Next stop after the tulou in Fujian was Xiamen for part an afternoon to catch a sleeper train to the famed Huangshan - Yellow Mountain - in inland Anhui province. Xiamen is a rich coastal city that has been part of China's limited (until the last 30 years) trade with the outside world for hundreds of years. That being the case it's still not a very enthralling place in all honestly and I was glad I wasn't spending much time there. During the afternoon I took the ferry out to Gulangyu Island, just off the coast (well technically Xiamen is an island too, so off the coast of the larger island) and took a bit of a look around. It's an interesting mixture of European style buildings and Chinese style touristy stuff, but it had a pretty nice (and surprisingly clean) beach with probably 10 couples taking wedding photos. Back to the mainland I was shocked and appalled to see such things as tiger's paws and other parts (use your imaginations) openly for sale on the street. In all my travels to China this is the first time I've seen this kind of open exploitation of allegedly Indian tigers (but who knows), but it probably won't be the last.
The train from Xiamen to Huangshan was a long one - overnight + a day on a "four digit" ie slow train. The slowest. The journey of 1000km took around 23 hours but at least I got to sleep. I arrived the evening after I had left and was picked up from the station by the hostel staff and ate and slept pretty much immediately.
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