Holidays in Tai'an

Tai Shan mountain rises over the city of Tai'an in Shandong province.

It took us a little less than seven hours or so to get here to Tai'an from Xuzhou -- sometimes it seems like it takes seven hours to get anywhere in China, regardless of distance. The bus ride provided a unique insight into bus travel in China. While our coach was nearly full upon leaving the station, our driver pulled over seemingly every 15 minutes or so to let on an extra passenger or two, thereby sweetening the deal for himself and the attendant. We also picked up several pieces of large cargo, which I assume we shipped at less than the going postal rate.

As we left Xuzhou and headed into Shandong province, the surroundings slowly changed from swampy to more arid and mountainous. Early in the journey we crossed the Grand Canal, once a highly valuable transportation waterway but today a silted over historical footnote. As our driver specifically avoided the freeways in order to save on tolls, we also got a good look at rural traffic conditions; in other words, donkey-drawn carts, pedicabs, pedestrians, bicyclists, buses and cargo vans all sharing the same roads.

Fortunately, here in Tai'an we've found a quieter and smaller town with numerous views of the city's main attraction: the sacred mountain Tai Shan. Which is not to say that it is all that quiet or all that small. We wandered the streets today with what seemed to be many Chinese on holiday -- people were busy shopping, eating and making travel plans. Some of the larger shops had set up small stages for live performances or demonstrations, and the streets were packed with vendors and salespeople selling everything from city maps to jumper cables to fresh pineapple. I bought some kind of high-density cake that was being sold all over town, although I'm not sure if it's a speciality to this region or is something that gets brought out for the May holidays -- kind of like our Christmas fruitcake. It weighs much more than I thought it would (and regrettably was being sold per unit of weight, so I also shelled out a lot more than I expected) so we'll probably save it for the trip back to Beijing on Friday. I don't think it'll make for good backpacking food on the way up the mountain, which should take up about eight hours of our day tomorrow.