One Day in DaHei Mountain

One Day in Dahei Mountain

“There are a lot of fruits and vegetations outside of Jinzhou city, where the depth of Yaoqin Cave is three li”

--- Yowei Kang (1925)

One day in Dahei Mountain, I had a habit of searching for salvation.

I did not know that I was drawing blueprints for what I will eventually seek on this trip, before I even woke up that morning; before setting foot on the faded asphalt roads that accumulated years and years of stampedes, but was not immune to overuse. Dahei Mountain was just a recurring answer to a passage in a musical fugue, and after a few more World Wars, the performer would have forgotten its origin.

The car took us to the bottom of the mountain, where it squeezed a parking spot next to some willow trees. Through the unlit neon lights that carry names of family restaurants, cherry farms, and small anonymous lots enclosed by barbed wires with banners that read post-Maoist verses, we walked, sometimes jogged, and when we became worn out, we panted and kept going as steadily as we could.

The sun was large, doing a dance that we responded to with headaches and low murmurs that made it feel larger. Large and red, and ahead was Dahei Mountain, translated to “Large and Black Mountain”, was the oasis in this dehydrated journey. We couldn’t see it yet, but our imagination could explain it to us.

Large and hopeful.

The summer wind of the peninsula city of Dalian protested with the help of soft, light-weighted banners, whose tiny bodies barely hung on for their dear lives across the road. Every time we reach them, we would leap in joy for what we have just conquered, as we knew victories in small dosages that will eventually convene in to one big salvation. The buildings were getting farther away from one another, and the words were becoming sparse and less political, as the role of humans becomes more of an observational one for new discoveries, instead of one that pours out what is already known.

Though there were less words being spoken, there were more noise being made by nature that spoke the words for us: the infinite buzzing of bees in a honey shop, the automated voice from the makeshift police station, the disintegrating of birds on electrical fences, and the shuffling of our footsteps against a ground that was the intermarriage of of dark soil and light concrete.

And the very last post for salvation was simply the end of the beginning, where neon signs and cherry farms were replaced with a greater anonymity ------ the mountain itself, with its utter greenness and its shyness of human disturbances as the leaves motioned for a deeper incline, and we could have panicked. We could have panicked because there were no longer concrete signs of victory, there were only the unknown with its cool, overwhelming silence.

Silence, showing that nature has understood far more than we even began to uncover, and silence can sometimes feel violent. The silence of the curators, the inventors, the idea-makers, and the revolutionaries have resulted in ignorance. Like the fugue without its origin, drifting its spirit from host to host.

“Are you guys ready to conquer Dahei Mountain?”

someone lifted the corner of their lips and snapped a photo of the rock that carved the words “Climb with Care”. Those words were hardly dictatorial, but still paternal enough for us to fear what is ahead.

“First one who get there wins!” I exclaimed at the same time I took off with my cousin. The wind that blew the banners was the same wind that propelled our feed forward.

The first roundabout was rather flat, with occasional cars catching us by surprise. As we lowered our upper body and bounced forward without hesitation, the neon lights and cherry farms below stood admiringly beneath the travelers for their swift movements.

Our bodies were like large waves of watercolor that carried themselves upward, relegating gray shadows of to the past and expending our energy in exchange for more distance between ourselves and the people far behind us.

We’d like to believe that our muscles were becoming stronger the farther that we go, as the roads become more worn out and less even, and there were no longer vehicles rushing by us in a fit of rage. Perhaps to catch the last empty seats in the family restaurants at the foot of the mountain.

There were colors all around us, mostly harmonized by shades of green, but colors all the same. Red was flowers that sprouted from crevices of rocks, scattering themselves around us and above them was white, white was dandelions that were calm and collected in the face of destruction and disintegration.

I picked one up and blew air on it and the frizzes danced themselves toward blue, blue was the sky but also the combination of short bushes and pink flowers in front of our eyes as we move quickly enough to blend things together in a sort of ------ brown. Brown was the color of our own skin reflected by our sunglasses when we stare at them closely enough to use them as mirrors, and the mirrors were all-knowing, they were prayer flags. Prayer flags contained red, white, blue, pink, and brown. They had the most --- human --- existence of them all because they tried to uncover nature through inclusivity and with the help of the wind, they were able to take roots and thrive between maple trees and willow barks.

We walked closer to a string of prayer flags and examined them with caution. Upon then were prayer verses in Sanskrit, an ancient tongue that birthed many subsequent languages in Asia and beyond. Of course, we did not understand a single letter but still observed, as different colors did their dances with the wind and we loved to believe that those prayers had flown beyond Dahei Mountain onto the people and places beneath, the city of Jinzhou that vibrated with human interactions and attempts to care a bit more for the unfamiliar.

Strings of prayer flags were hung at different parts of the mountain, sometimes in layers, and sometimes in lonesome bunches where the wind could not reach around to caress but simply intimidated with sound, which could have traveled corners and so we traced those corners with our fingertips. The graphics on the flags depicted deities with tributes and subjects around them, confined by geometric lines. Those lines are never blurred by rainfall or snowstorms, so the deities remain intact.

Suddenly my imaginations overtook me, as my body took itself into autopilot mode. I began to picture a world where alien lives are beaming up the last remnants of human traces, and the travelers and I could be carried away on gurneys toward some high-tech labs. How would we feel as we observe these strings of prayer flags from birds-eyes-view, from the Himalayas to Thai temples and then all the way to the northeastern corner of China, to Phoenix mountain, Hushan Great Walls, and then to Dahei mountain where red banners were gradually swallowed by black soil and rounds of colorful prayer flags? Would we grieve or rejoice? Are lives enlivened by the memories of how we made one another feel, or simply, inanimate objects that we took for granted on the daily? I couldn’t answer but as the prayers flags swung their bodies, I feel that they know, but I never will.

My limbs were fighting their soreness, but they beat on against the wind currents. Soon enough, we came across a circle of swings and an ice cream stand, and I sat down immediately. The ceiling inside my head was pushing down on my body like a hydraulic press, and I began seeing stars.

Going way too fast without reflecting on the journey felt like listening to a song that was over-appreciated, wearing a pair of pants that are way too tight, and pushing into a cave that is way too narrow. The halfway point in a hiking trip is usually the hardest and the most confusing, as we feel like jumping up and gloating for our accomplishments, but our bodies also become dysfunctional in the face of fatigue. I spat out my ice cream.

“Let me take a break in the woods and we can keep going.” I motioned forward and disappeared in a dirt path into some trees. Closing my eyes, the stars danced in pitch dark background and began to form patterns. I squatted and wished for this to be over, trying to remember a time without dizziness but can’t.

The birds around me went by their business and the trees shook their limbs without much attention for what they touched, and I was angered by the lack of responses from nature. It almost felt like that the blueprint I drew in the beginning was given a pauper’s funeral and its ashes scattered all around Dahei Mountain in the form of prayer flags.

The stars soon faded, and I was back to my conscious self. I retracted back to the swings and went by my way upward with the crew. Everyone asked me if I was okay and I flatted my hands and said: “I am alright, I just went too fast.”

Then, there was just a lot of going and going and going. Twists and turns became more frequent as the mountain narrowed and the trees congregated, and we could make out some steps toward a temple surrounded by some transparent clouds.

We followed the stairs to some stupas and incense smoke, and suddenly, the hydraulic press that was once my head figure-shifted into a balloon, with my neck gripping the end to keep it from traveling among the clouds. The feeling of victory was experienced once again by the people around me, but this time, there were no red banners with political words, there were scarlet walls held together by symmetrical cornerstones and elaborate decorations.

Around and around, there were stupas by different names and different origins. The sound of gong traveled around corners from the monks with long, black-and-white hair and stiff glances. I could not tell if they have an urge to escape and live the life of locals, or they have simply become content with the ebbs and flows of memories as a nature of preserving feelings and ideas. I bowed and kowtowed to different deities without thinking twice, and I turned around and searched for the next entrance for a series of new things.

Behind one archway was Echoing Sound, an area filled with greeneries and some verses by a refugee from the Qing court on his way to Japan. He spoke of Yaoqin cave and its indescribable depth, and we were drawn to it. The words were carved into the marble walls about one inch deep, colored with red. We saw that as another sign of victory, so we set foot toward Yaoqin cave among the smoke of the incenses and the hammering of people as they fix the Buddha statue by the entrance of the temple.

The entrance of the cave was a large version of a rabbit hole, where we had to completely get close to the ground to enter. There was no light other than the one emitted from an iPhone, and we inched forward, sometimes getting stuck and breathing heavily, and sometimes stopping for a tiny statue with some tributes around it.

All senses were deprived other than touch and smell, and touching and smelling we did, as we propelled ourselves in all directions trying not to bump into the ceiling or falter onto the ground.

It would be a terrible prank if the cave was stationed by a psychopath, filled by some concrete, or occupies by bats, but it did not seem impossible now because what was not known became what was worth fearing. The texture of the walls was rough and sometimes damp with morning dew, and there was no wind, but our hair smelled of summer breeze.

I’d like to believe that Dahei Mountain took the essence of its stillness, and hollowed itself for three li to intimidate the travelers from going further, and that belief kept me going. The cave transformed from pitch black to dark brown, and the subtle change allowed us to see the asymmetrical walls and how the rocks almost overlap one another above our heads, thrusting at the volume of our hair and almost nudging at our heads. Before any of us know it, we were at the exit, and I let out a sigh because I was not ready for the journey to come to an end.

After some more twists and squirms, everyone got out of Yaoqin cave intact of spiritual possessions and the like. I did not have any traces of it left other than a blackened knee from kneeling in a puddle of mysterious water in the cave, and I laughed.

When I think of a dozen of us going through the cave now, I struggle to remember anything other than the way my limbs felt when they were obscured by pointy rocks, and the pain would lessen every time I think about them more. I like to think that Yaoqin cave brought us salvation that was hyperbolized by us because when you are in love, you sometimes choose to ignore the flaws of the other person, and maybe it is the same with caves.

Only in Dahei mountain does darkness draw people closer than light could. I learned that from going inside Yaoqin cave but also during the latter part of the hike.

The sky was darkening, and we were becoming quite nervous, and some people talked about turning around. After some soft arguing, we decided to keep going forward. As we dragged our feet to the last challenge: the TV Station, hence a tower that required some more climbing, we saw a sign prohibiting our entrance.

So we made a turn and kept going to the very last temple at the peak of the mountain, and the last architecture made by a human on Dahei Mountain and also the most glorious. We could do the responsible thing and turn back, or we could fall in love and deprive our senses in search of the inevitable. The salvation.

I lit an incense that was almost my height and placed it on the holder in front of the temple. Instead of merely taking three bows, I took three in each of the four bearings. One spark flew close to my eyelids and I flinched, and the wind carried it away. I could feel the fragrance flowing through my body and going someplace, and I opened my eyes to see the incense resting itself into a pile of ashes and some pebbles built by the monks.

My family and friends watched as I proceeded into the temple and a feeling of accomplishment overtook me once again, but this time I did not see stars or feel the need to close my eyes in the woods for the nausea to go away, I felt fine. I withdrew myself from the pillow that my legs rested on as I kowtowed and thanked the monks for sounding the gong, but my gratitude ran farther than my words.

The incense kept burning in the direction that the prayer flags were flapping toward, and we walked through an archway lined with names of donors, reflective tiles with different colors, and old shingles on the outside. At the end of the archway was a platform with marble fences around it, overlooking all of Jinzhou city and the body of Dahei Mountain.

This could be a perfect spot for a photo op where I leap upward.

I rested my hands on the marble fences and took a gander toward the city. It was mostly light gray, with some movements I could not put names on. The coming and going of things seemed trivial now but are the things that construed entire lives of people. I could not help but consider the relative power of my love, whether it was for whom I do not remember --- feelings usually preserve longer than names --- and I became more confident that whatever I was looking for, it was inside of me all along.

No photos were taken as we moved downward toward our cars. More people followed our steps and said their silent goodbyes to the peak, but most importantly, the feelings that came out of it. They know that they will be craved soon, but at this moment, the dosage is enough.

After some mindless drifting down the road, we came across a row of houses with people sitting in rocking chairs, and this is when we decided to rest our feet. Everyone took out their smartphones to check their steps, exclaiming with joy when they discover that there is possible hope for weight loss. My phone was out of reach, so I sat there knowingly of the joy in the air, my ears receiving a conversation next to me.

Man 1: “*inaudible murmurs* I lived in a retirement home, it was nice, we ate and drank well *inaudible murmurs*

Man 2: “then why did you come back to Dahei Mountain?”

Man 1: *inaudible murmurs*

Man 2: “inaudible murmurs*

I soon realized that both men may be in the edge of their lives. I saw from the corner of my eyes that both men were twisting their facial muscles to try to squeeze out words and failing, but there was a power I felt as I began to imagine them as their primes. Maybe as Korean War veterans plagued by PTSD that was not yet recognized by official sources? Maybe as salt miners who loved to take day trips to suburban Dalian in dingy buses? Maybe another worshipper of salvations, and what are salvations to them? Maybe it was this moment that they felt the most content.

Not by what life will throw to them in the next second, but by the heaviness of what they carried for decades and centuries. It’s how people became rocks, and rocks congregated into mountains.

If my body was a conductor of goodwill, I would guide the Sanskrit blessings toward these two men, because I feel that the supernatural can be found in the ordinary cycles that these verses spoke of at their day and age. My head is feeling heavy with a hydraulic press again as I took more steps downward. This is when I began paying attention to people and what they were saying, because the green backdrop is becoming less and less visible as the sun seeps into an orange frenzy.

At the end of this frenzy was an old man with a long white beard, positioning himself in a stool made of wide elastic bands. Next to him was a lady in a headscarf. He was using a small knife to carve out religious shapes and walnuts using peach wood. He had a dialect that was not local, but a familiarity that was. One shoe on his foot was nearly falling off but he did not care, maybe he is comfortable that way.

He carved, and I asked:

“How long does it take for you to make one of these things?”

He nudged at the sun and said: “a better half of the day.”

“Wow, that is impressive!” I put my hands together but did not clap, fearing that I could break the serenity between him and his craft.

“It’s one way to turn trade into a hobby, you know.” He smiled a smile within his tan skin and something inside of me stirred. It was not love, it was another burst of salvation that I felt many times that day.

“Right, it is always good to create and worry about it later.” After purchasing one of his things, I tucked it into my shallow pocket and the thing was peeking out.

“Here, let me give you a red rope to put around it. This is made of peach wood, it is good for keeping bad spirits away.”

Everyone around me nodded as I looked for glances of affirmation. I am not much of a believer for the supernatural, but at that moment, I felt much safer. It was as if a gong was sounded and there were waves of vibration seeping closer and closer to my proximity, until my skin was burning a bit from it, but a part of me knew that the sensation was benign.

One day in Dahei mountain, I realized that every moment is a moment of salvation as long as we look close enough.