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Travel Story

The yin and yang of 21st century China

Travels in Schezuan province follow a path between the ancient and modern

It’s pitch black. I can’t even see my hands in front of my face; not surprising when you consider that I am over 2,000 metres above sea level, half way up one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in China, Mount Emei or Emeishan. From here it’s a four-hour walk to the nearest road. The air is fresh and cool. For the first time in weeks I’m not breathing in pollution and dirt, and for the first time in weeks it’s quiet, eerily quiet.

In a country with a 1.3 billion population, quiet doesn’t exist. There is always noise: horns from buses squealing around corners, bells from bicycles expertly dodging buses, women in stalls along the side of the road screaming the only English words they know at you through loudspeakers –"hello, water, hello" – and even chanting and 4 a.m. gongs from the corners of temples and monasteries.

There is always noise in China and yet here I am in silence, except for the occasional bumps and rustling coming from the other side of the monastery walls; Tibetan macaques wandering restlessly in the forest. The desire for sleep is making my eyelids heavy but my mind is racing, eagerly embracing this silence in the darkness of the mountain and I can’t help but reflect on where I am and why I am here.

I started the day in Baogou, near Chengdu in the Schezuan province of China, and spent half a morning riding buses, gondolas and hiking, until I emerged to find myself high on a forest-covered mountain, a thousand worlds away from the crowded Chinese cities I had traveled through. I was perched above a sea of clouds in awe of my surroundings, watching Buddhists lighting giant sticks of incense and monks mediating beside rocky cliffs. Off in the distance I could vaguely make out the snow-covered peaks of the Himalayas, rising out of the clouds like giants.

The beauty was tremendous, until suddenly in front of me was a giant metal crane, constructing the frame of what someday will be a temple, but currently appears more like a microwave tower; a metal monstrosity built to replace an older temple deemed not grand enough for such a sacred mountain.

Disappointed that I had arrived too late to visit the old temple, I proceeded down a path only to find a monorail, something so utterly out of place; but I had already learned that the out of place is commonplace in China. It is an ancient country rapidly modernizing and as such there is a constant juxtaposition between the traditional and the modern, between the beautiful and the efficient: ancient temples with monorails, Buddhist monks with cell phones, water buffalo sharing the road with BMWs. So seeing a monorail did not seem quite so strange, although unhappily visions of Disneyland jumped to mind.

The monorail sped me along the side of the mountain to the base of the highest peak at Emeishan, 3,077 metres above sea level. On this peak lay the Temple of 10,000 Buddhas, a newer temple made beautiful by its surroundings. It was perched higher than everything in its midst and approaching the temple I marveled at the amazing backdrop. From up there it felt like I was on a different plane altogether from the rest of earth. All I could see below me were clouds; even the path I had emerged from was hidden, and yet I was standing in brilliant sunlight. It was as if I had found a world one step closer to Nirvana – and one step further away from the cell phones, and monorails, and relentless construction of China’s modern age. I felt a sense of peace and a new appreciation for the natural beauty in the world, and also a new sadness for the disappearing beauty of this country. Here I knew why the mountain was sacred, even as the present-day world encroached upon it.

The late afternoon found me halfway down the mountain, at the start of another trail leading into the forest. I was told that four hours and 2,000 stairs later we would arrive at the monastery in which we would be staying. As we walked I wondered how many had walked this path before; I imagined that while my path was better, the forest had remained mostly unchanged since the first pilgrims had come here.

Finally, as the light was just starting to dim over the forest, I reached the monastery. The whole building sits painted black, nestled in the trees, and there it has survived for over 450 years, halfway up Emeishan.

I was shown to a room on a different floor from my traveling companions, but not ready to embrace the silence the monastery had to offer I visited with friends and fell asleep on their extra bed. I woke an hour later in extreme discomfort and decided to try to find my way back to my own room on the floor below. By now it was completely dark, except for the miniature flashlight that took me from room to room and down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs I took the turns I thought I needed to take and instead of finding my room I came face to face with a very fat, very jolly looking Buddha. While I could have come across any number of more menacing things in the darkness, Buddha was still not very welcome.

Eventually I was found by a small, elderly Chinese man who started speaking loudly to me. Regrettably my Chinese was limited to hello, thank you, this, and cold beer. We tried briefly to communicate with words, but quickly gave up and began playing a poor and confusing version of charades. After several minutes of pointing and shaking heads and general frustration, he took me to a hall where there were several muffled voices behind a series of doors. While I was a little nervous I couldn’t help but laugh at my situation and think that maybe Buddha had helped me out after all. Here I was lost in the dark, in a black wooden monastery, in the middle of nowhere, on a mountain in China, talking to a Chinese man who did not speak any English. All I could feel was a sort of giddiness and privilege at being able to experience this before it’s too late, before everyone in China speaks English, before a road is built to where I stand, and the monastery is knocked down for a hotel.

It was at this moment that I really knew why I had come to China. I can’t deny that it was partly due to random chance and partly that I just wanted to visit a new continent, but mostly I came here to discover China the way it is now, and to see what it soon will be. It is rapidly becoming a modern country, and a powerful one at that. From CNN specials to weekly news reports it’s a country on the forefront of the media’s collective mind, and yet it is a country that many of us know little about: communist government, sweet and sour pork, rice paddies, overpopulation, the production of nearly every consumer good we own: check. But what is the country really like? What are the people really like?

I came here in the hope of answering these questions and understanding a beautiful country that very soon may not exist in its present form. Already I have fallen in love with this country and its people, but I realize the part that I love most is disappearing. I love the elaborate traditions, natural spaces, and rich history. Lying here only one question springs to mind: will the rapid modernization of China ruin the very things that make me love it?