Gula Mountain, near Chongqing, China
One weekend, after 6 weeks of being cloaked in a haze of pollution and not seeing any views that didn't contain skyscrapers and rubble, I went with a group of people out into the countryside for a walk. One of these people was my friend Oliver, who is teaching in a school near to the one I work at, and the others were a couple of Chinese colleagues of his and some of their friends and relatives. There were 7 of us in all, and when we met up, at 3pm, the 2 men wearing smart shoes and carrying laptop bags, and one of the girls wearing a pretty skirt and high heels, I thought we must be in for a nice easy stroll in the countryside.
This is what we had at first, walking along a winding lane between lots of pretty hills. It was lovely to get out of the city, and we were actually in a very important historical place, as it was in these hills where the Kuomintang imprisoned and killed lots of prominent Communists in the 1940s.
We climbed up along a concrete path through a forest for a short while before we found ourselves at a building that was built for Chiang Kai-Shek to shelter in from the Japanese, a prison, and some buildings where revolutionaries were executed. Some of the information was printed in English as well as Chinese, so it was an educational experience.
It was a lovely day out so far. Then we crossed a road at the top end of the forest and suddenly decided to climb a hill. That was fair enough, I like climbing hills, but this one didn't actually have any paths up it, or any sensible route to get to the top. We crossed the road and the two Chinese men suddenly sprang into action, flinging themselves up a wall to the forest above, dusting themselves off, then energetically reaching down to haul the rest of us up to join them. I never would have guessed that they had it in them.
We then fought our way through the thick forest, gradually making our way uphill, and I was quickly covered in scratches all over my bare arms. We felt just like little kids, like the Famous Five (I find I have a lot of Famous Five adventures in China, I am able to live out many of my childhood dreams here). At a few points we had to climb up a bit of a steep rocky face, and this was hard enough for me, goodness knows how the girl with the high heels managed it!
After about 2 hours of pushing our way through thorns, pulling ourselves up through steep forests with thick slippy leafy carpets, and doing a bit of minor rock climbing, we spotted the top. There were some nice rocky outcrops so we could see over all the trees and it was quite a nice view. I was dreading going back down over all those obstacles, and didn't want to create any more for myself, so I decided not to go all the way to the peak. It would involve scrambling over yet more rocks, these ones looking a little more ominous as I glanced at the trees below and images fled through my mind of the consequences of a wrong foot or a slip. So I sat with one of the other girls looking at the view (of woody hills) as these sprightly Chinese men and Oliver leapt over the big stone slabs and up to the top. After 5 minutes we saw them emerge from some trees onto a big rock that was the summit, looking more like heroes in an adventure movie than geeky Chinese teachers.
Soon though, I was pulled from my resting place and summoned to the top, due to the discovery of an alternative route down the other side, where there was actually a path. It even had steps, but they were very bizarre steps, as some of them were about 3 feet high, so not exactly practical. However, there were no rocky slides to match the route we climbed, so I was happy. A few times we got quite lost and thought we were going to end up having to climb over another hill before we could get down. This would not be a good option, as it was almost time for it to get dark.
Then as a last resort we decided to climb over a little mound that lay to the side of the path in the forest, and saw a house, bizarrely situated in the middle of nowhere. Olli and one of the teachers went to ask the way down, but one of the many dogs tried to attack them and the Chinese bloke thought it would be a good idea to throw a stone at it. This of course was not the best thing to do, as it made the dog's owner very angry, and he shouted at them a lot and refused to tell them which way to go. It didn't matter too much though, as there was a reasonable path near to the house that we spotted and followed, and it took us back to civilisation.
Feeling very pleased with ourselves, we got a crazy minibus ride back to the girls' university and went to eat a good hotpot in a snazzy restaurant (luckily they didn't mind our bedraggled state) to finish off the day.
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