We drove from Beijing to Hongmen and found a hostel. We arrived at 6PM and got ready for the walk up Mount Tai. The tradition is to walk through the night and get to the top for the sunrise. We set off at midnight and began the 7000 steps to the top. It's an old path built so emperors could climb and worship at the temple at the top, 1500 m above sea level. It was brilliant, nice stonework and old bridges crossing a gorge with waterfalls and old engravings in the rock. Then lots of old temples at the top. What was meant to be a 5 hour climb took us 3.5 so we had a bit of time chilling at the top.
The sunrise was very unimpressive, it was far to misty to see it.
The norm is to get the cable car and bus back down, but we wanted to see the path in daylight which was a good decision. Our guide, Jimmy, was tired so he got the cable car back down. We got down in two hours, mixture of walking, jogging and jumping down the steps. Felt good to do a good stint of solid exercise.
We stopped at a city called Quofu with an old walled centre. We walked around the outside wall and moat then stopped at some street food vendors and had some absolute beauts. A cold fruit smoothie drizzled in syrup was everyones favourite.
Next stop was Nanjing, the former capital of China. Nanjing translates directly to south capital. (Beijing translates to north capital). We parked the van up down a quiet side street. It looked perfect. We woke up to find the van amongst a shed load of market stalls selling street food. We heard tapping at the window, the van was surrounded by policemen, one had a pretty serious gun slung over his shoulder. We weren't going to argue with them, we got dressed and drove off pretty quickly.
We found another spot to park a little bit out of town. Quickly a crowd gathered around the van, all intrigued about us, our van and why we were parked on their road. A Chinese guy stopped on his bike and began chatting to us in Chinese. Jimmy translated that he was inviting us up to his flat for tea. 5 minutes later some coppers turned up and checked all our paperwork and said we had to move the van, we moved 20 metres up the road, all seemed good. We went to the guys flat for tea and a turn out. He whipped out some musical instruments and played some tunes for us, then went and bought us breakfast leaving us alone in his flat, very trusting. We had our suspicions he may be the local drunk. Our suspicions were confirmed when he polished off a bottle of vodka over lunch. We headed to a river in Nanjing, it was huge with serious amounts of shipping going up and down. On the way back to the van we came across an outside party, with one lady singing and a hundred or so people gathered round. The next thing we have 100 pairs of eyes staring at us, everybody tapping their mate and pointing over. They probably hadn't seen a foreigner in there estate before.
We woke up, went for a jog then made our way towards Shanghai. It was Saturday, two days until my birthday and we had planned to be driving all day on my birthday so it made sense to have a night out tonight. We bought some Chinese fire water (56% proof) which got us well on the way. The lads made me where the sexy little Chinese number that Stew wore on his birthday a week before. We met some Germans at the hostel and went to a sports bar with them which was good fun. We liked the look of Shanghai so much we decided to stay a few more days than planned.
Me and Dunny went out for a beer the following evening. We were struggling to find a bar with cheap beer. A girl approached us and said she works for a bar where beers were £3 which was the cheapest we could find. We followed her to a bar which turned out to be a brothel. When we said we weren't interested and tried to leave 6 horrible looking Chinese blokes stood in our way, locked the door of the room we were in and claimed to be mafia. They threatened to beat us and drop us in the countryside unless we paid them money. Dunny got up to leave and they through him back down onto the sofa. They took £190 of each of my cards. Not a very pleasant experience but we got out alright. After we met some genuinely nice Chinese guys and had a drink in their bar with them. The following day we went to a police station, explained the situation so we could get a transcript from them and hopefully get my bank to reverse the transactions. Great way to spend your birthday! The next evening made up for it. We went and sat down on the Bund and saw the most awesome skyline I've seen. At night it was even better, all lit up. We met two English girls who were travelling China. We went out for some amazing street food then down to the Bund for the next where's willy.
The next two day was spent cycling around Shanghai admiring unbelievable skyscrapers, bridges and general brilliant infrastructure. Everything is new and clean. The area surrounding our hostel had about 50 small shops selling machine tools and spares. Just showed how much the country is geared towards manufacturing. Loads of construction here too, skyscrapers going up all over the city.
We still haven't heard whether we can get a permit for Tibet which is annoying. We are going to start heading west across China anyway.
Shanghai was awesome, up there with St. Petersburg as my favourite city so far on this tour.
Rob
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