Five Peak Mountain

by Rachel Kruft Welton

My Mum and I boarded the bus to Wutai Shan at 6.30am as Mr Wang suggested we should, in order to ‘get the best seats’. The bus drove around town for well over an hour picking up passengers. An old bloke, with formidable garlic breath, sat behind us and changed into Buddhist robes and a yellow padded hat. The driver sat under the no smoking sign and took it in turns with the passenger opposite us to chain smoke his way across China. Occasionally, he spat noisily onto the floor to relieve the boredom. The woman on the front row vomited neatly into a plastic bag.

The route as far as the Hanging Temple is fairly flat and dusty. After that and the welcome toilet stop, it climbs up into the mountains, before crossing another plain with the longest queue of lorries I have ever seen. We must have been driving past them for over half an hour.

Finally, six hours into the journey, we started to climb the really big mountains. The Wutai Shan mountains rise to over 2700m. We went up on hairpin bends with precipitous drops on one side and the remains of 8 feet of snowdrifts on the other. At one point we passed a snow plough trying to break up the pack-ice on the road. I clutched the seat in front and prayed that I wouldn't die on a Chinese mountain.

We stopped at the checkpoint where everyone had to buy three day passes to the Wutai Shan Scenic Spot. The cost bore no relation to the advertised price on the outside of the checkpoint. It was unsurprisingly significantly more expensive. I think we were done for about a tenner there.

On arrival in the village, we were immediately pounced on by a local family and dragged into their compound with the promise of a cheap room. To be fair, it was cheap, at just £3 per person, per night. There were three beds in a small room. At the back was a smaller room, with a sink, toilet and shower. The owner said the shower was only cold water, but we reckoned we could handle that for a couple of nights if we had to.

Once we had paid, however, we discovered the bathroom had no running water at all. In addition, the toilet didn't drain, let alone flush, rendering it unusable. We had inadvertently taken a room in the Hotel from Hell, with an en suite full of dysfunctional, smelly, pointless bathroom furniture.

Some hours later, when the toilet overflowed, through no fault of ours, they moved us to a new room on the upper storey. This also had a toilet that didn't work and no running water. The smell from this one was so bad that it woke me up in the morning when the door accidentally drifted ajar, letting the fumes into the sleeping area.

The owners had provided incense sticks, but it did little to alleviate the pong. Mum was all for crapping into a plastic bag. We high-tailed it at dawn to a four star hotel up the road and had a shower. It was so nice to see a bathroom where the toilet had a sign on it saying ‘Sterilized’ as opposed to the one we had just left, which should have been labelled ‘Unsanitary’.

The village of Wutai Shan sits in a valley between the mountain peaks. The name itself means five peak mountains and they do rise above the main road, dwarfing everything. It is an important site of Buddhist pilgrimage and the devout come to worship at the many temples here. Maroon robed lamas walk alongside mustard and grey-robed monks.

We visited several temples on the first afternoons and we had an impromptu course in Buddhism, courtesy of a local girl wishing to improve her English. We saw the gilded temple of Xiantong and the smiling Buddha of Guangren Si. Mum's legs were tired, so we sat on a rock where we were given some beads by an ancient, grey-clad man.

A friendly couple also started talking to us and helped us order food at our hotel from Hell. The food was surprisingly good. We swapped phone numbers and arranged to meet Li Wen Li (Lily) and her husband Wong Tai Long the next day.

They met us at the bottom of the cable car lift to the Dailuo Terrace. It was a peaceful ascent, giving excellent views over the village and the surrounding mountains. We took a look round the temple at the top and caught the cable car back down. There were actually sedan chairs available, but Mum declined. They were made from a metal framed deck-chair attached to a pair of wooden poles. I don't know that I would have fancied it either.

Lily and Wong treated us to lunch, then we went to the Pusa Temple, where everyone was gathering for a ceremony. We wedged ourselves into a spot on the concrete floor in amongst the crowd. It was immensely packed, cramped and uncomfortable.

The monks were lined up on either side of the temple. They chanted some prayers as the main head lama came in, accompanied by drums, cymbals and a blast on a seashell. The elderly lady next to me showed me how to make a lotus flower pattern with my fingers, the way the monks were doing.

There was a fair amount of rice throwing into the crowd. That was fine, I understand that, after all, we throw rice at weddings. Then the crowd started throwing bolts of golden or white cloth towards the front, one of which clobbered me round the back of the head. I have no idea what that was about.

After an hour, my bladder couldn't wait anymore and we crept out to try and find a loo. A friendly monk, called Suma, directed us to a WC. This was a communal affair involving us and a ten Chinese people squatting along a plank with holes in it. It was still an improvement on the one at the Hon Yon Hotel.

Mum’s knees are not really up to squatting, but, not to worry, in this open-plan facility, there were several willing helpers, who raced over to help her stand up again afterwards, seemingly completely unembarrassed by her knickers round her ankles!

Finally, we took a wander round the Tayuan Temple with the large white Dagoba in it. I turned the prayer wheels that surrounded it: once for health, once for happiness and once for longevity. I like prayer wheels. There is something good about turning them. More religions should have them, I think.

First published in VISA 92 (Aug 2010)