Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [36]
And China sang to me
In the peaceful haze of harvest time
A song of eternity
You’re smoking crack, Neil, if you think the haze that permeates China is the peaceful haze of harvesttime. I mean, come on. Clearly, the bitterness had never lifted. Nevertheless, as I stood in line at the base of the mountain to pay the entrance fee, I hoped that China would sing to me too. Actually, as I watched a nearby vendor do a brisk business selling bird whistles, I wished that China would just quiet down for a while.
At the gate, a sign informed us that old people (sixty to seventy years old), students, and maimed persons would have to pay only 50 yuan to climb Tai Shan. Not too many mountains offer a discount to the maimed, but Tai Shan does. The sign went on to inform us that teachers, provincial model workers, and combat model heroes also received a discount. Should one be tempted to proclaim oneself a Combat Model Hero—and I certainly was—you will be asked to provide a certificate confirming your status.
I passed the First Gate of Heaven, a square arch emblazoned with calligraphy, and started to clamber up the stairs, which wound ever upward through a forest of pine and cypress trees. Huge boulders and rock formations were emblazoned with ancient calligraphy, but since for this hiker they were about as inscrutable as, well, Chinese calligraphy, I turned my attention to the signs I could read. Please fling the rubbish into the dustbin. And I started to look for rubbish to fling.
I continued upward through a damp, muggy drizzle and it wasn’t long before I began to sweat. Tai Shan, I was discovering, was no stroll through the park. True, I was climbing stairs, but these were narrow stairs, suitable perhaps for tiny little bound feet but treacherous for others, particularly when they were as rain-slicked as they were that day. And, while I do want to commend the hard work that must have gone into building a stone staircase up a mountain, I did begin to wish that perhaps a little more effort could have been expended so that each step was similar to the others. But, of course, each step was different—a stutter step here, a two-foot chasm there—making it impossible to establish a rhythm.
I paused to take a breather. Keep distance from the precipitous cliff, a sign read. What cliff? I wondered. I couldn’t see more than ten feet through the drizzly haze. Instead, all I could see were people. Thousands of people. Tens of thousands of people. I had, of course, known that Tai Shan was the most climbed mountain on Earth. I had envisioned a Matterhorn-type crowd, a few streams of hikers, but in no way was I prepared for the seething masses scampering up Tai Shan. Good call, I muttered to myself. Wanted to get away from it all for a couple of days, did you? A little nature. Serenity. And so you choose to climb the most climbed mountain in the world in a country of one and a half billion people, give or take a hundred million.
While I stood there ruminating, I noticed people pointing at me. Laowai, I heard. Very often, it’s not meant kindly, either. And then “Picture,” said a man waving a camera. A moment later, I was surrounded by the Zhang family from Hunan, or whoever the heck they were, smiling for the camera. Xie xie. Thank you. Well, good, I thought, at least my presence here as an odd curiosity to be gawked at and photographed was bringing joy and mirth to many.
I trudged upward, momentarily pleased to have summited, until I noticed a sign informing me that I was presently at the Midway Gate to Heaven, and that I had roughly another 2,000 feet in elevation yet to conquer. Well, shoot, I thought, noticing a man who had just managed to hawk an enormous amount of phlegm out of his mouth while still keeping a cigarette dangling from his lips. If he could do it, I certainly could. And with a deep breath I resumed my climb into the clouds.
Fortunately, the mountain offers plenty of diversionary temples and pagodas along the way. I entered one, a dimly lit temple dominated by a large golden Buddha. Or perhaps it