Traveling from Beijing on a Bullet Train. We hit a top speed of 295 km/h before getting stuck for 5 hours due to heavy rain.

The end of the long, beautiful hike along the quartzite cliffs at Shaolin Temple was a new building

This week we had at least one full day of traveling on a bus and one over night train. Luckily on the train we had sleeper cars so that we could get some rest.  This was especially nice for me because if there’s one thing I learned on the trip it’s that I can’t sleep in a sitting position even if I have a pillow.  Between naps (lying down on the seats) we kept ourselves entertained on these trips by doing Tai Chi push hands and application, and palm readings.  All three Tai Chi masters we traveled with can read palms (though at least one was biased in his translation of the reading).  We also spent a lot of time chatting and getting to know each other, including our own group, the group of British that we were traveling with and the Tai Chi masters.

Fun times while traveling to another fantastic site (Tai Chi Village) via coach.

Nearly every time we arrived at a new hotel after these long travels, it was evening and we would wake up to a fantastic new view from the hotel.  Especially the views from the hotel near the Shaolin Kung Fu schools and the hotel outside Zhangjiajie Park had fantastic views of the surrounding mountains.

Mountains near our hotel at the Shaolin Temple

After leaving Beijing we explored the Tai Chi village near Zhengzhou, the birthplace of Tai Chi. We were also supposed to explore the Shaolin Temple but instead we spent the day hiking along a trail built along the sides of the cliffs.  It is the most beautiful hike that I have ever been on with absolutely amazing geology.  By the time we had reached the end of the trail and returned to the temple we were too exhausted to really tour the temple.  Now we have an excuse to go back to that beautiful land so that we can also view the temple.

Matching Tai Chi poses at the Tai Chi Village.

The giant Yin Yang symbol at Tai Chi Village.    

The trail we hiked to a new Shaolin Temple. The rocks are 2.5 billion year old uplifted seafloor.

Other sites we saw this week were Wudang Mountain which was gorgeous and packed full of people.  We smartly chose to ride the cable car to the near top and hike up the rest of the stairs.  Though I had been feeling sick early in the morning and bought a return cable car ride back down, I was feeling better by the time we had to choose hiking or cable car down.  I practically ran down that mountain with Patty and a Tai Chi master. The journey turned out to be much longer than we expected but it was very beautiful with much fewer people than at the top of the mountain (and most other sites). We got caught in a thunderstorm once we’d arrived at the bus station to ride back down the mountain and had to wait for buses to start driving once the storm calmed down.  Luckily we’d made it to shelter before the rain and lightening started.

A Wudang monk performing a Tai Chi form as a thunder storm rolls in behind him.

We then made our way back up to Zhengzhou because the Tai Chi masters had been invited to a photo with the head of Chen Style Tai Chi with other renowned Chen style masters.

Our group stands out well in the purple shirts at the ceremony picture for elite Chen style Tai Chi masters.

I’m not sure the total distance we traveled but I’m sure it was close to the equivalent of traveling all across the Western states in the U.S. It was a long distance and much of our time was in buses, or trains but it was completely worth it for the sites we got to see. And it was extremely rewarding when we would get to stay at a place for a more than one or two nights.  Quil