I don't really remember where I last left off, but I do remember I was angry. Well, I am not angry anymore and this trip has been pretty awesome. It has been the perfect thing to easy my mind. Since, I do not remember where I last left off, I will start at the beginning of our journey, which was the Beijing Train Station.
At the start of this trip it was Joy, Xiao Mei, and I, we where three lonely souls looking for a fantastic adventure. And right from the start we got it. Let me tell you, the Beijing Train Station before Chun Jie is ridiculously crowded. There are people everywhere, there is even a Chinese proverb for this experience (Ren Shan Ren Hai, it means people are everywhere from the mountain to the sea). Battling to get on the train was tough because everyone is trying to get on the train at the same time. People are pushing this way and that. I have played at least ten years of football, and it definitely did not prepare me for this experience. As people started to throw me out the way and I was not getting any closer to the front, I toughened up, and at one point I almost took out a little Chinese lady. Joy has a good picture of me beasting this little China lady. It is not really funny, but it was her or me, and let me tell you she had it coming. It was hard to get through the people, but once you got through it was easy to get on the train. And for lack of a better word the train was fucking sweet. We went with the more upscale part of the train and chose Ying Wo (Hard Sleeper). Ying Wo is a compartment with six beds, three on each side. I don't know how to explain how nice Ying Wo is but take my word for it, it is nice. And out of all the trains I took this was the nicest one. Oh, by the way we are taking this train to Tai An, the city that Tai Shan is in and if you don't know, Tai Shan is a mountain (in Chinese Shan means mountain). So, yeah, I lost my train of thought. Something about trains and riding on them. Ok, so we where in Ying Wo and the people that we were riding with were all very interested in us because we were Wai Guo Ren (Foreingers). A word of advise if you are a foreinger in China people will be very interested in you, and often the will stare at you for copious amounts of time, to the point that you will feel uncomfortable. I am so glad that I cut off my afro, because if I didn't have it people would definitely stare at me more. Right now, because I cut my hair, I can semi-blend in. People think I am Asian so they don't stare at me as much when I am by myself. They tend to think I am Malayasian or Indian or some other Asian, I have even got a couple of Chinese. But when I am with Joy people know right away I am a foreigner and they tend to stare at us even more. Inparticularly, Joy, she has brought us a lot of attention. I would just like to say right now, thanks Joy. At times this attention is very helpful and gets us the things we want (there we will be an example of this later in the story when I meet my train friend) and a lot the time it is unwanted and makes us feel uncomfortable. The fact that Joy and I can speak Chinese has only caused to be bring more attention upon ourselves. I like the fact that everyone says that we speak Chinese well, but sometimes when they find out that we speak Chinese all they do is want to talk to us. And speaking Chinese is hard if you didn't know and takes a lot of concentration, and when you are tired you just don't want to speak in Chinese. Maybe I am just lazy. However, this trip has definitely increased my Chinese speaking skills and even though it is tring at times I still like speaking in Chinese. But on this first train the attention was kind of cool and we meet some pretty cool people in our Ying Wo area. There was even one Chinese guy that could speak English. It was a good experience for our first train ride in China. Talking with those people just makes you realize how friend and helpful Chinese people are. I don't really want to get in to anymore details about this train ride because there are much more to come in this story and what I think was a much more interesting one. Also my time is running out at this internet bar and I have not even talked about my threesome experience on the top of Tai Shan.
So moving on, we caught the 10:00 am train to Tai An and did not arrive in Tai An until about 5:30 pm. When we got there the first thing we did was buy our tickets to Qing Dao, which was Joy and My next destination. Xiao Mei went to Ji Nan, Xiao Mei is a cool girl and everything but we were ready to part was from here once we got down from the mountain. But that is another story. Back to Tai An, we bought tickets and then we went to our hotel. The hotel was super sweet. I loved it. At that point it was the best place that I had stayed in China. To bad it was just one night. But the hotel had free dry cleaning and soft beds and what I later found out is the most important thing that you want from a hotel in China in the middle of winter. It had a good, check that, great heating system. At this time I didn't realize how important a good heating system is but through an unfortunate turn of events I would later find out. But at the time the thing that I would say that we all were most impressed with was the clean ass bathroom. At our dorm in Beijing, lets just say that our bathrooms are less than clean, but the heating system works fine. So once we finished getting settled in and finished being awestruck by the hotel, we went out to eat. One thing that I have learned from this eating experience is that one you should not go to Tai An expecting to eat good food, and two don't go to the beef place expecting good chicken or even other good dishes for that matter. Because in China it doesn't happen that way. So if you go to the beef place you should get some beef. Just a word of advice. After the eating and going to the internet cafe where I got to read some interesting emails, that I still have not quite had the chance to reply to, we went back to the hotel and took some hot ass showers in our clean ass bathroom. After the showers, it was time for some shut eye and we just prepared for the next day. That was Saturday, the 7th.
On Sunday the 8th, we prepared to climb Tai Shan and we began our Long March. Lucky for us, the base of the mountain was only a few blocks from our hotel. Before I begin, I would have to say that the best thing that I bought before coming to China was my travel backpack. It is so convenient and makes caring your stuff so easy. However, when climbing a mountian with all your crap on your back, your travel back becomes your worse enemy. At one point on the trip up, I just wanted to leave my bag behind. Let me explain why, Tai Shan is a mountain with a fucking ridiculously long ass staircase to the top. There are about 6600 steps to the top. I know because I counted everyone of them and steped on everyone. These are not the type of stairs that you take two at a time, especially when it is snowing. But that is getting a head of myself and I need to start at the beginning. So at the beginning of the trip everyone was happy and excited to climb the mountain. We even slept in until 10:30 am so that we could be well rested. We started the climb at about 11:15. So from the hotel there is a hill that leads up to the base of the mountain. Normally on this hill before you get to the base of the mountain, you can buy hot food of some sort. But because it was Chun Jie, there were absolutely no stores open. Lucky for us, we ran into this little girl that was making these pancake looking things. However they didn't taste like pancakes. They tasted more like a big ass pringle with out the salt but just as dry. But because there was no other stores open the big ass pringle hit the spot. After we all gobbled down our big ass pringles, we started our clean to the top. On Tai Shan, there are several gates, the most important are the First Gate to Heaven, The Middle Gate to Heaven, and South Gate to Heaven. At the First Gate to Heaven, everyone was excited, ready to climb, thinking this is going to be the greatest adventure ever. At first when we were climbing the stairs were not really a problem. We thought that if the stairs are like this, this climb is going to be easy. Later, we realized that our thinking was rather in correct. But before, we came to this realization, the climb was very enjoyable. According to Joy, "Tai Shan is the number one most holiest mountain Daoist place thing in China". So there was a lot to see on our way up the mountain. Tai Shan is known for having all those rocks with famous writings in them. I took a lot of pictures of those. You can see them when I get back or something. Also on the way up are a lot of cool temples and some roasters. But the worst thing that you see a lot are the fucking stairs. There a lot of stairs to the top of this mountain. I personally believe more than necessary. But since my time is running out in this internet cafe I am going to have to leave off here.
Highlights to come, the stairs and more stairs, a unusal threesome, the city by the sea, and Buddhas hiding in caves.
Tune in next time, same bat time same bat channel. And I am out.
As If We Never Left
13 years ago
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