Tai Shan

He said that we'll never make it to the top with such big backpacks," Sue translated for the middle-aged Chinese man on his way down Tai Shan Mountain. Walt was next to her, trying to keep up with the conversation though his Mandarin lagged too far behind. John was stretching his hamstrings on the other side of the road in a small gully lined with tan rocks.

"Tell him that our backpacks are American," said Walt, scratching his scruffy beard. "Specially made American hiking backpacks. Tell him they connect around the hip right here and it takes the weight off so the packs are light." He pointed at the clasp resting on his belly. "Tell him that the ten thousand steps won't be any trouble for us." John looked at the man, studying his face in hopes of seeing no hint of understanding Walt's words. Satisfied that there was none, John looked at his own pack and hoisted it a few inches to test its weight. It was big, but there really wasn't much in it other than a few changes of clothes, his sleeping bag, and a deck of spider-man playing cards - the heaviest thing was the green winter overcoat he bought from a People's Republic army surplus store a few blocks away from his dorm at Beijing University.

But multiply this weight, thought John, by ten thousand steps. He looked at the gray slabs of rock crenellating the brown slope ahead. This area was nicely preserved, with each stair roughly the same height and length as the one before it. But other areas had not been so nice. In one span, the stairway had been so steep they felt they should reach out and climb it like a ladder. At another point, each step raised only a couple of inches, causing them to stumble along like drunken monks. And then there were the irregular stretches where they could not look around them because each step is a surprise: one was a monstrous leap, the next a familiar height, and the third heading downward but broken in the middle by an obnoxious root.

John could see that the area was beautiful, and he found it no surprise that Confucius himself had praised this mountain two and a half millennia ago. They had passed through foliage writhing with neon greens and sweet scents, making the well-worn path seem like a narrow bridge across a tumultuous sea of chlorophyll. But here, in the heavier shade, undergrowth was scarce, as likely trampled into submission by avid mushroom hunters as starved away under the thick canopy. John did not recognize the trees except from the Asian landscapes commonly inked onto silk-screens. Now, curving above him, they spread their thin and lazy arms over the path as if to quietly boast that their black and white depictions failed to translate their ability to keep their color even in the diminishing October light.

"My friend says..." Sue started in her halting Mandarin, tugging at her trailing blonde hair the same way she did during exams. John could understand what she said but Walt, who had neither Sue's years of exposure nor John's studious hours with flashcards, heard only a string of syllables. "He says thank you for your advice. He knows you know Tai Shan." She looked at Walt, who again pointed eagerly to the clip on his belly. "He says he is hungry. Is there food?"

The man laughed and adjusted his wood-framed daypack before telling Sue about the fried noodle places and snack shops scattered along the trail. Rapidly losing interest in the conversation, Walt drifted over to John. Walt had a funny way of walking, curling his butt forward without leaning his shoulders back, shaping his spine just enough like a "C" so that his head and his pelvis were slightly further forward than the rest of his body. Rather than swinging his feet forward as he stepped, he lifted his knees as if they were attached to strings being pulled by a puppeteer above him. Walt often claimed that this was the proper way to move and that no one but him understood good posture, but with a backpack he looked unbalanced, like he might totter over and slide down the hill at any moment.

When they first stopped, John had been practicing his kicks. "You done with your little Kung Foo practice?" Walt asked from the elevated pathway.

Are you done with your little fast, John almost said, but decided it would sound too petty. Each morning since they had left Beijing, Walt had declared that he would begin a fast. "After twenty-four hours the body releases toxins," Walt explained while John and Sue munched their fried breakfast-bread. And each afternoon Walt would have a late lunch, gorging himself on boiled dumplings or some deliciously greasy pork pot stickers at the first sidewalk restaurant they passed after getting off their train.

The Chinese gentleman continued down the hill and Sue came to join John and Walt on the other side of the path, fiddling with the clasp of the overalls that she had been wearing every day of the trip. "He said we can stop at the hotel area, about a third of the way up. After that, he says the mountain starts to get really steep, but there was something about a car that we can take from there. I'm sorry, you guys - my Chinese sucks and I didn't want to ask him what he meant."

John slung his blue backpack up onto his shoulders. "We'll see what he means when we get there. Now, let's go find some food - Walt is hungry."

Walt smiled and pulled his long dark hair out of his eyes before smushing his battered outback hat into place.

"He also told me a joke," said Sue as they adjusted their straps and started moving up the steps. "He said: do you know what Confucius did when he reached the top of the mountain?" Walt and John waited. "Came back down," she said. "He came back down. Sorry - that was lame. I just wanted to see if it was any less not-funny in English."

"I thought it was funny," said Walt proudly. "But then, I'm a Taoist." "Did you hear what the Zen monk said when ordering pizza?" asked John. "'Make me one with everything!'"

This kicked off a bad joke competition that kept them amused for an hour or so while the trail slowly moved past them. John stayed in the back where he could watch his companions. He was, after all, the one with the first aid kit and the only unexpired Red Cross card. Walt was pale and his jaw slack as he pushed up the stairs, while Sue's normally white skin was flushed and the hair around her scalp was darkened with sweat. John was a little thirsty, but when he wiped his head he found it dry - he wasn't even breaking a sweat, which puzzled him. Only three months ago, when his exchange group went on their first field trip, he had been left panting as his classmates stormed through the endless courtyards of the Forbidden City. John had always tended to fall behind - in the grocery store as a kid with his father, with his PE class as a high schooler, and even with his current friends in the states as they hopped from bar to bar looking for co-eds. There, especially, John did not keep up; in his twenty years he only had one girlfriend, and she had dumped him after a week and avoided his eyes whenever he came near.

Since applying for this program, John had indulged in fantasies about meeting the perfect girl in China. We were practically neighbors all those years, he wanted to be able to say. And to think we had to travel to the other side of the world to finally find each other...

But his budding romantic notions had found the Chinese landscape as barren a place as his homeland. The men seemed to outnumber the women five to one, and all the girls in his class who did not already have boyfriends back home entwined themselves with the other boys faster than he could introduce himself. Still, he was careful to be friendly in the cafeteria and always to smile as he passed foreign co-eds on the cobbled university streets. Sometimes one of the girls would thump her pencil in frustration with an assignment and ask him what would be on the next test or how to draw the character for flower. He was always happy to help, but was vigilant about never seeming too smart or condescending; perhaps some day soon she might come to him in a moment of despair after a breakup, searching for an understanding mind. He was ready to open his door for any of the girls - anybody was better than nobody, he often told himself - but none had ever come to him.

He also dutifully traveled to the downtown dance clubs with his friends to search under the kaleidoscope lights, but the young women moved so quickly there, spiraling away from him into other sets of arms, arms that belonged to bodies that understood the throbbing beat of the music much better than John ever could. John's roommate could sense the location of single women the way a compass senses north and he admonished John repeatedly: You can't ask them for a date, you've got to tell them. Put your hand around their waists, take them to places where they don't know where they're going, find every excuse to touch them - on the shoulder, on the hand, wherever... Be assertive. You need to be assertive. It sounded atavistic to John's ears, like dragging your knuckles or painting on cave walls. But his roommate probably knew best; in twenty years, not a single woman had asserted herself in pursuit of John, so maybe that was still the role of the male.

John had not yet found a girl in China, but at least he had found Gung Fu. Two days after he had unpacked his suitcase into the bottom drawers of the crumbling dresser that he shared with Jason, his boredom led him to the martial arts class offered to foreign students. Gung Fu (or, as Walt still pronounced it, Kung Foo) literally means "Hard Work" - and that's exactly what John gave it. He crawled out of class that first day, his muscles pulverized by the jumps, tumbles, and drills. But he crawled back the second day, which was more than could be said for most of the other students.

Instructor Wang had, in her younger days, competed on the national level, but was very forgiving of the foreign students' lack of prior training. Hard work was what she respected; it did not matter to her how fast you learned to swing your staff or how high you could jump, just so long as you pushed yourself each time you tried. The style she taught had nothing to do with real fighting - even John could see that it was meant entirely for show, like an acrobatic dance set to the music of your own jumping feet and whirling arms. But it was demanding - physically, intellectually - and it filled that hole inside John, or at least covered it up for awhile. Studious, nerdy John soon found himself skipping classes to sneak up on the roof of his dorm to practice his latest staff technique. He felt like an eagle up there, fast and silent, looking down through the smoggy air at the couples holding hands in the university's gardens. Instructor Wang wanted John to focus on improving his expression of attitude; while he was quick enough in learning the graceful awareness of the crane and the deceptive slide of the snake, she had been assigning him more and more aggressive forms from the tiger and dragon techniques. Be like angry tiger coming down hill, she would tell him. No fear! Must have fierce no-fear! He would crunch up his face and try it again, lunging a little farther forward to simulate anger. And sometimes he could almost feel it.

The three of them now came over a hill into a dell formed in the lap of Tai Shan where the rolling hills below meet the steep slope above. An old tour van backfired loudly while grinding its way towards them up a paved road from some hidden point at the base of the mountain. Although up higher the mountain was stony gray and brown, this area was again packed tightly with green plants and trees, leaving barely enough room to squeeze in a few modest buildings. The little village consisted of three single-story hotels and a scattering of shops and restaurants, all of which (except one of the hotels) were deeply stained wood and looked like they might have used the same designs - if not the same lumber - as the buildings that Confucius must have passed on his journey.

"Look," said Sue, pointing at a gondola about half way up the mountain. "That must be what our friend was talking about when he said there was a car to the peak."

The three watched for a moment as the gondola worked its way along its cable. It looked like a long trip, but aside from the path that slowly faded into nothingness in the high distance, it was the only way up.

Re-invigorated by the opportunity to relieve their stiffening shoulders and legs, the three moved down the short slope and laid their packs beside the split-log benches of the first rice house on the path. John translated the menu for Walt while Sue ordered an extra beer as she always did - it was common knowledge that she could out-drink almost anyone in the exchange program. Bottle in hand, she flipped through her Lonely Planet Guide to China while the boys looked around and contemplated the upcoming food.

"What does it say about this place?" asked John.

"Um," Sue flipped back a page. "Just that Tai Shan's as famous as everyone keeps saying because Confucius climbed to the top and said that when you see the sunrise you can see all the past and future of China. That's about it, other than that it's one of the biggest tourism spots for the Chinese."

Walt snapped his chopsticks apart and rubbed them together like a cricket cleaning its legs. "Well, if it can give someone as boring as Confucius that kind of realization, then I bet someone spiritually prepared might just be able to achieve enlightenment up there."

"What's wrong with Confucius?" asked John. Walt smiled to himself and blew the splinters off his chopsticks. "All his talk about becoming a 'superior person.' Work, work, work; that's all he ever cared about. He should have listened to Lao Tzu and chilled out."

The serving boy set down a tray of chicken fried rice, dumplings, mountain mushrooms and snow peas. "Food truly doesn't suck right now," Sue said, scooping it onto her plate. No one spared any more room in their mouths for speech until they were down to their last few fugitive grains of rice. John excused himself to the bathroom, and upon returning found Sue with folded arms turned away from Walt, who was leaning over the table on his elbows towards her. He pulled back when John approached.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," John stopped before sitting, indicating with his hands that he could go back the direction he came.

"No. Sit," said Sue.

After a long pause, John ventured: "so, should we go rent a hotel room?"

"You and me should go get it," Sue says to him. "We both have light hair so they will think we are bother and sister or married or something and won't make us get separate rooms. That'll save money for Walt, "cause I know he's broke."

"Anybody got any cigarettes?" asked Walt. They shook their heads. "Then I'm going to get some. You want any, Sue?" She shook her head again and watched as he sauntered out the door.

"Jerk," she said to his back.

"I wasn't going to ask," said John.

"You wouldn't believe that creep. He was telling me all about this time his last girlfriend tied him up on his bed and what a good boyfriend he makes and stuff. And then he said 'well, how about us?' and I said 'what about us' and he said 'are we going to hook up now or later?' And then he said we could go to Tsing Tao and let you go to Loyang."

"If you guys want to go to Tsing Tao we can," said John. "I can skip Loyang." John was afraid he had been too insistent about Loyang during their planning for the trip: it was the capital of the Han and Tang dynasties and the home of the Shao Lin Temple, but he knew that these things might not have interested his friends as much as the breweries of Tsing Tao.

"That's not the point," Sue said. "Like there's any way I would ever travel alone with that creep." She scratched her head, sprinkling her knee lightly with dandruff. She brushed it away and took out a pack of cigarettes, offered one to John, but when he refused she put it in her mouth instead.

"This seriously sucks," she said through the cigarette. "Why do I attract all the freaks and weirdos? Do I have some kind of sign on my back? I know I'm no prize, but seriously - is it something I put out there? I must be worse that I thought."

John's eyes followed the serving boy cleaning the table next to theirs. Should he say No, you're great? Or Walt is slime? Or would it be best just to listen sympathetically?

Sue searched the pockets of her overalls for her lighter, found it, and lit up. Everybody smoked in China; it seemed to be unwritten law. Maybe it was because cigarettes were so cheap here, or maybe it was because the smoke tasted cleaner than the air in Beijing. For about a week, John had carried Dunhills to offer as friendly gestures, but he himself had so far resisted the habit.

"He pinched my ass, you know," Said Sue, breathing smoke out through her nose between her words.

"Who?" John sat up in his chair.

"Walt did."

"Walt did? When?"

"Just now, when you were gone. I got up to get my dictionary, and he pinched me and said 'good morning, sunshine.' Christ - he couldn't even think of anything cool to say with it."

John did not say anything because he was having trouble comprehending Walt's motive. Did Walt really think that it would charm her? Or did he figure his chances were already shot and so he might as well steal a pinch while he could? John's hands began to hurt and he realized his fists were clenched.

"Oh, shit," she said. "Here comes the happy hippy back again."

"Hey, I thought you didn't have any cigarettes," said Walt as he walked to the table.

"We didn't," Sue got up and started pushing her book back into her backpack. "Guy came buy selling them like three seconds after you left."

"Too bad, cause I got a Big Cock," Sue looked up sharply and he held out an unopened package of cigarettes. She tried hard not to laugh but did anyway, and when John looked over her shoulder he saw that the orange package was emblazoned with a picture of a large rooster and the blocky red English letters BIG COCK. Walt smiled contentedly as he drew them back and slapped them rhythmically against his palm to pack them down. "Sue, you can have one any time you want it. But John - I don't know if you have the ability to handle it."

"Whatever," Sue said, zipping up her pack. "Come on, John. Let's go get the room."

"I had an idea," said Walt. "Listen, you guys. I know you won't like the idea, but I was thinking we don't have to get a hotel room tonight."

"What, Camp out instead?" asked John. "It's going to be pretty cold."

"Sort of yes and sort of no. See, my idea - and I know you won't like it - is to keep going." Sue and John looked at him, waiting for him to continue. "See, I've been reading this book," he waved his paperback in front of them. "And there are these demons that enter your eyeballs and take over your soul. But Snowdog - he's the hero - Snowdog's really tough and he does all these amazing things. And when one of these demons enters his eye, he realizes it and gouges his eyeball out before it can get into him."

"So what's your point?" Sue looks over her shoulder at the hotel. "You want to play Oedipus? I've got a hairpin if you want to put yourself out of our misery."

"No, my point is that I'm ready to do something memorable. If Snowdog could stab out his own eye, then I can climb this mountain. Tonight. It'll be like a quest - a quest for personal enlightenment. And it will save money on the hotel."

"Nobody's worried about money except for you, Walt," said Sue, turning to leave.