Qingming Festival and Trek up the Shi bin Park

Qingming Festival (or Tomb Sweeping Festival in English) is a National Chinese holiday that is a day which families go to visit their ancestral graves, pray and sweep their tombs.

They burn clothes, incense, and paper money in their honor as well as set up food and things they like on their grave and eat in their honor (don't worry, the graves get their share too).
It's almost like a Day of the Dead for Mexico. Except its in April.

Primarly, the Qingming Festival takes place on the first day of the fifth solar term of the Chinese calendar which normally lands on the 4th or 5th of April. The number 4 for the Chinese represents death so you will see a lot of the buildings and elevators exclude the number 4 from their floors. And even phone numbers with the number 4 will be cheaper than any other number. (Fun fact: The Chinese love the number 8. For them it is a number that brings wealth and prosperity so phone numbers with the number 8 will be more expensive.) For this year to land on April 4th, and a Tuesday, people get the whole weekend off until the 4th. Not me of course I had to work the weekend but I get 3 days off too. I spoke with my friends from work and I told them about wanting to visit a temple that was near my apartment. Everyday from my balcony, I can see a tall temple looking building high in the mountains.

That little stick on top of the Mountain. That's a temple.

Ever since I saw it, I had been wanting to find how to get there. It looked high up in the mountains so I thought perhaps there was some sort of tram that got you to the top...or maybe hiked up there. The normal way.

When I mentioned this to my friends, they said we could all go together since they wanted to go too.

So this is how it started.

If I had done proper research about the temple at the top of the mountain, I would have found out that not only did they not have a tram or trolley but that I would have to climb up millions of of unsafe, probably homemade, stairs.

On a busy holiday. (Yeah there were graves scattered around the mountain so there were a lot of people.)

We started out trek up the mountains around 9:20am. There are no rails to hold on to so if you are afraid of heights, you're out of luck. (Not sure why you'd be wanting to go up a mountain either.)

It is beautiful There are several check points and areas to rest and take a breather. I saw plenty of people with their own hot water bottle flasks or bottled teas. It didn't help either that it was a humid 70 degree weather.

Drinking hot tea on a hot day. Hmmm.

Along the way, we saw very ancient burial grounds and some that were slighly newer. One of the rest stops is human sized Chinese chess. How does one play that, I have no clue but it was lovely to walk over it. Another rest stop was an ancestral cooking pot from the Zhang dynasty. Pretty sure I spelled it wrong. Millions of stairs later, we reached the top.

WE MADE IT TO THE TOP pose

And the view was spectacular!!!

 

  

So after the sweat, blood, and tears (mostly tears), we made it to the very top. The temple itself was closed due the holiday but from what I gathered, people were only allowed on the first floor of the tower due to its old steps and withering state. I felt super accomplished. If I could climb millions of stairs up all on my own.... I could also find the strength to climb those said million back down!

Zai Jian!!