Mount Tai

Saturday, September 6, 2009

Today, we met in the hotel lobby at 9:00 to start our trip to Tai’an for the Mount Taishan (Tai) Climbing Festival. This is an annual festival. Mount Taishan is the most holy of five holy mountains in China. The emperors from the old dynasties used to make sacrifices to the mountain. It is said that as long as Mount Taishan stands, so will China. [Mount Tai is a mountain of historical and cultural significance located north of the city of Tai'an, in Shandong Province, China. The tallest peak is Jade Emperor Peak, which is commonly reported as 1545 meters (5069 ft) tall. Mount Tai is one of the "Five Sacred Mountains". It is associated with sunrise, birth, and renewal, and is often regarded the foremost of the five. The temples on its slopes have been a destination for pilgrims for 3,000 years.]

The adult teachers rode in a van and the foreign students went by bus. This excursion was arranged by our Waiban, Toby, and is paid for by the school except for 100 Yan (about $14). It took about 2 hours to get to Tai’an. We went directly to the hotel. We were impressed with the hotel because the lobby was nice and clean. The rooms, however, weren’t as nice. I would say on a scale of 1-5, they were a two. One interesting thing about the room was a red plastic bucket in the corner that was half full of water. I didn’t know what it was for and suggested (humorously) to Lugene that maybe it was a chamber pot. After we had put away our things in the room we had lunch. It was a typical Chinese buffet lunch. It was quite good. We’re getting good with our chopsticks. In fact, I don’t even think about eating with a fork anymore. We found out during lunch that the bucket of water is our room’s fire extinguisher. I guess if you have a fire, you throw the water on it. So much for my idea of how it was to be used.

After lunch we did some site seeing of the city. We walked down one side street near the hotel that had a lot of little stores and street markets. It was very quaint and very interesting. We also went to a department store across from the hotel. It was very high end. It was nice, but very pricey. The prices were similar to what you would pay in the United States.

We ate dinner at the hotel and then had our free evening. Lugene and I were able to find a channel on the television that was playing the Godfather movie in English so we watched that until bedtime. The beds were extremely hard!!

Sunday, September 7, 2009

The next morning Lugene and I decided to go down to the lobby about ½ hour early for breakfast and wait for the others to arrive. We got in the elevator and went about half way down (we were on the 7th floor) and the elevator stopped and the door wouldn’t open. We didn’t know what to do, so we started pushing the alarm bell. After about 10 minutes we heard knocking on the other side of the door and some people talking in Chinese. We knocked back and said we didn’t speak Chinese. Of course, they didn’t speak English. The people left and we kept pushing the alarm bell. Lugene was getting a little excited at this point! Again some people started talking on the other side of the door. This time there were some men’s voices so we thought that maybe someone was trying to fix the elevator. After some time (and a few jerky drops of the elevator), we finally arrived at the 5th floor. We tried to open the door, but it still wouldn’t open. We assumed that whoever got us to 5th floor would now come and get us out. We waited but no one came. So, Brian, being as strong as he is, forced the doors open. Lugene said we had to walk the rest of the way to the lobby. We showed up about 5 minutes late for breakfast.

After breakfast we were each given a number to pin to our shirts (like runners in a marathon). We didn’t know until then that there was a race to the top of the mountain and we were part of the race. We walked to a plaza not far from the hotel where they were getting ready to start the climb to Mount Taishan. There were several thousand people there. Some were waiting to see the race start and some were race participants. Again, we were the only Americans there so we got lots of stares, “hellos”, etc. We were also interviewed again for the local television. We asked why we were visiting and what we thought of the city, the mountain, the people, etc. Lugene said getting all this attention could become addictive. The Chinese people really are nice and friendly.

Someone had the idea that we should be at the front of the racers. This was a mistake because we were packed like sardines and it was hot and humid. Also, we weren’t really going to race. We walked about a kilometer, took a bus to some cable cars, rode the cable cars most of the way up the mountain and then climbed about 1,000 steps to the summit. The last climb, however, was really hard. The real runners ran all the way from the plaza to the summit. There are granite steps that lead to the top. Just before you reach the top you go through a granite arch called the southern gate to heaven. We’ve always wanted to go to heaven, and now we have!

It was a fun day. We did a lot of walking and climbing, but it was worth it. After the climb, we had lunch and came home. We were given a medallion for having made it to the top of the mountain.

Lugene has to teach her first class tomorrow, so she is spending the rest of the evening getting ready for her classes.