Up, up, up

Mount Hua (Huashan) is the westernmost of the Five Sacred Buddhist Mountains of China, and is known to have shrines situated on and near it as early as the second century BC. I’ve read that Daoists believe one can access the underworld at Huashan and pilgrims have come to the mountain for that purpose for centuries, seeking their lost ancestors in the sublime temple garden at the base of the North peak, which is 5,300 feet up, up, up. Of the four other peaks, the South peak is the tallest, at 6,900 feet. / The are is also known for varieties of healing herbs, roots, and seeds—so people come also for immortality. / The range that Huashan is part of splits the state of Shaanxi, and the country of China, and has a history of natural and human drama punctuated by an earthquake in 1556 said to have caused 830,000 deaths, making it one of the biggest human catastrophes. / Trails up (and down) Huashan were carved (and lost) by Daoist, Buddhist, and other pilgrims through the centuries, and shrines established at summits along the way. In the 1949, a group of seven People’s Liberation Army soldiers used a recovered old footpath to overtake a group of 100 enemy soldiers. / The inaccessibility of the peaks was part of the special holiness of the place. Only the very rich or the very hardy would ever make it into the cluster of breath-taking ridges with dramatic drop-offs and gorges. / Until quite recently. In the 1980’s, the land area was turned over the Daoist Association of China for protection. In the 1990’s several trails were reinforced with cement walkways. In 2000, a cable car was built following the trails up to the North peak. A second cable car, down the West peak, was built in 2013. That was the around the time when bullet trains lines were being developed across the country and the time to travel from the major city of Xi’an to Huashan dropped to 30 minutes. Tourism boomed. / Lee and I took the cable car up to the North Peak and down the West peak yesterday—both incredibly terrifying gorgeous rides that had us floating through granite cliffs and looking down at seas of green and the old, forgotten, broken pathways below us. And up there, we walked from peak to peak—about a million stairs with about a million other people—mostly Chinese, it seemed, only less than a handful of other Westerners we saw. Most hikers wore ordinary sneakers like us—many older women in nice dresses and older men in dress pants and nice shirts. Younger people in more casual clothes—we saw so many of the creatively translated English logos we can’t help but enjoy. A few shouts of “hello!” at seeing our faces. Many young children running alongside their parents. A few toddlers taking the stairs slowly, their parents patiently holding onto their arms. Many set-ups of entrepreneurs aiming to take, print, and sell dramatic photos of climbers at particular rocks, ridges, peaks, even against green screens. It was a dry, warm Friday. Tiny temples on each peak had beautifully colorful and shaded shrines set up with offerings—incense, pyramids of pale pink apples, packets of crackers—inside, a dutiful monk looking in on each one. Sometimes we came upon penitents in a deep, deep bow, chanting. Oh, to come to such a place and pray! Often, holy chanting music blasted from a large speaker from the temple across the sky. The crowd slowed down at narrow parts in the path, at places where the summits were small. There were a few notoriously dangerous places—the sky walk where we had to grab on chains and pull ourselves up the face of a boulder holding onto chains, our toes clawing tiny footholds, the plank walk, where we could elect to hug the edge of the ridge while balancing on a narrow plank of wood. There were so many moments when I wished that I might be alone in this place, when I wished the concrete below my feet was more like the packed earth trails of home. Not in this life. And ok. / Being a tourist in China is generally an economically sound endeavor, but yesterday did not feel quite so. Purchasing tickets to take the bus from the tourist center to the cable car, then for each cable car, then for access to the mountain itself came out to about $100 for the both of us. / The village of Huashan is a somewhat dismal widening in the road built around the mountain tourism, and the town further down that road where the train station seems to have little to call attention to it. But if you ever end up this way and need recommendations for a place to stay and places to eat, let me know—Lee and I found the best mutton and duck restaurants in the area, we figured out how to bargain with cab drivers, and scored an incredibly comfortable and cheap and sweet place to stay…and we even ended up buying one of those photos…