During the 2025 Spring Festival, the most talked-about sight on Mount Tai was not the sunrise, but a viral video.
In the video, a visitor moved swiftly up the mountain steps without stopping. People around him turned to look and raised their phones, because the device he was wearing looked just like the “mechanical armor” from a science-fiction film.
From Xinhua News Agency and CCTV to local media and online comments, “the Mount Tai exoskeleton” filled the conversation throughout the holiday. The video was reposted again and again. Behind jokes such as “When your stamina runs out, let the gear take over” and “Can I borrow it for Everest?” was an industry-defining moment: exoskeleton robots were entering the public eye in China in an entirely new way.
People sharing the video kept asking the same question: What is this?
The answer: Kenqing Technology’s π-series motion-assistance exoskeleton.
Before then, “exoskeletons” belonged to laboratories or science-fiction films. Now, they belong to every ordinary person who wants to reach the summit.
“After putting it on, it felt as if someone were pulling me up the mountain. It felt incredibly futuristic!”— A visitor at Mount Tai
At Mount Tai, reaching the summit has always been a choice:
Take the cable car and save effort, but let the scenery from Middle Heaven Gate to South Heaven Gate pass overhead;
Hike on foot and keep every view beneath your feet, though for older people with sensitive knees or less strength than before, the question is whether they can make it all the way up.
A staff member from the Mount Tai Cultural Tourism Group once put it simply: the original reason for introducing Kenqing Technology’s exoskeleton robots was seeing older visitors who wanted to experience Mount Tai’s scenery without missing the views along the route from a cable car.