We found our seats. Unsurprisingly, they were occupied by people with standing tickets. Trains are the main way of transport in China, since flying, though cheaper than in America, is still really expensive. And for distances longer than a couple hundred kilometers, buses are not efficient in terms of fuel, labor, or bodies moved. For migrant workers therefore, the only way to really get from point A to point B is the train, and the cheapest ticket is the standing class. Some trains are high-class and only have hard sleepers (cots) or soft sleepers (luxury cots) and no standing space. Alas, this was not our train. When we took our seats, the people in them seemed a little miffed that these young, rich, white kids had the audacity to take the seats that they had claimed fair and square. I felt a twinge of guilt, but it’s not my fault that the purchasing power of my dollar is inflated because their government has created a sort of de facto peg to the American dollar and has artificially deflated its value in order to attract more exports. My guilt having been rationalized, we sat down. We had a row of 5 seats, 3 on one side of the train and 2 on the other. Across from us were 5 very 地道 (didao, authentic) Chinese people. One of them was an old man who had fought for the North Vietnamese against the Americans in the Vietnam War, and also fought the Russians in the Sino-Soviet border conflict. He had an awesome Mao pin on his shirt that I considered offering him 100 kuai for, but more rational people on the train pointed out this might be highly offensive. Another of our train buddies was a total slob. He ate peanuts out of his hand as one might expect a dog to do, lapping them up and munching on them, mouth totally open. He also had a thinly veiled antipathy toward America. In the course of our conversation he insulted my friend’s shoes, tried to make us guilty for being educated, told us our government was evil, and was miffed when informed that we actually buy our MP3 players in the US, not China, because we want them to last longer than a month. He quite accurately represented the China that has slowly been dying since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms; xenophobic, reactionary, jealous, small-minded, and jingoistic. Unfortunately, this is still common in the rural and poor parts of China, which is exactly where this man was from. His home province of Anhui is the 5th-poorest in China based on GDP per capita.
After the lectures and naps that went on and off for 4.5 hours, we arrived at Tai’An, the city at the base of Tai Shan. As I said before, it is not a great place to be. Some small cities in China have a certain charm based on an old city, or have been spruced up because of tourist traffic, or are in some other way redeemable. Tai’An is not. It is dirty. By the end of our 24-hour excursion, we were only half-jokingly referring to Tianjin as a cosmopolitan metropolis. We took a small lunch at a restaurant near the train station, then got cabs to the base of Tai Shan. And then we started climbing. I’ll let some pictures take over for now.
The climbing got harder and harder. Not only did fatigue grow, but it became ever and ever more vertical, and eventually it became a sheer wall of stairs. Thousands of stairs. We started out, and then midway through our faces turned red from the huffing and puffing. By the end, it was declared that I looked ghastly pale and very sick. When we got to the top, a tout immediately spotted us and took us to a hotel. We go the room for 400 kuai, which isn’t too bad when split five ways. Cheaper than I had expected to pay for lodging on top of a mountain. I passed out while waiting to shower and my lungs were threatening to collapse. The day after my chest felt weak and I coughed constantly. It was perfectly exhausting. We fell asleep by 8:00pm. We were plenty tired to do so, and we also wanted to get up in time to see the sun rise, which is supposed to be a big draw for Tai Shan.
We got up at 3:45am and left the hotel to venture out into the dark. The entire mountain was misted in, and visibility was perhaps 20 feet. As we started to follow a small crowd of Chinese people whom we figured knew the way to the observation point, we noticed they were wearing ponchos. Sure it was so foggy my camera flash was turning the haze into a mirror, but the forecast called for a 10% chance of showers, and the day before had looked okay. We poked fun at them and laughed.
And karma cackled back.
About a third of the way to the observation point, it started drizzling. Half a minute later, it was raining. Then the lightning came. Keep in mind, we are on top of a mountain. This was lightning that was simultaneously accompanied by thunder. For those not meteorologically inclined, this means the storm is not 10 miles away, not 1 mile away, it is right above you. And when you’re 1500 meters in the air, it’s not far above. We ran for cover, and there wasn’t much. We found an outcropping on the rock wall and hid under it. The rain refused to stop however, and a moat started forming, as if to box us in. And it kept growing, encroaching, swallowing my sandaled toes. I moved to higher ground, but it kept coming. Finally there was a slight lull in the rain. I took my chance, and we fled to the hotel. Cold, damp, and annoyed at the lack of sunrise, we just sat for a bit, regaining feeling in the extremities. We then checked out and headed for the gondola line – there was no way we were going to make it down a rain-slicked mountain with aching legs in time to make our 9:56am train back. We got to the gondola line at 5:30am, precisely when the hotel staff recommended. We were not only the first ones there, but no one else actually showed up until about 6:15. So we loitered. Finally, a man came out of the ticket booth hut (he slept there) and opened up the gate. A mass of humanity followed, but we had a gameplan and stuck to it. Three of us rushed to the roped line to secure first place and block it off from others, while 2 went to the ticket window. This plan was executed to perfection. After buying the tickets, the pair joined up with us and we got the first gondola off that rock. It was actually a really cool ride, it started with an eerie view of mist then below that we had a really good view of the landscape.
The gondola took us halfway down the mountain, and then we caught a bus for the other half. It was pretty incredible to see what we had climbed just yesterday, and took almost 5 hours to do so. When we got to the bottom there were plenty of taxis waiting to take tourists like ourselves to the train station. So we hopped in, and 10 kuai later were there. After a true breakfast of champions – Pepsi, soggy fries, and a spicy chicken sandwich – at a KFC imitator, we went to wait for the train. We had bought our return tickets when we arrived the day before, but on such short notice, there wasn’t exactly space. So we got standers.
The 无座 means “no seat” and the 学 is short for 学生, student. We were actually able to find a very convenient nook and sit 4 cramped people down at a time out of 7, so it wasn’t too bad. Not a pleasant experience, but when you’re paying $4.18 to go 600 kilometers, how can one possibly complain?
We got back at around 4:00pm and from there it was dinner then a pretty early 10:00 bedtime, this due mostly to the fact we had been up for your typical 18 hour day, and had been standing for a good chunk of it.
It was an odd weekend. I can’t really point to anything and say affirmatively “that was fun” except for maybe the gondola, but it was still enjoyable. And the weekend in Tianjin would have just involved basically sitting around anyway so I feel it’s good we at least did something.
This is our three-day weekend, and after the test and culture class on Thursday I am out of here to Qingdao. You may be more familiar with the postal-map spelling of Tsingtao, and yes it is the very same city of the beer. The Germans set up shop there when they colonized, and there are also supposed to be nice beaches, along with churches and some other cool stuff to see.
And that’s basically it. Three-day, then regular weekend, then 10-day to Guangxi. We’ve already been here more than a month, and when the 10-day starts I’ll be halfway through my 12 weeks here. (The program is 11 and I have a week at the end with a friend who is in China on a Northwestern University program.) The title of this post is lifted from the vocab list we got in class yesterday. It is about a butcher, and how good he is at his craft and how it sounds like music when he slices and dices a cow. It also felt appropriate given the difficulties involved with our Tai Shan trip.
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