The hills are alive
I just had to give more details about our hike last Sunday, especially since I've finished uploading the pictures that go with it. (Click on the pic and then look at all the pix tagged "1st hike")
Now our hiking experiences have all been in North America--on trails that have been set up in parks and/or wilderness areas. While this had prepared us for the physical walking of the hike, it certainly didn't prepare us for what we were about to see. We started out in the city, walking around our campus and down a commercial street. Except for the newly built orphanage, the buildings were all somewhat old. We ventured up a side street that shortly became a one lane road. The higher we climbed, the more old fashioned the homes became. Fired brick structures gave way to mud bricked ones. We came to a little plaza with a gazebo and an elephant shaped slide. There was a nice viewpoint from which we could see a bit of the campus and the fields behind our building. Venturing further we soon left the buildings behind and our road became a footpath. We climbed around a terraced rice paddy. The rice was so close that we could reach out to touch it. (We didn't. We want to be good guests here.) Beyond the field, the trail started following a ridge. On our right was a small creek or ditch--I couldn't tell if it was natural or not. On our left was a nice view of the city. There was also an occasional group of bamboo plants, larger than I had ever seen. around the foot of them seemed to be husks of bamboo shoots. Whether this is a natural phenomenon, or some folks had been making a snack for themselves, I don't know.
A bit past the bamboo, we passed a small shack in which was chained an irritated dog. He was either telling us to get out of his territory or that we were headed the wrong direction to see the shrines. A few paces past the shack, Michael decided that we were headed in the wrong direction, so we backtracked to the last fork in the trail. We ventured up the road not taken but soon decided that it, too, was the wrong path. As we headed down the switchback, we encountered another big nose. Matthew was a new English teacher at one of the local middle schools. He had never met Michael before, but was acquainted with some of the other expats. He, too, was looking for the shrines and had gone the wrong way. So we figured that if we were going to be lost, it'd be more fun to be lost together. However, between Michael's past experience and the directions Matthew had received, we managed to find the shrines.
The first shrines seemed to be dedicated to the seven immortals of old Chinese literature fame. (Yau Neih knows these things because she's read all sorts of English translations of Chinese classics.)(Me, I've watched a few kung-fu movies.) There were paintings of the seven on the wall, all sorts of gifts left on the ledge beneath the paintings, and a bunch of burnt out joss sticks in the incense urns. I had my usual reaction that I get when I encounter religious practice other than my own--an admiration for the artistry and devotion, mixed with sorrow over our doctrinal differences. Anyway, we rested and photographed for a bit and then ventured up the path to the second shrine. I forget to whom this was dedicated to Kwan Yin--I think she was the goddess of peace, or mercy or something. Michael was delivering a mini-lecture on it, but I wasn't paying close attention as there were some excellent views of the fields and city below us. This shrine had three statues in it, all enclosed behind glass.
There seemed to be yet another shrine up above the second one, this one with a few people already visiting them. Matthew started boldly heading up the trail and I, like Sir Robin at the bridge of infinite peril, bravely followed him. It turns out the "third shrine" was actually somebody's house. The had another one of those concrete gazebos stuck on the edge of the hill and a couple of guys were sitting and drinking tea. They had already invited Matthew to sit a spell, and when I rounded the corner, they motioned for me to sit as well. With typical Chinese hospitality we were given some tea and the guys tried to make conversation. I understood none of the words, but one guy seemed to be saying that I was fat. Or at least my legs were. He made a point of comparing the size of our respective thighs and I have to admit, I certainly had him beat. Anyway, the rest of our party arrived and were all treated to tea. The guys especially took a liking to Siu Wan, who is, of course, incredibly cute. She, of course, didn't care to be the center of attention, but she bore it well. So we sat and chatted within the limitations of our groups' Chinese and drank tea and watched the chicks and chickens waddle about the yard.
Matthew was eager to continue upwards and we all followed along. We hiked another 15 minutes or so, the trail being very steep in some places. We stopped at a clearing on the trail and gazed about us. Ga Dai had about reached her limit, so we all decided to head back down. (No doubt that Matthew and Siu Wan--who's part mountain goat--would have continued until the top of the mountain.) The trip back was rather uneventful, save that we paused to sort of talk to a woman at our previous tea stop and stopped to visit Flora, as I mentioned in a previous post. A few days later we gazed up at the mountain from campus and tried to visually trace our route. If we identified the shrines correctly (why, oh why did we leave the binoculars back in Seattle?), we had only traversed about a third of the way up the mountain. We may have to try to get higher next time. Assuming we don't spend all our time exploring other places.
posted by John @ 7:42 AM
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