Wudang Mountain is the birth place of Taoism, which is the native religion in China. It is on the list of UNESCO as the natural & cultural legacy of human being. The buildings I saw in the zone were mostly built in Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty. It is about 6 hours by train from Wuhan, the conference site of TUG 2005 conference. On July 09-10, I visited there again, this is the second time I have been there, the first time was in 1988, when I was studying in the university, I worked short-termly in a large automobile factory near it. There are a lot of changes in the past 2 decades.
There are two tourism routes inside the site, one is to Nan Yan (means the "South Rock" in Chinese), another is to Jin Ding (means the "Golden Roof" in Chinese), which is the summit of the mountain. The road to Nan Yan is flat, and the road to Jin Ding is difficult for me, as my right foot was wounded 2 years ago, it is not good for me to walk to long in the mountain, so I took the route to Nan Yan again. But I am sure TUG 2005 conference participants will be more interested in visiting the Jin Ding. I was told there are cable-hanged-cabinet carriers which can take the visitors from the bottom to the top, and back. I did not try it by this trip.
I arranged the hotel rooms for the TUG 2005 participants, it is in the Wudang Town, which is quite near the entrance of the zone. From the hotel to the entrance of Nan Yan, it takes about 40-60 minutes by car. I made a bargain with a private car driver, he took me to the place not expensively. The road is zigzagged, and in very good condition, not dangerous at all (it was quite risky when I first time visited it). I was told since this Oct, there will no private vehicles allowed to take passengers into the zone.
The Wudang Town is small, with just about less than 10K constant inhabitants, and most people live on the service for the tourists. Nothing is special interesting for me in the town, the local people are quite friendly though.
In this trip, I found a
tailor who made a Taoism robe for me in Wudang Town, and this is
the first uniform for me to dress in the Hackerdom Training Program (HTP).
I will ask my students to dress in the robe in the HTP classroom
in the future. The robe is made in cotton, quite comfortable,
especially in winter and the fall. I will print the HTP logo on
the robes for my students. Actually, I've made 2 robes, one
is the long one as the shown in the photo, another is
a short one, in silk, but I've not got it yet, the tailor will mail it
to me by post in a couple of days when he gets it ready. Taoists only take
the robe in white, darkblue and black color, I was thinking gray is the
color for the Taoist, but it is not, it is for the Budhist.
