TAI'AN, CHINA

The latest destination on my whistle-stop tour of China is the town of Tai'an, in Shandong Province. And "whistle-stop" is appropriate, I guess, because to get there I had to take a seven-hour train ride from Beijing.

By the way, have you ever tried to buy a ticket in a Chinese train station? It's an adventure, let me tell you. I think it should replace "Chinese fire drill" as the new politically-incorrect metaphor for a chaotic situation.

Anyway, the train ride itself was pretty comfortable. I chose a "hard sleeper" bunk, which wasn't really that hard after all. It was was definitely worth the few extra few bucks to have a place to lay down, even if the ceiling was just inches above my head. Interestingly, the "Chinese" gentleman in the bunk across from me turned out to be from Sheboygan, Wisconsin(!), on a business trip to sell American plants and trees to Chinese cities for landscaping ("They really need it," he told me).

Oh, the reason I made the rail journey to Tai'an? Even though my time is limited in China, I wanted to do something that's a little "off the beaten path," not on the usual list of tourist spots. So I've decided to climb Tai Shan, the most sacred mountain in China according to the Taoist religion. We'll see how that goes....