This past weekend, I climbed Tai Shan with a few friends. If you’re too lazy to read the background information, Mount Tai is a famous mountain of religious significance about seven hours away from Beijing. Legend has it that whoever climbs the mountain will live one hundred years. It’s incredibly popular, so the climb is as simple as taking the 7,200 steps up to the 1.5km peak (almost a mile). Alternatively, you can pay your way up and travel via combination of bus and cable car up to the peak.
The 7,200 steps are supposed to take anywhere from three to eight hours — we ended up finishing in about three and a half hours, with several breaks (especially during the final stretch, when it becomes particularly steep and the air is significantly thinner).
Once you reach the top (and all along the way) there are tons of vendors selling food, incense, religious paraphernalia, even bird call whistles (not sure why). If you happen to be laowai be prepared for many requests for photographs (rural tourists find foreigners slightly more intriguing than city folk). I started requesting payment for the privilege; but no one took me seriously, ruining a potentially lucrative career opportunity.
The view is pretty impressive once you reach the top, although I was suprised how poor the visibility is (not nearly as bad as Beijing, but far worse than Seattle on a non-overcast day).
This is after I used photoshop
We took the cable car and bus back down in order to save time (despite our newfound longevity, we are busy people).
Getting to and from Tai Shan was an adventure in itself. Language difficulties meant we ended up getting a standing room tickets for the packed seven hour train ride from Beijing. After 1.5 tiring hours, we jumped off the train in Tianjin with hopes of buying real tickets. This, again, was far more complicated than expected — but a short 6 hours later we were on our way in a luxurious soft sleeper. Hopes of an uneventful return trip were foiled by a sold out train.
After surveying our options, we opted for a sleeper bus, which has no seats, only (small) beds. Surprisingly, this too is oversold, and people end up standing and laying in the aisles. The bus made frequent stops, often in bizarre locations, and arrived about an hour and a half late. Sleeping was difficult at best, given the cigarette smoke, frequent loud speaker announcements, and constant jostling from the standing room passengers. Lessons learned.