I am Alive! [22/6 to 26/6]
I'm now in Qing Dao (where Qing Dao Beer is made). Here is the summary of my previous journey:
22/6 Jinan (濟南)
Flight Delayed
The flight was cancelled (!!!) and I had to land in Shanghai. The arrangement was a mess and I arrived at Jinan (where Dai Min Lake is located) 5 hours behind schedule. I will claim under my insurance policy later. I met a Hong Konger on the plane.
23/6 Jinan - Qufu (曲阜) - Jinan
I took congee and many steam buns for breakfast at a "Tai Pai Don". The total cost was $1.8 only!
Confucis Temple (孔廟)
I took a long distance coach to Qufu (where Confucis taught his students). Jinan's long distance bus terminal is the hub of the province (later I found that it's one of the busiest bus terminal in China). As it's a hub, terrible and dirty people from all places gathered there. The only good news was the terminal was well managed and user-friendly. The 24-seat coach I took was small, old and dirty. It's so exhausting to take 2.5 hr trip in it.
Eventually I arrived at Qufu. The Qufu terminal was like a junkyard... with computerized ticket system. I encountered a pocket-picker there. Fortunately, I turned back when I felt something wrong with my bag. When I left the terminal, many tricyle man came to me. The comments on internet said all of them are cheaters. Therefore, I ignored them and walked straight to the Confucis Temple.
Confucis Temple is the "holy place" for Chinese culture. It should be worth seeing. However, when I went into the temple, many women asked to be my tour guide. At least 15 people disturbed me in this way. How come the holy place of Confucis culture be polluted by these annoying people????
The temple itself is quite large. If it is clean and tidy, it would be a good place to visit. However, it's not. It's dirty and with many bad-taste stalls selling bad-tast gifts. If I haven't read the books about it, I couldn't have imagined it's the "holy place".
Confucis House (孔府)
Then I went to the Confucis House (where the Hung people live before PRC regime). The Hung family is itself a government department, governing all stuff about the Confucis knowledge, in every dynasty. Therefor,e the Confucis House is the combination of Hung family's office and living place. It's large, too. It's even more poorly manged than the Confucis Temple. The living rooms of the Hung family were restricted areas. Visitors can only see it through glass. Guess why? Coz the staff take rest, chat, and play poker there!!!!! They dare to do that even when the visitors are on the other side of the glass.
There's another senic point called the Confucis Forest. It's the tombs of the Hung people. The comments on forum about it were all negative. So, I didn't visit it.
I tried the so-called "Hung Family Tofu (Beancurb)". That's nothing more than overpriced tofu. That's all.
I took the coach back to Jinan. But this time the coach was even worse than the previous one...
24/6 - Tai Shan (泰山) (in Tai An City 泰安市)
Tai Shan: "All other mountains you see are small" (一覽眾山小)
Tai Shan is the most important point of my plan. It's the most important mountain in Chinese history coz it's the place where the emperors worship the gods of the sky and the hill. The ceremony is called "Fung Sim (read it in Cantonese, you should have read this term in secondary school)". I read a book about this (can you imagine a book talking about Fung Sim only?) before I went there.
Tai Shan is 1532m in height. How high is it? Tai Mo Shan of Hong Kong is around 900m. It's just 1.52 times of Tai Mo Shan. The whole trip is about 10km in length. In terms of height to length ratio, it's very very step.
The road uphill is well constructed. Of coz it's well-constructed as the emperors also walk through this road. Same as the Confucis temple, there are numerous tour guides and bad-taste gifts on the road. I bought a torch and a stick (recommended by the online forum people). Later I found that without these two stuff, the trip would be ruined.
It's quite exhausting to walk on the step stairs. In the middle of the trip it started to RAIN!!!!!!!! Thank god there were the bad-taste stalls. I could have shelters when the rain was heavy. Later, I decided to go regardless of the rain. Otherwise, I could never see the destination. The final part of the route is called "18 Pun (band)". It's terribly step and harsh. I walked and walked in the rain, strong wind and fog. Eventually I saw the gate (called "South Sky Gate"). A man from a hotel welcomed me and brought me to his hotel. I was so wet and tired to think too much about the quality. The price was within my budget and I stayed there. Later I found that I was terribly wrong.
The whole hill top was blocked by fog. I could see nothing at 100m away. That means all the features mentioned by the books couldn't bee seen. That means I couldn't see the sunset and sunrise, the two "must-see" feature in my plan.
When I was taking my dinner (taste good, the boss was friendly), I saw sunlight. The sun came back! I ran out of the resturant and took some photos of the sunset. Thanks God! Then I walked around the hill top and enjoyed the view. Too bad that there was no enough light for phototaking. The hill top was peaceful (not equal to quiet coz the Mainland people always talked aloud). There's no thief-like and dirty people (although the visitors still spit everywhere). There're visitors from various countries (At least I can recognize Westerners, Koreans and Japaneses). That's like a hill-top camp with some friendship and peace. In short, the hill-top was so far the only place in the trip that made me felt safe and pleasant. Having enjoyed the peace, I went back to the hotel.
Before I decided to stay, I've saw the room. However, I've ignored some details - there's no air-conditioning! the washroom had no flush water! there were strange smell at the washroom! there was no towel, toothbruch, shampoo, liquid soap, etc.! (I investigated the hotel next to mine when I plan to stay one more night if I couldn't see the sunrise. That's much better). When I slept, I felt that the bankquet was not clean enough. That made me very difficult to slept well...
The people at the lobby talked so loud that if it's Hong Kong, I would have called the police. That, together with the hygiene problems prevented me from sleeping well. Suddenly there was a big thunder and the electricity supply stopped. Thanks God again - the people stopped talking as there's no lighting. Then I could sleep.
25/6 Tai Shan - Tai An County - Jinan - Qian Dao (青島)
Dawn!
I woke up at 4:00am. The temperature outside was 10 degree C. Glad that I followed the recommendations of the online people to rent a thick army jacket. Remember the torch I've mentioned? That's not for going to the place for viewing sunrise. That's for walking at the dark corridor of the hotel and wake the staff to open the door.
All visitors went to the same site for viewing the sunrise. At a junction without clear sign, we heard a speaker saying "come here to see the sunrise". That's made by the people taking instant photos and providing foods there. The free-market wins! They did that out of self-interest but the society is benefited.
I must thank God again. It was still raining heavily at night. But now the clouds were not tick enough to block the sun! I took many photos (that's my purpose of coming). Then I met a Japanese who studied Chinese in Beijing. We travel around the hill top for hours. Then we walked back to the city, had lunch and visited the "Dai Temple (the start point of Fung Sim). I am very sure that if it's not the friendly and peaceful atmosphere of Tai Shan, I couldn't have made this new friend. The interesting thing is that he's going to HK in July and I'm going to Tokyo in August. We promised to take each other around then.
My Japanese friend went to Qufu while I went to Qian Dao. So we separated. The trip to Qian Dao took me 7 hours (2 hours from Tai Shan to Jinan. Then 5 hours from Jinan to Qian Dao). Fortunately the coach was clean and spacious. They also showed movies on the coach (Windtalker and Pearl Harbour, two junk movies).
26/6 - Qian Dao
I'm too tired to type any more. I would type it tomorrow. The only thing I want to say now is Qian Dao is so good!
Talk later.
究竟是誰把它丟棄？是相片中受屈的一方，還是某個不在相片中的人？
今天是大猩猩生日。
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