| On the morning of our second day in Xi An, Chad and I took a train to Hua Shan mountain. The ride was about three hours long, and we had to sit in sections where there were four seats on each side facing each other. There was a small table built next to the window that was not long enough for the four people sitting closest to the aisle to use. It was almost impossible to get any sleep because there was no way to lie down or move into a comfortable position. Chad told me he once took a train for more than two days sitting in seats like that, and many people didn't have a seat on his train, and they just stood or laid down on the floor wherever they could find a space. With no lounge car available, there wasn't much to do but stay in your assigned seat the whole trip. The entrance to the mountain was on top of a big hill in a small town. On the face of the hill, there were many shops and restaurants that had been built on either side of the steep road leading straight up to the mountain's entrance. People would holler at us to come and eat in their restaurants as we passed them by, and we stopped at one place to get fuel before the big hike. Chad and I were all about speed, so we wanted to climb and descend as quickly as possible. We started hiking late afternoon before it started getting dark. At the beginning, there was a long pathway that gradually inclined up the mountain made of large individual stones that had been perfectly evened off to create a surface that was a little bumpy yet smooth like the scales on a snake's back. There was also a small river with some tiny waterfalls not far from us on the left down the ledge from where we walked. Many of the stairs on the mountain were so steep that, at some parts, they were practically a 100- ft. vertical climb. Those vertical climbs were what made the mountain so dangerous. On the sides were hand rails made from of old chains. It was so tiring for me because I had boots on, so after a while, each step felt like someone was adding five pounds to my feet until by the time I reached the top, it felt like I was wearing elephants instead of boots. With nowhere to rest while climbing the stairs, and no choice but to keep going, it was all or nothing. There were many small restaurants and small hotels on the mountain, but Chad and I refused the comfort and kept climbing until late. Neither of us had a flashlight, and we both got very tired, so we decided to sleep in a small cave next to the path where there were some tables and chairs, and also a few shops. Sometimes other hikers would pass us by in small groups while we were freezing on the ground trying to get some rest. During the daytime, the weather was cool, not cold, but the temperature dropped severely at night. After an hour of shivering in and out of sleep, I decided I wasn't going to get well rested, so I paced back and forth waiting for Chad to wake up. After another hour passed by, Chad also realized how uncomfortable the situation was. We both decided to continue hiking, and that our best chance to make it up the mountain safely was to find a group who had a flashlight, and follow them for a while. Luckily, shortly after we started climbing again, we ran into a young couple from Switzerland that could speak English. They had no problem with us traveling in a group together. The four of us wandered in the dark for several hours on top of the mountain with the help of only one flashlight. It was hard to see much of anything, but there were times when I could see the faint bluish-white glow of the moonlight being reflected off of smooth rock formations and walkways that were not surrounded by trees made of rock that curved around the ledge above the pure darkness below. It was a beautiful night scenery that brought me back to a time long ago, when life was much simpler and more mysterious. People had been living in and traveling through the mountain since ancient days, and in those times, their lives were not dominated by the structure of modern living. There was so much undiscovered terrain in the world, and many things that people were and could do had never been seen before. These days, humanity knows, or at least thinks it knows so much about the world that it can be difficult to imagine things abstractly, though the possibility lies deep inside of every individual. It is easy to get comfortable with one way of thinking when life is very routine because of work and other obligations that try to pin us down in our busy lives. But in the mountains, the old world still exists untouched by what modern society collectively believes is and isn't possible or acceptable. There was great beauty and vastness in the mountains, but also great danger. The unguarded ledges reminded Chad and I not to be so foolish about climbing mountains at night. At least one of us wouldn't have made it back alive if it wasn't for the help of the strangers from Switzerland. We hiked with the couple from Switzerland for at least two hours until we found an old two-story building that rested on top of a small, but steep hill. We had to climb up a large cement stairway to get to the entrance to the building. After having only one hour of light sleep, climbing the hill was quite challenging. Inside of one of the rooms on the first floor, there was an old couch and some chairs where some other young hikers decided to take a rest. Both entrances to the room led directly out into the cold night, so it wasn't much comfort to stay there. All the other rooms in the building were inaccessible. We ate our snacks and drank our water that we had stowed away in our backpacks, and then continued on to look for a warm place we could sleep. After a half hour of trying, we all gave up and decided to sleep out in the cold and pitch black on some wide cement stairs that were spread out far enough that they weren't too uncomfortable to sleep on. Everyone got at least an hour of sleep, but then it was time to start climbing down the mountain. We found some restaurants where we could eat breakfast just as the sky was persuaded by the sun to begin a new day, and just as it started raining. The young man from Switzerland was determined to see the sunrise, so he climbed up to the top of the mountain so he could see it, leaving his girlfriend behind with Chad and I to climb down by ourselves. We made it down without any problems until we came to the stone pathway that would bring us back down to the entrance to the mountain. It became very slippery after it had rained, and the path was built at such an angle that it was very difficult to just walk down. I saw some older men walking down backwards because it must have been easier to keep a certain pace that way. I kept running down in front of Chad and the young woman from Switzerland until I would be so far ahead that I had to stand and wait for them to catch up to me. Running was the most comfortable way for me to take that slippery downward path though I almost fell several times, and once I looked back to see Chad slip and fall. It took Chad and I about 12 hours to hike from the bottom of the mountain to the top, and back down again with only a couple hours of rest. Sleep deprivation seemed to be a common occurrence during the trip to Xi An. First on the bus to Xi An because of my stomach problems, next in the hotel in Xi An since we had to sleep on cots in the conference room, on the train to Hua Shan mountain because there was no way to get comfortable, and lastly on the mountain because it was much too cold to fall asleep for long. But after trying to sleep on the mountain, the idea of anything else would seem comfortable. When we got back into Xi An from the mountain, Chad and I went back to the hotel where we stayed in the conference room a couple of nights earlier. We collected our baggage and then went to use a public telephone where we could make a call to Rae to let her know we were back in the city. We stopped at a small shop not far from the hotel where Chad was able to use the phone and could stand halfway in the store and on the sidewalk while calling because the counter was near the entrance to the store, and there was no door. I stood by waiting for Chad to finish using the phone, and then an older man who was probably in his sixties walked past me on the sidewalk and saw Chad using the phone. He stopped and completely forgot about whatever he was supposed to be doing and stared at Chad with his mouth slightly open and his eyes fixed in what seemed like horror. I thought he must have been surprised to see a foreigner, but 30 seconds after I stopped looking at him, I looked again, and saw that he hadn't changed his position. He was still staring at Chad. When Chad finished using the phone, we both walked down the street dragging our suitcases behind us and I told him about the man. I looked behind and saw that the man started to follow us, still with a very strange look on his face. After Chad's camera and Rae's purse had been stolen, and a pickpocket tried to sneak up on me, we weren't trying to find out what this man was thinking. We walked quickly, and then bursted to the hotel once we got around the corner and out of his visibility. We waited at the hotel until Rae came to meet us. That evening, Rae treated both Chad and I to have noodles at an outdoor restaurant that was under a large tarp, and had several long tables that all customers shared together, so strangers would be sitting next to each other. It was obvious that Rae was going to miss us because she was not easy to make friends with others. Though she was very kind to the friends she did have, she was very introverted, and she used her feelings a lot when she would meet other people. If she didn't trust someone, then she wouldn';t want anything to do with them after her first impression. She had a lot of maturing to undergo because she was 19 years old, and she had been living with her mother and father alternately since they were divorced her whole life, and she never had a job before. I thought living in a city like Xi An away from her parents would help her to become more self-reliant. Upon seeing us off at the bus station, Rae told us we could come back and visit her anytime. I could only think about how much I wanted to return to Xi An someday. I didn't get enough of the place. When I returned to Hefei, I began to understand more about what the place was like after having more knowledge about other cities in China. In Xi An, though there seemed to be more cases of theft, the air seemed to be purer, physically and mentally. In Hefei, I began to notice that there seemed to be a blanket of pressure and frustration among the general populace there. It wasn't only in my imagination. My boss David was from another city in the south of China called Guangzhou, one of China's biggest cities. He once said at a meeting in his office that he didn't like Hefei people. My first impression of Hefei was enough to make me want to live there, and I had met many interesting and friendly people, but it seemed obvious to me that I had many layers of understanding about the place to peel through to get to understand what the place was truly about. |
| China Dispatch/Andrew Gramling Climbing Hua Shan mountain |
 |