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Last week I returned from a shoot in Yanshan Village, Anhui Province. I went to a rural school with NGO Shanghai Roots & Shoots to check out a poverty elevation program for an article for this Thursday’s China Daily. Much like the last story I did on this organization, this program was very impressive. More on that shoot later this week.

On my way back from the village, reporter Erik Neilson and I stopped to hang out with the Anhui tourism officials. They told us, we were the first foreign reporters ever sent to Anhui by a Chinese media group (meaning, plenty of Western journalists had been there, but none that worked for Chinese media). To celebrate this momentous occasion they made sure we had a good time by feeding us excessive amounts of food (some of which was a bit hard to stomach) and copious amounts of alcohol (in the form Baijiu and Meijiu) throughout the day, everyday.

While most people wouldn’t think Anhui and tourism are synonymous (its normally known for being poor), the province actually does have a lot to offer. Beyond the famous Huangshan in the Yellow Mountain Range, there are pockets of ancient history throughout the province.

While the quality of the places I was shown ranged dramatically, one place I did like a lot was Sanhe — the ancient city of Hefei.

Walking into Sanhe, you almost feel like you are leaving China and entering medieval Europe. Although the city is certainly a tourist attraction, the residents are still living within the ancient city walls. Most of the streets are too small for cars, and the streets are lined with cobblestone paths. Given the rainy environment, small shops and people drudging around in big boots — the city really feels and looks ancient.

Villagers pride themselves with their sea food which is swimming and slithering in small buckets of water on the sides of the small alleys. At one banquet, the officials insisted that I eat one of their famous mud eels — some type of snakefish that lives in mud. They are black in color, about 10 inches long with a bumpy, slimy and spiny back. The inside of the eel is filled with bones that someone from Sanhe probobly wouldn’t spit out. The rice wine I was being force fed was a true savior to wash this one down. When I say ‘force fed’ it doesn’t necessarily mean someone is holding my head back — however, at these types of meals someone will cheers you about every 1 to 2 minutes. Rather than the entire table cheersing, individuals standup and cheers each other. However, as a foreign guest in this situations, you end up raising your glass very often (another example of this here “Lessons from getting into a drinking match with Mongolian farmers”).

The alleys of Sanhe were measured in entertaining terms — one person, two person or three person alleys. Meaning, how many people can fit side-by-side while walking. One of the one person alleys I was in was small enough I couldn’t keep my umbrella open. The alley in the photo above is a two person alley.

While the tourism officials held my hand from attraction to attraction (through the rain), during lunch with the mayor of Sanhe, I was informed me of an enormous lotus field on the outskirts of the city. However, this wasn’t on the tourism officials – official, list of things to do. In a quick deal with the officials, I agreed to do portraits of the tourism officials, party officials and mayor in the lotus fields, in exchange for getting access to the fields.

And she wasn’t kidding, it was enormous. Hanging out in the rain in a field of lotus just about as far as you can see is pretty neat. Frogs are jumping off lotus leaves and the saturation of the color is extremely vibrant. Some of these leaves and flowers can grow much bigger than your head.

The mayor told me she thought most of these plants were about 3.5 meters tall. The plant itself can get even bigger as Wikipedia tells us:

The plant normally grows up to a height of about 150 cm and a horizontal spread of up to 3 meters, but some unverified reports place the height as high as over 5 meters. The leaves may be as large as 60 cm in diameter, while the showy flowers can be up to 20 cm in diameter.

When we weren’t eating slimey foods and strong alcohals, we spent the rest of the time was visiting historical spots, houses and ruins (see slideshow below).