Another Weekend, Another Trip

Continuing with the theme of dwindling time and a list of places we still have yet to visit, Allyssa and I decided to take a trip this weekend with Japanese and Korean friends to Qufu ad Tai'an, home of Confucius and Taishan, China's holiest Taoist mountain, for the weekend.

On Friday night, we took a bus to the nearby Yantai and then boarded a 9-hour train to Yanzhou, which at 15km away is the closest rail connection to Qufu. We were able to get "hard sleeper" tickets, offering the best combination of comfort and frugality. Despite the incredibly loud Chinese women below us and the fact that it was really hot on the train because they closed all the windows because they were cold, I actually slept pretty well until the morning music came on at around 6am.

Our accommodation:




We arrived in Yanzhou at about 7:30am and decided to take a taxi straight to Qufu and the Confucius Temple. Confucius was born in Qufu in 551 BC, and the first temple here dates back to 478 BC, and since then is has been repeatedly enlarged, though most of its present structure dates from around 1500. Along with the Forbidden City in Beijing and a summer resort in Chengdu, the temple is one of China's three greatest architectural complexes, and when the emperor came to visit, it is said that parts of the temple were covered up so that he wouldn't become jealous. Having been to the Forbidden City, though, the Confucius Temple has definitely lost some ground to the imperial palace today.


The Hall of the Great Achievements, and the altar within:




Many of the trees are famous, so we had to mock, of course, some of the ridiculous photographs the Chinese tourists were taking. Sumin next to a big tree goiter:


And Sora standing cool:


Ridiculous Chinese fashion (did we time warp back to the 80's?):



One of the best parts of the temple was a dance performance. It gave the place a sort of Disney-esque feel, but it was nonetheless cool.








Here, Sora is warming up a few of the instruments...




... Before the "performers" take control of them. Note: they didn't actually play them, and I believe the flutes didn't even have holes, and one of the string instruments was missing all of its strings except for one. They were there just to look cool while the dancers performed to the music on loudspeakers.

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After the dance show we walked around the complex a little more and then headed to the Confucius Mansion, which largely looked like the temple, until stumbled upon the garden where Confucius and his descendants often read books. Perhaps none of our writings will ever become as famous, but a little inspiration can't hurt.



After finishing up there, we scoped out some lunch (nothing like chicken claws for the soul, and to fill the belly...)...


...And then realized that Qufu really had nothing else to offer. We spent a couple of hours having name stamps made, and then Allyssa and I took a bus to Tai'an, while Sora and Sumin departed to return home.

A gate in the city wall as we were leaving Qufu...


And the huge communist statue that greeted us in Tai'an!



We arrived in Tai'an a little later than desired since the bus took 1.5 hours and not the advertised 30 minutes, so we wanted to quickly find a hotel. Our plan was to get dinner and then get 4-5 hours of sleep before hiking to the summit of the holiest Taoist mountain, Taishan, before sunrise.

A woman at the train station approached us, and the bargaining ensued as follows.
Woman: Are you looking for a room? We have rooms for 120yuan.
Me: No, too expensive.
Woman: We also have rooms for 100.... (I turn to walk away).... 80 (still walking)..... 60!.... (still walking). How much do you want to pay?
Me: 50 yuan (7 dollars).
Woman: Ok, we have rooms for 50, follow me.

We walked across the street to a hotel (the blue hotel in the picture with the statue), but they were out of rooms, so she took us to another one that looks much worse. The proprietor then charged us 60yuan, but when I again feigned walking out, she obliged with the original request. While I think I have stayed in a more disgusting hotel, (look back to Xanga and the entry for Hamburg, Germany), this one was definitely in the race.


The area next to the hotel:



Unfortunately, by the time we finished dinner and bought the flashlights requisite for the hike, it was already 9pm, leaving me with only about two hours to sleep before I needed to wake up, shower (I was disgusting from the train and bus rides and activities from the very warm day), and head to the base at around 11:30pm. I naturally overslept and we didn't leave until about 12:15am, but it turned not to hurt us in the end. Now, climbing a mountain at night may sound crazy to non-Chinese people, but it is THE thing to do here. The mountain of 5,000 feet has almost 7,000 steps carved into the entire 8km path up. It's said that those who climb the mountain live to be 100 years old, and that it's the first place in China from which you can see the sun rise. Even not getting started at the base of the mountain until almost 1am, we were joined by lots of other tourists, and at the halfway point, to which it is possible to take a bus and then continue to the summit by cable car (we were intense and walked all the steps), we were joined by thousands more. Keep in mind that this is in the wee hours of the morning.

A man offering incense on the way up, probably at around 2am:

The summit at around 4am. Thousands more are on other peaks or resting below the summit.


Sunrise:




The scheduled time was around 4:45 am, though we actually had to wait a little longer for the sun to rise above the thick haze. You'd think that the fact that there's so much haze that you can't even watch the sun rise on China's holiest mountain would alarm people, but I'm not sure it has, based on the level of pollution and genera apathy I've witnessed in the country.

On the hike down we were actually able to see what we had hiked past a few hours before, and I think not knowing exactly how far we had to go definitely helped out resolve to get to the summit. Plus, it was much cooler than it would have been if we had waited until after sunrise.

A temple complex:


And engraved rock facades:


I usually carry incense in my DaVinci Code backpack, too:


The hike down:


And looking back up:


Imagine walking all these steps (and more). At 1am.


Here, porters carry things like watermelon up the mountain. This must be an incredibly hard job. Some porters make as much as three round trips a day, six or seven days a week. As expected, they earn very little money. Why don't the businesses on the mountain just use the bus and cable car system? Sure, it would cost a little extra money, but it would save these people from backbreaking work. But, in a country as crowded as China, perhaps it as seen as more important that the people have jobs, as difficult as they may be.




Allyssa and I reached the bottom at about 8am after a one-hour break for sunrise and several more bathroom stops on the way down, meaning that our total time of hiking was about 6 hours. Not bad for 10 miles round-trip of stairs.

We were eager to get back to Weihai in any way possible so as to sleep on our own beds, and being only about 250 miles from home, you'd think this would be pretty easy. Allow me to elaborate on China's train and bus system.

It's archaic and incredibly unorganized. It's impossible to buy train tickets unless you're in the actual city from which the train departs (unless you hire an expensive broker). It's also impossible to connect in a different city without buying new tickets. Thus, if you're in Tai'an and want to go back to Weihai, which isn't directly connected to Tai'an by train, you must first buy a ticket to Jinan, disembark, buy new tickets, and board another train. What makes this more difficult is the fact that you can only buy tickets 5 days in advance, and they usually sell out before the day of departure. Thus, if you arrive in a city and need to change trains, your layover is likely to last at least a day in every city in which you have to change trains. Naturally, we wanted to avoid the prospect of getting to Jinan and having to endure along layover, so instead we tried to take a train from Tai'an to Yantai (only an hour from Weihai) and then perhaps get a bus from there. Unfortunately, there were only standing room tickets available (Had we been able to book on the internet, or from a remote place before the day of our departure, we would have been fine, but like I said, this is literally impossible. Simply astounding.), and because we had not really slept the night before and instead climbed a mountain, this was not an exciting prospect. The next step was to see about big long-distance buses, since I had vowed never to ride a minibus again. That was also a no go, they didn't have any to Weihai. Last step: minibuses. Of course, there was a minibus departing (supposedly) at 10am, in only 30 minutes, so we bought tickets. These tickets were 125yuan, far more than the train (99yuan) or a big bus might have been. Again, as with the train system, I simply don't understand the logic. The most expensive, and most enraging, way to travel is by minibus. In every other country I've been, the very worst option is the cheapest. Not in China. If you're going to be tortured for hours on end, you're also going to charged out the wazoo. You'd think someone would realize this glaring fact and change things, but it surely has not happened yet. I was still a little hopeful that the journey would be ok, because the ticket agent said the trip would only take 6 hours, but I had a suspicion the trip would take far longer, and an hour later, after we had visited the other three long-distance bus stations in Tai'an and still not left the city, I knew it was going to be a long day. Again, I don't want to needlessly complain, but why do you need 4 of the exact same bus stations in the same (small) city? It takes an hour for every bus to leave the city. Instead of having people congregate at one place and then get things moving efficiently, you have to waste an hour. On top of that, the buses are horribly uncomfortable and stop every few minutes to try and recruit additional riders who happen to be walking along the highway! So instead of the promised 6 hours, we were on the bus for 9 hours. I should say busES, actually, because were were on three of them. After about 5 hours on the first one, which was relatively comfortable and odor-free, the driver worked out a deal with another bus (apparently he was no longer going to weihai) and we boarded it. It was quite full and a lot more cramped, but it did at least say Weihai on the front of it, so we thought we were safe. WRONG! About an hour later, we were transferred to a third bus. This one was one of the worst I have been on. There were only two seats left, and I got stuck in the back row with five people. It smelled like a combination of bunghole, pee, and foot fungus, and I had to sit next to a really rude chubby Chinese woman that took up half of my seat so that she could turn sideways and place her nasty feet on her boyfriend's lap. Despite the fact that the bus was completely full, the bus still deemed it necessary to stop and pick up extra passengers, and they generally sat near the front of the bus on the floor next to the driver. Have I mentioned that safety and traffic laws need not be followed? When the bus finally pulled into Weihai three hours later, Allyssa and I chose to get off the bus at the edge of town and take a taxi back to school rather than take the bus another 30-60 minutes to the bus station. I'd like to say again that I will never again ride a minibus in China, but I know that "never" actually means "never", especially in China, the land of a God-forsaken travel system.