Mount Taishan

I used to lave the more detailed blog entries to Charlie, so I will try my best to paint the complete picture for a change. Taishan - a long weeknd thats for sure. The first step, the jouney, wasn't as easy as I would have hoped. The five hour train journey to Jinan was fine, mostly due to the 18 bottles of Shijiazhuang's finest that we knocked back. When we arrived at Jinan, we tried to purchase our return tickets their and then, but found that they only had standing available (something that took 30mins to determine with the aid of Nancy - the Chinese teacher back in Shijiazhuang). Then we tried to buy our tickets from Jinan to Tai'an, where we were staying, but found we couldn't. Why? There are two train stations in Jinan and of course we arrived at the one that we wouldnt be departing from. Great. Problem averted however thanks to a six seater minibus that bombed along and dropped us off at Jinan Central station. 50 minutes spent in the food carriage of that train, plus a short taxi drive from the train station in Taishan, we found ourselves finally at the hotel. Phew.

Thursday was going to be our lazy day, not quite ready to hit the mountain. It turned out not to be quite as relaxing as we had hoped when we discovered that the hotel had neither the swimming pool or Italian restaurant as advertised on the internet. So crazy golf, a walk round a mini forbidden City and a tuna salad for tea before an early night were all that we got round to doing (tuna salad = apple salad, covered in sweet mayonnaise and sugar sprinkles, with a dash of tinned tuna over the top - yum!).



Friday, 8.10am and fuelled by a McDonalds breakfast and coffee, we left for the foot of the mountain. At 1545meters, we knew we had a hard day ahead of us. It started out overcast, but warm and after a short while we bought our tickets onto the mountain. We climbed as a group from the bottom to the Midway to Heaven Gate (half way up). Literally just a series of staircases, one after the other, covering more distance vertically than horizontally. It was fairly hard work. I think it took a couple of hours till we reached the sign that said 'Americans and Disabled this way ->' - the Cable Car. A joke stolen from Brock, so i'm not to blame for that one!



Brock, Meredith and Becky took the Cable Car (Hilary was unable to get the long weekend break as her students didnt have exams), and Chris and I drove on up the mountain. This second part of the climb, up to the South Gate to Heaven (the top) was a real killer. About 600meters height gain, in pretty much constant steps. Over a short space of time this was definately much more difficult that the 11k walk along the Great Wall. But we made it to the top, where we all enjoyed a celebratory doughnut together.


Following a period of trigger-happy photo taking, the others set off back for the hotel and Chris and I continued our walk to the other side of the mountain. Clearly this side is not as holy or as importnant to the Chinese as the main area, as we were literally the only people on that entire side of the mountain. It was quite unbelievable really. From thousands of people on the one side, to a completely empty mountain on the other, we were left to moochy around by ourselves. This was possibly the most enjoyable thing I have done to date in China, obviously other than breaking my toe. Climbing to the other peak required some brave scrambling under and over some boulders, placed their I imagine by some seriously under-qualified Chinese workman. The peak itself was incredible, obviously not very visited as the Lonely Planet nor the internet never mentioned even once what was to be found there (a giant Ying Yang symbol made out of marble on the floor). It was apparetly the area of the mountain where Emperors of days gone by where sacrificed, some 75 I seem to remember reading.

The walk to the bottom and journey on the Cable Car were uneventful, and we met up with the others back in the hotel ready for pizza for tea. After checking out on Saturday, we found that we only had to pay for two nights stay, as they had counted our 01:00am check-in as a Thursday evening for some reason. That meant a bit more cash for our day in Jinan. We spent it riding a roller coaster that was definately too short, as Brock points out, shopping for gifts and consuming some alcoholic beverages in the Crowne Plaza hotel lounge as if we were guests. A delicious buffet dinner rounded off a decent weekend.

The train journey back needs a mention. The three tickets we bought turned out to be three seats and two standing. The two standing were left to crouch into the smokey doorway of the carriage, so we took it in turns for the 4 hour journey, rotating beteen the seats and the doorway (used by the Chinese as a smoking room). Virgin Rail may have its drawbacks, but it seemed a mile away from what we had to go through on that train thats for sure!

The pictures are all on Flickr, ill put some on here shortly.