Taian

— After five or six days in Beijing and Datong, head south to Taian in Shandong Province -- again by train, the means of locomotion for most Chinese traveling between cities. One of your short rail journeys in China should be by hard seat, the cheapest class, which is how ordinary Chinese travel, but the nine-hour journey from Beijing to Taian is not the one to spend jammed in an uncomfortable railroad car as people spit on the floor and converse raucously about the large size of foreigners' noses. Taian is the town at the base of Mount Tai, or Taishan as the holy mountain is called in Chinese.