China Day 4

The Journey of Mount Emei

Wake up. Go. We’re packed full of supplies. Will has bought endless brioche which tastes of ethanol and preservatives, somehow he finds comfort in this. We’ve also got nuts, bananas, and cucumber flavoured crisps and I hate cucumber. We’ve bought ourselves some bamboo walking poles and the sun is shinning, JIAYOUUUUUUUU! We’ve been told the riverside path is likely closed due to a landfall so we would be taking the forest path up and the river path down. This is the longest path you can take up the mountain and it begins at Baoguo temple taking us back to our tea spot of yesterday. As we walk to the start, more and more people start to accumulate readying themselves for the pilgrimage of the sacred mountain.

The Relentless Never Ending Stairway to the Golden Summit

So far, so good, there is no rain. As we pass the temple the climbing begins on road before we get to the real climb, the multiple days of endless steps. It doesn’t take long to realise that this is going to be hard work. There are very few flat sections for the first couple of hours, just never ending steps that are more than often just a little bit to big to do in a single step. This is the beginning of the never ending climb to the golden summit.

The path is peaceful and more often than not, it is our own, not a person in sight. It is truly a beautiful place in the world. As we march on we hear the practise of martial arts in a distant temple. We can’t get there but it sounds magical. Am I in a movie? Big guttural call and responses. We just stood and took it all in.

We are celebrities

Over the last couple of days we’ve had our fair share of pictures taken with people who often thrust it upon us. Great moments are when Will speaks to them in Mandarin and they become very embarrassed. We started to ask if we could have our picture taken with them instead.

Side Characters

Little did we know that there would be a few reoccurring characters on our journey up the mountain. A young boy, maybe eight years old and his father and a very very sweaty man. We met these guys at the bottom of the climb. The sweaty man would race past us up the stairs leaving us in his wake but we would find him about ten minutes later crashed out on a bench completely dead. This would happen continuously for 3 days. The young boy and is father are taking it slowly. From what i remember the kid always had a lollipop of some sort in his mouth and fair play to him. This is a tough climb and his legs are only small.

The Bifurcation

We have reached Qingyin Pavilion, where the route splits between forest or river route. The river route has been cleared, hoooray, but we’ve committed to the forest route for our way up at this point anyway. As soon as we come down the stairs to the area and cross the bridge the area explodes into chaos as tourists flood in from the nearby bus stop. We spend a little time at the pavilion and have a brief look at the temple. It’s too busy, we just want peace. Immediately the path returns to tranquillity.

At this point we have covered around 500m of climbing and things are going well. We don’t know where were going to stay for the night but we have discovered that the map we’ve been given has absolutely no correlation to actual distances at all.

OH MY MUSHROOMS

Ho ho ho, out of nowhere, mushrooms. These aren’t just any mushroom though, these are Reishi mushrooms. I am very very excited. I cannot believe what I’m seeing. Never did I think I would find this mushroom actually growing in the wild. In China this mushroom is known as Lingzhi, in Japanese, Reishi but it also has another name, the mushroom of immortality, and we have found it. It’s not just me whose hyped but theres a film crew there filming the mushrooms with drones. Will speaks to a man about what’s going on but then gets trapped in a conversation he can’t escape from. Eventually we leave none the wiser.

The story of the fungus is told on a sign.

Ganoderma lucidum from Mount Emei:

A thousand-year fusion of auspicious legends and ecological treasures

In the brilliant constellation of Chinese culture, Ganoderma lucidum has been revered since ancient times as the embodiment of divine will and blessings, symbolizing good fortune, wealth, and longevity. It is regarded as an “immortal herb” born from the condensation of the righteous energy of heaven and earth and the essence of the sun and moon, refined by the passage of time. Among them, the Ganoderma lucidum of Mount Emei, with its dramatic and legendary stories and profound cultural heritage, has become the most dazzling pearl in the Ganoderma lucidum family.

A thousand-year-old myth has shrouded the Ganoderma lucidum of Mount Emei in mystery. In the classic legend of the White Snake, the White Snake Lady risks her life to steal the magical Ganoderma lucidum from Mount Emei to save Xu Xian. This story not only became a timeless love tale but also made the Ganoderma lucidum of Mount Emei famous. The legendary encounter of the renowned physician Sun Simiao during his medical practice also lends it a touch of the past: he meets a schoolteacher who has recovered from edema by eating a special “mushroom.” Tracing the source, he discovers that a girl named Lingzhi in a dilapidated temple has picked a red-purple hairpin-sized fungus, the size of a bowl, which has cured many stubborn ailments. Sun Simiao named this miraculous substance “Lingzhi” after the girl. In Taoist legend, Magu brewed Lingzhi wine with thirteen clear springs. After cultivating Taoism and becoming an immortal, she brought the wine to celebrate the birthday of the Queen Mother of the West and was granted the title of True Man of Emptiness and Response. The story of “Magu Presenting Longevity Wine” has made Lingzhi wine a symbol of “longevity wine”. Not far from Mount Emei, in Pengshan, Peng Zu lived to be 760 years old and had a youthful appearance because he consumed Lingzhi for many years. His health preservation method of “drinking Lingzhi wine from waterfalls and practicing Taoist health preservation” has been passed down to this day.

Throughout history, scholars and poets have highly praised the Ganoderma lucidum of Mount Emei, often writing, “Many treasures of health and longevity are found on Mount Dongshan,” their words brimming with admiration. Guo Moruo, in his “Super Ganoderma lucidum,” meticulously described its appearance: “It comes in 192, abundant in many places. Its root color is a mixture of milky white, green, and purple-gold,” capturing its essence perfectly.

In the real world, the Ganoderma lucidum reserve in the Emei Mountain Red Ganoderma lucidum natural forest boasts unique natural conditions. The complex topography and vertical climate zones of Emei Mountain create a unique microclimate characterized by high humidity, abundant rainfall, and frequent cloud cover. The humus layer in the dense forest, ample diffused sunlight, and clean air provide an ideal home for Ganoderma lucidum growth. As the core species of the reserve, Ganoderma lucidum not only carries a thousand years of cultural significance but also possesses extremely high medicinal value. Local departments and research institutions work together to protect this precious resource through measures such as setting boundary markers, real-time monitoring, and ecological restoration. Simultaneously, it has become a natural classroom for ecological education and science popularization, attracting countless people to explore the magical mysteries of the intertwining of nature and culture. Emei Mountain Ganoderma lucidum is not only a precious gift of nature for health and wellness but also a vivid testament to a thousand years of culture and ecological wisdom.

Emeishan City Traditional Chinese Medicine and Health Association

Lunch

I honestly don’t know how we would have managed without Will’s ability to speak Mandarin. Here he is trying to convey we are vegetarian and don’t eat meat. Pure concentration on deciphering the Sichuan accent. We managed to get ourselves some rice, water spinach, and bamboo shoots! success!

Wangnian Temple

We leave lunch and we continue on, the chat never stops, we’re having the best time, and it’s about to get better. There are Tibetan Macaques on the route! My friend Alice had warned me about these as she had climbed this route many years ago where she was trapped by a monkey and had to turn back. I don’t know what she’s on about. These guys are great!

The Rain

We managed to get pretty far without the rain but its time has come. We loiter around the Elephant pool temple (Xinxin) hiding from the rain and chatting to some fellow pilgrimmers. One guy told us how holiday from work functions in China. You start off with a base of 5 days holiday pay which increases by 5 days for every 5 years you work at the company.

As we leave the elephant pool temple it really starts to rain. This is around 3pm. Time to try out my raincoat that’s been in a cupboard for 10 years. It’s not very waterproof. I am wet. We ask some people coming down the mountain how far we are away from the next temple. Some people say 1 hour, others say 3 hours, no one really knows but we have been told that it levels out after the next bit. It didn’t. Lies. At around 5pm we arrive at Chu temple, where we meet the father and his son again who both eat a giant bowl of egg fried rice and then they continue on into the night! Today we have walked around 17km and 1630m of altitude gain and we’re pooped. We asked for a room at the temple and they had one available! Hooray!

Ghost in the night

The accommodation in the temple is very very basic but it does come with a heated blanket which, traditionally, I’m pretty scared of. I don’t want 230V to wake me up. We shower and ready ourselves for bed, I put all my wet clothes under my blanket to dry and attempt to fall asleep.

In the middle of the night Will wakes up and really needs a piss but the toilet is pretty far away and its proper raining at this point so his plan is to go in a bush next to the accommodation. What we didn’t expect is that people would be hiking to the summit all the way through the night! Even at 3am some dude walks past with a boombox blasting Chinese dance music. So Wills gone outside and is stood at the entrance in his boxers and a headlamp hyping himself up to get out there and before he knows it a couple of hikers illuminate him as they walk past. A pasty British white ghost in the night.