Wudangshan day 1, part 1

It's 6:45am Tuesday morning here and my girls are still sleeping. That wont last long I think so I'll try to tackle my goal of catching up from the past. More on out new treasure in another post...I ill say this when she smiles...eally smiles, she looks like an old japanese man...and she's quite the trickster...but I digress...rewind back to 08/26/05 Waking up on Mt. Wudang
After a night in very moist hotel room I got out of bed about 5:30 or so and walked out on the patio which led into the building.Our hair raising and long plane/car trip the night before brought us to this place in total darkness so I was stupified to look out on a breathtaking moutain vistaThe hotel (and included karaeoke bar) actually was quite nice. We were just billited late night into a room that into which an 800 foot jungle encrusted cliff was emptying is newly gotten rainfall. I got my first solo glimpses of Mt. Wudang....OMG...

For those of you who haven't heard me raving for the last month about this trip,here's the beginning of some info on Mt. Wudang. Guess what it's ALL that and more. The hotel we were at was right next to the Wudang Taoist Academy of Wushu Arts. I've posted more Wudangshan pix at the supersecretmoonbase.com ( use the "more pics" link on the right side of this blog ). There was a court yard of blue clad wushu students short step marching back and forth in lines while a master yelled at them for chewing gum or not resembling a tiger enough..one or the other. I watched, stretched and read my copy of the dao de jing.

1. The Way
The Way that can be experienced is not true;
The world that can be constructed is not true.
The Way manifests all that happens and may happen;
The world represents all that exists and may exist.

To experience without intention is to sense the world;
To experience with intention is to anticipate the world.
These two experiences are indistinguishable;
Their construction differs but their effect is the same.

Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way,
Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.


Soon as the sun began to peek over the cliffs, I got P out of bed. Trooper that she is, she got up and saw sun rise on the mountain. Then she was back to the spore suite until I bribed her with coffee from the co-op ( 64.07 yuan / lb --posters, the first correct USD conversion gets a cup of wudang green tea from me!). We were to meet Victor and Mr. Sho at 8a. Soon there were many younger chinese women scurrying around yammering at each other and washing washing washing the floors. We went to the court yard and found Victor playing ping pong ( seriously ) with the night staff...he was heng hao (very good) and I came to find out later that he had to stop playing competeitvly for an injury...now thats ping (or is it pong?) Into the car we get and drive back down the mountain half way, This time we can see what we've gotten ourselves into...and it's absolutley beautiful..lush pines, wierd other trees, vines and shiny leaved plants..victor says theres boars, leapords and, to P's utter joy, possible monkeys.


I want to take a moment here to talk about China's most abundant resource, insanely fervent workers...young, old and post retirement everywhere there are people, backs bent and shovel in hand. The emporer and officials who commishoned the temples and shrines of Wudang to be built 800 years ago have the stain of the blood of tens of thousands of workers who died during the constructions on their hands...now thats a pleasant thought. But everywhere we go in China, from Beijing pre-olympic construction to the rural agricultural work in coutless rice paddys we saw on our train trip from Wudangshan to Wuhan...peopl peopl...toiling on all days of the week, in the day and in the night...Patrice asked Victor about it and he gave a short sounding "They have jobs"... I was struck by the industriousness of teir efforts...The next time I see an american moaning about ANYTHING I'm going to lay into them in mandarin..."get off your nascar ass and get out into the feild and pay for that SUV with sweat!"


We come to an intersection and turn to drive bck up the other side of the ravine/gorge that we've just come down. Up, up, up past more workers clearing tons of rock off the road..each time we come to a hairpin or a group of workers, Mr. Sho lays on the horn a couple of taps. Soon we come to the end of the road and are faced with a bluff probably 900 meters up, some shops and a cable car, kind like the alpine tram at lutsen only in china going up to a Taoist temple complex built on the top of a mountain. The row of shops, all open fronted and selling trinkets, odd potatoes nd the main tourist souvenier of Mt. Wudang, swords...I have come home. Sowrds...literally hundreds of them...the river in the gorge, Sword (Jian) River..And due to the fact that we have so limited yuan, I cant buy one....grrrr..Big, Huge, Monstorous, medium and toy...swords with tassles, swords in boxes, hanging on the wall...swords for tai chi sword practice, special ornamental swords to scare devils from your house...swords for cleaving letters open and proping the window open...I ave to keep moving...Victor buys our tickets and we're away up, up, up...P wants to see a monkey, I want a monkey with a sword...Actually not...P and I dscussed why it's hard for people and monkeys to live together...it's not our stupidity, or our wonton disregard for theirs and our living spaces...no it's that we cant abide all their sill monkey pranks. Butter on door knobs, short sheeting, fake poop...and always with that insideous monkey snickering in the background..I'm glad we didn't run into any monkeys...that we know of at least.

Golden Top (1 pillar supporting heaven)
Okay everyone, get out the zepp album...you know the track I want to play. The cable cars DONT STOP! You have to hustle out either side quick like or you are going back down...the timid luckily cant get on or else they wouldnt ever get off...We get out of the tram car/sauna after passing many choice monk perches. Victor rides the car behind us...he's actually got business up here. He wants to become a Taoist priest but not stay up on goldentop and has to lobby for a permit. P and I are set to walk the rest of the way on the ...wait for it...stairway to heaven...actually getting to use that phrase is an odd badge of honor...much like the bruise I have on my forehead from passing out in the bathroom from TD (see past post)...Anyway victor said that hermits and meditators have been up here in caves since ancient times..in chinese, thats really old...like BCE stuff and I could see where they had hung out...meditated, converted and fossilized. We start out ascent up winding skinny stairs to a patio where we pause for a picture or two.We shared this spot for a second with a blue tailed lizard. And on again..Victor has a schedule to keep us on. Up more stairs to another patio with a few incense selling stands and a carved "very fine caligraphy". It says "One Pillar Supporting Heaven"Kind of like Goldentop's mission statement...a good one at that...to the point. We buy incense and we both make offerings in this icehouse sized incense burner, I prayed for our new dughter. I dont know what P prayed for but she started to cry afterwards so...Then...guess what? Up more stairs...just short though a door....

OKAY HANG ON FLASH FORWARD!! BTW now it's 5pm Wuhan BestWestern and I just changed my daughter's first poop in our family...BIG NEWS cause we've been pumping her with apple juice, watermellon and teething biscits for 36 hours...it had to blow sometime and we were eagerly awaiting this blessed event...which just happened now 2 times in the last 30 minutes...never been so happy to smell diareah before..she fits in with mom and papa now..at least at one point she stood there..peeing on the floor...and laughed with us.

okay back to the misty mountain... we go through a door into a coutyard where shrines lead off all sides. each has sliding doors which are locked and some purpose related to the life of Zhengwu the mystic who is the root of his whole mountain. I'll find a link to his story so I dont butcher it.