29-May-2004 -- 35 N – 114 E Henan, China

Visit Date: May 29, 2004

This is the first confluence visit of Henan Province.

Henan is the heart of China with nearly 100 million people. It is known as the general area were Chinese culture developed.

The hunting party made of Ray Yip of the Yip-Bannicq Group, Button Zhao, Vincent Wu, and Zhang Baolin from Beijing.

This particular point is the closest point from Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan, about 25 km away.

After a busy working day in Southern part of Henan and we end up in Zhengzhou half a day ahead of our original schedule. Our drive to Beijing is about 650 km and the extra half day made it feasible for a small detour for a line hunting.

Instead of overnight in Zhengzhou, we took a leisure drive crossing the yellow river to the county town of Yuan Yang. This put us 6 km from the confluence point.

Saturday morning we started off early, and the right roads leading to the point was pretty easy to figure out. The last part of the drive was on the outer bank alone the yellow river flood control area. There are vast track of farm lands and many villages within the flood containing bank of the yellow river.

The confluence point is located near a village name Da Xi about 1 km from the river bank. We were able to drive to the end of village and this put us about 330 meters from the point.

We reached the confluence point by 7.30 am in a wheat field which was harvested recently.

After a short visit with villagers who are busy harvesting wheat, we started heading toward the main highway at 8 am.

Maybe we have time from line hunting on our way back to Beijing.

Rating of this hunt:

Degree of Challenge: 1 – straight forward drive to 330 meters from the point (Scale: 1= very easy - drive to the point; to 5= a death march – glad it is over)

Scenery: 3 – classic central China village by the yellow river in the middle of harvest (Scale: 1= not interesting at all; 5= take your breath away)

Culture-social factors: 3– rural agriculture communities in the heart of the middle kingdom (Scale: 1=dull; 5= most stimulating)