Tai An is a really small city by Chinese standards, pop. 350,000. There are supposedly five major Buddhist/Tao mountains in China. Each representing the head, arms, and legs of a fallen God. Tai An (the city) is at the base of Tai Shan (the mountain), the head, so we wanted to climb this monster. To do so, we had to climb 6660 steps over the span of 4 hours. It was a humbling experience and practically destroyed our lower bodies. The city itself was uneventful except for an interesting temple complex in it’s center. The highlight was the mountain.
What We Learned
1. The Chinese have timed eating habits in smaller cities. The restaurants are open in shifts. If you arrive early/late expect a limited menu.
2. If a restaurant brings food that they previously didn’t have, and you didn’t actually order, it is not a gift, you will be paying for it later.
3. Familiarize yourself with the variety of paper money used in China. The smaller notes have the same numbers as the larger ones, but are only increments of their bigger brothers. Even a decent sized, busy supermarket, short changed us twice.
4. If you go to a site with multiple entrances, be specific about the one you want to end up at. We went to the wrong entrance to the mountain and it wasted an hour of our time.
5. Don’t bother going to a lot of mountains in China. The government has commandeered every cultural site in China and they charge around $20 for entrance to the mountains. It’s too much, unless you are really into that type of thing.
6. There aren’t monks in most temples. Just government staff.
7. Communism is a religion in China. You have the freedom to believe what you want, but if you have a religion you will not be allowed to be part of the communist party.
8. Talk to passengers about whether a bus is boarding, not the staff, they will wait until the last minute to seat you and you’ll probably not be happy about your seats.
9. The bakeries in China are quite good. They make much better use of butter and sugar than Korea.
