[Continued from first post]

Because Qufu is only an hour's drive from Tai An, we hired the same driver who picked us up from the train station to drive us on rather than taking a public minibus. He probably thought he was ripping us off by charging us RMB 260, the equivalent of about $32. Tai An, while a bigger city than Qufu, definitely felt like the most provincial place we went. Only one person at the hotel spoke English, and none of the restaurants we went to had English menus, though they all automatically scrambled to find an English-speaking waiter to help us the minute they saw our faces. Worked fine, especially with the assistance of a phrasebook with a pretty complete menu section. (In restaurants in most other places, we were surprised to see that they inevitably managed to dig up an English translation of the menu, even if it was just an old photocopy. This was not only in "touristy" restaurants.)

An aside, we were well and truly suprised at how many people in China do speak servicable English. All the bookstores had huge sections for books on learning English, many very business-specific - English for hotel workers, English for bus mechanics, etc. There's obviously a real push to teach people how to communicate in a manner understood by the Western world.

The Taishan Binguan (hotel) was clearly a dinosour - really well located in the nice part of town for climbing the sacred mountain of Tai Shan, but there was hardly anyone there. They also stuck us in a lousy second floor room overlooking the parking lot even though we paid rack rate - but we don't think there was anyone on any of the other floors.

The temple in Tai An was really gorgeous, though. We went on both afternoons we were there - first day we just napped until almost dark, so we didn't feel we had enough time to explore it properly. Two cool things - first, there was a truly ancient mural in one of the buildings that covered all the walls - second, you could climb up on top of the wall surrounding the temple and get a great view of the city and the mountain.

The second day there we climbed Tai Shan - and climbed - and climbed. More than 6000 stone steps, a 4500 foot elevation gain, straight up. None of that wussy switchbacking, and we didn't take the bus or cable car for any of the ascent. There were temples, old inscriptions, and other sights all the way up, many of which we missed because we had no idea what the signs along the way said. By the time we got to the top, we were exhausted, taking one step at a time. We thought we were so slow. But we then realized all the books said it would take 4-5 hours, and we had done it in 3! At the top were hotels, restaurants, temples - almost a miniature tourist city. We saw exactly 4 other westerners the whole day - it was amazing the number of people who "surreptitiously" took our picture that day, and many others in China, just because we didn't have Asian faces.

Coming down, we were exhausted - took the cable car to a bus to a taxi back to the hotel. We then resolved a snafu with the non-English speaking travel agent we'd found (she'd neglected to deliver our air tickets to Beijing when she promised the night before, but we got them when my partner left her a note threatening to call the police). This was our last night (thankfully) to have smoked tofu.

Early early the next day the travel agent had arranged a car to pick us up to drive us to the nearest airport at Jin An to catch our flight to Beijing - from Jinan, a 2 hour drive away. It's hard to imagine, but Tai An, a "town" of over 5 million people, doesn't have an airport! In the dark traffic was ok, but as it got lighter we (as was typical in China) shared the highway with pedestrians, pedicabs, bicycles, trucks - you name it. And everyone just jockeys for position. We finally had to look in the phrase book to figure out how to tell the driver to slow down, he was making us so nervous. At first I think he thought we were complaining that he was going too slow, because he sped up. Arrrgh. But ultimately we got the point across.

The flight, on Shandong Airlines, was fine, albeit cramped. I had a pleasant conversation with the gentleman next to me, who ran the refinery in Jin An. Across the isle was a Chinese couple with a very fat little boy - somewhere between 3 and 5 years old, I'd guess. He was the perfect example of the "spoiled child" syndrome. As he stood up when the plane landed, he proceeded to pull his pants down and try to defacate in the aisle. His mother pleaded and pleaded and pleaded with him as he screamed and screamed and screamed. It was about to get really ugly, but she did ultimately prevail and get his pants back up. Last I saw them they were holding his pants up and running to the bathroom in the terminal.

Beijing reminded me of Washington, DC in some ways - very grand public boulevards and squares. The Forbidden City was kind of overrated - and it didn't help that half of it was under reconstruction. The Temple of Heaven was very cool, though. We went to two "museums" in Beijing. One - the Academy of Art- was taken up by an architectural biennial, which was basically advertisements for a bunch of big architecture firms. The other - the National Museum on Tiananmen Square - was more like an old elementary school, much of which was boarded up, with some reproductions of architectural finds in two old classrooms. Strange and very disappointing.

We walked and walked and walked in Beijing. One day, we took the subway 10 miles across town and walked the whole way back, stopping at a whole bunch of sights, heading through everything from huge boulevards to lakes to old house museums to parks to fetid little alleyways strewn with garbage. Very scenic, and really fun.

Food was also great in Beijing. One night we walked into a Sichuan restaurant, which IMO was the culinary highlight of the trip. I've never eaten anything like it. We were dripping sweat. But it was delicious. One dish had bamboo shoots and dry-fried pork strips. Sounds normal, except for the crushed Sichuan peppercorns encrusting the pork, and the hundreds of dried Sichan red peppers. Whew.

The St. Regis was a really really nice hotel. I wouldn't have paid for it, but for points it was perfect. Our SPG Gold status got us a high-floor room with a view. There was a "butler" for each floor (basically a glorified concierge) and a really nice spa and pool. We also indulged in the buffet dinner a couple of times. By that time in the trip we didn't always want to go out exploring for dinner.

We had saved most of our souvenir shopping to the end of the trip, but up until the last day or so weren't having much luck. The Friendship Store was overpriced. We thought that Beijing Curio City would be good - a huge antique mall with hundreds of stalls - but absolutely everything was "Ming Dynasty" and the initial asking price was in the thousands of dollars. We were really disheartened. Then, on the last Saturday morning, we went to the Dirt Market - basically a huge flea market, no longer in a dirt field, but with aisles upon ailes of stalls of porcelain, jade, furniture, bronze, etc. Many of the same things from Curio City, but no one was trying to convince us they were antiques instead of reproductions. Jackpot! We got into the bargaining and brought home some nice things - even one bowl we're convinced is really an antique. I'm sure we paid tourist prices even after the bargaining, but least we paid the well negotiated tourist price, less than we would pay here for nice decorative pieces.

All in all, traveling independently in China was a bit frustrating at times, but also rewarding. The older I get the more I like to be taken care of, but getting around on our own still has its charms. We're not yet ready for the packaged bus tour route!

We'd definitely go back, maybe to Sichuan, Hunan, Tibet or the Silk Road. It was a wonderful trip.