I've been grappling with how to write about my trip to China, and I'm not sure there really is a good way to tell the story of a laowai (foreigner) so far from home in one sitting. So as the memories hit me, these may trickle out. For example, the other day I had a lucky turn of events. The thought "Once around the bronze Buddha" went through my head, and I couldn't help but smile.
We had about two months in China. In the middle of the program, we got a week off to travel and see the country a little bit. Two buddies and I flew to Xi'an, the ancient capital of China during the hayday of the Silk Road. Not long before leaving the states, I had re-watched Crouching Tiger and got curious about where it was filmed, because the scenery was amazing. Turns out some of the scenes I loved were shot at Holy Mt. Wudang.
I call it Holy Mt. Wudang because it is one of the most holy mountain ranges in Taoism. Its peaks are peppered with Taoist temples, and it is the destination of many Chinese pilgrims every year. It is also the birthplace of Wudang- or Wutang-style kung fu, and draws martial arts pilgrims as well. As opposed to the hard-striking, power movements of Shaolin-style, Wudang is called the 'internal' kung fu. It is not about destroying your opponent. It is about making your opponent destroy themselves. The creator of this style is said to have been inspired by a fight he witnessed between a snake and a magpie. The snake was constantly in motion, circling, shifting, eluding the magpie's strikes. All the while, it watched the magpie until the magpie revealed its weakness, and then struck when the bird exposed itself. This clip from Crouching Tiger is a good example of the fluid motions of the style. It's beautiful to watch:
Turns out that Mt. Wudang is just a four hour bus ride south of Xi'an. So despite being non-Taoist, non-martial artists, we decided to make pilgrims of ourselves and take a mid-week vacation from our vacation.
We pulled in at the base of the mountain around two in the afternoon and found that we were the only laowai around. There would likely not be a soul on this mountain who could speak English. We became pretty adept at getting what we needed through highly exaggerated pantomiming and flapping of hands. The visual spectacle got a lot of laughs, as the effect was probably similar to what you'd get by telling a deaf person in sign language to speak up. Our gestures go to 11.
From base camp, you take about a 35-45 minute bus ride to the second base camp, about half way to the summit, with a stop along the way for a particularly popular structure, Purple Cloud Temple. We decided to hit this complex on the way up, so we didn't have to come back down to see it. It is one of the best-preserved temples on the mountain, and was a good introduction to the trip.
Tucked away in the mountain side with the mother of all koi ponds in front
Climbing all these stairs was a harbinger of things to come
Just me and some tired old yeye
The detail on the buildings was incredible
This was the norm. Little boys apparently need a little more freedom than the girls.
I loved this scene with the lady monk. Maybe not "door of the week", Miss B, but lovely nonetheless.
Meditating? Or forgot what he came out here to get?
More detail on the building, these little guys holding up the center spire.
After Purple Cloud, we caught another bus up to the midway base camp where the hotels were. The previous weekend had been a national holiday and the places had been packed, but now there was almost nobody on the mountain. So as soon as they saw the three laowai get off the bus, the hotel workers were all following us up the road trying to convince us to stay in their concrete death traps. Who do you think had the upper hand in negotiating room rates on this one? That's right. The three of us got overnight accommodations for $20. For all three of us! We dropped off our bags and headed out to "hike" one more temple called Nanyan before dark. Nanyan is one of the coolest temples in Wudang, built into the side of a cliff face. If any of you have seared your retinas with the abomination that was the Karate Kid starring Jackie Chan as Pat Morita, you'll recognize the incense burner overlooking the lake.
Nanyan from afar
Winding path, getting closer
Taken from the backside of the mountain
The trash receptacles were one of the best gifts on the mountain
Watching the sunset from outside the entrance
The incense pot overlooking the lake. I've walked in Jackie's footsteps
Brad taking in the awesome aura of Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith
After watching the sun set from the mountainside, we needed dinner in a bad way. There were about two dozen restaurants lining the street with the hotels, and again, besides the workers, we were nearly the only people there. We stopped once briefly to consider where to eat and were thronged by servers waiving menus in our faces and pawing at us like some glutton's version of a Madonna video. As we stood deliberating over the identical menus (literally photocopies of one another), another laowai waded into the crowd and struck up a conversation with us. Talk about a small world, the guy was a Ute! He was of the 'martial arts pilgrim' variety and owned a chain of kung fu dojos in California and Utah.
We decided on a place to eat and invited our new friend Mike to join us, which turned out to be a lot of fun. We got to talking about martial arts, and how the body sometimes just tells you you're done before your brain will admit it. As an example, he offered to choke me out to show me how quick it can happen, to which I eagerly assented. Not to be left out, my travel companions, Brad and Peter request a ride on the Blackout Express. I only managed to get my camera out in time for a crappy blurred shot of Peter tapping out.
Go to sleep!
We had so much fun with our new friend, we invited him to climb with us to the Golden Summit on the morrow. He accepted the invitation and we agreed to meet up for an 8am start. We had to get moving somewhat early, because we had to catch the bus back to Xi'an that afternoon at 3pm. We thought we'd have plenty of time, but we had no idea the amount of stairs we would have to climb in the morning. It was four solid hours of stairs. It was rough. Rough. But oddly uplifting as well, hiking from one scruffy temple complex to another on the way to the Golden Summit. Even though I have a hard time wrapping my head around the blue and gold gods, the meaning of spiritual devotion and pilgrimage were concepts familiar to me.
At the summit, the temple complex on the top has many shrines and buildings, with the Golden Temple at the center.
One of the side buildings sat inconspicuously up a set of stairs, and I would have totally missed it had I not seen people climbing in and out of the tight doorway. To miss this would have been tragic to the success of the rest of our trip. So much of what happened over the rest of our time in China stemmed from our observation of the superstitious ritual we participated in within its walls.
This small, pitch-black room was the Turnaround Palace. Inside is a bronze shrine to Zhen Wu, the Perfect Warrior, but for some reason I remember the plaque on the building describing the statue as a bronze buddha. The shrine is about 10 X 10, with a narrow corridor no more than 15" wide surrounding the whole thing. The faithful pilgrim enters on the right of the shrine, squeezing sideways into the space between the wall and the shrine, feeling his way through the inky blackness to emerge on the far side having earned the good will of the Perfect Warrior (hence the post title, Once Around The Bronze Buddha.) We, of course, earned a nod from Zheng Wu. It would serve us well over the next few weeks.
Getting started
This was a regular scene on the mountain
I found little gems like this all over
I wasn't lying about the trash receptacles
Three pilgrims
Noted. Thanks.
It is priceless, isn't it?
Stairway to Heaven...'s Gate
I almost died on this one
Mike and Brad needed a break on this one
Oh, what, you thought you were done with stairs?
Stopped to make friends at the top of that last staircase
Of course, if you get tired, these guys will carry you to the top. For a price.
Lest you think the trash cans provided all the fun
More gems
Maybe I should have called it Effectual Mt. Wudang
Sorry, we're fresh out
Probably says something about Wudang Mountain
Do you think they mean me?
The thinking man's trash can
Can you feel it?
This is the angry god Benhua, god of punishment.
The climactic Golden Temple, well tarnished by the weather
These brass lockets lined all of the handrails around the summit
Hardcore scenery, indeed
What a climb. It took us so long to get up and down the mountain, we weren't sure we would make our bus. We got the absolute slowest driver on the mountain on the way back down to the station from the hotel. The instant the doors opened at the base of the mountain, I took Pete's bag so that he could sprint to the station on the off-chance that the bus hadn't left, while Brad and I lugged the bags at a jogger's pace. I thought, "Come on, Perfect Warrior, don't fail us now."
As we turned the corner to the home-stretch, we caught sight of our bus pulled off to the side of the exit gate and Pete standing with one foot on the first step, one foot on the pavement, catching his breath. The bus had been pulling out and he had managed to chase it down with his lightning fast speed.
As I collapsed into my seat and wiped the sweat from my brow, the thought "Once around the bronze buddha" went through my head. We were lucky. It was the first of many lucky occurrences during our travels together.
If you've read this far, immersed in uncomfortable darkness these last 15 minutes or so, you've earned a token for the faithful. Your emergence from the shadows has earned you the good fortune of The Humungus. Go forth and prosper.
I was gonna let this go. Let it be a part of a past life. Stay focused on my studies. Write my risk analysis of investing in South Africa. But this video came across my path again tonight and I can't go to bed without exorcising this demon. It's not new, but it is notable. The former half-term governor of Alaska and current talking sock puppet, Lambchop, is on a bus tour around American historical sites looking for "real Americans" with whom she can connect. Sigh. I guess that's not so wretched by itself, but if you're going to visit a site, at least read a dang book while you're on the bus or something. I know that asking Lambchop to read is, well, playing gotcha journalism and all. But still. There are cameras everywhere, and when you are going to visit Paul Revere's house, they're probably not going to ask you questions about snowmobiling. So when you ask Lambchop a 'gotcha' question like "What do you think of Paul Revere?" (may or may not be the actual question in this case), you get an answer like this:
You know, when cattle are grazing, they just don't pay any attention to what they are taking into their bodies and they tend to hoover up bits of barbed wire fence from time to time. This leads to a tearing of their stomach lining and intestines, and eventually premature death if not treated early enough. So ranchers have these AA-battery shaped magnets that they force-feed the ailing animal to gather in all the metal bits into one place. That way, the poor bovine can pass the strands of wire safely out. The Republican party is the cow, and in pursuing the religious right so hard for so many years to procure a faithful voter bloc, they sucked up some folks that are just plain more interested in hastening the second coming and letting Jesus sort out the mess than actually doing the heavy intellectual work that is required to fix our problems. And they attend grass roots party meetings like they attend church. This includes party primaries in which they choose presidential candidates. For this reason, I think Lambchop is good for Republicans. She is the magnet that gathers to herself all the idiot mouth-breathers who would vote for an oil can if it believed in God. And when she loses out on the nomination and goes off to run as an independent, she'll take that steaming mass of faithful folk out into the open air where they can do "real American" stuff, like meth. And they can skip all of those elitist things like "elections" and "governing" while they wait for other "real Americans" to come pick them up and carry them to victory. At that point, hopefully, anyone tempted to do so will look and say, "hey, that there is bullshit."
So apparently the action film director Tony Scott has been hanging out with Sylvester Stallone and George Lucas a bit too much lately. Last night I was disappointed to learn from Dirty Harry that Scott is on board for a new Top Gun movie. This idea couldn't get worse with a script from VH1's I Love the 80's crew and a working title of "Maverick's Lost That Lovin' Feeling." Why must Hollywood tamper with our childhood memories like this? Just like Rocky Balboa. Just like Rambo 4. Just like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Deuce. Just like FREAKING STAR WARS!!! (In which Natalie Portman did indeed suck). This is bound to suck. How in the world does Scott intend to recapture this, the most magical scene in the history of cinema (sorry for the Italian dubbing):
I'm pretty sure that's the scene that turned the tide for George Michael.
