The following post was sourced from the People’s Daily Online.

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Workers conduct maintenance work as the Jiaozhou Bay undersea tunnel project nears completion at Jiaozhou Bay, Qingdao City of east China's Shandong Province on May 31, 2011.

Recently, the Jiaozhou Bay undersea tunnel, located in Qingdao City of east China’s Shandong Province, completed major construction, and progress on affiliated projects, such as installing equipment and electronic cables, is being accelerated. Inspection and approval is being carried out gradually.

The Jiaozhou Bay undersea tunnel is the longest undersea tunnel in China and the third longest underwater tunnel in the world. It has a total length of 7,800 meters, of which the undersea section of the tunnel is 3,950 meters long. The project has a total investment of 3.3 billion yuan.

In June 30, 2011, the undersea tunnel will be open to traffic.

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Shandong Province is home to Tai Shan, one of the four Holy mountains around China and Confucius’ ancestral home, the Kong family mansion. For more information about travel to this province, please email info@wildchina.com.

Photo by Li Ziheng, Xinhua

Talking to a journalist recently. He asked me: I’m thinking of going to China in Sept. or Oct. to do a story on China’s holy mountains. Have you been to many of them? Any particular one worth profiling?

Here is my answer:
I am sure you’ve researched, two different definitions of China’s holy mountains:
Wuyue, Five sacred mountains:
1. Tai Shan, Taoist mountain of the east, Shandong
2. Heng Shan Bei, Taoist mountain of the north, Shanxi
3. Hua Shan, Taoist mountain of the west, Shaanxi
4. Heng Shan Nan, Taoist mountain of the south, Hunan
5. Song Shan, Taoist mountain of the center, Henan

Four Buddhist mountains:
1. Wutai Shan in Shanxi
2. Putuo Shan in Zhejiang
3. Ermei Shan in Sichuan
4. Jiuhua Shan in An’hui

Shame to say, I’ve only been to Er’mei, which is stunning. Most of these places are very crowded with tourist, but if you opt for hiking up the mountain the same way the monks did years ago, it’s still really beautiful. Jiuhua Shan is close to the Yellow Mountain. There are some lovely villages nearby that’s worth your visit – Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon was filmed there – all those bamboo forests.

If you include Tibet on the list, then I have been the holiest of all Mt. Kailash. I hiked around the mountain myself for 2 days. It’s a once in a lifetime experience.

When I arrived on the train in Yangzhou,  Shandong Province this past Friday morning, I really didn’t know what to expect. WildChina sent a colleague, Cara, and myself to survey a few sites that we are planning on taking a school group to later this fall. It was important that we spend some time there to figure out logistics, test activities, and get a good feel for how the trip would run; all generally wise things to do before you descend on a site with a few busloads of middle schoolers.

We met our friendly driver Mr. Hu outside of the train station, and hopped into his car for the short ride to Qufu. As the legendary birthplace of Confucius and the location of his descendants’ ancestral home, Qufu has an almost mind-bogglingly long history. Two years after Confucius’ death in 479 BC his home was already designated as a temple, and Emperor Gao of the Han Dynasty was the first to offer sacrifices there in 205 BC. For those of us used to thinking in terms of the timelines of Western history, this longevity is absolutely incredible; yet to my Chinese friends, it is just another example of the depth and breadth of Chinese culture and history.

Confucius Temple is a beautiful and expansive historic site, and at 16,000 square meters, in China it is second in size only to the Forbidden City.  We visited early in the morning when the crowds were at a minimum, and found the tall pines and numerous courtyards serenely beautiful. I was also impressed by the 9 Carved Dragon Columns (see below), which, according to legend, were covered when the Emperor visited so as not to arouse his envy.

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