Have you ever heard of Mount Tai in Tai’an, China? If so you know what I am talking about, if not let me give you a quick introduction. Mount Tai is one of the Five Great Mountains and is located in the Eastern part of China. It is the highest point in the Shandong Province.
I heard from my Chinese colleagues that if you go to Mount Tai you must see the sunrise from the top of the mountain! The views they described were magnificent!
If you’ve ever been to China, you know the locals have a nich for talking hilarious pictures. If there’s any sight worth capturing on camera, you will see people posing all different ways in efforts to capture the funnies pictures! You know, like wrapping their fingers around the sun, people eating the sun or a beautiful sunrise coming out of their mouth or out of other places…
Anyway, let me tell you how this trip went went for me.
How to Get to the Peak
So you have basically two options to reach the peak of Mount Tai. Number one, you can take the cable car and have a sweat free and easy “climb” up the mountain.
The other option is you can hike up the mountain and by hiking I mean you can walk up 6,293 stairs! The bad news is that the cable car doesn’t run during the night and won’t run until the sunrise is over, so if you are looking at catching a glimpse of the beautiful sunrise from this famous mountain you have to take the cable car up the evening before and set up camp or just sleep under the open sky.
I opted for the 6,293 stairs. This will prove to have been a terrible idea.
Where to Stay
I booked a bed at the Taishan International Youth Hostel. I had dinner at a local soup kitchen and went to sleep early in preparation for my hike the next morning. I definitely wanted to see the sunrise which meant I had to catch the last bus that took you from the entrance to the starting point of the hike. The last bus runs around 2:00 AM.
At around 1:00 AM, while I was getting ready to catch my DiDi (Chinese version of Uber) to the bus stop, I was thinking what in the hell did I get myself into? I had no headlamp and I didn’t bring a jacket because it was the middle of Summer. And guess what? What was I thinking? I was totally unprepared.
Good news, I definitely wasn’t the only one crazy enough to climb this mountain at 2:00 AM. There seemed to be around 49 others on the bus doing the exact same thing!
When I arrived at the starting point, I looked up and saw what seemed to be a river of light heading up this mount. As I got closer, nope, no river but rather hundreds and thousands of people climbing this mountain all with their headlamps and flashlights. Obviously, no need for little ole me to have a light source. The path was light up like the damn 4th of July.
The Hike to Mount Tai
So I started my hike up the 6.293 steps.
On the way up to the peak you pass a ton of sellers selling you drinks and food and also hiking sticks. Everyone around me had one! They were using them to assist in climbing each stair and I could understand that, especially for the older people who did the hike. Some of the steps were at least 20 inches. But the side effect of the hiking sticks is that you have to be careful not to get Killed. If you are hiking behind someone with the sticks, you can end up getting punched in the stomach or other parts of your body.
Let me skip the excruciating part of the hike and tell you what happened after the first 2.5 hours of climbing the stairs…
The first thing I realized was thousand of people sleeping on top of the peak and I though if I ever come back, this is what I’d do also!
I made my way to a rock with an overview of Tai’an. It was so clear and you could see the whole city lit up. I was feeling like a champ. It was around 1.5 hours until the sunrise so I started eating my breakfast I bought the evening before. While eating clouds started to coming in. Shortly after, you guessed it, rain! I made my way to a rock with an overview of Tai’an. It was so clear and you could see the whole city lit up. I was feeling like a champ. It was around 1.5 hours until the sunrise so I started eating my breakfast I bought the evening before. While eating clouds started to coming in. Shortly after, you guessed it, rain!
I had an umbrella so I stayed for like 5 minutes until it really started pouring down. I went to the closet restroom (yup, there were bathrooms on top of the mountain, it’s wild there y’all) and squeezed myself in there with hundreds of others. When I think about it, all I can remember was the horrid smell of the bathroom!
So I had the choice between a stinky bathroom or a downpour. I think it stopped raining about 10 to 15 minutes before the sunrise. I was thinking YAY! How lucky am I!
After that it started raining again and everyone was heading to the cable car because taking the stairs down would be very slippery and dangerous. The line to the cable car was extremely long and I waited for over an hour absolutely SOAKED!
I finally made it back to the hostel and started drying everything before I went to the railway station and back to Beijing. And, by drying everything I mean using a hair dryer to hand dry everything because it’s China we are talking about. Clothes driers are few and far between. They aren’t common.
So basically, I hiked up the highest mountain in the Shandong province at 2:00 AM in the morning to see the sunrise but got nothing more than soaked from head to toe! I could barely even see the sunrise. If you I spect the picture closely maybe you can see it.
I’ll definitely go back there to see the sunrise and hope for a day without rain!
-Max
