baseball-capped tourists, we rounded a bend to encounter a snack shop specializing in hydrothermal cuisine. In a fitting tribute to Chinese ingenuity, warm sulphurous water had been diverted from its natural path to heat crates of eggs and bright yellow corn cobs in a steaming pool. Not wanting to wake the vendor, who was either happily asleep or asphyxiated by the fumes, we moved briskly on.           

Ten minutes of hiking over a jumbled mass of small boulders toward the towering stone ramparts that cup Heavenly Lake, and my heavily perspiring body necessitated a rapid re-think in clothing. A quick glance at the steeply inclined walkway that lay ahead told me that keeping warm wasn’t going to be such a life-threatening problem after all.

Heavenly Landscapes

On that clear September morning Changbai Shan was stunningly beautiful, as the first rays of sun slowly dispelled the low-lying mist. The ochre hues of the surrounding rock faces contrasted exquisitely with the verdant green canopy provided by birch trees lining our route, the darker rocks of the valley floor, and the foaming whiteness of the Erdaobai River flowing from Heavenly Lake above. At the head of the valley, a huge waterfall plummeted down a rock face of nearly 70 metres, creating a nebulous white mist of water droplets as it crashed to the rocks below. This was the source of Jilin’s three great rivers—the Songhua, Tumen and Yalu—which form natural barriers with Russia and Korea. Despite being an avid photographer, I was quickly hypnotized by this awe-inspiring demonstration of raw power, as water that had once resided calmly in the lake remorselessly pounded the glistening boulders at the base of the cascade. I stood there, captivated, for several minutes. 

After ascending a circuitous concrete walkway leading to a lakeside plateau—an unfortunate man-made scar on an otherwise pristine landscape—we emerged a short distance from the lake. While it was still not cold enough to justify my excessive clothing, I could tell from the noticeable drop in temperature that in a month our surrounding environment would be hidden under a blanket of snow. As it was, the intense blue of the sunlit autumnal sky imparted a deep turquoise hue to the surface of Heavenly Lake. Small, wind-whipped waves lapped the shoreline and fluffy cumulus scudded overhead. If there was a monster here, it had certainly chosen an extremely scenic environment in which to defy evolution.

Sporadic gusts of icy wind added to the feeling of remoteness as I took stock of my new surroundings. Here I was in a valley between craggy peaks and crumbling rock walls, even though I felt as though I had climbed a small mountain. The fast-flowing, translucent water of the Erodobai River eddied and flowed through tussocks of lush green grass, taking its leave of the plateau over the lip of the waterfall. The wide valley floor was littered with gnarly, volcanic rocks of varying shapes and sizes, like a giant’s chess set abandoned mid-game. Yet even here, in an elevated wilderness, with nature’s elemental power holding sway, the human hand was evident, as hundreds of man-made miniature rock piles decorated the undulating ground. I picked up a single pebble and added it to the nearest cairn, less as a spiritual tribute than as a sign of my passing.

Despite a small crowd of people at the lake’s edge, our moment of arrival was still something special. Farther down the shingle beach stood Changbai Shan’s very own Nessie, staring fixedly toward Korea, its scaly hide gleaming metallically as children played on its broad back. Up close, Heavenly Lake resembled a vast liquid mirror where clouds came down to bathe, a giant green jewel ringed by towering peaks and serrated ridges straining to pierce the sky. For once, use of the word “heavenly” had been apt. And understated.