Day 2.1 of an Unforgettable Journey

Cont'd

I got up quite early the next day to take a few photos of our hotel in Weifong and then took a quick look of the area around it before breakfast. The above are some of the glass cranes decorating glass partition wall marking out the hotel lobby from the cafe where we would have our buffet breakfast.

The hotel lobby.

A glass tree at the centre of the hotel lobby.

A glass plant right outside the lift lobby.

Two paintings inside my room.  Not a hundred yards from our hotel, there was an old style two-storey
hotel with tiled roofs, wooden beams, pillars, doors, windows eaves etc. 

 A view of the small traditional style hotel from across the street.

The people at Weifong appear to have a liking for green and orange. Even their rubbish bin are in those colors.

A street cleaner in orange coat and cap clearing off fallen leaves early in the morning. Pedal tricyles seem a popular mode of transport for workers.

Another worker racing across the pedestrian crossing in her tricycle, also in orange and green. In the opposite direction is another worker in a motor-bike.

Not all tricycles are foot-powered. A very Chinese adaptation of the tricycle parked on the pavement.

Not all motorized tricycles are for carrying passengers. Its trailer is packed to maximum capacity.

A brightly colored roadside breakfast stand, also in green orange but also yellow.

Some travellers or workers having a roadside breakfast of Chinese style egg pancakes, fried bean curd and meat before the lady pedlar, also on a tricycle. Beside her is another pedlar selling roasted sweet potatoes.

Next to the small traditional Chinese style hotel was my first surprise of the day: a park. It was a blaze of colors in the soft morning light: various shades of red, brown, purple, yellow and green.

I like the juxtapositioning of forms and colors found there: a rich blend of various shades of green, brown, orange, yellow and green above a very Chinese tiled wall. .

Beside the park was the "Back to Truth Garden": a very Taoist concept.

But not only was there juxtapositioning of forms and colors of Nature. There was also juxtapositioning of architectural styles and culture.Behind the traditional petite Chinese style hotel was a more imposing old-fashioned European style hotel with Corinthian columns, Roman arches, French windows, Italian fountains,statues of Grecian goddesses and balustrades and a garden with carefully manicured French style hedge plants but with middle-aged Chinese ladies in Western clothes practising taichi. 

Two ladies, one in black and another in red focusing on one of the 108 continuous, slow and carefully measured Taichi forms.

A tiger in stone on the embankment on our way to Tai Shan

This is one of the favourite snacks of the ordinary Shantung men, on sale upon a simple metal tray at a small store at the rest stop. They would take out a pen knife, peel off the skin, hold it in their hand, bite and munch!

Two flowers I found growing below the embankment.

We were taken to a Shantung culture pearl shop where we saw how pearls are made. Before this mother of pearl shell was pried open with a knife, we were asked by the village chief doing the promotion where the pearls were cultured how many pearls we expected to find inside the cusps of the shell. I guessed three. We found 23!

Some pearls embedded within the flesh of the shell fish.

Some were firmly stuck to the shell.

A necklace with irregularly shaped pearls.

Another necklace with dark pearls.

But these are obviously not pearls.

After lunch, we were taken to Tai Shan, one of the main attractions. The colors of the trees from the window of my coach on the way to Tai Shan are beautiful under the rays of the afternoon sun.

The speed of the coach lent an "Impressionistic" fuzziness to the colors of the mountain.

The car park to the building for entering Tai Shan. It's of fairly contemporary design.

This is the ticketing hall for getting tickets for the environmental vans and cable cars which will take us up Tai Shan. It would save us 6,666 steps! The lady in black windbreaker over a red cardigan is our lady tour guide, a most professional and dedicated guide with 17 years experience behind her.