Mt. Emei, Sichuan province - Part 4 of 5 by BASIL

CHAPTER 4: THE PLACE WHERE THE BODIHISSATIVA PUCKION WASHED AN ELEPHANT’S FACE... OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT

After the twenty minute walk back to the surface of the earth and another twenty minute walk back to the monastery, we continue on. After a little while, we go up a few stairs and break.


There’s a Chinese family sitting next to us, and they open their backpack and start pulling out snacks and handing them to us.  They hand us so many snacks I start wondering if they’re poisoned or something, it’s just so out of the ordinary. but then, Dad pulls out a precious Snickers bar and hands it to them.




I feel like I’m part of the Ice Age movie where the elephant, Manny, is trying to find food for the baby and they steal a watermelon from the Dodo birds, who revere melons. Basically what happens in the movie is the scene freezes, then you see one of the Dodo birds in slo-mo, yelling with some blown-out speaker effect, “the last melon…”.  That’s what I feel when Dad hands them the Snickers.  I’m so upset for some reason.  Looking back, it was totally ridiculous, but I’m just so mad about that Snickers.  They sell them everywhere, but I felt like we hadn’t even wanted their stuff and so why should they want ours? 

We continue on, me kind of mad at Dad. Dad starts telling us this reallyyyyyyy long story about how the Bodhissattva Puxian stopped there to bathe his elephant, whom he rode through the sky on, and his elephant drank from the water, purifying it blah blah blah. Soon we reach a little place where a whole bunch of food places are kind of making a little aisle that you walk through, and at the end it looks like it stops because of all the trees in the way. There’s people crowding everywhere, so unfortunately we couldn’t see the trailhead. Dad’s uncertainly like, “Well... if we were going the wrong way, these people would tell us like they did last time. Right?” We all uncertainly agree. We walk for about half an hour, and then come to a monastery. It’s only like two or three in the afternoon, and so we think it’s a little weird that we’re at the Elephant Bathing Pool already. 

After the monastery, the trail goes down. We seem to be at some sort of peak. There are four peaks, the Golden Summit being the tallest, but the Bathing Pool is not one of them. Also, another weird part is how Zuantian Slope is before the Elephant Bathing Pool, and we haven’t seen any monkeys. Just then, a bunch of english-speaking people come up the trail. See, there are two ways up the mountain, but both end up here before the golden summit. We think that these people are just getting back from the summit, but in actuality they’re just ascending the mountain a different way. We, apparently, should have gone through the aisle of restaurants. Instead, we learn that we’ve been going the wrong way for thirty minutes now. We turn around, disappointed at having our dreams of reaching the summit today crushed. Now, we’re barely going to make it to the Elephant Bathing Pool. we start back down. It’s actually much faster going down, and we’re back at the place that we started off course in only ten minutes. 

We eat quickly, then go through the “aisle” and actually turn behind the shops and go down. We walk and talk for a few hours, and then reach the real Bathing Pool at about 5:00. 




I’m wiped and feel like we should stay here, but Dad thinks that we should push on to Lidongping bus station and find a monastery there.  After some reluctance, I agree on the condition that I get a whole Snickers to myself after we reach Lidongping. We walk, and then encounter some monkeys. Mom needs to use the bathroom, and goes into the brush. Me and Dad and Kayl wait for a minute, but then Mom speaks in this petrified yet calm voice. “Ryan (that’s my Dad’s name),” She says, “I think there’s a monkey right next to me.” Kayl and me kind of look at each other, unsure of whether to start laughing hysterically or get really scared. We hear a big snort, then a whinny. “And,” Mom says, “a horse.” This time I can’t stop myself, I start cracking up. The way she’s saying it is just too funny. 

She eventually comes out and shakily starts down the trail. We see a monkey just sitting on the path, but it doesn’t frighten me any more. It just looks at us as we pass and then jumps off the trail into the brush. We walk on, and then come to a bridge. We look over the side, and I, once again, am at a loss for how to describe it.

We’re so high up, and you can see through the two pieces of rock another peak in the distance, silhouetted against the sun, which has turned a bright shade of orange and is surrounded by clouds, but apart from the ring around the sun it’s a cloudless sky.
It’s just so amazing I can’t speak for a minute.

I learn twenty minutes later to hold onto these moments while you can.
We continue, and when we reach Lidongping this is what I see: there’s buses all over, hotels and people trying to get you to stay in their hotel, bus and car fumes filling the air, and tons of people in cars causing a traffic jam.  I suddenly feel sick to my stomach.
All I want to do is just leave.

We see, in the distance, a monastery, and all agree that we have to go there and get out of this place. But when we start walking, this is what I see. There’s a monkey up in a tree, and a person below holding a slingshot and shooting rocks at the monkey, who’s just innocently sitting in the tree. I’m seized by a sudden rage and don’t even know why, but suddenly I’m throwing all the swear words and cruel things I know at this person. He looks over at me, not understanding my words but getting the tone. Dad pulls me away, but looks more in agreement with me than angry. “I should knock him out with his own stupid slingshot,” I mutter. “That monkey’s totally innocent.” We continue, feeling so upset.
What a reverse this is from the magical feeling not more than twenty minutes ago! So much is happening, and I can’t make any sense of it most of the time.
We see monkeys sitting on a railing and having people yell at them and throw food at them and we walk by silently.

We reach a place to stay, and it sort of looks like some sort of a temple. There’s a completely unhelpful and rude guy who we try to book our rooms with, and the price he offers us for a room with four beds is 360 RMB. The last place was 200, so we think that it’s an unfair price. Four Chinese people walk by and we ask them if there’s another place to stay nearby. They say that they’re staying in a four-bed hotel room with a shower (we haven’t showered in days) and a heater for 400 RMB. We go in and a lady shows us a room. It’s warm, has a shower, and three beds. Then she holds up a calculator with the price on it for Mom and Dad. “Oh my god,” is all Mom says, and then she starts walking away. I catch a glimpse of the calculator as I walk by and my heart starts pounding fast. “What is it?” Kayl asks. “Why aren’t we staying here?” “900 RMB,” I say, but Kayl gets it. The lady runs outside after us and offers 400 RMB for a four person room. She leads us down a bunch of steps and we joke that we’re staying in the dungeon. She opens a door that I think is a closet, but she points to it. There’s one queen sized bed just filling up the room, with no space to even get up. We just leave without a word, hoping that the 360 RMB room isn’t taken yet. Luckily, it’s not. There’s only three beds, not four, and the door doesn’t lock, but I accept that it’s all we’re going to get. there’s actually even heated mattresses, so it’s not all bad. We go eat, but I’m not hungry. After, Dad suggests this thing called foot bathing. We get basins filled with hot water and soak our feet. It’s so relaxing that we could just keep refilling the basins with hot water and doing it all night, but we eventually go to bed.