Since the Chinese Censor Bureau and the American Censor Bureau have threatened to end my blogging privileges and threatened to take a way my professional journalism licenses, the rest of my blogs will be toned down. Oh, and by Chinese Censor Bureau, I mean Golze (he has all the administrative on our blog, so he thinks he is Mao Ze Dong or something), and by American Censor Bureau, I mean my mom (she controls all the cash flow in my life, so enough said). I also would like to apologize again to all the parents who are reading this and to all the little kids I let down with my inappropriate language. I don't want anyone to forget, I do it for the kids. Because children are our future.
So now, let me continue from where I last left off, Tai Shan has a lot stairs. At first you don't notice how many stairs there are because the scenery is beautiful and there are many things to see along the way. I think my favorite thing that I saw before I realized that there are like a million stairs on that mountain was the Dragon tree. This is a tree that has some how grown together in to what the Chinese say is a shape of a Dragon. To me it didn't really look like a dragon but it still looked cool anyway. While this was my favorite thing before the stairs almost killed me, there was other interesting stuff that we saw a long the way. For example, Tai Shan is loaded with lots of temples. Because we were climbing on Chun Jie the temples were very lively and interesting. My favorite temple was the one right after the dragon trees, not because it was particularly interesting but because there was this one really funny guy there that had the "you speak so well conversation" with us, but in reverse.
The "you speak so well" conversation is a conversation that every Chinese person has with you once they figure out that you speak Chinese. If you are a Chinese student you will know what I am talking about, and if you are not maybe you won't find this funny or interesting at all. First you say a sentence in Chinese then a set of about two, three, maybe even four questions follow, the dialogue normally goes like this. "Oh, you speak question?" The normal reply is, "Yes." "What country are you from?" The normal reply is, "America." Then next thing they normally say is you speak so well. The normal reply is, "Of course." Or for more modest people, the reply is, "Something on the lines of Thanks or No my Chinese sucks." Then they sometime ask you next, "how years have you studied or how long have you been in China?" This reply varies. But it is always followed by, "wow, you speak so well." So that is the "you speak so well conversation." It was funny having the "you speak so will conversation with this guy in reverse, is one he obviously speaks chinese and he is obviously a chinese person, and two he knew all the standard replies. Re-reading what I just wrote, I don't think I explained this very clearly, but if you are a Chinese student that has ever had this conversation you would understand, how funny this was.
Back to The Long March, as I was saying before the march was pleasant and beautiful at first. It was even slightly snowing on our way up, to add more beauty to the climb. The fact that it was slightly snowing probably made our climb warmer than golzes. Just because of the fact that it was warm enough to snow. People who know me may think that I am being sarcastic right now, but I am so serious, the snow made it even more beautiful. I must say that I am not the outdoors type and more comfortable in the city, but at this point the climb was very.....ah...very...cool. I can't think of a better word that I can spell right now. However, once we reached the gate that had the trees growing the stairs started to get...um...since I am being censored, let's just say annoying. And at that point we had not even reached the halfway point. The halfway point did not coming until about 800 stairs later. 800 hundred stairs doesn't sound like a lot especially when you have to climb 6600 stairs. But let me tell you, with our backpacks and having already climbed like 12 million before that, I thought I was going to die by the time we reached the top. But once we finally reached the middle gate I was so happy. Then reality set in and I realized that that was only the halfway point and there was still more stairs to come. I swear I could have cried right then. But then I toughened up, fixed my backpack straps, and complained the rest of the way to the top. Since this part of the trip is all a blur in my mind, I am going to fast forwarded through this part. On the way up to the top from the middle gate, there was more stones with famous carvings in them, one really cool looking tree, majestic views, more temples, and one of the longest steepest stair cases with the tiniest stairs I have ever seen in my life. Let's pause here for a moment. This stair case from the bottom looks beautiful. It is hard to believe that man made it. It is also the last staircase before you reach the top of the mountain. It has about 1,600 stairs. I felt like a giant on each step, it was definitely not made for my feet. Each step I took, I thought I was going to fall all the was back down to the bottom. But climbing each and everyone of those stairs was worth it, once I reached the top. Reaching the top, was one of the greatest feelings I have ever had. My happiest about reaching the top did not last long, as I was bombarded by people trying to get me to sleep in there hotel for the night. But once I got away from them, the feeling of glory and victory quickly returned. Until, I reached the hotel that we would be staying for the night.
As my time at the internet cafe is quickly running out again, I have to end here. But I promise the next post that I have will be the last one concerning this trip. Which is good because by time I am able to blog again, I will be back at CET and my trip will finally be over.
This part is for my dad. Happy Birthday 48th Big Head, my you have many more. Man, you are getting old.
And to Ann, I don't know who did it, but it wasn't me.
As If We Never Left
13 years ago
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