Mount Tai or Tai Shan is one of the 5 holy daoist mountains of China. It is also the only one located in my home province of Shandong. My friend thought it would be a good place to visit during the week-long break we had as the rest of the class went on school trips to Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. It was a mere 6 hour train ride from Qingdao, and offered supposedly great hiking and cultural prospects. So we bought the train tickets for Thursday and made plans to meet at 7:20 am near my place to grab a taxi to the train station.

Wednesday night was Halloween. I don’t know what got into me, but for some reason or another I got blackout drunk. I had already started drinking when I thought to myself that the best way to deal with the train ride would be to zone out in a hangover induced nap. You needn’t work in a Jewish deli to know that this idea was not kosher.

I woke up to the phone ringing at 7:25am Thursday morning. Holy shit I thought to myself. I was able to quickly pull myself together and realize that I was indeed at home and not in a ditch somewhere. I picked up the phone and found my friend on the other end inquiring as to where I was. “I’m on my way give me 5 minutes” I coughed out. My brain recomposed itself and I flailed about wildly shoving the things I needed into my pack. I was out the door and running towards where I was supposed to meet my friend, when I noticed that I was still intoxicated to an unexplainable degree.

Thanks to my friend’s strength in organizational skills we had afforded ourselves enough time to make it to the train station with some to spare. We squatted down to eat some fried dumplings which were either the best dumplings in all of China, or just good because my stomach finally had something to fill the void. Then it hit me like a train pulling into the station. The buzz was making way for the inevitably immense hangover. But what really spoiled my bananas was that in my rush out the door I had forgot to pack the weeknight drinker’s secret weapon: extra-strength liquid Advil. One of those capsules was potent enough to mitigate even the most massive migraines.

Since we still had about 30 minutes before the train departure time, I told my friend I was going on a walk to get some stuff. My friend doesn’t really know me, and the shenanigans that I get up to, so he let me on my way. My mission was to get to a drug store to find something that would help me through my weakened state. In my hazy journey I had managed to get all the way around the station. I drew a Smithsonian worthy image below to give you an idea of what went down. What I didn’t manage to do was pay attention to the time, as by the time I got to the drug store I now had about 10 minutes to get all the way back from whence I had came and make it through the throngs of security, ticket checkers and Chinese travelers carrying big plaid bags full of God-knows-what to get to my train.

My friend began frantically phoning me to find out where I was. As usual in this little adventure I told him I was on my way. My tempo increased while I began scanning the vicinity to find a gate on the other side of the train station that would give me faster access, because I knew even if I ran, I wouldn’t make it back the long way. All I found was railway yards and giant garages for the locomotives. I quickly cut across through them, walking fast so I looked important, but not running as if I was up to no good. A few workers gave me looks of bewilderment as to why this random western person was infiltrating their place of employment, but they all generally ignored me. Finally I came to what was a giant wall that surely blocked the way to what would be the train station’s rail lines. My friend was phoning me and I was ignoring him at this point. I had about 5 minutes before the train was to leave and at this point I figured I was pretty much SOL unless there was some freaky divine intervention junk going on.

The divine intervention was a large tree next to the wall with a broken branch at the bottom of it. Using the branch against the wall, I scaled the tree and then swung myself from a branch Tarzan style as I jumped to the ground. I could see the platforms. I ran as fast as I could across the tracks to the platform nearest the train station. At this point the security people were swarming me but I shouted to them that my friend had my ticket and was already on the train. I had to guess which train was going to Taishan. They let me go and told me it was on platform 2, the one on the other side of the tracks, and I would have to run down below them through the underpass to get there. I went as fast as I possibly could with my head beginning to throb, my eyes bleary and the dumplings’ trying to make a second coming. I got to the top of the stairs when I was blocked by a security guy. I tried to tell him the same thing I had told the others, but then I looked over and noticed all the doors of the train were shut and the train was slowly lurching into forward motion. This was just like in the movies where the guy goes through hell to get to the train and manages to jump on the caboose at the last second, but in reality’s version the story ends with a missed train and passengers giving you the Nelson “HA HA!” as they fade into the distance.

The worst thing was that in my dumb ass quest for drugs, all I managed to buy was some strange medication whose ingredients read like that of a Twinkie. So there I was, stranded at the station, no train, a hangover to end all hangovers and some pills that would probably embalm my brain. Was my trip coming to an early demise? Did I screw over my friend who didn’t even know me that well? Which would you pick: a man-to-man kiss with tongue or drinking hot baijiu??? Find out next week in chapter 2 of “Taishan 泰山”, same bat time, same bat place.

Filed under: tourist shit