Within a days of arriving in Beijing, I took my first trip with some coworkers. This trip took us to Yaji Mountain in the Pinggu District of Beijing, which is about an hour and a half trip from central Beijing. On the bus ride out, we saw a lot of the countryside of the outer Beijing area.
Arriving at our destination and walking to the gate was quite a sight. It was about this point that my nerves kicked into high gear. My fear of heights is extremely bad, and as much as I wanted to see the temple at the top, I had major concerns about actually making it to the top.
As we approached the main gate to the mountain, I saw a number of these lion head statues. These Chinese guardian lions are commonly found in front of places like government buildings, temples, and homes of high ranking society members. These statues have traditionally been believed to have protective powers or to ward off evil spirits. You can now find these lion statues all over China, and other places around the world where the Chinese have immigrated.
Atop Yaji Mountain sits a Taoist holy site – two temples originally built during the Tang and Ming Dynasties. The temples have since been rebuilt as they were destroyed in wars. The name Yaji means “girls hair bun” as the mountain is said to resemble the two buns in which young Chinese girls would wear their hair. If you use your imagination, you can see this in the first picture.
As this was my true experience in China, it was very cool to see this gate, also known as a paifang. Seeing this really helped it sink in that I was actually in China. These gates, or paifangs, can be seen all over the country.
As I began the trek up the stairs, the steps didn’t look quite as daunting. Though I quickly found out that this angle was a big deception. And if you look closely at the first photo, you can see that once you reach the top of this set of stairs, there were even more stairs to get to the temples at the top.
This is, unfortunately, as far up as I could go. My fear of heights was sent into overdrive about halfway up the stairs. I took this picture with my eyes pretty much shut tight. My knees were shaking and my heart was racing. I wanted to go all the way to the top, but I decided that this was far enough. The view from halfway up, though, was still an incredible sight to see.
Though I didn’t make it to the top, I’m glad I attempted this trek. I honestly got further up the steps than I thought that I would, so I call that a win. This is definitely a place to add to your list of places to visit if you’re an adventurous person that has no fears.
