Confucius say, "Wise man stay at sea level."

After walking around the highest point of Mt. Tai and admiring the view, we began our descent back to the cable car station. We went down a different way than we came up. One of the temples we passed on the way down was called the Confucius Temple. Confucius wrote about this mountain and apparently climbed it more than once, long before there were buses or cable cars. And I thought Confucius was supposed to be wise!The guys coming down those steps were Indonesian tourists with a Chinese friend of theirs, who were all speaking English to each other. We chatted with them a bit on the way down the many, many steps. We went through several gates on the way down. Each of them has an interesting name, but you pretty much have to know Chinese to read them. Here is one of them.You can also see some of the many shops over on the right. They sold everything from souvenirs to hot tea and noodles. The hot souvenir seemed to be rocks. Rocks of all sizes, engraved with Chinese characters.

Now, you might remember that I said Hubby climbed this mountain at a previous time. He started at a little after midnight and got to the top in time to see the sunrise, which is a big deal. Most Chinese people aspire to one day watch the sunrise from Mt. Tai, or so the literature tells me. Anyway, here's just a small portion of what he climbed to accomplish this task:You can see why I was all for the bus and cable car idea! So, at long last, our day on the mountain was complete. We headed back to the cable cars, just in time to be treated to a spectacular sunset.And so concludes my day on Mt. Tai, chief among the five sacred mountains of China.

This afternoon, we're leaving Tai'an to go back to Beijing, where I will catch my flight home on Monday. We plan to do more sightseeing over the weekend, and hopefully I can get online at our new hotel and share some more pics!