To A Quiet Bluff

Riding back home now.  The map suggests we just passed into Hebei Province from Shanxi.  We’ve been traveling now for some time at dusk along a broad plane with a three thousand foot hard scrabble mountain range on either side.  Every where are cherry trees with blossoms.  It’s almost hackneyed how many of these small trees are in bloom with pink flowers.  It’s been a theme all day.  Were they planted, are they indigenous?

For the second birthday period in a row we have climbed up and down one of the five sacred Daoist mountains: the Wu Yue.  Last year we got everyone together an climbed Mount Tai.   That was hard earned.  I think I’m in better shape this year, and even though Mount Heng (properly pronounced in the same fashion someone might suggest another is "hung" like a horse.) in Shanxi, the northern mountain god, Bei Yue, is taller, this climb was undoubtedly more gentle than Mount Tai.  Still to come are Mount Song, the middle mountain in Hennan, Mount Hua, the western mountain in Shaanxi and the other Mount Heng in Hunan, outside of Changsha which is the Southern mountain god.  I kept thinking of Strawberry Field as one does, affirming its all “nothing to get hung about.”

Last year we woke in the hotel and looked out to see an overcast sky.  This year we had a sunny April day, but my younger daughter had not slept well, saddled with a case of the runs. She had, in fact, come home early from school the day before, as she’d felt sick.  It was clear she wasn’t comfortable in the morning but she rallied and decided to pass on the offer to sit it out or ride the gondola and joined us for the journey to the peak.

The town of Hunyuan is certainly a rather basic county level seat.  We stayed at the "Heng Shan International Hotel," and  I labored to understand what it was that made it international.  The staff was rough and young and clearly used to providing the lowest possible amount of effort, with minimal supervision, as there wasn’t any competition.  We got in late and nothing was open.  We attempted to find a place that had “local food” and then opted for some random chain-store hot-pot place.   Back at the International the executive suite room I splurged for at $40.00 per night, was ill kept, with coal stains visible on the ceiling from the air vent and condoms with passionate western faces on them, available in the bathroom.  The floor of the shower had the same coal stains as the ceiling.  They’d become part of the tile and no amount of soap or water was going to remove them.  I asked my wife what the stereotypes about people from Shanxi were?  Everyone had stereotypes about the Henan people and the Shanghai people.  What about folks from Shanxi?  All she could say was "coal." Late she mentioned that two people dining next to us at the place who looked typically “Chinese” to me, looked typically “Shanxi” to her.  I considered this.

And we spent time comparing to the obvious benchmark for us, which is the Tycoon hotel in the county of WuDi where my wife hails from.  It is similarly simple with a "Service?  What do you mean service" approach to service. The breakfasts are bad but perhaps not as bad.  The service is rather bad but again, perhaps not as bad.  Outside the fifth floor window lay rows and rows of simple tiled buildings.  I considered how the residents must all necessarily look up at this silly hotel.

But we came to climb the mountain and this, certainly, was wonderful to do so. The path starts out gently.  We proceeded up from the parking lot along a gradual incline.  Aside from some pines and the ubiquitous cherry trees, the landscape was stark, rocky and not especially inviting to plant life.  Proceeding along we came to some cliffside temple constructions.  Before you can reach them there is a final dash of one hundred impossibly steep stairs with no banisters that suddenly reminds me of Taishan.  I had a nice chat with the monk inside the God of the Northern Mountain temple.  He asked how long I'd been in China.  I told him since before he'd been born.  He wasn't a venerable monk.  I wondered about what, precisely a Daoist does up here on the mountain besides temple upkeep and prayer. “You've only thirty minutes to go” he said.  I’d thought we had quite a bit longer remaining.  After a wrong turn up to a steep dead end we plodded along until reaching a pagoda which, as they always do, seemed to be the summit.  But another straight dash up the mountain to the summit still remained.  No trees, no vegetation, just a rocky pathway with steps riding up to the peak. 

My older one reminded me of me.  “I want to keep my pace” and she kept going on up the trail.  I badly wanted to follow.  But thought it was best for me to wait for the wife and the younger one to reach the pagoda.  They did and had the same disappointment as everyone else when they looked upward.  Once we made eye contact,  I continued on the path upwards to the peak  And then gasping for air, receiving a welcome from my daughter I mounted the top and gazed off at the valley we had recently driven through, flat, grey, cultivated.  Counterintuitively I walked down away from the peak to a quiet bluff one hundred years down in the other direction.  I enjoyed the rare Chinese privilege there, of silence.  There were no other people who had made it down this way.  I listened to some mountain birds and though for a moment about what it meant to be fifty-one, until I heard my wife calling my name from the summit.

Saturday, 4/15/17