Finishing My Journey

Days 6-8

For the next few days, I  travel with the nomads; it would be too dangerous to leave the trail and hike through the steep mountains alone. They continue to take good care of my mule and she slowly becomes fatter. The walking and cold air raise my spirits and I travel along the trail singing songs with the nomads. They are glad to make me happy and even offer the horse I was riding to me to keep. For good. I am not sure whether to accept the gift or not.

When we get close to the source, I begin to get excited. Nobody except for monks and nomads have ever seen this portion of the river before. The nomads tell me there is a monastery near the source, but they are not allowed to enter. I ask why, and they say it is because they are not Confucius. I wonder if I will be able to come in because I am traveling with the nomads. I decide not to worry about it until we get to the source.

By midday on the seventh day of my journey, I find myself gasping for breath. How could this be? The nomads tell me I am not used to the mountain air and laugh at me. I laugh too, but I am determined to show them I can do something.

The next day, we arrive at the source, a small spring in a narrow valley. I slip a lot. At first, the nomads laugh at me again, but when my eyebrows begin to lower and my face turns red, they decide to help me down. Some of them even apologize for laughing at me yesterday. I accept the apologies graciously.

When we get to the bottom of the valley, the nomads let me drink from the source. It is fresh and pure. I smile at them and thank them for their hospitality. They offer to escort me back. I want to refuse, but they insist. And so, with my newfound nomad friends, I make my way back to Lihang, and vow to return to the eternal source of the Yangtze River one day.

Meeting Nomads!

Day 5

The morning is clear with few clouds. The world is so different here; it feels like a dream. I say goodbye and thank the small family I stayed with last night. They smile and tell me goodbye too. I swing my legs over my mule and continue riding up the rugged trail.

Around midday, I come to a nomad tribe. They invite me to stay with them the rest of my journey because they are traveling to the source also. I agree and thank them. They feed my mule and let me ride one of their bigger, stronger, horses. Riding a horse feels different than riding a mule; horses have some kind of power that mules don’t. I tell the tribe I’ve never been able to afford a horse before.

“We do not care about money,” they reply, “Nor social status. We found these wild.”

I can’t imagine how they managed to capture a wild horse, but I can assume it must have been quite an ordeal. They sing their tribe’s traditional traveling songs and teach them to me. I wish I could stay a nomad forever. They have such an easy life.

For dinner, we stop and set up a camp with tents and hitch the horses (and my mule) to some craggy rocks. The animals wait patiently while we eat and share my food. Then, it is time to let them graze. I don’t see any grass around; the animals must starve. But the nomads lead them to a small spring, bubbling water that had melted the snow around it. How can they know the area so well? I ask them but they just smile. They wouldn’t want to tell me their secrets.

With dusk, comes extreme cold. The nomads give me a furry coat, stitched together from many animal’s pelts. I thank them, but I can see that they just pulled it out of a pile of extra coats. They have done a good job adapting to harsh, cold environment. When we are ready to sleep, we crawl into surprisingly warm tents, and leave the fire burning to keep us warm. We cover the animals with blankets to keep them from freezing in the cold. The rush of the Yangtze lulls us all to sleep.  

A Snowstorm!

Days 2-4

The morning is clear and bright. I say goodbye to the monks who load my mule with incense and tea. I thank them, and I am on my way. The bright sun beats down on my back and I am not cold anymore. The Yangtze rushes by, through a shallow gorge. Everything is peaceful, much more so than in Lihang.

At lunchtime, I reach a village along the Silk Route, the first one I have seen since I begun my journey. I ride towards the village among yak herders. When I arrive, I go to the monastery. Someone there will give me a meal, I’m sure. When I arrive, I get a nice meal of rice and vegetables, a rare delicacy in the dead of winter. I thank the people at the monastery and then I get on my mule and ride just a bit past the village to a small hut, similar to Di and Sei’s. The kind family who live there invite me to stay for dinner and sleep there. I am very much obliged.

The next morning, I begin my journey into the mountains. I can feel the trail sloping upwards and getting narrower until it is little more than a footpath. My mule whinnies when a pebble falls from a cliff above. Dark clouds are beginning to roll in. I will my mule to go faster, so we can beat this Himalayan blizzard, infamous for killing anyone who is outside. She seems to get the message and breaks into a steady canter. When another rock falls, it spooks her so that she gallops ahead. I do not object; the clouds are so ominous. As the first snowflakes begin to fall and the wind picks up, I come across a small shelter, dug into the mountain. I bang on the door, and a young man and his wife answer.

“Come inside quickly!” they say, “A snowstorm is coming!”

I accept their invitation and come in. The shelter is little more than a hole, but it is cozy with the candlelight. I eat lunch, and the snowstorm passes. When I come out, snow blankets the landscape in a thin crust. It sparkles in the little sun there is. I thank the couple and keep riding.

That night, I stay at another family’s house, and at the end of the next day, I find myself two days’ riding distance from the end of the river. I’m almost there.

Exploring Confucianism With Di and Sei

Day 1

The first day of my journey dawns cold and bitter. I wrap some cloth around myself and get onto my mule. She will carry my supplies. I start up the path and the wind becomes worse. My eyes begin to water, and I squint against the cold. This is how most days are during winter in this region. I expect they will be worse in the mountains. No matter, I have brought lots of cloth with me. I think I will be fine.

Around midday, I arrive at a small hut. I decide to ask if I can stay a while; I am very hungry and cold. When I knock on the door, it creaks. These people must be even poorer than I. I begin to feel kind of embarrassed that I would ask them for help. They obviously would not help me. Just as I begin to walk away, the door opens. An old man answers.

“Hello?” he says.

“Hello,” I answer, “I am looking for a place to warm myself.”

“Come in, come in, my friend,” he says with a smile.

I step into the house and immediately smell incense. It’s rather comforting, even though I’m not religious. The old man, named Di, introduces me to his wife, Sei. They tell me they are Taoist and explain to me that they burn incense as an offering. The couple do a good job of making their small house seem cosy. We sit down to a lovely lunch of dumplings (made by them), meat, and rice (made by me). When I am done, I thank them, but tell them I need to go on my way. They smile and tell me they hope they will see me again. I doubt it, but I tell them I hope I will too. I swing my legs over my mule and I am off. The sun shines, watery through the clouds, warming me up a little bit at least, but only enough to take my outermost layer of shawls off. By sunset, I have to put them on again, but at least I am in sight of a monastery where I might have dinner.

The monks are friendly and also are Taoist. They nod and smile at me as I share some of my rice with them. After dinner, I participate in a meaningful prayer session by candlelight. The monks bow their heads and chant to a strange and beautiful rhythm, the perfect lullaby.

Getting Ready in Lihang

Intro: I am getting ready for my journey up the Yangtze River. I have been selected to complete the journey, as I travel from my home in Lihang to the source of the Yangtze, high in the Himalayas. It could be a long and difficult journey, but as a commoner, the second to lowest of the four classes, I am honored to be completing the journey. I will be leaving the Shu Kingdom and traveling into territory that has not yet been claimed by any of the kingdoms. Here, the way of life has been untouched by the constant war between the Shu, Wei, and Wu Kingdoms. I pack some simple clothing, water, dried meat, vegetables, and rice. I know if I run low on any of these supplies I will be able to hunt for food. The rice will last me a long time because it will not go bad. My resting place each night will be at a monastery or with nomads. I can expect some very exceptional experiences throughout this extraordinary journey.

the sad ending

when I woke up wu and chan were having some tea together so I joined them and I had some tea with wu and chan the tea was from the Yangtze river it was a good tea it had so spices  in it then chan said we are going to go to my secret stream off the yangtze river it will take 30 min to get to the stream we will go fishing in the stream with nets so let get ready to go to the stream so in 10 min we took off and headed to the stream to go fishing when we got to the stream we saw some big fish jumping out of the stream it was an amazing thing to see but anyway it took us 10 min to set up the nets and traps to catch the fish within 1 hour we just would not stop catching fish every time we put a trap in the water we got some thing we also did some hand fishing which is when you go under the water and grab fish with your hand it is hard but it is a lot of fun to do we also got a 99 lbs beast with our hands it took all 3 of us to get it on land and that took about 10 min to do and then to get the fish to stop moving was insanely hard to do it took another 10 min to do that and when we where all do with that we had to leave and go back to chan's hut on the yangtze river. 2 days later I got to my endpoint lihangh.

fishing with chan

wu and  woke up at 7 am wu and I said goodbye to ching and got in our boat and headed down the river my next stop was one of wu's friends from when he was a kid his name is chen is a fisherman he fishes on the Yangtze river to get something to trade and to get food to eat I also love fish and love fishing to so this will be a lot of fun to do in about 2 hours wu and I get to chans hut on the river he is fishing and also has some bamboo fishing rods for wu and I when wu and I dock chan hugs wu and then hugs me then he hands wu and I a fishing rod so we all start fishing and the fish are so high in the water you can see them so about 5 min in to fishing we started catching so many fish we put all the fish under 1 foot back in the river when we stopped fishing we had 100 fish chan then made wu and I a fish for dinner then we went to bed the next day wu woke me up chan then said so who wants to clean some fish chan said ok I said so I 1 hour we cleaned 25 fish the chan said now we will clean the big fish so we got to work and started to clean the big fish we also had to pull all the guts out of the fish by the way that is not fun at all ok do not ever pull guts out of a fish later that day we went to bed