at this point we're resting near the jing shiyu i believe it's called, which is a series of Daoist riddles carved into a rock face near a stream. even our guide couldn't read most of it, cause it was written so long ago, so i have no idea what it says, but those Daoists are known to be crafty devils. there are these types of things carved all along the path, none of which i can read.
this next picture is taken at the half-way point, appropriately titled "halfway gate to heaven." you can see a slight discoloration in the saddle in the mountains beyond. that is where the road leads. here it started to get a bit cold and a bit windy. but we were still pretty warm from climbing so much.
in the states, if someone builds a trail up a mountain they use switchbacks, and a lot of them, to make the slope a bit easier. in canada, they perhaps put one switchback in where we would use twenty. in china, they just build a big freakin' staircase. the following picture shows the part of the trail called shiba wan, which means eighteen turns, but they use the term "turn" losely here. it climbs about 600 meters in what is essentially a straight shot to the south gate to heaven.
now i consider myself a pretty accomplished hiker, but this mountain absolutely killed me. here is the four of us looking happy and warm and without a clue of the horrors that would await us at the top.
my pictures at the top are few and far between, as i tried to avoid taking my hands out of my gloves as much as possible. it was damn cold. we stopped at a restaurant at the top for a bite to eat and to warm up (there's essentially a city up there). they brought out some dishes that could be considered lukewarm at best, but were still steaming because it was so cold. the china has some pretty nasty loos, and tai shan was no exception. let's just say that if they weren't heating the restaurant, they definitely weren't heating the bathrooms, which means no running water. for at least two months. in any event, here's on of the pictures from the top.
so we descended in a rush, or as fast as possible without destroying our knees. at the bottom, hai miao took us to a restaurant he knew to kill time and eat dinner before our train came. hai miao is a muslim, so we went to a xinjiang restaurant (xinjiang is the western-most semi-autonomous province in china). interesting note, when the four of us walking in the restaurant, the owner thought we were all from xinjiang, because the natives there look vaugely eurasian. in any event, here is a picture of trevor eating a chicken head. he had lost some sort of contest but i don't remember what it was.
so we eventually ditched a the restaurant and camped out in the local KFC, where we had ice cream. the vanilla flavor in china is not actually vanilla at all, but tastes vaugely of soybeans. i actually prefer it to regular vanilla. at that point, one of the guys looked at his ticket and realized that the date printed was for the next night. we freaked out but hai miao quickly assured us that it only said that because they were student tickets, so we could travel on either day. we headed over to the train station to wait for the train. our plan, since we had standing tickets, was to sit in the dining car and eat very very slowly, but we got to the car and found all the conducters sitting there. they said they had a soft sleeper available. now that is the way to travel. you get your own compartment with four beds. so we crashed for seven hours, got back to beijing, and i promptly fell asleep again for another seven hours. i'll be honest, i'm getting tired of all this typing so i'll just leave it at that. if you have any questions, send me an e-mail.
Love, BEN
p.s. clark says he hates you all.
oh yeah, by climbing tai shan, legend has it that i'll live to be 100. how's that for an accomplishment while abroad?
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