Alex in China

Alright! So we’re finally back from Qufu and Ti’an (I only say “finally” because the drive was a nice 7 hour trek with little to no air conditioning!) and it was an amazing excursion. Even though the drive was long and sometimes tough I’m really glad we made it because we had a beautiful view of rural China and the general landscape of the area. It’s funny seeing how quickly the environment changes once you leave the city. One minute you’re driving through the streets of a well developed city and the next your tumbling down a gravel road weaving your way through farmers and carts. China is very unique in the sense of how rapidly it’s progressing. To put it into metaphor form, it’s like a dog whose legs are growing faster than the rest of it’s body. The cities are like the legs growing at an extreme rate and pushing the country forward while the rural area is like the body, trying to keep up and take in all the new changes. Well…at least that’s how it seems to me, I could be wrong.

So back to the trip, we arrived at Ti’an in the evening and crashed pretty early after getting some food and exploring the streets for awhile. I was definitely thankful for the full nights sleep as we woke up at 5:30am to get ready to leave for Mt. Taishan. What’s so crazy about climbing Mt. Tai is that you don’t climb it by walking a nice dirt path, you climb over 7,200 stone stairs all the way to the top. Standing at the bottom and looking up at this mountain sized staircase was extremely intimidating and slightly discouraging but we went for it anyways. I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever felt that kind of intense burning sensation all throughout my legs before (and hopefully never will again). They say that climbing Mt. Tai is supposed to lead to “spiritual enlightment”, but the only enlightment I felt was realizing that I should have spent some time on a stairmaster before leaving!

But as bad I as I’m making it sound, I actually had a blast climbing Mt. Tai. Being with a group made it well worth the challenge as we were all soaked in sweat and gasping for air together. It also made me feel more connected to the Chinese people around us because they clearly were having just as hard of a time doing the climb as we were (although there was the occasional crazy old man who would go sprinting up the stairs). There was also lots of stuff to keep you entertained along the way. A group of men half way up insisted they would carry you up a few flights of stairs for a good price. Apparently a good price is 500 yuan ($80) as our poor friend Derrick found out three flights later. To top it all off there was this guy somewhere along the climb that was selling pictures with his monkey for really cheap. Despite the little voice in the back of my head warning me about monkey diseases, I couldn’t resist and got this awesome picture of me and ChangChang the monkey. If you look closely you can see ChangChang searching through my hair (unfortunately for him I shower daily, so there wasn’t anything there!)

At the top of Mt. Tai (the “South Gate to Heaven”) there were several temples that you could visit and pay your respects to the gods. Personally I don’t believe in the god of longevity or sky so I went ahead and just watched the locals on the side. I can see why the people put these temples up on Mt. Tai though because the view was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in a long time and definitely “worthy of the gods”.

After leaving Mt. Tai later that day we passed out as the hotel for a little and then a few of us went out to eat with the local street vendors. You’ll never find food as cheap as you can from a street vendor. They pile meat onto a stick and then you chose the meat stick you want and they cook it for you right there with their own special spice blend. It’s usually 1 yuan per a stick which is about $0.15. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to handle US prices for food after I leave China!

After climbing a mountain the whole day, there was clearly only one thing we could do to finish the night off. Get a massage. Five of us headed over to the massage spa after taking a shower and paid $10 (US) for an hour and a half massage. To be honest the place was a little shady and we were told to make sure we didn’t get the “special massage” but it turned out to be legit and well worth the cheap price. They even walked on our backs which I really don’t think most masseuses can do unless they’re as small as these ladies were!

To finish the trip off we headed to Qufu the next day which is the hometown of Confucius. His home and temple were extremely beautiful and filled with Chinese history. I don’t really have any exciting stories about anything crazy that happened in Qufu, it’s more like one of those places that you have to see to appreciate. To make up for my lack of description I’ll put a few pictures below to give you a feel for what it was like.

(thanks to Joel for that last one)

And now we’re finally back home in Qingdao. Today is a national holiday (Dragon Boat Festival, I think?) so we’re all catching up on our blogs, emails and sleep. Tomorrow we’ll be back in class, which I just realized I haven’t written about but I think I’ll save that for another day -a