On the list of five famous mountains in China, Mt. Tai is ranked #1. After finding some food, I visited Dai Temple, the traditional starting point to climbing the mountain. Right away I noticed there was a really long history here. There were stone inscriptions going back to the Qin dynasty, over 2000 years ago. The mountain was famous back then too. It has been a tradition for Chinese emperors and normal people to climb the mountain over the centuries. Some people take buses and cable cars, but I decided to walk the entire distance.
The past couple days I caught a little cold, but nothing serious. After climbing over 6000 stairs, walking about 9km uphill over 3 hours, and feeling the cold air at the top of the mountain, I was feeling a lot worse.
Being sick made it the hardest mountain for me to walk up yet and it was the coldest place I’ve been on my trip so far. There was nice scenery though. Lots of trees shaded the path and Chinese characters carved into the rocks everywhere.
After a couple hours at the peak of the mountain, I walked all the way back. The whole day quite a few people tried talking to me, saying “Hello” or saying something about “laowai” or foreigner in Chinese.
I got down the mountain had had some food in a local restaurant. School was ending, so there were a lot of kids walking on the street and many were surprised to see me. One boy and his mother came in to say “Hi” to me.
It was a long day, so I went to sleep early.