more adventures

Back from another 4 day holiday, and it was, of course, fantastic.

We saw Qufu -the place where Confucius lived and died (we saw his grave). Confuciun philosophy is the dominant philosophy that the Chinese live by, as an alternative to religion mostly. The place was not too tacky although very busy, and the cemetary was especially peaceful (although not too inspiring). Having taken an overnight seated train to get there, we quickly left for our trip to Tai Shan, the holiest of the 5 'holy mountains' in China.

This is the mountain that everyone climbs (its not easy taking 4 hours fo solid uphill step climbing to get there), and is beautiful with a famed sunrise. Rachel found a porter to help her for the first half (she has a very heavy way, but somehow managed the harder second half alone); we hid from everyone on the mountain in order to find a place to camp (not supposed to), and all 7 of us showered in the 1 hotel room that 3 people took (instead of camping). The walk up was tiring (as we had had no sleep the night before), the sunrise was great (we were lucky with the weather) and camping was fun (I just bought the tent). However the 'fantastic piece of flat land' that I had found at dusk, turned out to be the overgrown roof of a concrete sewerage tank for the nearby hotel...hmm, in the morning (4.30am) we woke up to a pungent smell before running to catch the sun.

A walk down the mountain was pleasent, off-the-beaten-track and long, but the vegetation smelt great. We then got a bus to Qingdao, one of the first cities opened up to foreign powers (Germany). It is a beatuful city with beaches and tree-lined promenades and is just like mediterranean Europe, with European style villas, houses, churches etc. We were kindly shown around by Rachel's friend's brother and saw the Chinese Naval museum, ate all kinds of seafood (some scary looking), drank lots of Qingdao (especially the first night, as it was Chris' brithday), turned off the power of the submarine whilst touring it, gathered large groups around us 'foreigners' especially when listening to an old sailor's life history....

Once again, the joys of travelling in a group, with people I have never met before has been fantastic, with lots of laughs and lots of crazy moments; great memories and great photos (uploaded, and a few key ones to be shown on weblog soon). When we bought 5 litres of baijiu (strong, horrible cheap, chinese spirit) and went down 8 carriages on a train wearing paper hats singing a song and giving out baijiu to very beweildered chinese people, it was truly a moment never to be forgotten (we were chanting: wo gei ni baijiu, mianfei/gambe -i give you baijiu, free/bottoms up)..I'll track down some of the other's photos too.

We're not quite sure why we did it (just for fun?), but i was concerned to start with about our maturity levels(!) and about stereotyping our culture, but once we started it was great, they all wanted pictures with us, we got rid of 4 litres of the horrible stuff (Chris was challenged to a 'gambe' and then had to spit the stuff out!), and we ensured their journey will never be forgotten!

Now, back in beijing, contemplating another weekend trip (wallet is getting thin and chinese knowledge even thinner!) and finished tutoring :( -Derrick is off to London this week for school. Tomorrow I start my internship at the British Chamber of Commerce in the afternoons (will let you know more once i know), have to catch up on 3 days of class missed (train was late this morning) and I have to celebrate France rejecting the EU constitution. Meanwhile the weather is great, I'm healthy and my camera is overused!