Truly.. we must be insane... our next destination involved, yes, more stairs!! Wudang Shan is the bithplace of T'ai Chi, and home of numerous mountain temples populated with bad ass, T'ai Chi practicing monks. But before getting to that it is worthwhile sharing our adventure in getting there, as this was a great example of how helpful and nice people can be here to a couple of wayward travelers.
We took another train from Chengdu to Shiyen (a very non-descript town near our final destination). This time we opted for the much cushier first class car, which involved A/C and comfy sleepers. Though our cabin-mates were great snorers. After stumbling off the train at 3AM we checked ourselves into the closest flea-bag hotel and caught a few more hrs of sleep.
Wudang Shan is not the big tourist destination that Emei Shan is, therefore the surrounding areas and access is far less populated with English speakers and signage. And strangeley enough every moving vehicle around seemed to be trying to get us on their bus no matter where they were headed. So needless to say, with our limited mandarin abilities, we were somewhat challenged in figuring out which bus would get us to our final destination (not to mention this town was not in our trusty guidebook!). Thanks to a couple of very nice people we were walked over to the right bus and chaperoned all the way to our final destination.
We stayed at a hotel about 25 km up the mountain, at the foot of the many paths up to the peak, we were surrounded by mountains, cool mountain air and clouds.. we were literally staying in the clouds.
While there we met a super nice local guy named 'Peter' (many people take english names). Peter was our chaperone for the 3 days we were there, taking us around to all the temples, to the local martial arts school, making sure we didnt get ripped off buying souvenirs.
The place was really beautiful.. the scenery and temples were right out of a kung fu movie.... stony temples built into the side of the mountain with long, steep steps climbing through the mist. Rocky walkways meandering along the side of the mountain, chinese characters for long-live, happiness, prosperity, peace carved into the mountainside painted a blazing red.
One day we clinbed up to the Golden Summit - this was only two-days after our previously insane climb. Fortunately, our legs had just about recovered and this was only a 9 km climb... by this time we were pros and it was a breeze. It was very cloudy that day so we were literally climbing through the clouds. When we would look over a precipice all we saw was a thick white mist.... while it would have been nice to see the view, as we were quite high up, it was really mystical walking through these clouds....
The highlight of this walk was the scene at the temple at the very top of the mountain. There was a group of Taiwanese, members of some sect of Daoism, there on some pilgrimage. There were about 10-15 of them, dressed in white silk jammies going through some very interesting religious rites. Their leader guided them individually up the last set of stairs... which involved a lot of burping noises, dramatic hand gestures and lunging. There seemed to be some exorcising of bad spirits, as well as lots of wailing, crying, bizarre singing, flapping and flailing about at the alter. Our guide, Peter, admitted that he had never seen 'anything so crazy' (his words) so this was definitely some extreme, or fringe sect that we happened upon.
We were extremely lucky to have met Peter - he was a really great guy and definitely made our experience there. His parents ran a small restaurant so, in a town where there where no English menus, we actually got to taste some decent food and we got to see sites we would otherwise have missed.
