View of our destination: Taishan "Pain fades but bragging rights last forever"It's been a week since we returned from our trip to climb Taishan and the muscle pain in my legs has finally subsided enough that I can look at photos of the mountain without cringing.
The train trip from Beijing to Tai'an was uneventful - it was when we arrived that event #1 occurred. A quirk of the Chinese railway system, that one can't buy roundtrip train tickets, quickly became a big annoyance when we discovered that all return tickets for the day we want to leave were sold out.
We were told that there was space on trains departing from Jinan, a city about 1-2 hours away from Tai'an. It's a larger transportation hub and which has more trains running to Beijing. Okay, but how do we get from Tai'an to Jinan? Our cheapest options were train or bus, but after asking a friendly driver how much a cab ride would cost, we decided it was worth the 180 kuai (about $22 USD) to be able to leave in the evening at our convenience instead of working around a train or bus schedule.
With that matter settled, we were off to 曲阜
Qufu, home of the man oft quoted in fortune cookies - Confucius. We get to the bus station, hop on a bus (thankfully without any
misleading minibus shit like we had in Xi'an) and arrive in Qufu one hour later.
Qufu is one teensy city. Does a population of 88,000 even count as a city? We easily walked around the entire place using less time and energy than it takes to cover a single district in Beijing. It was lovely and even a bit quaint to be in a small town again.
At Confucius Temple 
Confucius' Tombstone We head to the town center to check out the Confucius Temple. It takes us 20 minutes to figure out where the ticket booth is and to avoid people pestering us to hire them as a tour guide (for only 20 kuai! 20 kuai!). We find out they don't have student discounts available - bizaare when nearly every major tourist attraction we've been to so far has a sweet 50% student discount. We grudgingly fork over the 52 kuai and enter the Temple grounds, which were nice in an overgrown sort of way, but buildings were shabby and run-down - worn off and graying paint, with splintering wood in some areas. It was slightly alarming to realize that this is what the Forbidden City or Temple of Heaven would look if they weren't constantly preserved and restored. After quick stop for lunch, we were off to see the Confucius Forest - the largest artificial forest in China (apparently every tree was planted by one of Confucius' students). It's also a cemetary for Confucius' descendants, and of course, for Confucius himself. We wandered around, avoided Chinese tourist groups, watched a lady sell flowers by Confucius' tomb, and got told off for trying to get closer to some tombstones, before returning to the hotel for an early night's sleep (after watching an episode of 梦想中国 aka Chinese version of American Idol).
Sign that Qufu is mostly a domestic tourist destination? The number of visibly-foreign (ie. not counting me or Chris) people we saw today: 2. This number already includes Craig.
At an earlier, happier, point of the climb up Taishan We start the climb up
Mount Taishan bright and early next morning. The gloomy weather was replaced by beautiful blue skies and warm sunshine which made the first few hours a very pleasant hike. There were loads of people on the path, again mostly domestic tourists which meant there were quite a few people who would see Craig then shout "Hello!" In fact, a group of 3 students even asked if they could have a photo taken with Craig (he kindly obliged). Chris and I overhead people wondering if we were his translators.
these are the steps we were dealing with By the second half of the hike however, the steps got significantly steeper and narrower. It got to the point where stop every few minutes because of painful lactic acid buildup in our calf muscles. We were exhausted by the time we reached the summit but oddly renergized by the view at the top. The summit was much larger than expected and we took some time to explore the trails around the area.
At the summit! The ribbon reads: climb Mount Taishan, bring peace to your family 
checking out the view Now's the time to admit that we could have taken a cable-car and a bus back to the base of the mountain (hell, we could have taken those UP), but because we stubbornly set out to
climb the mountain, by god that's what we're going to do. Even if it kills us. And it very nearly did.
If climbing up steep narrow steps were hard, it didn't occur to how difficult it would be to balance on each little ledge using legs that were wobbly with exhaustion. My knees were sore and aching (Heather, I have so much more sympathy for your knee troubles!) and I actually burst into tears at one point because a piercing cramp started in the middle of my left foot. Even after Craig mercifully rubbed the cramp out, we still had half a mountain to go down. We actually had to hurry down the final section because we had to catch our ride to the Jinan train station.
Chris demonstrates how we all felt by the end of the day We arrived at the hotel just in time to catch our car... but we couldn't relax just yet. We'd allocated 1.5 hours for the entire trip to the Jinan train station. Our cabbie said it normally takes 1.5 hours
just on the highway to get from Tai'an to Jinan so, in his words, "I might have to speed a bit". By speed a bit, I mean he had his foot on the accelerator and thumb on the horn from the minute he pulled out the hotel parking lot to the time he arrived at the train station. I should also mention at this time that the highway was completely unlit, and we were surrounded by masses of manic lorry drivers. Overtake using the lane with oncoming traffic? No problem. Use the shoulder as an extra lane? Sure thing. He did such a brilliant job driving that we only spent 45 minutes on the highway and actually arrived 15 minutes
early at the train station.
Thank god our bunk this time didn't have any foul smelling people or loud snorers (except for Chris). Nothing like a 10 hour hike up and down a hill to induce a great sleep, even it if it is on a train. Photos of the expedition are
here.
