Watch Your Steps - This Is Hua Shan (華山) !
Posted On Sunday, September 6, 2009 at at 10:59 PM by Alvin
Since ancient times, Hua Shan (華山) had been one of the most revered and picturesque mountains in China where temples (西嶽廟 ) were built as far back as 3,000 years ago for the emperors to perform their worshipping rituals.
Hua Shan was made even more famous by the well-known Chinese novelist and historian Jing Yung (金庸) as he penned his heroes and heroines doing swords and fists battles and duos atop the dangerous peaks of Hua Shan whose sheer cliffs and precarious steep ascents offered the ultimate testing grounds for "who dares win" and "who dares not die". None more so than the "world-famous" battles of 華山論劍 between such well-known fictional characters as 東邪、西毒、南帝、北丐、中神通 !
We stayed at the foot of Hua Shan near the 玉泉院 entrance where we enjoyed the local dinners of 四菜一湯 (four dishes with one soup) for a bargain of 50 RMB ! I love this place ! Having fed ourselves well, we felt ready to tackle our itinerary the next day : 8AM start by climbing the 5 main peaks followed by the steep descent from the Eastern slopes back down to the 玉泉院 entrance where we would be met with a lovely hot shower !
Sounded easy enough, little did we know the real magnitude that awaited us - the famed Hua Shan sheer cliffs which went up and up, vertical "climb-like-Spiderman" rocky staircases that tested our agility - all performed with an extremely cautious eye to safety as we were surrounded by sheer drops on all sides of our pathways (called 長空棧道) ! We were also glad that we remembered to buy the workmen gloves before we started our hike as the gloves were indispensable to protect our hands from the rusty iron rails. The route was no easier on the way down, we could never forget the seemingly never-ending last leg of the descent - basically a 3 hours' walk down one long 45 degrees pathway ! We passed many interesting rock formations, temples and monuments such as 千尺幢 and 九天宮 and finally our downward momentum carried us all the way back to 玉泉院 at around 5PM and we relaxed over a well-deserved dinner with a few glasses of the locally Shaanxi (陝西) brewed Baiju (白酒)- 西鳳 ! Hua Shan was one of the most memorable hikes we've had !
