|
Friends In High Places
Saturday, July 16, 2005-10:00 PM
Wudang Mountain's "golden summit" reaches an elevation of 1,612 meters above sea level. In the tiny town that serves as its mini base camp, I made several friends who showed me around.
Peter introduced himself to me. He's a 19 year-old student who just finished high school and is helping his parents run their hotel over the summer before he enters university.
He's lived here his whole life. It's such a small, isolated community. It's a completely different lifestyle.
There are probably less than a thousand people who call this place home. Basic services are available here. There's an elementary school and a small clinic if you get sick.
But for anything else, people need to take an hour long minibus ride into the city.
Peter and I left at 6:30 in the morning to climb to the summit of Wudang Mountain. We arrived in about an hour and a half.
At the top, we met a Daoist monk that Peter recognized. He had been living there for one year, and when I asked him how long he planned to say, he wasn't sure.
"A few years. Maybe my entire life."
In the afternoon I headed in the opposite direction, following the road down the mountain to the Purple Heaven Hall.
On the way down, I met a garbage truck driver picking up a dumpster. He offered me a lift in his truck.
Riding down the mountain in a garbage truck was more interesting than the Purple Heaven Hall.
Then again, I wouldn't know because I didn't go in. I thought the admission price of 15 renminbi was too steep.
On the walk back up, I met Batumenke, a Mongolian guy from Inner Mongolia doing a little traveling in Hubei.
He was very interesting in talking to me and thought it was destiny (yuanfen) that we would meet.
I spent the afternoon revisiting places I'd already been with him while he told me how beautiful the Inner Mongolian grasslands were and how great the Mongolian food was.
I want to go to Inner Mongolia.
|
