Considered by Emperors and Poets

We climbed the Nan Yue yesterday.  We’d meant to arrive the night before.  I’d booked the trip once and then changed it because a school trip.  The next on account of a school dance.  The only weekend left was one where I returned home at midnight on Friday.  Up then, up at 5:00AM for a flight at seven.  In the Changsha airport we found that DiDi in the countryside is still a work in progress.  It doesn’t matter what it says in the app.  People still want to negotiate. 

We drove along a highway that could have connected New York and Pennsylvania, except for the sorghum liquor ads and blooming parasol trees that lined the way south.  We arrived around noon, hungry.  And we were staying at the five-year-old ‘Lonely Planet’ I had on my shelf’s “Top Pick” for Nan Yue: “The Vegetarian and Tea Restaurant.”  This is where we’d be staying for the night and we got our rooms and filled a table with veg fare. Dumplings were a bit wonky but the noodles were tasty and the eggplant was devoured in seconds.   I noted that the portions, here in rural Hunan were huge and we left enough on the table to feed another four more people.

Setting out we left the Nanyue Temple itself for the following day and made our way to the second floor of the big two story building where tickets could be bought.  I purchased the full price tickets even though I wanted to walk to the lift instead of taking the bus up.  The way it was described suggested that the initial walk was lovely but that the path beyond where one could board the cable care was just a walk along a road with lots of traffic, which sounded horrible.  We set out on the path and one and then another person told us what had been initially billed as a two-hour walk was really going to take seven hours.  Impatient, annoyed I brushed off all these people whom my wife was very interested to liaise with.  “Did you hear that?  He said seven hours.”  “It’s all bullshit.  He's trying to sell you something.”

As we began the official walkway yet another person tried to talk us out of hiking the trail.  “Oh.  The tram closes at five thirty.  You’ll never make it. “It was 2:00PM.  I walked back and confirmed with the cops standing at the entrance that the walk was only two hours up, which they agreed on.  My wife and daughters were not so sure. 

The pathway was indeed lovely, with lots of flowers newly blooming and bridges over lake underneath tumbled stones that have been considered by emperors and poets for thousands of years.  But off to the side, never too far away was the paved road with speeding busses and honking horns.  And with it the constant lure of copping-out and hitching a ride.  At any time we wanted, we could head over and flag down a bus and zip on up to tram station.  I held out for about two-hour’s worth of hiking till we got to a turn in the road.  The road, with its traffic was the only way up. This held no charm and I capitulated.   Ahh, but our tickets were not the right tickets to allow you to flag down a bus and board mid-route,  a lady in a nearby park hut confirmed.  She was however happy to sell us just the right tickets.  “Yes, we take cash.”

And so we bussed it up the next two kilometers and waited in an nearly empty room for the next tram to come.  No one was waiting in line, which was a very good thing in China.   The ride was picturesque if the stanchions themselves seemed dangerously rusty.  Up at the top I tried to make sense amidst the long line that had formed for the return trip and the megaphones loudly announcing all the various options for how one might get down.  Ahh but how do you get up, to the top?  By now it was 4:30PM.  We got our bearings and considered the summit.  I believe the words my older one chose were: “Hell no,” as I noted that we were almost there.  It was late in the day.  I couldn’t really force anyone any more than what we’d already done. Checking though, my little one surprised me.  She was willing to give it a try with me.  I was thrilled and wishing the Mrs. and the older one adieu, we set out to see what we could do. 

The final phases of Chinese mountain stepped climbs are always brutal.  They are especially brutal after you’ve been hiking all day, on a few hours’ sleep, when the sun is beginning to set and the tram back down is clearly closing.   We went to one bluff.  A sign suggested 1900 meters to go.  We began to count them as steps.  “Dad, a step isn’t a meter!”  “I know.  It’s close.”  My little girl regularly suggested we throw in the towel.  We made it to another bluff.  Her will power was slipping.  We agreed to push on up one more twisting path of stairs to an area above which surprised even me.  We were now there at the summit plateau.

At this point my left foot, in particular, was completely shot.  I waddled around the summit area like a penguin and got some water outside the peak temple.  But there is a unique calm that comes with reaching top of any hill, that can’t be ruined by the fact that some local officials cousin’s, uncle is driving his car around what should be an area of quiet reflection.  I am at peace and am not overly annoyed by the young kids nor middle aged ladies who refer to me loudly as a foreigner.  I refer aloud back to them noting their ethnicity, in their language and smile. I am so proud of my little one for joining me and helping me to make it.  Selfies.  More selfies. 

The walk down is gruesome.  No way around it.  Slowly I go, imagining that I must look rather feeble and, yes, old.  Small children speed by.  Step by step we descend using those other leg muscles that were ignored all day long on the way up.  At one bluff a man asks if I want a ride down in one of the parked vehicles off to the side, and it takes me about two seconds to wash away my defensiveness, check the price and agree.  It didn’t occur to me as we began our journey with this fella, but in as much as there were only official buses up the main road ascent, we took a completely different path now on the way down.  I couldn’t get my bearings for a while but soon a realized we were quiet a bit further around from where we had begun, and though I fretted a bit about whether or not we’d reach the proper destination, soon I began to relax as best I could with two solid legs of ache, and enjoy the whitewashed village scenes we drove through that looked just like the Hunan scenery I’d otherwise only imagined from the cover of my Shen Congwen’ collection of short stories.  It was dark by the time we reached the Nan Yue village once again and swapped stories with my wife and older daughter.

Sunday 4/08/18