Xiangjiang Great Wall Business Hotel Jining

... of the five sacred mountains in China, Taishan. It has a total 6000+ steps, but we only climbed 3000! Still it was a workout, but the view from the top was awesome!
Then we went to Qufu, which is only about a 1.5 hour bus ride away. Qufu is Confucious' hometown, so we visited everything Confucious! We saw Confucious temple, then Confucious burial forest, and his mansion (he didn't actually ...

... stay in a hotel like this but as I haven’t seen Luo Wei for over a month and as I have said above it was her birthday so I chose the Youth Hostel to begin our journey together for the next three weeks to one month.

Luo We arrived around one and by two she was impossible to wake.

I spent the rest of the day and the evening walking all over the old walled core of Qufu. As ...

... in the morning when I departed the train. I know you are all saying, ohhh, isn’t that sweet and yes, it was sweet FOR THE FIRST HOUR but for six hours she sang the same ******n song over and over and over again.

Somehow today I gained around three hours.

I was told by train staff and passengers that we would arrive at Yanzhou City around seven in the morning yet somehow I found myself leaving ...

... sights of town, all dedicated to its most famous son. There is a vast Confucian temple complex which really could be the set for a scene out of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon - a huge complex of traditional looking halls, stele (inscribed slabs of stone), pine trees, twittering birds and traditional music piped around the whole area. Next door there is the Confucius mansions - the living quarters of the many generations of the Kong family that followed the ...

Word of the day: �_�� shen2mi4 -- mysterious. I had to look this one up, but I felt that it fit the day best, both the atmosphere of Confucious forest, and the journey to Nanjing QuFu, as I may have mentioned, is the birthplace of Confucius. It is also his final resting place. The Confucius Forest is actually a vast graveyard where all of Confucius's decendants are buried. According to the guidebook, a at least a quarter of the citizens of QuFu are decendants of ...

... a huge understatement... the two of us are total plebs, I only like museums if they have lots of swords and stuff). We whirled through Kong temple, mansion and cemetery in record speed, despite Mum being hampered by a very sore knee.

The temple was very cool even for a cultural dumb bum like me and the town was neat, but even still, after a few hours we'd had enough, so we had a coffee and then headed for the bus station to catch a bus back to Jinan, only to find the bus ...

... The area was so depressing and represented the majority of Chinese in Shandong who live in poverty. We found an eerie closed-down fairground with a single skeleton of a carousel and a completely random aeroplane in a metal cage hidden among the forgotten half-built buildings and left-behind houses. Amazingly, we managed to have lunch in a restaurant which was the only place alive. Back to Qufu to reflect in one of the two places to go in the evening - a little coffee shop.

Still Tuesday, September 11th I didn't actually get off the train in Jining myself, but a couple of Swiss cyclists did, and I figured this would be a good excuse for a quick story and a couple of pictures. While I was standing on the train platform in Ulaan Baator, a couple of attractive cyclists with fully loaded touring bikes passed me and smiled. I'd already grown accustomed to the fact that, even in Ulaan ...

... Kong Zi. The compound consists of the monastery, the Kong family mansion and the cemetry/forest. Dave was not impressed that Confucious himself didn't have the chance to live in such lavish conditions but rather died leaving only 3 straw huts. Because of the importance of his philosophies, his descendents were continuously supported by the governement, even as royals fell and dynasties changed, the Kong family still received the ...

... afterwards we were informed that we would be going to dinner with him and 20 people visiting from the Dalian Police Bureau. I had obviously been delivered to perform a White Monkey Dance for him. Well, no bloody way pal, you are not going to be seeing me for dust. Actually, whilst the thought crossed my mind, I was willing to play along for the sake of appearances. What actually happened was that I was effectively quarantined by my mad ...