We had a real adventure this weekend. Now we are back to reality and have to get ready for final examinations. I'll have to get that ready before I do any long blogging. We went to Panshan Mountain this weekend with our young friend, Monkey, and her mother. Her father was going to go but he was told he needed to go to Sichuan Province. But he both dropped us off at the train station on Sunday morning and picked us up Monday afternoon. I'm not sure what happened in between but I think there was something going on in his department that made him come back early.
We rode a real old Chinese train for 2 1/2 hours to the countryside of China to one of its famous tourist areas in the north and stayed with friends of Monkey's parents. We hiked around the Panshan mountain area quite a bit and even walked up the road toward the peak but we didn't make it. I'd like to go back in the fall when the sumac is turning red - yes there is sumac in China.
Briefly, Panshan Mountain is considered one of the 15 peaks that Chinese people must get to in their lifetime. It's the only one near here. It is a mountainous area north of Tianjin and east of Beijing. One of the emporers of China in the Ming dynasty fell in love with the place and wanted to spend a lot of time there. This was about 600 years ago. He has a lot of work done to make it suitable for a emporer, most of which is gone but some of which remains. We only did things that were free or included in our resort/motel package. It is quite beautiful there. We had a great time walking around, meeting people and resting. I did take a bunch of pictures and I hope to have them developed later this week.