Yulong Hotel Qufu

... 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 ...

... twice but a third time with me standing right before them. I was absolutely stunned at what they had done. I am unsure what language they think BEEP is from but for most it is simply computer language. Maybe they think that English speaking people hear BEEP differently than they do. With the ease they completed such a task it was obvious that most of those that enter their supermarket ...

... I’d best change from my shoddy fifty Yuan a night flea pit and head to the hostel and book in for a few nights.

We always eat at the beautiful hostel in Xian and we then head back to our usual hotel……why?

Our hotel is half the price of the hostel and we get free towels, a kettle, tea, cups glasses, soap, shampoo, conditioner, combs, toothbrushes ...

... but is now something that easily resembles the river Ganges with its colour and speed. Huge claps of thunder intermittedly overpower the blues that is softly coming from the roof speaks and lightening allows the hour to return to daylight in large flashes that last several seconds after which we are plummeted back into something that sits between afternoon and evening yet the hour is half past four.

I left ...

... 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 ...

... I took some nice pictures in the forest, which looked like something out of Lord of the Rings, with the mist all around on the ground, over the golden brown leaves. I also took some pictures of the tomb of Confucious itself. The next morning, we took a taxi to the first bus station mentioned in the last entry, and took the short-distance bus to the long distance bus, this time with no mishaps. Once there, we asked the people at the gate for the bus, in ...

Qufu; the hometown of Confuscious was unfortunately not that great. Its a small town consumed by the tourist draw of the Confuscious temple, mansion and tomb. We frequently felt ripped off. A diamond in the rough however was the small chinese girl working at reception in our 2nd hostel (the first one stank really bad). She was so cute and helpful ...

... the counter went off on a long explaination, all in Chinese of course, that neither of us could understand. Finally, some nice person who could speak enough English to translate came by, and helped us figure out that, yes, we could get to Nanjing, but we had to get off at a place where there was no stop. We got our tickets, and took the bus back to Qufu, and walked back to our hostel. And that is why today's word is qi2guai4.

If it were not for the unfortunate fact that I was pretty much unable to walk after my first trip to Taishan (no, scrap that, I was crippled), I was going to go to Qufu during Golden Week. Sadly, I had a hard enough time negotiating flat surfaces, let alone the four flights of stairs it would have taken me to get to the ground floor (the first leg of the trip to the bus station). For this reason, I was stuck in my apartment for most of the rest of that week. Taishan is a bit ...

... the main sights 74 times..... Qufu is a lovely little town, very pretty and touristless since we have come at the coldest time of the year. The main sights in Qufu are called 'San Kong' which means 'Three Confuscius' or something similar and includes a temple, a mansion and a forest all of which either celebrate or actually hold Confuscius. On the second day, we made our way to a mountain called Nishan which is supposedly where Confuscius was actually born. Nishan is ...