Day 27 - Taishan Mountain

Taishan Mountain,

Located in the Shandong province, Taishan mountain, also known as Mt Tai, was another natural attraction that captivated us while researching China.
It is located in East China & is associated with the rising sun, birth & renewal.

A sacred mountain worshipped by the Chinese people for as long as time, the first of five holy mountains. Mythology claims it was created from the limbs & head of Pangu, the creator & first living being.
It is where Confucius taught, a temple, his rock & some of his literature are still on display.
There is the presence of monks here,with a monastery that sits 3/4 of the way up the mountain through the gate of heaven.
To walk to the top of Mt Tai is to follow in the footsteps of every emperor from the last 2,300 years.

Historically important for being the site of rare Chinese ceremonies, worshipping & making offerings to heaven & earth, a ritual that is believed to ensure a dynasty's fortune. Not only is Mt Tai the place of these imposing ceremonies of Life, it is the home of powerful & ancient spirits. These spirits are placated with rituals to give thanks for a good harvest & to protect the people from floods & earthquakes. Along the journey to the top you will see evidence of a broad range of beliefs, derived from folk religion and connected with Daoism, a 2000 year old philosophy integral to the Chinese way of life. Mt Tai has also been a huge place for the development of Taoism & Buddhism.

The slopes are covered in temples & shrines, dedicated to the many, complex spiritual beliefs. There is 22 temples and over 1800 stone tablets & various inscriptions.
Annually, vast numbers of pilgrims still visit Mt Tai, to climb the 7000+ stairs, many that attempt, don't make it.
According to Chinese legends, if you climb Mt Tai, you will live to be 100.

We started our journey at the Dai Kong archway, behind Dai temple, the road here is pretty flat and gives no indication of the mountain we are about to walk up. We choose the Imperial route, also called the central route & the East route. This is the route that the emperors took when ascending the mountain. It was just before 11am when we started our journey. The first part of the journey was very enjoyable, the chinese are very happy to be making the pilgrimage, there is lots of humming & singing. A few people were playing their own music, mostly old traditional singing music, we did hear a few people playing techno/rave music There was some dogs barking and a few roosters crowing. All the way up there was a continual noise of bells and chimes that people had attached to their own bags or to the trees.  Surrounding the walkway was evidence that spring had arrived, pale pink and purple flowers on trees, yellow and blue flowers on the ground and a great range of green leaves were growing on the trees.
The walk gradually became harder  & harder as we went up.  At the bottom of the mountain I brought a wooden cane mostly out of amusement, it was now becoming a necessity. The last quarter of the hike was the hardest, you climbed half of the elevation in that one section.  The steps became dramatically deeper with a smaller ledge requiring you to angle your feet or walk on the balls of your foot as well as slanting down. Every few hundred steps, we would stop and have a 30 second rest while trying to stretch out our cramps.
 It took us just over 4 hours to make our way to the top, including 2 beer stops, A total of 5,029 feet and over 7,000 steps.

Once at the top it was kinda disappointing. The pollution haze from the city obscured the view down the mountain and apart from the temples at the top, the land was dry, dusty & barren, a concoction of brown colours and rubbish was all you could see. The crowds were significantly worse up the top, with a lot of tour groups here that made the journey via a bus.
 We made sure we reached the highest summit, visited a few of the temples, in particular the confucius temple, had a stretch and then made our way down.

Mount Taishan was always about the journey to the top, the achievement of endurance when we reached the bottom & not necessarily the view.  As well as our own cold beer pilgrimage.

The first part of the journey down was perilous, Tom slipped a few times and I fell down a few steps until Tom caught me by my face and stopped my fall! After the steep section was done it became a lot easier & was a lot more enjoyable. A lot of the crowds from earlier on were gone, I suspect that most of the people who climb to the top, get the cable car or the bus back down.  Not us! We were determined to walk back down again. With a couple of beer stops, we finally reached the bottom at 7.30pm, a much quicker time than our journey up. By the end it was dark, I felt so overcome with fatigue I couldn't trust my legs to carry my weight anymore or for my eyes to accurately judge the distance of the steps. On one occasion, very very close to the end,  my legs totally failed on me & I crumpled to the ground. It was a 14,000 + steps  & 25.6 km round trip.
 I was so relieved to catch a taxi the rest of the way home & in ecstasy when I eventually was getting into bed.  I'm not looking forward to the delayed onset of Muscle soreness we will get from this!

Due to us not being fluent in Chinese, we have not gained the deep & ancient wisdom from reading all the inscriptions. But we walk away from Mount Taishan & China as different people than who we were 4 weeks ago.

While on Mount Taishan  at the highest peak, we attached a padlock, 1 among thousands, to represent our eternal love.
We purchased the lock the day before at the Dai temple, it has been blessed & at the top of the mountain we had our names engraved  on to it as well.
We had another lock on a bridge in Australia that was removed by the authorities.
 Looking at the other locks surrounding it, I feel like this one will last forever, up here on this sacred mountain.

- Alli

Day 26 - Tai'an

Tai'an,

After our late arrival last night & our love of sleep in's,  its no real surprise that today was a late start & a convenient  McDonalds breakfast.

We then set out for a walk through town, to locate a printing place, a supermarket, a bank and to see the Dai Temple.
We were unsuccessful in finding a place to print out our documents, lucky our next hostel has the facilities.  We came across the Dai Temple, found at the Southern foot of Mt Taishan, a place where ancient emperors came to worship the god of Mt Taishan. The temple has palace-style architecture with double edge eaves, ancient trees, corner towers, numerous prayer halls, incense, wishing wells & is housed behind 8 gates. We only walked through a small section of the temple, taking a few photos,  enough to appreciate the god of Mt Taishan.

After the temple we walked down the main street, trying to withdraw some cash, failing at a few banks until we found one big enough to accept a foreign card. then it was on to the supermarket to buy snacks for tomorrows adventure & a few beers for tonight while chilling in the hostel common room.

The city of Tai' an, feels like most other cities in China. Along the main street there is a lot of traffic, it is scooter mayhem on the sidewalks & carparks!  There are a lot of big fancy department stores, banks and we noticed a lot of shops with big glass front displays for wedding dresses and wedding photography. In the smaller streets, the cement pavement is very old and crumbling away, people gather on small, fold out chairs to play card games or stand around chatting. The stores here are smaller clothing stores, shoe stores & the usual amount of street food. We saw quite a few people walking dogs.
The city is smothered in a thick haze of air pollution, we haven't seen it this bad since we left Hong Kong, only the haze in this city feels closer to the ground and was noticeably uncomfortable. We didn't stay out for too long.

That night for dinner we conveniently walked 2 streets away to  'food street' where we both had 2 giant meals. The cost for each meal was $2.10 AUD, by far our cheapest meal!  We then got ice cream, I selected a purple one thinking it would be some sort of berry..... We are not sure what it was but it tasted like prawns!


- Alli

Day 25 - Pingyao - Tai'an

Pingyao - Tai'an

Our day started off uncharacteristically early at 6am. We were packed, showered & checked out by 7am. Leaving our present for Li Hong on the front desk. We walked to the edge of the walled city & then got a taxi to the train station.

Our first train was a bullet train from Pingyao to Shiazhuang, leaving at 8.40am & arriving at Shijiazhuang at 11am. When we got onto our train there was people in our seats & lots of people sitting on the floor & standing around. We thought the seats on the train had been double booked until someone explained those people brought standing tickets & that we just need to show our tickets & the people should get out of our seats. Sounds easy enough! There was a bit of resistance by the 2 middle aged women sitting in our seats, but eventually they moved.  After taking our seats, the rest of the journey was uneventful. I slept the whole way & Tom watched Netflix.

We then had a 4.25 hour stop over in the busy station of Shijiazhuang, but easily found our departure level & gate. Which thankfully were not at a seperate station. The train from Shijiazhuang to Taishan was a slow sleeper train. When we first brought these tickets online, there was a problem with the processing which resulted in only 1 soft sleeper ticket being issued to me. Overnight the rest of those tickets sold out. Tom had to buy a hard seat ticket & sit 9 carriages away. It was a long, lonely train ride for me. The train left at 4.15pm & got into Taishan station at 1.10am. Officially the town is called Tai'an & is situated at the base of Taishan, also called Mount Tai.

Another taxi took us to our hostel with no issues. We had been in contact with the hostel admin requesting a late arrival between 1am - 2am & we were assured someone would be there for us. On arrival, no one was there, the lights were off & there was a note on the door to ring a contact number.
Neither of us have a Chinese number so Tom walked down the road & found a drunk man sitting in his shop front listening to loud, sad music. He rung the number for us & before too long we were checked in! It is a really spacious room with a large bathroom & the fanciest toilet I've seen in China. To fully appreciate this revelation, the past 2 weeks have been all squatty potty toilets, this toilet is exciting! We still can't flush our toilet paper though.

Finally it was sleep time for Tom, while I downloaded a new fantasy trilogy to start reading. It wasn't long before I joined Tom in the land of dreams.

- Alli

Day 24 - Pingyao, Another 'Day Off'

Pingyao,  Another 'Day Off'

Today we woke up around 9am & did some more planning, we booked some plane tickets & our first lot of accommodation in the next country.
Even with all the research we did prior to this trip, there is still so much to read, re-read and try to remember for each country.
These days of reading, planning & finally booking things are very productive days but the process takes a surprisingly long time!
Often we spend this time in a hostel common room, quiet bar or a coffee shop.

We had a break from the planning at lunch time, heading to the same place as yesterday for more cheap noodles & beer!

On our way back from lunch we stumbled across the best cup of coffee we have experienced, since leaving Australia. We found this coffee in the most relaxing cafe, surrounded by wooden detail, books, antiques, a cat, plants & acoustic music. It was our happy place for an hour or so.

  Unfortunately the coffee we have been drinking in China is either the same price or sometimes more expensive than it is in Australia & is mostly frothy warm milk, with a hint of coffee.
We decided after the previous dissapointing coffee, that from now on we would only be drinking double expressos, otherwise it wasn't worth it.
I had a good feeling about this place though & got a hazelnut cappuccino that tasted like coffee, I actually got a caffeine buzz! whooooooo hoooooo !!

The rest of the day passed by and consisted of us enjoying some sun, beers & music on the rooftop terrace. Another day of increasing temperatures, today it got up to 20 degrees celsius.

- Alli

Day 23 - Pingyao, A Day Of Planning & A Dinner Invitation

Pingyao - A day of planning and a dinner invitation,


We had always planned to have a few days off in Pingyao,
so we used our day to plan the last of our time in China, read over information we already had saved on our next Visa application & border crossing, search for any newer information & decided on a plan.
Determined not to get lost and be wandering the streets at night again, we also used this opportunity to email our next lot of accommodation again to try and get a personal reply to confirm our booking.
After a few hours of being cooped up, we set off through the ancient city to find some lunch & stretch our legs. The weather today is still windy, but it is now really sunny and the temperature has come up to 16 degrees. We both ordered big bowls of noodles & beer at this little restaurant that was loudly playing 90's pop music. By far our cheapest meal - less than 20 Yuan each for our meal! We are once again boldly loading up our noodle bowls with spoons of fresh chilli & oil they provide on the tables.

Later that day we ru into the hotel owner, whose name is Li Hong, the same one we woke up & who helped us by finding us a room in another hotel. He asks us about our next destination & accommodation booking. We explain we can't get confirmation, he then offers to ring them for us. After a few phone calls and lots of confusion, translating Chinese & English the whole time, we are told that the next hotel can't find our booking and that they don't accept foreign guests.
Feeling a little bit disappointed but also relieved to finally have an answer, we cancel that booking and make a new booking. The new hostel immediately confirms with a personal message. So we celebrate with some ginger tea in the managers office and some light conversation about where we are from and some of the differences between our countries. We also show him on a big map of China where we have been & where we are going. The conversation then leads to us inviting him to have a beer with us, Li Hong declines the beer, instead insisting we need to try Chinese 'white wine' and that he can take us out to dinner and show us some traditional food!

A short walk later and we are seated in a really nice restaurant. We are shown the menu & agree to eat whatever Li Hong orders us, already drinking our BYO white wine that is called Baijiu. Baijiu, also known as Shaojiu, is a strong distilled spirit, normally 50% alcohol per volume,  made from grain, the name literally means 'white alcohol' & each part of the country has its own preferred type. We are drinking one called Fen Jiu that comes in a smart looking bottle with a gold and red label, found commonly in the Shaanxi province. We each have a small glass jug and a tiny wine cup, about half the size of a standard shot glass, that the wine is poured into. With each drink, we cheers & then consume the contents of our tiny wine cup. I would describe it as refreshing, with a slight sweet aroma, not entirely tasteless, not unpleasant, but very strong. You can feel it heating you up as it goes down, it goes really well with the Chinese food and I actually think I prefer it more than vodka. Between the 3 of us, we finished the whole bottle!

Li Hong ordered a total of 8 different, traditional meals featuring wheat noodles, squid, pork, beef, vegetables & dumplings. He explained what each dish was and was very amused by my attempts to pick up some slippery vegetables covered in sauce, using chopsticks. It was a great meal & we feel very lucky to have been shown traditional Chinese food by a local! Over dinner we spoke some more about things like travel, jobs & family lives. Li Hong has a wife and daughter that live in another town and manage one business, when its busy Li Hong stays in Pingyao away from his family to manage the hotel (his second business). He asked us a few questions about our relationship such as marriage & kids, then complimented us by saying he could tell we were in love. It was a really nice compliment coming from someone who can't understand english & come to this opinion based on brief observations of our interactions. After we had all eaten, Li Hong spoke to the person at the restaurant counter, seeming to settle the bill, refusing our money and protests to help pay. We have brought a bottle of Baijiu to leave on his desk when we go, to say thanks.

Feeling very full & a little bit tipsy, we walked home and fell into a very deep food coma.

-  Alli

Day 22 - Pingyao

Pingyao,

After everything that happened last night, we slept right thorough till 10am. Then were taken back to our hotel and officially checked in to our room that we will be staying in for another 3 nights. We showered, got dressed and made plans to find some lunch & to explore. It had been nearly 24 hours since we had a proper meal and our stomachs were loudly protesting!

The weather in Pingyao is a fresh +2/-4 today, finally time to test out our new thermals! We found a restaurant and ordered large meals with extra rice, all the food quickly vanished shortly after landing on our table. Once we had filled our stomachs we set off exploring.

A little bit off the beaten track, Pingyao is located in the middle of the Shanxi Province, North China & is more than 2700 years old.The ancient city is surrounded by a wall, originally built in 1370. Entirely different from the wall in Xi'an. The wall of Pingyao is significantly smaller (6 kilometres long) & a lot of areas are rough, exposed clay with only some brick work. The city wall has 6 gates & is said to be shaped like a turtle, Pingyao is nicknamed turtle city. This ancient city has, 4 major streets, 8 lesser streets & 72 winding & twisting lanes, entirely made of various brickwork. It is a maze & very easy to loose yourself. The major streets feel a little bit commercialised with souvenir shops, and many tourists & flashy signs, the ancient authenticity a little lost. In the lesser streets you can easily forget you are in the 21st century.

A few hours exploring was all that we got from the day, we brought some beer and headed back to our accommodation to finish the day off watching the sun go down from the rooftop balcony.  Once the sun went down and it was dark, approximately 8pm, we put on additional jumpers, scarves and gloves before setting out to explore the night life.

A city can be totally transformed once the blanket of darkness falls. We walked the major streets within the ancient city, listening to karaoke, trying various street food, browsing through gift shops (wishing we had room in our packs & more muscles) & posing for more photos with people. As of today, when people ask us for a photo (a daily occurrence) we are also going to ask for one in return. It's going to make for one big, cool collection of photos showing us integrating with people of various cultures. We will share at the end of our trip!

By 10pm we were heading home! Not a very big day for us, only 12km's of exercise, but still very tired from the previous night.

- Alli

Day 21 - Xi'an / Pingyao & Nearly Sleeping On The Street

Xi'an - Pinyao

After last night's explorations through the night market, it was another late start for us today. Overnight the temperature got down to a fresh 10 degrees and looking around this morning it appears that it has rained quite a bit. All the flowers in the street have been buffeted and there are massive puddles trenching the road.

Check out in hotels here is usually 12pm, plenty of time to sleep in, pack our bags & get ready. Packing our bags is getting easier & quicker, things now feel like they have a pre-determined place, so that everything fits nice & snug. We have a few hours after check out to fill before making our way to the train station. So we go for lunch & 1 last walk to see the Xi'an wall. On our walk back a Chinese man on a scooter, stopped at an intersection and said in a strong but determined Chinese accent, "Hi, it's lovely to meet you. Welcome to China, Xi'an" then rode off straight away. It was quite unexpected, but very nice! The manager of the hotel was very helpful & let us store our big packs for 3 hours while we did all this. He also gave instructions on what bus & metro line we would need to get us to the high speed rail station instead of taking a taxi. We thought we would give it a go, worse case is we get lost & hail a taxi anyway.

We found a bus station with our bus number, 700. Then worked out which way our bus was going & how many stops till we got off at the metro. On the bus there was 3 really lovely, elderly ladies who seemed quite concerned about the size of my pack. All 3, at different times got up to give me their seats, which I politely declined. Once off the bus, we asked a few people for help and crossed a few roads at a busy intersection until we found the right staircase descending down to the metro. We brought tickets (with more help) found our line & thankfully were already on the right line/platform & did not need to switch lines (this is pretty common and very confusing). It was a 30 minute metro ride and 12 stops to get us to the other side of the city & to the train station. The pack is starting to feel less cumbersome & I'm able to wear it, comfortably for over an hour now while walking & on transport. At the train station we get our next lot of tickets & make our way to level F1, platform B18.
It's at this point we discover Tom has had a brain fart & read the 24 hour time wrong, he is trying to blame the computer.... (turns out it was the computer, which was in Australian timezone when he made the calendar event) Lucky we are 2 hours early! This platform is very busy & couldn't find a seat for an hour. We roll our packs onto their sides & eat some Maccas to pass the time.

Another thing worth mentioning, we've seen a few times before, is young kids with holes in their pants for easy toilet access. There is a few little boys on the platform, wearing pants like this & playing. In some parts of China, we have even seen small kids toileting in the street, we read this is normal & encouraged. Come to think of it there are very few public toilets around the place.

At 6.40pm we got in line for the train, where we were approached by a Chinese girl who had studied English at university. She was very shy & nervous but asked for a photo and we had a conversation about our travels. We also got a Picture with her! Tom & I, again were not seated together, but only a few rows apart. Next to me was a boy and his father, who both spoke some English. The young boy who was 10 years old, Owen is his English name & YuanChenwe is his Chinese name, was very chatty & told me about his visit to the U.S.A & about his friend who went to Canada. He learnt English at school & speaks some at home. He was also going to Pingyao with his father, mother, little brother & grandparents. We exchanged email address' and he taught me to count to five:

yī / 一
èr / 二
sān / 三
sì / 四
wǔ / 五

The girl from the line was also in our carriage & came down to practise her English (we also exchanged details) I hope the emailing is successful between the language barriers & technology platforms. It's definitely a day for English in China!

Our train left at 7.05pm, another bullet train! And we arrived in Pingyao at 9.50pm. Our initial plan was to get a bus into the ancient town & walk 200 metres to our hotel. Unfortunately the bus service stopped at 8pm, something that wasn't on the website. We caught a gypsy taxi, the driver agreed on 50Yuan to drop us at the hotel. We drove 30 minutes to get into the ancient city, our taxi driver asked a local for directions, then dropped us off at the entrance to a small lane. He told us our hotel was just down this lane. We put our packs on & walked down the lane, dodging lit incense, assuming it wouldn't be very far. Finding no signs, hotel entrance or any other indicator, we continued walking. We walk through the dark streets & lanes, asking for help several times & being shown various maps & directions, every piece of advice different. Our GPS isn't working & the Pinpoint with the hotel coordinates we had from the booking website were wrong.

At 12.30am a man who must of noticed us wandering around looking lost, asked us where we needed to go. He used his own GPS to find the place, cause our information was wrong. We got into his car & he drove us 10 minutes to our hotel. It turns out the taxi driver did drop us at the right corner, the hotel had no lights on, no English sign & the Chinese symbols were hand painted & looked very different to the computer ones we had. The entrance was a big door in a brick wall with a giant curtain of material covering the door (to keep the cold wind out). We were never going to find this! The man knocked on the door & woke the hotel owner up who was sleeping on the floor in the office. Once he was sure we were in the right place he went on his way. The hotel owner was very confused about our booking & said there had been technical difficulties with the website. We feel like it more likely that he doesn't really use that particular website or check it frequently, which is why he had not replied to the 2 emails we sent. He also said that the price was too cheap and that it was a holiday weekend. He then told us he had no rooms spare which is why he is sleeping on the floor. This was all communicated painstakingly via a translator app. At 12.30am it was going to be hard to find accommodation! The hotel owner made us tea, offered us a cigarette & started to make some phone calls. After about half an hour he located a room & organised us transport to & from this other hotel. We agreed to come back & spend the other 3 nights at the planned hotel. With an upfront cash payment we were on our way to a bed! Finally just after 1am we crawled into bed exhausted.

For awhile I was genuinely nervous we would be sleeping on the street, in the -2C, I was eyeing off shop fronts that would offer some protection & hopefully be semi clean to sleep under. I'm so proud of us as a couple for dealing with the situation, being resourceful, positive & not arguing or blaming each other. Travel can be extremely trying & it will either make or break a relationship. Regardless of if its a friendship, family bond or a couple.

Learnings:

When we make a booking, we will ask for a personal reply back from the accommodation manager as confirmation. Not just rely on the automated booking confirmation. We will be asking if the booking websites GPS coordinates/map directions are correct. Or to have them sent to us seperatly. We will also be asking for details or a photo of the entrance to the accommodation & if they have any obvious signage.  If we have no reply from an accomodation 24 hours before our arrival we will be making arrangements to have someone call them or looking for a backup.alternate solution. 

- Alli