Part of a series of posts about my experiences on a trip to China in October 2015. The series of posts related to this can be seen on my page “Sleeping Dragon Slowly Opens One Eye”.

Continued from Sleeping Dragon Slowly Opens One Eye-Part 4

If you recall we were trouping, somewhat bleary eyed, out of our hotel. We were more awake than many of the others since we had to battle with the alarm on our door.

Watching the sunrise on Mount Tai is, to quote the commercial, “what you do”.

As we walked out of the hotel we were joined by others, and as we walked along toward the viewing area groups of folks who had come up in the night joined the throng. There were vendors renting big army looking coats for 20 RMB and photographers that would take your picture then “photoshop” you into various wonderful, but, in many cases, geographically impossible backgrounds.

I was awfully glad that we had sent James the high-vis hat which made him easy to spot in the dim light and crowds. The pictures are blurry, even with a mono-pod it was hard to stay still in the chilly morning as I tried to keep track of James (I gave up trying to keep up with him years ago) and keep out of the way of more vigorous others (pretty much everyone).

Why were we all there?

The sunrise on Mount Tai is splendid and one of the marvelous spectacles of the summit of Mount Tai and is also the important symbol of Mount Tai. While the first beam of sunlight tears the last beam of darkness before dawn, the east sky turns dull black to grey, to red and then to dazzling golden yellow jetting out rays of morning sun and brightening the whole sky. Finally, one fireball suddenly jumps out of sea of cloud. The whole process is like a peak of perfection which likes thousands of polychrome pictures brought by a lofty magician.

There came a point when both the clock and the amount of ambient light indicated that the sun had risen. But no one wanted to give up and walk away.

Then someone started pointing and others joined in. There it was, the sun.

My son said “sleeping dragon slowly opens one eye…then hits the snooze button.”

We were now free to file out through the “Eye of the Tortoise” and find some breakfast.