In the Land of Confucian -- Foreigners in China

Week 11 (November 14, 1997) -- In the Shadow of Jiuhua

by Scott Urban

Introduction: Scott Urban went to China in 1994 to work at the China Daily newspaper in Beijing, where he stayed until 1997. While in China, Scott contracted a severe form of bicycling mania, which manifested itself in his 6,000-kilometer bicycle journey to Xinjiang in 1995 with friend Brice Minnigh.

In the Fall of 1996, Scott Urban and another friend William Lindesay spent every weekend possible cycling to the Great Wall of China to find lost sections of the Wall, with nothing more than curiosity, bicycles, and a map of the greater Beijing area.

This Jiuhua story was written in April 1995 about Scott's brother Pat's visit to China, their unusal encounters with Chinese people. The story begins in the middle of that visit. Jiuhua is one of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains (the other 3 being Pu Tuo in Zhejiang, Emei in SIchuan and Wutai in Shanxi). Jiuhua is located in Anhui Province, East China. In its heyday there were more than 300 monastaries around Jiuhua Mountain.

Scott currently resides in Denver, Colorado, USA, and is involved in a number of China-related projects. He can be reached at 110362.3041@compuserve.com .

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it was a pivotal moment.

We were on the steep face of a rock outcropping on the side of a mountain, surrounded by fairly dense brush and trees. We’d pushed our way through the undergrowth with some difficulty to get this far, and the way down wasn’t going to be any easier.

The rock face afforded us a moment to gain perspective on our whereabouts -- we could see back up the mountain from whence we came; we could look across the valley to other mountains, and down into the ravine below. Looking as far as possible to the next mountain ridge, I could see a trail along the border of some woods, steeply climbing out of that far-off ravine.

It was the only trail we could see, and it was miles away. But if we were going to continue with this escapade, as opposed to retracing our steps back up the mountain and over the top where the vendors and tourists tread, I had a feeling we’d be climbing out of the ravine on that distant trail eventually. I pointed it out to my brother.

"Sure, I see it," he said. "It’s over there and we’re here."

Not sure that we were doing the right thing, and yet not wanting to be the spoiler, I gave Pat every opportunity to give up and retreat up the mountain without actually suggesting we do so. "Maybe this ain’t gonna work," I said as I worked out the ‘for’ and ‘against’ factors.

We were out-of-bounds and had only the vaguest notion of where we were going -- a photocopied road atlas of Anhui Province to tell us what towns were in the vicinity. We’d bush-whacked part of the way down the mountain and the going was rough. Where would this lead?

"But this is China," I thought. "You can’t be alone in China." It was early afternoon, but if we kept walking we were bound to run into civilization. The converse seemed absurd. On the mountain, far from a trail or route down, the rationalizing was automatic.

Running down the list of factors, most seemed to check out: I knew there was no man-eating wildlife left in East China -- man had eaten it. I knew there was a trail far on the next ravine -- we would just have to get to it. And we had a bag of terrible tofu wafers we bought from a farmer on the mountain top.

The only thing ‘against’ was the calamity factor. What if we were about to walk off a cliff? What if we got injured some other way? And isn’t this how catastrophes happen -- two people going somewhere they shouldn’t? Why not act now to eliminate that possibility?

Because of the monk.

Maybe it’s really because my brother was not used to the glares one gets in China. After eight months here I’ve learned that a glare generally doesn’t mean anything but a blank expression -- behind it often lies a smile if only you smile. It’s just a blank canvas ready to respond to your own action.

But to my brother, the glare we got back at the summit was one of hatred, contempt or, at least, disapproval. And he perceived the man behind the glare was a Buddhist monk, upon whose mountain we were infringing.

It’s true that we’d spent the morning climbing the thousands of steps up the other side of Jiuhua Mountain, just like every other tourist visiting this famous Buddhist mountain. It had taken us the first half of the day to scale the mountain steps, fending off vendors and restaurant owners much of the way.

We’d gotten to the top and found a decent view, and sat for some lunch -- sponge-like bread with delicious English blackcurrant jam. And tofu wafers: an old man found us eating there and wanted to sell us some wafers, a wad of ‘em for four cents. My brother handed him a dollar and the man loaded us up with an armful of the inedible things. For Pat, it was a particularly unsavory experience since he expected the small brown wafer in his mouth to be a cookie.

Between the extraordinarily large tofu purchase and the bread we’d shared with the man, I felt comfortable asking for his help. "We want to walk down the back of this mountain," I told him. "We just need a small trail. Can you lead us to such a trail?"

There ensued several rounds of "But there’s nothing on that side of the mountain, better go down to Qing Yang where you can play and find a place to stay" and "No, we just came from Qing Yang, we want to go down the back of this mountain, and continue on to Ling Yang, we just want to see ordinary things and meet ordinary country people, can you lead us to such a trail?"

He finally agreed to do so but we were suspicious -- he began leading us along a concrete path that skirted the ridge of Jiuhua and would return to the base.

Then he turned onto a trail down the back of Jiuhua. Our spirits soared.

[To be continued]

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