Not without a sense of humor

Last weekend, some friends and I decided to hike Mount Tai. I knew it would a fun trip when I checked my China guidebook and found this:

"Tai Shan is not just a mountain, it's a god."

Besides the apparent awe-inspiring nature of the mountain itself, and the rigorous climb to its peak, my trip to Mount Tai had the added advantage of being planned by a close friend with a unique sense of humor. One of the first decisions she made was to have us all meet at 8 am. It wasn't until we had bought train tickets and were seated on the 9:30 train to the town at the mountain's base that she announced that we would not begin climbing until 11 pm (so that we'd arrive at the top just in time for the famed sunrise), and that she had no activities planned for the day.

Funny, right?

We therefore spent the day wandering around the faceless town of Tai An, watching helplessly as our morning vigour turned into afternoon laziness and then got completely sapped away by the dusty roads and endless sidewalks of the downtown area.

After an exhausting two hours of nighttime karaoke, we finally started to make our way to the mountain. My friend chose to have us walk thirty minutes to the trail head instead of paying $1 per person for a cab. Our feeble protests were met with a cheery response about the importance of cardiovascular fitness.

At 11 pm on the dot, we finally began to drag ourselves up the mountain. I could sense the beautiful scenery on either side of the path, but the light of my flashlight only illuminated the hundreds of other people struggling up ahead of me.

Unlike American mountains, which tend to sport rugged dirt "trails", Chinese mountains are completely paved over and boast regulation-sized stairways.

If you'd like to recreate my "hiking" experience, all you have to do is hop on a stairmaster, turn off the lights, and set a timer for three hours. For an even more realistic experience, make sure that in the last hour you increase the incline to near vertical.

I reached the top at 2 am, and was promptly greeted enthusiastically by several entrepreneurs hoping to rent me a stylish "one size fits all" military coat designed to keep out the wind. Because I was exhausted and covered in sweat, and the temperature at the peak was quite literally freezing, I accepted. I quickly found that my coat had been playing an important role in Chinese history for quite some time. I liked imagining that the pungent odor it sported was that of its original wearer, perhaps a guard standing along the Great Wall. Taking care not to let it touch my face, I curled up against the icy stone wall of a conveniently located tunnel and slept.

Soon enough, it was time to head over to the "sunrise viewing area", along with a thousand other spectators who had magically appeared in the two hours I was asleep. To secure a good view, we got there early, and I found myself perched on top of a boulder with both the wind and the pressing crowd threatening to throw me off the mountain at any moment. (The Chinese aren't big on security railings.)

For about forty-five minutes, we stared at this:

Pretty, yes, but we were all cold. The universal annoyance with nature exhibited itself in the following exchange, shouted by anonymous spectators in the crowd:

"Hey, look! A bird!"
"Poor thing - the wind is too strong for it."
"Quick! Someone shoot it!"

Then, just when we were about to give up, this happened:

For the record, I attribute the sun's hasty appearance to the angrily shouted threat posed by the young man next to me:

"Hurry up, Sun, before I "sun" you!"

This followed by an over-the-shoulder remark from his friend:

"Nice. Subtle."

My sentiments exactly.