The Long Way Up (And Down!)

Mount Tai, China

Here I wanted to make up for the day I added in Qingdao, so I only planned to stay two instead of three days. Up on the first day, down on the second. I only worried a bit about prices of accommodation on the mountain. I had also planned this as my days of meditation, time to think about the things that had been going round my head after leaving Beijing. I wasn't expecting any travel companions here.
Funny enough, when I least expected them I got them - a lot of them, too. Many people said hello to the lone foreigner climbing the Taoist holy mountain. I ended up climbing the mountain with three girls I kept running into. We started chatting and it turned out they were all final year medical students at the university of Taian. What a coincidence, I thought, I hadn't bought the offered medical insurance that came with the ticket but now I was surrounded by a group of three cute medics. As we climbed further our group grew as first two of their friends and then two other guys joined us.
On the last bit of the climb before the South Gate to Heaven - a flight of 1600 steps - I almost thought I'd need the girls' skills. We kept encouraging each other shouting “加油”. Still, we were all completely, utterly exhausted when we made it to the top. Apparently, up to that point the steps total 6600. I swear, I felt every one of them. I had started climbing around 15:00 - it was now 20:30 and darkness had fallen. They were also here to watch the sunrise, so we decided to be economical and all share a room. Prices for very simple rooms can easily be more than 200 RMB. We managed to find what people said was the cheapest hotel on the mountain top - 80 RMB for a four-person room. No need to mention that there were eight of us. 10 RMB per person on Mount Tai! It was a bit crowded with two persons per bed but it was cold at this altitude and the night was short anyway.
Then came the main event: the sunrise from the summit. We got up at 4:30 (!) to find that "sunrise from the summit" is also a major tourist event in China. More than half an hour before start when the sky began to turn grey almost every level piece of rock was occupied. People were pushing and shoving to get the perfect spot for the sunrise photo. And in the middle of all this touts were trying to sell their services as photographers: “拍一张！拍一张！” 15 RMB! I can do that myself. Only that they kept annoyingly getting in the way. When the big moment came and the brilliant sun disk appeared on the horizon all hell broke loose. The touts grew frantic shouting and hustling customers to the perfect position. I had imagined a quiet magical moment - but not in China, not on Mount Tai. A flurry of photographs erupted. And everyone was taking the same two shots: "I'm holding the sun in my palm" or "I'm poking the sun". Then 30 minutes later when the sun disk had cleared the horizon it was all over, everyone had gone. Then I finally got my private moment with the sun and a bit of magic did actually come up. The highest peak I've climbed so far, alone with the wind, the sun and the sky.
Then came the most difficult bit that I been afraid of: the long way down. Another 6600 steps. I'd never make it. My legs, despite endless hours of walking around cities, were feeling like jelly. But what goes up must come down. Unfortunately, I had lost sight of my friends from yesterday during the flurry of activity during the early hours. I found some distraction meeting another group of girls also on their way down. But they were so interested in all the souvenirs sold along the way that I eventually left them. So, bathed in sweat but happy I reached the foot of the mountain. I wonder when the pain will subside but I'm looking forward to climbing the next higher mountain.

Revelation on Mount Tai

Mount Tai, China

See things with your eyes, not just through the camera lens.

Admittedly, you don't have to meditate on the summit of Mount Tai for this revelation but it did come to me here. By coincidence. It should be common sense. But is it?
Taking pictures is getting easier and quicker and more and more people list "photography" as their hobby - especially travel photography. I do, I have to confess. With a digital camera you can take hundreds of photos, shoot everything if you want. So, when going to interesting places, doing interesting things you take lots of snaps to show off to friends and relatives - "check out where I've been!"
Unfortunately, the temptation is to look at something once, take a snap and turn away and move on - "I'll always have the photo to remind me." You want to go more places and then later look at the photos. But what if something happens to the precious pictures? Printed photos fade or can be lost, digital ones - well, it happened to me. Twice even. A single hard drive crash can erase hundreds - thousands - of photos. With my USB hard drive broken - for good, I have to assume for now - I know what that means. That moment more than 4000 photos went down the toilet. All that remains are memories.
So, now I hope that I really looked properly at all the places I went. I certainly try but sometimes temptation is too great to line up a shot and leave the rest to the camera. I know, from now on I'll look at everything with double attention. I still take pictures but from now on I want to make sure I don't miss a thing. As a friend said: "What's important are the memories in your head."

Sleeping in a Rat Hole

Taian, China

I arrived here in Taian late last night. Groggily I walked out of the train station into the usual throng of relatives, hotel touts and taxi drivers. The Station Hotel had been described as reasonable, so I was looking for that one. A taxi driver helped me find it but it was full. And I hadn't booked. Crap, I thought, it's late at night, I'm in a strange place, I have no room and I'm planning a difficult climb tomorrow. I told the taxi driver I was looking for something cheap and the helpful man instead guided me to what I had taken for a newspaper stand. On one side there was an entrance and stairs leading down underground. Several shady types were hanging around the entrance. This was a hotel?! I was introduced to the boss. The rooms were really underground. There was a long, dirty corridor littered with rubbish. Some more shady types were loitering. I was feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. The first room he showed me was right at the back. For RMB 65 he said. I laughed at him, told him I was prepared to pay 30. Then he showed me another room around the middle of the corridor. It all looked like a brothel. Some rooms did have girls in them. This room had TV and a VCR, he announced. Apart from that there was a single light bulb, the bed and table were cheap, ancient and rickety. It did have a shower. I thought about it: the backpack was getting heavy, I was tired, it was late, I hadn't spotted any other hotels nearby and it would only be for a night. I haggled him down to 30 and registered. By the way, where was the toilet? I was led further into the bowels of this warren to a dark doorway. The room had no light (which may have been a mercy) but it stank as if people had pissed and shit on the floor and it hadn't been cleaned in a decade. The stuff that grew and lived in there was probably better left in the dark anyway! And my door could only be locked with a makeshift latch and a padlock. I was having second thoughts...
Before sleeping I found myself a net bar to check my email. It's an interesting phenomenon that once you've made a bad choice much better alternatives seem so obvious. Now I realised the damn station square was surrounded by hotels. Some rooms were also for RMB 30 and they were above ground. Gah! Since when did I listen to taxi drivers at the train station anyway?!
In the end I decided I was too tired tonight to carry my luggage to another place. Besides, I had already paid. And how bad could it get? How bad exactly I found out when I went to bed later - after using that scary toilet one last time. I now found out that the walls of my room were only a thin sheet of plywood. People were shouting in the corridor and it sounded as if there was no partition at all. It also sounded like some sort of argument. And the door to my room didn't close properly and could only be jammed shut by a little latch on the inside. Lying wide awake on my bed I considered the situation: the shady characters outside were fighting, it was all happening right outside my room, my walls were basically paper and the door was not secure. I was so not feeling safe when someone actually started banging on the door. Now I was frightened. What did they want now? I tried to ignore it but it went on. Eventually, I opened. It was the boss. They wanted the VCR. I waited while they disconnected it and carried it to their room. I jammed the door shut again and went back to "restive guard mode", listening, staring into the darkness. Finally, I started listening to some music instead and that lulled me to sleep.
This morning I practically fled the place. Even forgot to take a photo to document it. I only felt comfortable again when I was outside in the bright morning sun. The boss wanted to help me find a guy that would watch my luggage while climbed the mountain. It turned out to be a little tent next to my "hotel". There were some suitcases and the "guard"'s sleeping mat in the middle. It had "theft" written all over it. No way, I was trying my luck with the left luggage office at the station.
Later a businessman from Beijing treated me to a massive breakfast and we chatted slightly awkwardly about Beijing, China, economy and the Olympics. He ordered some expensive seafood dishes and made me eat some of it. He refused to let me pay for any of them. That revived my trust in the kindness of people a little. Still, I'm never ever again going to go for the first hotel I see. Especially if it's a cab driver recommending it.