Rock Calligraphy on Mount Tai 泰山

The Chinese have a penchant for graffiti and it is definitely hard to miss here on top of Mount Tai. The graffiti I talk about is writing on bare mountainsides. Numerous places on Mount Tai are Chinese characters carved on rock faces. Most of these calligraphy are quite old. As was the tradition, emperors would come up here to Mount Tai to worship heaven. This is a tradition thousands of years old. Part of the ritual would be the make rock inscriptions, naturally only very important people get to immortalize theire handwriting here.

Incidentally, these very rock inscriptions have become part of the attractions here at Mount Tai. Some of the graffiti were made very recently, as in a few decades ago. Others have been there for more than two thousand years. I didn’t try to understand what was written on these rocks but I have a feeling most of them are dedicated to the glorification of Mount Tai. Some calligraphy was done on stone tables which over time needed to be braced lest it collapse. Most of these inscriptions come with the names of the writers, however, I don’t have the foggiest idea of who these people are. There was a particularly well known rock inscription here but there were far too many people trying to get a photo with it.

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