Huangshan (Yellow Mountain)
Huangshan is one of the most beautiful natural wonders I have ever seen, second only to the Grand Canyon in my experience. Millions of tourists (mostly Chinese) visit each year and climb its peaks. Its distinct look has inspired generations of watercolor artists.
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Like many tourist sites in China, there are historical legends. There is a tree, for example, that supposedly inspired Li Bai (an 8th century Chinese poet) to write one of his famous poems.
Qiyunshan (Cloud-High Mountain)
If Huangshan was a yellow mountain, then Qiyunshan could be called a red mountain. It was another sacred Taoist mountain with temples throughout it (though not as famous). Hiking on the red rocks around these temples was one of my favorite parts of the whole China trip, simply for its uniqueness among all the other sites I visited.
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The picture below is of Yuxiu Temple. Inside this temple were two giant sculptural murals each about 16 square meters in size. They didn't give quite the powerful emotional effect as the Jalq'a tapestry in Bolivia, but their beauty and symbolism was superior to anything else I saw while in China. I wasn't allowed to photograph the Yuxiu Temple murals, so I sat down and wrote this description:
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"Every square inch is filled and made use of--planned out elegantly...The bottom of each is a sea of green: the earth a swirling mess of waves with people and animals and boats and dragons (even an alligator, possibly) getting swept away. But the majority is blue, cavernous clouds, in each "cave" of which sits or stands some immortal or sage or god. Some sit like the Buddha in meditation; some turn outward as if to address the world below. In the middle [of each mural] is a temple in the clouds with a staircase going down (disappearing into the clouds but bound for earth). The temples are red and resemble Taoist temples here on earth. The sun is also red, and it casts a thick, red beam diagonally down and left upon a sage lying on his left side, resting his elbow, enjoying the Heavens. Elsewhere in the sky there is a man who appears to be making clouds blow from his hands. All the people are gold, with black hair, painted eyes and lips, and red folds in their robes. A tree grows out of a cloud. Elsewhere is a stone bridge. Two men are on horses. No sign of death; it is an entirely different plane of existence! At the very top of both murals there are distant temples partially hidden by clouds, as if to say, there are even higher realities than this one. Just keep ascending. Don't give up."
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Huashan (Magnificent Mountain)
The most mysterious site was Huashan. This was where Kwan Saihung (from Deng Ming-Dao's book) lived and trained under the mountain's Grand Master. Some of the feats described in this supposedly factual biography were pretty extraordinary--for example, the exercise of making oneself lighter than air in order to jump higher, kind of like in the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I had to see it for myself.
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When I got to Huashan, I didn't have enough money to enter the gates in order to climb the mountain. But later on, I met a monk who offered to take me up himself using the monastery path. We passed through different temples and a cemetery containing graves some more than 3000 years old. Then, the mountain grew steeper. We reached a temple where a Taoist monk lived in a tiny chamber filled with altars. I saw this monk chanting while reading from the scriptures. The monk guiding me explained that this man was training to become a Taoist Immortal. This wasn't the first time I had heard this term. Kwan Saihung's biography also contained people described as Immortals. I had come to believe they weren't literally immortal, that this was just the common translation of the word (xian) from Chinese. (Xian, by the way, is a word made from two Chinese characters put together: the character for "person" and the character for "mountain"; this might explain why they made their mountain paths so steep).
Of all the places in China I visited, Huashan was the most otherworldly. I didn't know how much from Kwan Saihung's story was true, but after seeing something physically real that couldn't be explained at the Perdika Church in Greece, what's to say there aren't impossible things that could be possible with the right training? After all, with Jesus's training, Peter was able to walk on water. (Or, so I choose to believe given my personal story and life experience). Each of us has to reason it out in our own way. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to test this reason in Huashan. As the monk and I continued our ascent, I realized how far from complete my training was. It was just too steep. The monk was too fast. My legs were burning and I was out of breath. Eventually the monk asked me to turn back. "It's too difficult for you." My heart was crushed. I obeyed and told him I would return someday to finish climbing.
But first I had to go back to Wudang Academy and continue training...
Of all the places in China I visited, Huashan was the most otherworldly. I didn't know how much from Kwan Saihung's story was true, but after seeing something physically real that couldn't be explained at the Perdika Church in Greece, what's to say there aren't impossible things that could be possible with the right training? After all, with Jesus's training, Peter was able to walk on water. (Or, so I choose to believe given my personal story and life experience). Each of us has to reason it out in our own way. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to test this reason in Huashan. As the monk and I continued our ascent, I realized how far from complete my training was. It was just too steep. The monk was too fast. My legs were burning and I was out of breath. Eventually the monk asked me to turn back. "It's too difficult for you." My heart was crushed. I obeyed and told him I would return someday to finish climbing.
But first I had to go back to Wudang Academy and continue training...
Conclusion
When I got home from China, I did continue practicing Ba Gua Zhang, but for only a few more months, reaching 2 years total. I realized that the journey was leading me too far from my natural creative tendencies. I found that I was romanticizing Eastern philosophy too much, and I longed to return to our Western sense of beauty and art and happiness. Training in Taoist martial arts was like trying to grow a sense of discipline that simply wasn't in my DNA. I was an artist, not a warrior. Self-defense was unnecessary; my art spoke for itself.
And as soon as I yielded to that inner calling, the path gradually became clear. I began noticing all the actions in my life that were "strained efforts" versus what was natural for me to do. I began seeing and feeling this everywhere, especially in my career. As a teacher, I could only be myself to a limited extent. Defining myself as "teacher" led to me seeing the world in terms of teachers and students, of leaders and followers, rather than equals and co-creators. As the year went by, I realized more and more what would happen if I let go of my identity as a teacher. I could enter a world in which I could be a partner rather than an authority figure whose job it was to be in control. I could relax, be myself, be happy.
In conclusion, after a decade of travel, it was clear that there was something beyond my career, something providential that I had yet to experience. I could have remained a teacher until age 65 and retired happily; but at what cost? Could I afford to continue limiting my identity to what a single job expected me to be? No, I could not. I needed to let myself grow into something that was real and authentic. All the world was my stage, and I needed to find a role in which I could be creative and compassionate without needing to strain or control too much. And so I resigned from teaching that following year in order to focus on contributing to the world in a new way...
And as soon as I yielded to that inner calling, the path gradually became clear. I began noticing all the actions in my life that were "strained efforts" versus what was natural for me to do. I began seeing and feeling this everywhere, especially in my career. As a teacher, I could only be myself to a limited extent. Defining myself as "teacher" led to me seeing the world in terms of teachers and students, of leaders and followers, rather than equals and co-creators. As the year went by, I realized more and more what would happen if I let go of my identity as a teacher. I could enter a world in which I could be a partner rather than an authority figure whose job it was to be in control. I could relax, be myself, be happy.
In conclusion, after a decade of travel, it was clear that there was something beyond my career, something providential that I had yet to experience. I could have remained a teacher until age 65 and retired happily; but at what cost? Could I afford to continue limiting my identity to what a single job expected me to be? No, I could not. I needed to let myself grow into something that was real and authentic. All the world was my stage, and I needed to find a role in which I could be creative and compassionate without needing to strain or control too much. And so I resigned from teaching that following year in order to focus on contributing to the world in a new way...
