The Journey to Laoshan

In all my previous travels in China, I’ve never actually been to an actual mountain in China. I’ve always stuck pretty close to the cities. So when Leslie suggested that we visit a mountain range while she was here, I agreed. We picked Laoshan (崂山), since it is close and easily accessible from Qingdao.

Laoshan (aka Mt. Lao, and Mt. Laoshan), is a large coastal mountain on the Yellow Sea coast. During the height of Taoism, it was the home of nine palaces, eight temples and 72 nunneries. Today, only a few survive, including the oldest and largest of them all, Taiqing Temple. Laoshan is also renowned for it’s spring water, which is supposedly has healing powers and is what gives Tsingtao beer it’s good taste. 

So, after hearing all of that, how could we not go? 

Determined to go visit Laoshan, we asked the staff at our hostel about the best way to get to Laoshan the next day.  However, the look of shock that greeted us in response to our question was shocking to us. Too bad I didn’t have my camera ready to capture their expressions. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: “Excuse me, we want to visit Laoshan tomorrow, what is the best way to go out there?”

Hostel receptionist [look of shock on her face]: “You want to go to Laoshan? Really?”

Me: “Umm…yesss…? Is that possible?”

Hostel receptionist: “It’s going to be very cold if you go to Laoshan.”

Me: “I know. But we’re already here in Qingdao, so we might as well visit it.”

Hostel receptionist [looking perplexed by my insistence]: “Okayyyy…”

I should preface this by saying that at this point, I think the people at the hostel (and possibly the other people of Qingdao as well) already think we’re very bizarre for traveling to their summertime city in the dead of a very frigid winter. In fact, for a while Leslie & I were semi-convinced we were the only two tourists in the entire city. Ha ha. (We were most likely the only two guests at are our hostel though.)

Despite our hostel receptionist’s confusion, she was able to tell us which bus to take out to Laoshan and that night we prepared for a cold hike around Laoshan the next day.

Love locks attached onto a bridge at Laoshan

Now, before we go any further, I have to point out that Leslie & I were basically clueless about what we were going to do when we reached Laoshan and even about how to get there. We were basically completely reliant on the guidance and instructions of others.

 [More of our journey & pictures after the break]

In the morning, we woke up and after some confusion, found the bus that was supposed to take us to Laoshan (according to our hostel receptionist, a guy at the train station and the bus driver). After a somewhat long bus ride, the driver instructed us to get off the bus at a large gravel parking lot. We were confused, but did as we were told.

As it turns out, the large gravel parking lot also had two trailers in it—one was a visitor center for Laoshan and another was a ticket office. Apparently, the Laoshan tourism office operates shuttle buses to various destinations on Laoshan and when you buy a ticket for the bus you actually purchase both your bus and park entrance ticket. 

So Leslie & I purchased our tickets, went through the gate and boarded the bus to Laoshan. We were told that the bus we were on made two stops—one at Beishuihe and another at Taiqing Temple. But as I already mentioned, we were pretty clueless about what we were doing, so we adopted the motto of, “Just follow the other people who seem to have a better idea of what’s going on.”

In the end, our motto did not fail us. We ended up walking around Taiqing Temple (太清宮), the largest and oldest  temple on Laoshan and around the Beishuihe (北水河) area. Since it was winter time, there weren’t mainly other tourists in general and we were able to walk around mostly unencumbered by other tourists, which is definitely a plus for traveling in the winter.

It was definitely great to get out of the city as well and be outside with nature (as corny as that sounds). Plus, the mountain, as Leslie pointed out, looked very strange. Instead of the normal sloops and jagged rocks I expect to see in the mountains, Laoshan looks like it’s made up of giant rounded rocks all heaped together in piles to form a mountain—very different from any type of mountain I’ve ever seen before. We didn’t learn until after our trek out to Laoshan that the odd appearance of the rocks and mountain are a part of what makes Laoshan so famous and recognizable. 

And as for the cold, while it definitely was not warm up on Laoshan, it was actually warmer in Laoshan park than in the city of Qingdao proper. So much for our hostel receptionist’s warning.

Now for some pictures:

More pictures on Angela Photo Musings