This weekend we ventured to Taishan, one of China's most famous mountains. Famous for what? I don't really know except that it probably has to do with Confucius (as it has the highest Confucius temple in China).
We (Natalie, Stephen, Matt, Matt's Chinese roommate, Chen laoshi (our teacher), her roommate, her roommate's boss, and I... phew) left Beijing at about 11:30pm on a train headed for Taishan. All of the sleepers and "soft" seats were sold out, so we were relegated to buy $10US "hard seats". Which, well, lived up to their name. After 7.5hrs on the most uncomfortable ride of our lives (one bench sat 3 people, but since the Chinese are Chinese, some sat 4 people), we welcomed the 7:00am wake-up call to get off that God-forsaken train!
When we arrived, we were greeted by a tourguide and a van who took us straight to a hotel. At the hotel we were met by a man who was nice and genial and treated all of us to a big Chinese breakfast. Why was he doing this? Why did we have a tourguide and van waiting for us? Well at the time, none of us really knew, until later when my teacher finally told us that her roommate works for an advertising firm and this was a business relationship.
Anyways, so then we headed to the base of the mountain. We arrived at about 9am and immediately started hiking. By hiking, I mean we climbed a lot of stairs. In the beginning the hike was a gradual incline, but towards the end, it turned out to be pretty vertical. 3 hours later we hit the "Middle gate." We were only half way there and already really pooped!
I don't know if you can see a little speck of a red arrow in the center of the picture. Yes, that is our destination from the MIDDLE GATE.
After a long lunch at middle camp, all of us except for Stephen and Matt's roommate decided to take a gondola thing up to the top... Thank God!
The second half of the hike would have had 4x as many stairs and was 100% vertical. I think we could have done it, but none of us were in the mood to after the horrible train trip. Needless to say, Stepehen and the roommate only took 1 HOUR to get to the top, whereas the average is about 2.5-3 HOURS. I couldnt believe it!
A view from the top:
The top of the mountain had its own little town filled with restaurants, shops to buy stuff, and tea houses. There were also a lot of little temples and scenic points scattered here and there, none of which we visited because we were too tired.
Sunset:
We also rented a hotel at the top. Let's just say that we got what we paid for. It was about a 20minute walk (UP STAIRS) to one of the highest points on the mountain. Our rooms were very crude and we had a toilet/shower combination. The toilet required us to throw water down the hole in the floor in order to semi-flush. Not pretty. Needless to say, we refused to take showers there.
The northern most building in this picture is our hotel:
The climate on the top was really odd. In the late afternoon, it was still relatively warm, yet we had a cool breeze. At one point I really felt like I was in Monterrey or near a beach in California. It really made me miss that kind of enviroment, but at the sametime invoked a deep sense of respect for this kind of mountain scenery, seemingly protected from pollution that so often plagues Chinese cities. I also realized that not many places in the States can match China's natural beauty.
That night we were in bed by 8:30 (of course, not until after we did a little impromptu star gazing) because we had to be out of the hotel by 5am in order to catch the sunrise. I wish our pictures did the sunrise justice, but well, it was beautiful. I don't think I've ever really watched a sunrise in my life. It's amazing how the sun just pops up little by little. That day I promised it would not be my last.
We then descended the mountain by gondola and bus (still with our tourguide on our trail). At the bottom of the mountain we were left with this view:
Note, that you can't even see Taishan. It's behind those mountains. Despite only hiking half of the way, we managed to go a pretty far distance.
At the bottom there were 2 vans waiting for us with more of my teacher's roommate's business accomplices. They took us out to lunch (on the menu was the region's famous Lamb soup (SOOOOO GOOD). The soup was good, until the chef brought in a platter full of 50 or so LAMB EYEBALLS. My teacher told him "Nooo!! Don't put into too many, just two or three!" 15 eyeballs later, only two people tried them. Natalie said it had the consistency of an egg. Needless to say, I stuck to the cow stomach and duck liver (yet again, not a joke).). The two vans then shuttled us to the train station where we had less than 15 minutes to catch our first class-bullet train back!
Next adventure, next weekend: Spending the night on the Great Wall.
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