No, I haven't acquired an addition to opium -- although, every street vendor in China has opium pipes. This past weekend I climbed to the highest point I have ever encountered outside of an airplane!
Case, Mario, and I decided that an escape from the city was necessary. So, we met another teacher from my company, Lauren, at Taishan. Taishan is a Taoist mountain in central China that is renowned for allowing climbers to reach immortality. Supposedly a whole bunch of emperors made the hike to the top, which is 1400 meters above sea level.
We left Beijing at 14:30 on Friday, arrived in Taishan at 22:30, and started climbed the next morning at about 9:30. The trip was pretty trippy.
Lauren and her crew (other teachers and some students) decided that immortality is for the weak, and took the bus up the mountain. But, desiring at least a taste of the good life, Case, Mario and I decided to tackle the 6,660 steps on foot. About 35 steps in, I realized why I don't exercise and decided immediately that at the half way point, I was taking the cable car the rest of the way. Case and Mario, however, assumed the role of my heroes and athletes extraodinaire and climbed all the way to the top. Their glistening halos were evident when I met up with them again.
On top of the mountain was a little city with temples, restaurants, gift shops, basically everything. The most mind boggling thing is that everything that they use on the mountain must be CARRIED all 6,660 steps. The buses only go half way up. Then you must take a cable car (for Y45 a person). So, beer, food, trinkets, blankets, incense, everything is carried up by little men who don't complain, but don't move very fast either.
We stayed on the mountain Saturday night to catch the sunrise. We got a room for Y60 (which is Y20 each, about $3). But it didn't have heat. The room was so cold that the toilet water was frozen. We all piled onto one bed and put 6 blankets on top of us while we were wearing all of our clothes and our coats, hats, and scarves. We were still freezing. We could see our breath in the air. We decided to ask for a room with heat.
Paying Y40 more EACH, we got the heated room. It took about three hours for it to heat up, but it was much more bearable. We also got three more blankets. The three of us cuddled as close together as possible to avoid frozen extremities and other disastrous illnesses.
We awoke at 6:00 to greet the sun. But the sun wasn't having it. In fact, it lazily rolled along the sky long after coffee and breakfast had been consumed. Even then, it was still wearing a robe of clouds. We took some pictures and made our way down the mountain.
When we started the voyage down, I realized immediately that I had made the correct decision in not acquiring immortality. The steps were ridiculous -- steep, narrow, uneven. I would have lost the life I have currently if I had tried to gain a life without end. A few hours later, we were on another eight hour train ride back to Beijing.
When we arrived (at the wrong train station), we had to fight a million taxi drivers who were trying to charge us Y50 to go less than a kilometer. We didn't know how to get there, and we were slightly pressed for time, so we couldn't walk. But they refused to run the meter, even though we knew it wasn't far at all.
After this, three tired, cranky, and pissed off foreigners walked down a street in Beijing trying to find a reasonable taxi driver. During the voyage, a little lady asked if we wanted to eat in her restaurant. And three tired, cranky, and pissed off foreigners turned and cursed her out in every language we could think of. It was only the next morning that we realized how ridiculous we must have looked. Screaming obscenities in languages we don't really speak to a little lady who was just asking, "Che fan, ma?"
It doesn't matter. Immortality or not, we're human now. But I sure felt like a god when I was wandering around on the highest point of my life.
