For those of you who know me, I am not much of an outdoor girl.  The trip to China has challenged me in many ways.  I climbed part of the Great Wall of China last week and this past weekend the nurses from UMass Lowell “climbed” one of the most famous mountains in China, The Tai Mountain.  I use the word “climb” with some hesitation.  On the advice of our wonderful guide Tony we decided to do a smaller initial climb and then opt to use the gondola to get us close the peak.  We still had a fair amount of climbing after the gondola.

As the weather changed it appeared that we were climbing into the sky. We made it safely to the peak for a round of photos ( along with hundreds of fellow Chinese climbers). This mountain is very significant in Chinese history.  The recorded history goes back about 3,000 years and it has been an important pilgrimage destination for emperors to worship the gods.  It is a UNESCO /World Heritage Center . On the mountain there are 12 historically recorded imperial ceremonies in homage to Heaven and Earth, about 1,800 stone tablets and inscriptions, and 22 temples .

The mountain is about 5,069 feet tall and has over 6,600 steps to  climb ( and it felt like we climbed every one of those steps but I suspect we only climbed about 1500 steps).  For more information about this historical site, here is a website link. http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/437

Our group at the end of our climb. Our Tshirts have picture of the national flower and the Chinese words “China Dream- 2016”

At the end of the day we got a foot massage … actually a bit painful but the therapist did not understand “ouch”

View from close to the top of Jade Emperor Peak