Porter pride on Mount Tai

Porters also contributed to the construction of the mountain's scenic areas.

Chen Guangwu, a retired porter in his 70s, said that porters in the 1980s and 1990s played an important role in the construction of the ropeways on the mountain.

The ropeway equipment was imported from Austria. The major component was an axle which was 9.5 meters long and weighed four tonnes. A helicopter refused to lift the heavy load, but Chen accepted the work without hesitation.

Chen gathered 150 porters to set up a frame to help the transportation. Over four days, they carried the axle uphill passing through the most winding courses and taking the 3,000 steep steps. The total payment for the "impossible mission" at that time was 30,000 yuan. Each porter got about 20 yuan per day.

"The salary was not high but we felt we deserved it, and that we had done a great thing," Chen said.

"The bricks of the Confucius temple, the meteorological station and the ropeway at Nantianmen on the mountain were all shouldered uphill by us," said Sun Diankun, a former porter in his 60s.

Sun said that the mountain becomes more and more beautiful and the facilities are more convenient and tourist-friendly.

"Porters not only transporters of groceries but also the major construction workers of the mountain," said Zhao Pingjiang, chief of a porter group.

However, less people are choosing to become porters. The once attractive career is fading into history.

"Our team was established in 1983 when there were seven or eight porter groups. In 2000, my team had over 300 porters but now we have only a dozen," Zhao said.

"We used to worry about how to find enough accommodation for them," he said. "Now, we have to figure out how to improve living conditions to retain them," he said.

Porters today find it harder to get work as a cargo transportation ropeway opened in 2003. The price for goods to be transported on the ropeway is 0.3 yuan per kilogram, about half the cost of employing a porter.

Zhao said that porters would not be phased out immediately as they could deliver goods from the cargo ropeway station to each store on the mountain, which is welcomed by business owners.

"In addition, the ropeway can only carry goods to a maximum of 300 kg. Some heavy goods which can not be split up still rely on porters for transportation," he said.

The youngest porter in Zhao's group is 39-year-old Xu Yong, and they have struggled to find successors in the past decade.