#1: [01-Aug-05]

05-Apr-2006 --

34N – 117E Anhui, China

The last Confluence point of Anhui for the Y-B Group and Company

Our line hunting enterprise in Anhui started in January 19, 2004 33N 115E. After more than a dozen trips to Anhui for work, we managed to visit the 13th and our last point of the province – a span of 27 months. For the most part, we visited one or two points during some of the field trips as a detour to our destination. This model of line hunting can be regarded as the piggy-back approach – adding a hunt or two to spice up the long drive. In contrast, Targ Parsons used a very different model of hunting, and completed all 13 points of Anhui in a span of 10 days during August of 2005! Targ’s model can be regarded as “power hunting”.

The last point and the longest detour

Like most of the previous line hunting trips in Anhui, for this last point, part of the team came from Beijing and met at Hefei airport by the local team. The final destination of our journey was Lixin County (near 33N 116E) and required a 200 km detour to complete the hunt. We budgeted four hours for this detour. Based on the latest map, this confluence point located very near the expressway but the nearest exit is more than 20 km away. We did not expect a complicated approach to this point.

Hour and half to cover the last 25 km

We departed Hefei around 2 pm after an obligatory lunch. The expressway portion of the approach took a little over two hours. After we left the expressway it was rather slow going mainly small and often unpaved road linking village to village. One pleasant finding was an area with rather unusual landscape for Anhui– rocky hills with flowering fruit trees. It took over an hour before we reached Zhuangli township and the point located just slightly outside the town center. We parked 450 meters away from the confluence point and had an easy hike through the field to reach the all zeros point. Indeed the confluence point located about 400 meters east to the main expressway going to northern Jiangsu. We could save almost 3 hours if we had just parked along the expressway and jumped over the fence. We completed the visit in the dusk and started heading to Lixin, and reached there near 9 pm.

Muddy trails – the rule of line hunting in Anhui

A total of 18 hunters participated in the 13 hunts in Anhui with the Y-B Group. This last hunt, we had one brand new hunter – Christina. Only 3 hunters took part in 5 or more of the hunts. Li Wei and Ray were present at both the first and this last hunt. The most remarkable statistics was the fact that more than half, or 7 of the confluence points were visited under very muddy conditions. The mud seems to be present in all four seasons. Thus far, among all the points (over 50) we have visited in other provinces, none were muddy! Somehow, Anhui is a rather muddy province. Other than mud, we had many great moments throughout the 13 hunts. Now, according to Li Wei, we have to invade the neighboring provinces in order to continue this great tradition of making line hunting part of our work in the field.

Rating of this hunt:

Degree of Challenge:1 – Easy to reach by road with 400 meters by foot (1= very easy - drive to the point; to 5= a death march – glad it is over)

Scenery: 2– Farming area with newly planted crops (Scale: 1= not interesting at all; 5= take your breath away)

Culture-social factors: 2– rural central China (Scale: 1=dull; 5= most stimulating)