Latest / bit of a Rambler / 053 Death Mountain

Transcript

053 Death Mountain · bit of a Rambler

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Kai, and I am a bit
0:02
Speaker 1: of a rambler. I like to travel, learn and tell stories.
0:07
Speaker 1: Today I want to talk about mountains because I liked
0:12
Speaker 1: climbing mountains as a kid and I always got into it.
0:16
Speaker 1: But when I was living in China, it hit me
0:19
Speaker 1: after like a year that I hadn't climbed any mountains,
0:22
Speaker 1: and they had some of the most famous and awe
0:24
Speaker 1: inspiring mountains in the world. After all, I'd seen crouching
0:28
Speaker 1: Tiger Head and Dragon. So I'm just realizing I probably
0:32
Speaker 1: could have climbed that. Which mountain was that, I'm going
0:35
Speaker 1: to check if I climb that mountain. Oh it was Hoangshan. Okay,
0:38
Speaker 1: so yes, I've climbed the mountain and crouching Tiger had
0:40
Speaker 1: and Dragon not just a joke. That's the most famous
0:44
Speaker 1: mountain in China. They say like, there are five mountains
0:48
Speaker 1: in China, and if you climb four of them, you
0:51
Speaker 1: never need to see another mountain again. But if you
0:53
Speaker 1: climb hoang Shan, you don't need to look at those
0:56
Speaker 1: four mountains. That means I was in that town too, Homesoung.
1:00
Speaker 1: That's cool. I was in the town and crouching I
1:03
Speaker 1: didn't even know. Wow, I am pretty clueless. Sometimes good
1:07
Speaker 1: to find this out a decade later. Okay, So anyway,
1:11
Speaker 1: I climbed a lot of mountains. We can easily say fifty.
1:15
Speaker 1: If we're counting individual peaks, then well well over one
1:18
Speaker 1: hundred or a couple hundred. I don't know. It's a
1:20
Speaker 1: lot like hwah On by itself had five seven peaks
1:23
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I climbed all of them the
1:25
Speaker 1: same night. I want there. The mountains in China are great,
1:30
Speaker 1: not for the least reason of them having steps. They
1:34
Speaker 1: all have steps, because every mountain is thousands of years
1:38
Speaker 1: old and people have been climbing up it so much.
1:41
Speaker 1: Eventually a monk was like, oh, let us have steps,
1:44
Speaker 1: and then they cut steps into the mountain. They all
1:47
Speaker 1: have one hundred stories for each mountain, and they have
1:50
Speaker 1: little stone explanation things sometimes and sometimes there's just steps.
1:55
Speaker 1: But it is pretty nice having steps going up every
2:01
Speaker 1: major mountain in China. They don't all Some of them
2:04
Speaker 1: have paths, and I went on probably more of those honestly,
2:07
Speaker 1: because I would just find a mountain. But all of
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Speaker 1: the main ones have these steps, and it feels like
2:12
Speaker 1: you're ascending a program. It feels like you're getting something done,
2:16
Speaker 1: accomplishing something with these steps, and it's amazing to be
2:19
Speaker 1: walking up the steps and then see someone carrying two huge,
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Speaker 1: like oil drum sized buckets of water up these sheer,
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Speaker 1: sheer steps and they're like ninety years old with a
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Speaker 1: bamboo pole hung between two giant gallon or like oil
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Speaker 1: drums of filled with water barrels some would call them.
2:40
Speaker 1: So it's nice that they all have steps. It is
2:44
Speaker 1: very Chinese, like, like getting to the top of the mountain.
2:49
Speaker 1: In America, we're like, we don't use steps. You pull
2:53
Speaker 1: yourself up and all that kind of you know, you
2:55
Speaker 1: hike the trails if they give you a trail. But
2:58
Speaker 1: in China they're like, no, you're trying to get to
3:00
Speaker 1: the top of them, and that's what you do. You
3:02
Speaker 1: build a stairway to the top. That's where you're trying
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Speaker 1: to get to. There's so many fun cultural things about
3:08
Speaker 1: China that just still make me laugh to this day.
3:11
Speaker 1: If you like explain to a Chinese person like no, no, no,
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Speaker 1: we don't use steps. You need to really fight through it,
3:17
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, that that doesn't sound as enjoyable, doesn't
3:21
Speaker 1: that make it unnecessarily difficult, and in you know, of course,
3:25
Speaker 1: in certain respects they're right and wrong, and so are we.
3:29
Speaker 1: So while you're climbing mountains in China, you can appreciate
3:34
Speaker 1: that there are step paths up and that I mean
3:37
Speaker 1: millions of people have climbed those steps before you. There's
3:42
Speaker 1: memory in them. You can see the individual footprints in
3:44
Speaker 1: the stone in a lot of the mountains. That's pretty cool.
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Speaker 1: That's you know, living history memory in the rock of
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Speaker 1: a mountain. It's pretty impressive to see a lot and
3:57
Speaker 1: they wind off. There are multiple there's not just one
4:00
Speaker 1: step going up. All the paths go all around. So
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Speaker 1: you can take all these different, nice comfortable stairway paths
4:07
Speaker 1: that are not easy by any stretch of the imagination.
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Speaker 1: Many many people take breaks multiple times along the ascent,
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Speaker 1: and it can still take hours. But it's just nice
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Speaker 1: that they have steps. And it's funny in this world,
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Speaker 1: like especially as an American, where everything is the oldest
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Speaker 1: thing in our country is less than two hundred years old.
4:28
Speaker 1: I know, I know, I'm just saying it's like about
4:31
Speaker 1: two hundred years old, and then they're they're like, well,
4:34
Speaker 1: this one's three thousand years old. There's another one that's
4:37
Speaker 1: you know, three or thirty five hundred years old, and
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Speaker 1: their mountains are so much older in terms of human
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Speaker 1: habitation that after however long it took, they were just like,
4:49
Speaker 1: you know what, time for some stairs. Let's just let's
4:52
Speaker 1: skip over this not having stairs thing. Everyone's going to
4:55
Speaker 1: keep climbing up mountains for another thousand years. Let's put
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Speaker 1: in a stairway, so the mountains in China have stairs.
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Speaker 1: I find it charming and fun and culturally relevant. It
5:05
Speaker 1: kind of sticks out to me as like this new
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Speaker 1: way to look at hiking a mountain, which before I
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Speaker 1: would have scoffed at as an American because my cultural experiences,
5:14
Speaker 1: I can do this myself. But it's a good lesson
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Speaker 1: to see. Yeah, they have steps. Okay, So I want
5:23
Speaker 1: to tell my mountain stories, and I think I'm going
5:26
Speaker 1: to start with Taishan, which is next to the town Taian,
5:30
Speaker 1: where a girlfriend was from. And she said I should
5:35
Speaker 1: climb Taishan. And that's really all that convincing I need,
5:39
Speaker 1: pretty much of anything. So we went took a train
5:42
Speaker 1: over there, and I was already loving it, because as
5:47
Speaker 1: soon as you're climbing a mountain. You're above the pollution
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Speaker 1: in China, which is mostly like this dirt cloud above
5:52
Speaker 1: the biggest cities, and as soon as you're out of
5:54
Speaker 1: the biggest cities, the air is pretty clean, sometimes shockingly clean.
6:00
Speaker 1: And we hiked through the night so that we would
6:02
Speaker 1: be able to see the sunrise together. And I don't
6:05
Speaker 1: remember much of it because you know, there are stairs,
6:08
Speaker 1: so it's not like you had to go through. You
6:11
Speaker 1: didn't have to improvise a path or trailblaze anything. But
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Speaker 1: it was a nice climb up, and I hiked a
6:18
Speaker 1: lot and I ran a lot, so I got to
6:20
Speaker 1: look like strong because I didn't have to take breaks.
6:22
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, no, take your time, it's fine.
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Speaker 1: Sometimes we all need a rest. I'm fine, No, no, no.
6:29
Speaker 1: Weeke of going up. And when we got to the top,
6:34
Speaker 1: it was cold, and I wasn't thinking because I don't
6:38
Speaker 1: even think I had a jacket at that point. I
6:40
Speaker 1: might have had a hoodie, but I didn't bring my
6:42
Speaker 1: hoodie and it was maybe I don't know, forty five
6:46
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenheit. It was like twenty degrees celsius, and I
6:50
Speaker 1: was starting to shiver and I was like, oh boy, like,
6:52
Speaker 1: if we have to wait here because we had to
6:54
Speaker 1: wait now for an hour for the centurrise. Because we
6:56
Speaker 1: got up a little faster than we did. It took
6:58
Speaker 1: a couple hours or something might taken four hours, might
7:01
Speaker 1: taken a while, I can't remember. And my girlfriend at
7:05
Speaker 1: the time helped me buy one of those huge Russian
7:08
Speaker 1: thick winter coats or Mongolian coats that they wear that
7:11
Speaker 1: are just super thick, and I was like, oh, thank goodness,
7:14
Speaker 1: and there's just a guy up there with a huge
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Speaker 1: hut full of these super warm coats that you can
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Speaker 1: rent for a couple dollars while you wait for the
7:24
Speaker 1: sun to rise on this magical peak. Now I say
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Speaker 1: magical because this sunrise is one of the most insane
7:34
Speaker 1: things I have ever seen. And I still don't know
7:38
Speaker 1: what happened exactly, And I'm sure I've come across the
7:42
Speaker 1: words for this phenomenon before, but I don't know what
7:46
Speaker 1: those words are now, and I sure didn't have words
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Speaker 1: for it back then. But we were with a group
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Speaker 1: of I don't know, fifty to one hundred people who
7:54
Speaker 1: had made it up before the sunrise were all waiting
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Speaker 1: and it's just, you know, this guy's a little bit brighter,
8:00
Speaker 1: little bit brighter, and then it's like, okay, we're at
8:03
Speaker 1: the time the sun's about to start rising. And then
8:08
Speaker 1: the thing is we had to start at the horizon
8:11
Speaker 1: because there was a flood of clouds. Suddenly they all
8:15
Speaker 1: rolled in and covered all the lower peaks. We were
8:18
Speaker 1: on the highest peak, the actual Tayshon Peak, and all
8:21
Speaker 1: the other peaks were lower and they were all covered
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Speaker 1: in clouds. And on the sides there were larger peaks
8:28
Speaker 1: like poking up to the clouds. But in front of us,
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Speaker 1: out to the horizon where the sun was going to rise,
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Speaker 1: there was just a field of fluffy but almost dense clouds.
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Speaker 1: It was already absurdly beautiful and romantic, and in the
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Speaker 1: poetical sense of the word and the romantic sense of
8:50
Speaker 1: the word, come to think of it. My girlfriend was
8:53
Speaker 1: very happy to be there, and then I was just
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Speaker 1: staring because I was like, I'm going to see that
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Speaker 1: horizon sunrise before anyone else. And then there was a
9:03
Speaker 1: weird light bulb thing poking up in the middle of
9:10
Speaker 1: the field of clouds. So there's where on a mountain,
9:15
Speaker 1: there mountains off to the sides, and then a huge
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Speaker 1: field of clouds heading off into the horizon, and in
9:25
Speaker 1: the middle of the field of clouds, a light came
9:29
Speaker 1: up and I was like, what the fuck is that?
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Speaker 1: Is that like a air tower or like a four
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Speaker 1: G tower with a light blinking? And then it kept
9:40
Speaker 1: coming up and getting brighter, and I realized it was
9:43
Speaker 1: the sun. The sun was rising in the middle of
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Speaker 1: the bank of clouds. We were all staring at and
9:54
Speaker 1: I was like very confused, and everyone was like looking excited,
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Speaker 1: and and then they started like, wow, what is it doing?
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Speaker 1: What is it doing there? And that's what I was wondering.
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Speaker 1: And I asked my girlfriend, like, do you see the sun?
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Speaker 1: Is it in the middle of the clouds. She was like, yeah, yeah,
10:15
Speaker 1: it's in the middle of the clouds. And I was like,
10:17
Speaker 1: how that's where the land is. How is the sun
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Speaker 1: coming up from the land instead of behind this miles
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Speaker 1: long bank of clouds at the horizon. Why is it
10:28
Speaker 1: coming up in the middle of the clouds. And she
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Speaker 1: was like, I don't know. And it was a deep,
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Speaker 1: deep red orange, not bright yellow, deep deep red orange,
10:39
Speaker 1: and it was like pushing up through the clouds, this
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Speaker 1: like lion king ass sun, and it was so bewildering.
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Speaker 1: All of us just stared at it and washed it
10:53
Speaker 1: and it after it passed like the halfway point, and
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Speaker 1: half of it wasn't covered by the clouds anymore. It
11:00
Speaker 1: got a little more yellow, and then the more it
11:04
Speaker 1: left the cloud cover, the more yellow the sun became.
11:07
Speaker 1: And then it came all the way out of the
11:10
Speaker 1: middle of the cloud bank, and it wasn't obscured by
11:12
Speaker 1: any clouds, and it became a bright yellow of you know,
11:15
Speaker 1: the sun after its risen. But it changed from red
11:20
Speaker 1: to orange to the bright regular sun yellow. And once
11:24
Speaker 1: it got high enough over the bank of clouds, then
11:26
Speaker 1: it looked like it was back in the horizon. But
11:31
Speaker 1: it came up optically anyway in the middle of the
11:36
Speaker 1: cloud bank, very clearly, like it wasn't almost near the horizon.
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Speaker 1: It was like halfway to us, halfway in the middle
11:45
Speaker 1: of this cloud in the middle of a miles long
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Speaker 1: cloud bank, so mile and a half in a mile
11:49
Speaker 1: and a half away from us or half a mile. Really,
11:52
Speaker 1: it was pretty close. It felt close. It looked very close,
11:55
Speaker 1: and everyone agreed like that was weird that the sun
11:58
Speaker 1: came up in the middle of the cloud bank, like
12:01
Speaker 1: over the land instead of in the horizon, and then
12:05
Speaker 1: we all gave our coats back and started walking back
12:09
Speaker 1: down the mountain like in you know, straggling pairs or whatever.
12:13
Speaker 1: And that site has stuck in my mind forever, and
12:20
Speaker 1: it's thinking about it now. I can very clearly see it.
12:25
Speaker 1: And I was telling this story recently and the person asked,
12:30
Speaker 1: are you sure. I was like, yeah, I know, I
12:32
Speaker 1: know how it sounds when the cloud come rises overland
12:35
Speaker 1: through cloud banks, but that's what it looked like. It
12:39
Speaker 1: was nuts. And I was with my friends, so they
12:42
Speaker 1: were like, have you asked her if she saw the
12:45
Speaker 1: same thing, And I hadn't in a decade, so I
12:49
Speaker 1: was like, that's a great idea. So I reached out
12:51
Speaker 1: and I asked her about what she saw when we
12:56
Speaker 1: saw the sun rise, and she didn't quite know I
13:00
Speaker 1: was getting at and while we were seeing it, she
13:03
Speaker 1: did look really confused at what was happening, but it
13:06
Speaker 1: was just like accepting it. So then I asked her, like, well,
13:09
Speaker 1: when the sun rose, did it rise on the horizon,
13:13
Speaker 1: like behind the mountains and everything. Did it rise how
13:16
Speaker 1: it normally rises, or did it rise in the middle
13:21
Speaker 1: of a cloud bank? And immediately she said, Oh, it
13:24
Speaker 1: came from the middle of the clouds. The sun rose
13:27
Speaker 1: in the middle of the clouds. There were clouds behind
13:29
Speaker 1: it and clouds in front of it from where we were,
13:32
Speaker 1: but the cloud the sun didn't rise on the horizon
13:36
Speaker 1: where it should happen. It rose in the middle of
13:38
Speaker 1: all the clouds. So I have at least one other
13:41
Speaker 1: person who was right next to me when it happened,
13:44
Speaker 1: who also remembers the sun rising through clouds with a
13:50
Speaker 1: mile or so of clouds behind it. It was the
13:53
Speaker 1: and there wasn't another sun rise at the same time.
13:57
Speaker 1: There was one blood orange, blood red sun rising in
14:02
Speaker 1: the middle, and then when it was high enough, it
14:05
Speaker 1: looked like it was back on the horizon, but when
14:08
Speaker 1: it rose, it rose through a cloud bank. Glad to share.
14:14
Speaker 1: That was one of the craziest things I have ever
14:16
Speaker 1: seen in my life. Another crazy thing was this like
14:19
Speaker 1: cow I saw in a forest that I didn't realize.
14:22
Speaker 1: We tracked until we were like ten feet away from it,
14:24
Speaker 1: and it was just staring at us, and it was
14:25
Speaker 1: pretty freaky. But the sun was probably sun was more impressive.
14:30
Speaker 1: The sun was crazy. So that was my that's my
14:34
Speaker 1: Tai Shan story. I should probably bring up the monks
14:38
Speaker 1: story because I was with the same girlfriend on a
14:40
Speaker 1: different mountain closer to Beijing when this happened. And this
14:45
Speaker 1: story makes me laugh to this day because a lot
14:48
Speaker 1: of Chinese people, you know, people from every country, have
14:52
Speaker 1: conceptions of Americans and they act on those concepts same
15:00
Speaker 1: way that everybody does, So shut up, Kai. So when
15:03
Speaker 1: I walked up, he saw a foreigner and a monk huddled.
15:07
Speaker 1: We're like halfway up the mountain by this point, after
15:10
Speaker 1: ninety minutes of walking, I'll say, and he scuttled out
15:13
Speaker 1: of his hovel built into the side of the mountain
15:17
Speaker 1: and he was like, Hello, where are you from? And
15:20
Speaker 1: he was all dressed, all monk like, and I was like,
15:25
Speaker 1: it's nice to meet you. I'm from Hawaii and he
15:30
Speaker 1: was like that's great. So what are you doing in China?
15:33
Speaker 1: Do you like it? Yes? Of course, everyone asked the
15:35
Speaker 1: same things the first time. Do you eat spicy food?
15:38
Speaker 1: I do? Ah? And then he said, look at you.
15:43
Speaker 1: You're very strong, aren't you. Americans are very strong. And
15:47
Speaker 1: I'm like a pretty thin guy. But I was jogging
15:51
Speaker 1: a lot and working out, and I was like, oh,
15:53
Speaker 1: thank you monk for noticing. He was like, but that
15:57
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. I was like, well, it's kind of important
16:01
Speaker 1: to remain like physically, you know, capable of things. And
16:07
Speaker 1: he was like, how do you even know you're strong?
16:09
Speaker 1: And I was like, wow, this is an aggressive monk
16:12
Speaker 1: and this is right in the first year when I
16:14
Speaker 1: got there, so my Chinese was still really bad, and
16:17
Speaker 1: I wanted to explain my exercise routine and why it
16:21
Speaker 1: was important to you know, do yoga stretch also in
16:25
Speaker 1: addition to wait whatever. But I couldn't explain that properly,
16:29
Speaker 1: like I tried a few times and had false starts,
16:31
Speaker 1: and I was like, exercise duan leen, which I did
16:34
Speaker 1: know how to say. And then I did some push
16:36
Speaker 1: ups in front of him, and he laughed in a
16:39
Speaker 1: monk like way and shook his head and turned to
16:42
Speaker 1: my girlfriend and said, ha, you see, Americans don't understand.
16:46
Speaker 1: And then he turned to me and he said that
16:49
Speaker 1: does not make you strong. What makes you strong is
16:53
Speaker 1: how many of you there are. And I was like, oh, okay,
16:56
Speaker 1: I get it. Like I instantly saw where he was going.
16:59
Speaker 1: He was like, do you know how many people America has?
17:03
Speaker 1: Do you know how many people China has? I was like, yep, yeah,
17:05
Speaker 1: I get it. And he was like, so you are
17:08
Speaker 1: this stick and he held up this I don't know,
17:13
Speaker 1: let's say, finger sized stick. He's like very strong, very big,
17:18
Speaker 1: very strong American, right, And I was like, oh no, no,
17:21
Speaker 1: not really, but thank you. But if you have a
17:25
Speaker 1: group of people and he held up the twigs, they
17:30
Speaker 1: together are stronger than one branch. And he pointed to,
17:35
Speaker 1: you know, the me stick and I was like, that
17:39
Speaker 1: is that's correct, That's a good point. And he turned
17:43
Speaker 1: to my girlfriend. He's like, ah see, I can teach
17:46
Speaker 1: we Chinese can teach Americans. And then I said, you know, though,
17:53
Speaker 1: if you have many branches, all of the branches together
18:00
Speaker 1: will be stronger than all of the sticks together. Is
18:03
Speaker 1: that correct, teacher, And you could just see his face
18:09
Speaker 1: like drop and he had this murderous, you motherfucker look
18:14
Speaker 1: behind his eyes and he was like he doesn't get it.
18:18
Speaker 1: To my girlfriend whirled around and scurried back into the
18:23
Speaker 1: mountain shack and she was like, oh no, no, he
18:26
Speaker 1: gets it, and he really does like China. And she
18:28
Speaker 1: was like trying to mollify him. But that's still one
18:32
Speaker 1: of the funniest things that happened. To me on a mountain. Thanks,
18:36
Speaker 1: old Monk. I didn't mean anything by it, but you
18:39
Speaker 1: know you didn't have to start shit neither. So a
18:43
Speaker 1: few years into my China journey, a friend showed up
18:49
Speaker 1: and I had been inviting people to China for all
18:52
Speaker 1: three years, and my mom actually made a visit for
18:54
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks and had quite an adventure, mostly
18:59
Speaker 1: just eating good food and listening to me speak Chinese
19:03
Speaker 1: and being just completely underpressed, thinking I was terrible, and
19:08
Speaker 1: then watching other foreigners speak Chinese being like, oh God,
19:11
Speaker 1: did you see how good he How does he do it?
19:14
Speaker 1: I was like, I was, I ordered for you like
19:17
Speaker 1: ten minutes ago. But she had a good time. And
19:20
Speaker 1: finally another person agreed to visit, Josh, so he came
19:26
Speaker 1: over and I showed him Rick and Morty. I have
19:29
Speaker 1: to say that because it just stuck out. I was like,
19:32
Speaker 1: I just watched the funniest TV show I've ever seen
19:34
Speaker 1: and showed him Rick and Morty, and I watched the
19:38
Speaker 1: entire first season again with him. Because the first season
19:40
Speaker 1: was so good. I was like, yeah, I can watch
19:42
Speaker 1: this entire thing again, even though I watched the whole
19:43
Speaker 1: thing yesterday thirteen hours ago and we did that, and
19:47
Speaker 1: then he was looking to do something more fun. And
19:50
Speaker 1: I was looking to be very drunk for the rest
19:53
Speaker 1: of the year, as I had been for the entire
19:56
Speaker 1: beginning of that year, because the first three years in
19:58
Speaker 1: China was just drunk. He's like, let's do something. Let's
20:01
Speaker 1: go to a club or climb a mountain. And I
20:05
Speaker 1: was like, well, the club suck because they're loud and
20:08
Speaker 1: I don't like them, but mountains are cool. Do you
20:11
Speaker 1: want to go about Are you sure? Because we could
20:14
Speaker 1: just get drunk, maybe watch Rick and Morty again. He's like, no,
20:19
Speaker 1: I feel like we should do something because we've been
20:21
Speaker 1: drunk for like four days. And upon realizing that we
20:25
Speaker 1: had already spent four days in a haze of in sobriety,
20:29
Speaker 1: after you know, making sure one more time, he really
20:31
Speaker 1: wanted to do anything physical outside, not next to a
20:37
Speaker 1: restaurant or bar. We went out and got tickets to
20:43
Speaker 1: h wash On, which is the most dangerous mountain in
20:46
Speaker 1: the world. The most people die on it. Slightly less
20:48
Speaker 1: people die on it now. I think it's like twenty
20:51
Speaker 1: people a year die climbing the cliff side thing now,
20:55
Speaker 1: but there's a cliff side part of the trail where
21:01
Speaker 1: you climb down like a hole the size of a manhole,
21:04
Speaker 1: and then you go on two small planks of wood
21:08
Speaker 1: like maybe a foot to eighteen inches wide thirty centimeters folks,
21:14
Speaker 1: And you just lean against the mountain and scooch along
21:21
Speaker 1: these wooden planks until you get around the crazy side
21:26
Speaker 1: of the trail with no fence or boundary line and
21:29
Speaker 1: no safety ropes. And used to be like one hundred
21:34
Speaker 1: people were dying every year because it's a plank on
21:37
Speaker 1: the bald face of a mountain. And then they finally
21:42
Speaker 1: installed safety line so you had something to hold onto
21:47
Speaker 1: after I don't know, it happened like twenty eighteen. Very
21:53
Speaker 1: recently they added in these safety lines and now only
21:56
Speaker 1: twenty people that year or something. And but that's like
22:00
Speaker 1: the cool one. I had been climbing mountains, you know
22:03
Speaker 1: for a year or something. But I was like, you know,
22:04
Speaker 1: I haven't gone to washeion yet? It's supposed to be
22:06
Speaker 1: the dangerous crazy one? And he was like, great, let's go.
22:10
Speaker 1: So the next day I was like, well, let's get
22:12
Speaker 1: drunk one more day we can go that we can
22:14
Speaker 1: go up tomorrow. It's already the afternoon the day is shot.
22:18
Speaker 1: And we did that, and so we got the train
22:21
Speaker 1: to Hwaiyin, which was the city near the famous mountain
22:26
Speaker 1: Hahan Shan means mountain in Chinese in Mandarin anyway, Oh,
22:31
Speaker 1: I think it's in Canoney's also anyway. So we're on
22:34
Speaker 1: the train and we jump off and the sun is
22:37
Speaker 1: just setting, and I was like, oh, right, we're gonna
22:39
Speaker 1: be hiking at night. So we just went up bought
22:43
Speaker 1: a ticket and then they let us walk up a
22:46
Speaker 1: mountain in what rapidly became pitch blackness. It was very dark,
22:51
Speaker 1: and this was a great mountain climb. I had a
22:54
Speaker 1: very good time. I like the nighttime already, and it
22:58
Speaker 1: was the perfect temperature. There was bog rolling everywhere. There's
23:01
Speaker 1: a paved path and then steps leading to the next
23:04
Speaker 1: pay paths are huge courtyards. But before we got to
23:08
Speaker 1: the courtyards were one hundred meters down the pathway and
23:14
Speaker 1: there's one other guy. I think we might have had
23:17
Speaker 1: a beer. We did, you know what. We went to
23:19
Speaker 1: a restaurant and had dinner and a couple beers first.
23:23
Speaker 1: So by the time we actually got on the mountain
23:26
Speaker 1: it was much darker and it was really it felt
23:30
Speaker 1: like evening nighttime. Then the sun was totally gone, and
23:34
Speaker 1: so I didn't expect to see many people because Chinese
23:36
Speaker 1: people do not like the dark, and they don't like
23:39
Speaker 1: remote locations. They like to be with other people. So
23:43
Speaker 1: I was like, we're probably going to be the only
23:44
Speaker 1: people climbing up this mountain. And I was nearly right.
23:49
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't one hundred meters. It was more
23:50
Speaker 1: like half a mile or something like a kilometer. And
23:54
Speaker 1: there was these like resting things, resting pagodas, sort of
23:59
Speaker 1: gazebos with like a picnic table, and even at night,
24:04
Speaker 1: there were little snacks snack shops, like vendors selling instant
24:09
Speaker 1: noodles and snacks and all that kind of stuff. And
24:12
Speaker 1: in the third one we passed, there was this guy
24:14
Speaker 1: slurping down a bowl of noodles and I was like, whoa, okay,
24:18
Speaker 1: maybe there will be a couple other people. And I
24:22
Speaker 1: saw him look up at us and stare at us,
24:24
Speaker 1: and I was just like anyhow, and he's like huh,
24:28
Speaker 1: and then went back to slurping his noodles. But the
24:31
Speaker 1: look in his eyes, I was like, something's going on.
24:35
Speaker 1: It's some weird look in his eyes, but I was
24:38
Speaker 1: like whatever, we got to climb this mountain. And we
24:39
Speaker 1: just kept walking. And then after you know, we're a
24:45
Speaker 1: little ways past him, maybe thirty feet or so, and
24:48
Speaker 1: I hear him jump up and scuttle like push everything
24:52
Speaker 1: into his backpack and then running behind us. And he
24:55
Speaker 1: shows up and he's like, wait, don't even go on,
24:57
Speaker 1: and what's up, guys? What are you doing? And I
25:01
Speaker 1: was like, hey, you know, climb the mountain. And he's like, ooh,
25:04
Speaker 1: Google Google. So I'm just gonna translate everything into English.
25:07
Speaker 1: Now can I come with you guys? And I was
25:11
Speaker 1: like oh uh, and he goes cause it's very dark
25:16
Speaker 1: and I don't want to climb the mountain in the
25:19
Speaker 1: dark because of how scary it is. And I was
25:24
Speaker 1: just like, uh, yeah, I think that's fine by me.
25:27
Speaker 1: And I asked Josh and he was like, yeah, sure,
25:30
Speaker 1: of course. And so we had a third member of
25:33
Speaker 1: our party, and he was effusively happy. He was ecstatic
25:38
Speaker 1: that he was able to go up. And he was like,
25:41
Speaker 1: I wasn't even I wasn't even hungry. I was eating
25:44
Speaker 1: those noodles just so I was waiting for someone else
25:47
Speaker 1: to come by. So I had someone to climb the
25:49
Speaker 1: mountain with that night. I was like, okay, yeah, great man,
25:52
Speaker 1: So what's your name? And we started trading stories and
25:55
Speaker 1: he was happy that I could speak some Chinese, and
25:57
Speaker 1: I translated a bit for Josh, but mostly we just
26:00
Speaker 1: climbed this mountain and I answered his questions do you
26:04
Speaker 1: eat spicy food? I do what? And then it was
26:09
Speaker 1: like maybe two miles later, we'll say and we're making
26:14
Speaker 1: our way up the mountain, and there's still these pagodas.
26:17
Speaker 1: Because we're not quite into the they're still fairly common.
26:20
Speaker 1: But this is like the end of all the base
26:23
Speaker 1: camp area, and there's another guy eating like noodles and
26:27
Speaker 1: snacks and a soda, and we passed by and he
26:31
Speaker 1: like looks up and gives me a look, and I
26:33
Speaker 1: was like, it's gonna happen. He's gonna do the exact
26:35
Speaker 1: same thing, and he did. He packed everything up ran
26:38
Speaker 1: after us, and he was like, hey, group of friends,
26:42
Speaker 1: do you want to all travel up the mountain together?
26:44
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's kind of dark right now, a little bit scary.
26:49
Speaker 1: And then the other Chinese guy was like, oh, I know,
26:51
Speaker 1: that's why I'm with them. I didn't even know either,
26:53
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, man, that's fine, come join us.
26:56
Speaker 1: It's totally cool. And so we all climbed up them
27:00
Speaker 1: out and together and it was great. It was a
27:03
Speaker 1: great hike up. There's like Buddhists palm, which when you're
27:08
Speaker 1: halfway up, there's this valley, and on the other side
27:12
Speaker 1: of the valley from the main trail is a huge,
27:16
Speaker 1: like I don't even know how large. It was, maybe
27:19
Speaker 1: thirty meters one hundred feet palm of a granite poking
27:25
Speaker 1: out of the side of the mountain where no vegetation
27:27
Speaker 1: grows on it because it's just rock face, but it's
27:30
Speaker 1: in the shape of a palm, and it is like
27:35
Speaker 1: a thumb and four fingers and just stamped right onto
27:38
Speaker 1: the side of the mountain. That was definitely one of
27:40
Speaker 1: the coolest things I saw on Huahan, and it's a
27:43
Speaker 1: very blatant palm print. So we all saw it. It
27:45
Speaker 1: was very cool. And then we went up and we
27:47
Speaker 1: explored the plaza courtyards, which were really creepy because they
27:51
Speaker 1: all still look like old imperial fortresses and bridges and gates,
27:56
Speaker 1: and the fog is rolling around everywhere and now it's
27:59
Speaker 1: pitch black, know, it's midnight or something. We were on
28:02
Speaker 1: the mountain proper, and we just go from one courtyard
28:04
Speaker 1: to the rest, get lost. Look at the bells and
28:06
Speaker 1: lanterns and all the stuff they have. And some people
28:09
Speaker 1: live in those places still just live it up on
28:12
Speaker 1: top of the mountain, some of the vendors and some
28:14
Speaker 1: of the caretakers of the mountain, and so you can
28:18
Speaker 1: see people scarring back and forth with lanterns and these
28:20
Speaker 1: ghost cities halfway up the mountain, ghost villages, and that
28:25
Speaker 1: was also very cool. We got to the romantic part
28:28
Speaker 1: of the bridge where if you're going with your girlfriend,
28:31
Speaker 1: you bring a lock and put the lock on the
28:32
Speaker 1: fence to you know, cement your love as permanent. And
28:37
Speaker 1: I found one that was unlocked, so I took it
28:39
Speaker 1: off and thought of my girlfriend and locked it again.
28:43
Speaker 1: But maybe, you know, I was using an open lock,
28:46
Speaker 1: someone else's lock, so maybe that's why it didn't work out.
28:48
Speaker 1: And we eventually broke up a few times over a
28:51
Speaker 1: couple of years. And so after the bridge, which was fun,
28:56
Speaker 1: we all like laughed because we were four boys and
28:58
Speaker 1: we're like, love is dumb. Then we what was the
29:04
Speaker 1: next thing? You know what? We got to the top
29:11
Speaker 1: of a peak and that was the real peak I
29:13
Speaker 1: wanted to go to. There was like seven peaks, and
29:15
Speaker 1: I was like, that's that's the real peak. Like I
29:18
Speaker 1: fucking knew anything. And so we made it to the
29:21
Speaker 1: top of that peak, and all four of us were like, wow,
29:23
Speaker 1: we did it, because it was it was like five
29:26
Speaker 1: hours to the top, six hours, I don't know. It
29:28
Speaker 1: was a long hike to one of the main peak
29:31
Speaker 1: of Hahan. And they were standing on the peaks and
29:34
Speaker 1: I looked at my left and right and I can
29:35
Speaker 1: see the other peaks in the distance, and I was like,
29:39
Speaker 1: you want to just go to like that second peak,
29:42
Speaker 1: and the other three guys were like yeah, I mean,
29:45
Speaker 1: I guess it's still not we're not doing anything. Let's
29:48
Speaker 1: go to the next one. I was like great, and
29:50
Speaker 1: then we went to the next one, and then I
29:53
Speaker 1: was like, you guys want to go to like the
29:55
Speaker 1: third peak. And some of them had crazy bridges you
29:57
Speaker 1: had to cross, and some of them had like wooden
30:00
Speaker 1: scaffolding you had to step on and jump around or
30:03
Speaker 1: maybe I just did that. And the sun was starting
30:06
Speaker 1: to come up finally, and one of the it was
30:08
Speaker 1: raining at that point, so there was like water running
30:11
Speaker 1: down the mountain and the trails we were on, but
30:15
Speaker 1: there was a chain link like hanging down from one
30:22
Speaker 1: trail to the other and you could climb up it.
30:24
Speaker 1: It was like twenty feet and I don't know if
30:26
Speaker 1: I was a wasted or exhausted, but it was really
30:29
Speaker 1: hard for me to climb this chain link. I went
30:31
Speaker 1: first because I had invited Josh, and then I was
30:33
Speaker 1: kind of the leader of that party. I was just
30:35
Speaker 1: signing where we go, so I was like, yep, let's
30:38
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's just do it. It looks really dangerous
30:40
Speaker 1: because there's water raining down the chain link and it
30:42
Speaker 1: does look a little slippery, but you know, let's just
30:44
Speaker 1: go out there. And I did. I got to the
30:46
Speaker 1: top and my I was like twenty feet up and
30:49
Speaker 1: my arms were shaking, my hands, and I didn't think
30:52
Speaker 1: it was fear because I wasn't. I didn't feel, oh, no,
30:54
Speaker 1: I'm afraid I'm gonna fall. I was just like, oh,
30:57
Speaker 1: I think the fatigue and my muscles is just done.
31:01
Speaker 1: I don't think I am adequately physically prepared for this task.
31:06
Speaker 1: And then I just hung on because I feel like
31:08
Speaker 1: if I took another one, i'd fall off, and then
31:10
Speaker 1: I literally thought to myself, what are you just gonna die?
31:13
Speaker 1: Like I was making fun of myself. And then I
31:15
Speaker 1: was like, well no, and then I climbed up the
31:17
Speaker 1: rest of the chain link to the next trail and
31:20
Speaker 1: I leaned back over. I was like, guys, it's really
31:22
Speaker 1: slippery and dangerous. Please be careful. And Joshua was like, yeah, okay,
31:25
Speaker 1: and he just came up in like ten seconds. Was
31:27
Speaker 1: totally fine. And then the other guys two guys did too,
31:30
Speaker 1: and they were like, that was really hard. I was like, yeah,
31:33
Speaker 1: I agree, but you know, I'm fine, nothing to worry about.
31:37
Speaker 1: And that was actually really fun because we all climbed
31:39
Speaker 1: up this crazy chain that you didn't need to. It
31:41
Speaker 1: saved us like ten steps. But it was fun and
31:44
Speaker 1: a little scary and just a good adventure. Okay, So
31:48
Speaker 1: now we're up like five peaks at this point, and
31:50
Speaker 1: I think there were a couple more peaks, and I
31:54
Speaker 1: was like, josh you want to go this six peak?
31:56
Speaker 1: And I must have. You know what, I probably was
31:59
Speaker 1: drinking a bunch of going up, because there were some
32:01
Speaker 1: twenty four hour places. I can't imagine I was not
32:04
Speaker 1: drinking beer on top of that mountain. That's absurd for
32:07
Speaker 1: me to think. When I would ride my bike to mountains,
32:11
Speaker 1: I would carry packs of beer in my backpack. So anyway,
32:17
Speaker 1: I was like, let's go to that, you know, half
32:19
Speaker 1: a half a dozen peak over there, number six. And
32:24
Speaker 1: the two guys were like, oh, you know, we've already
32:27
Speaker 1: climbed like five peaks, and we keep saying yes, but
32:30
Speaker 1: like the sun's up, so we're gonna go get our bus.
32:33
Speaker 1: Our buses coming soon. So we got to like you know,
32:37
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, yeah, that's totally fine, Josh,
32:39
Speaker 1: and he was like yeah, And I remember when we
32:43
Speaker 1: were going on to this next peak, he was like,
32:45
Speaker 1: you know, I noticed that you always say probably or
32:49
Speaker 1: soon when you talk about when we're getting to the
32:52
Speaker 1: next peak or when the next thing we're going to is.
32:55
Speaker 1: You always say that's right up around here, it'll be
32:58
Speaker 1: up there in about twenty minutes. But then we get
33:00
Speaker 1: there in thirty minutes, and then you say there's like
33:02
Speaker 1: four peaks, but I'm pretty sure this is the sixth
33:05
Speaker 1: peak so far. I was like, yeah, it looks like
33:07
Speaker 1: there's like seven peaks. There might be nine. I don't know.
33:08
Speaker 1: There's a lot of peaks. He's like, I think that's
33:11
Speaker 1: how you keep going. You have like this incremental you know,
33:14
Speaker 1: you're never gonna quit because it's always there's one next thing.
33:18
Speaker 1: And I was like, that's exactly how I talk, so
33:21
Speaker 1: that I don't scare people who may not have the
33:24
Speaker 1: physical stamma or maniacal focus on exertion that I do
33:32
Speaker 1: prolonged exertion. And he's like, okay, okay, I got I
33:36
Speaker 1: got it now. Just good to know that that whenever
33:38
Speaker 1: you say we're gonna be there, it means we will
33:40
Speaker 1: get there eventually. It might just not be imminent. And
33:47
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, exactly right, we will get there,
33:49
Speaker 1: that's all I'm saying. I'm just saying in a way
33:51
Speaker 1: that makes everyone feel comfortable. So we've been on the
33:54
Speaker 1: mountain for twelve hours at this point, eleven hour or
33:57
Speaker 1: something like that from when we started climbing, and uh,
34:01
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, we never went to the
34:03
Speaker 1: the Death Walk, you know, the cliff death the death Place,
34:08
Speaker 1: and Josh just like what And I was like, there's
34:10
Speaker 1: this place where people die all the time, like constantly.
34:13
Speaker 1: We should check it out. And it's drizzling and he's
34:18
Speaker 1: just climbed seven peaks. He's like, yeah, I mean we're there.
34:21
Speaker 1: We should go, I guess, and he was game for it.
34:25
Speaker 1: So we went, and because he is a good sport
34:28
Speaker 1: and was a very good friend, and so we made
34:32
Speaker 1: our way over to that, which was like back near
34:34
Speaker 1: one of the other peaks, and I was like, oh,
34:36
Speaker 1: we got to walk back to like the first peak now,
34:39
Speaker 1: and it's like giant cliff, death plank Walk, dangerous, do
34:46
Speaker 1: not enter, and anytime it is raining, do not go here.
34:51
Speaker 1: And it was i'll say, heavily sprinkling at that point,
34:56
Speaker 1: to the point that small rivulets of water were all around,
34:59
Speaker 1: and there were barricades put up, like five sloppy barricades
35:06
Speaker 1: stacked in front of each other blocking the entrance to
35:09
Speaker 1: the death walk. And I was like, we should just
35:13
Speaker 1: go anyway, right though, And he's like, well, what do
35:16
Speaker 1: the signs say. I was like, well, they say don't
35:18
Speaker 1: go if it's raining, and it's like raining all around us,
35:21
Speaker 1: and then they say it's very dangerous and there are
35:24
Speaker 1: no handholds or anything. And he was like, well, we
35:27
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't. We probably shouldn't go on the death walk.
35:32
Speaker 1: Then that people die on all the time, and I
35:35
Speaker 1: was like, you know, I'll be right back, and I
35:38
Speaker 1: vaulted the collection of barricades like they were a picket fence,
35:42
Speaker 1: and I was about to steal an apple pie from
35:44
Speaker 1: the sill and made my way to a foreboding looking
35:49
Speaker 1: cave entrance that opened right next to it onto this
35:54
Speaker 1: like manhole sized hole with a couple rebar rods stuck
35:59
Speaker 1: into the stone of the mountain, and then there's a
36:02
Speaker 1: hole going down. So I went down. I climbed down it,
36:06
Speaker 1: and I was like, woah, these rebars are kind of
36:08
Speaker 1: slippery with all this rain, and then that opens out
36:14
Speaker 1: the mountain. As soon as you get to the bottom
36:17
Speaker 1: of the slippery rebar vertical tunnel, you turn around from
36:23
Speaker 1: the we'll call it a ladder, it is not, and
36:26
Speaker 1: you're facing the open valley that's like a thousand feet
36:31
Speaker 1: down or whatever. It's very far away, and there's a
36:35
Speaker 1: little little little bridge like two two by fives, like tiny,
36:44
Speaker 1: tiny little bridge, like I said, a foot across maybe,
36:48
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, I should check if it's safe,
36:53
Speaker 1: And so I went out and started like walking on
36:56
Speaker 1: it and stood looked over the edge. I was like,
36:59
Speaker 1: that is far and I looked at this. I was like,
37:01
Speaker 1: there's no barrier holding you inside. And I hear Josh
37:06
Speaker 1: climbing down behind me, and I start moving out, and
37:09
Speaker 1: I was like, well, it's wide enough for like feet,
37:12
Speaker 1: So I walk a couple steps, and it's slippery because
37:17
Speaker 1: it's raining, and this is a tiny bridge. And I
37:21
Speaker 1: wisely turned back and said, you know what, we could die.
37:23
Speaker 1: We could easily die here. This is very dangerous. There's
37:27
Speaker 1: nothing in the mountain wall, there's no barrier fence. This
37:30
Speaker 1: is a tiny bridge, and we have to walk for
37:33
Speaker 1: like hundreds of feet, like easily a couple hundred meters.
37:38
Speaker 1: And Josh was like, yep, okay, and we went back
37:40
Speaker 1: up the man hole and left. He did go out
37:44
Speaker 1: and check it out, also a couple steps, just to see,
37:47
Speaker 1: but it looked perilously foolish a path to take. So
37:53
Speaker 1: we did not. We declined, and we went back and
37:56
Speaker 1: we hopped back over those barriers, and boom, we climbed
38:01
Speaker 1: every peak that was on my offline maps app. So
38:05
Speaker 1: I was satisfied and Josh was like, thank God, and
38:08
Speaker 1: we went down the mountain, got some breakfast beers and
38:13
Speaker 1: Josh probably got breakfast, and then he was like, well,
38:18
Speaker 1: I need a souvenir because that was an adventure. That
38:20
Speaker 1: was a crazy adventure, and I need a souvenir. And
38:23
Speaker 1: so we walked around and looked at all this stuff
38:25
Speaker 1: and then there was a short sword and Josh was like, hmm,
38:30
Speaker 1: that's it, like I want a short sword. And I
38:33
Speaker 1: was like, oh okay, but you have to like get
38:36
Speaker 1: on a plane to go back to America and he's like,
38:39
Speaker 1: I can mail it whatever. Now, knives of any kind
38:43
Speaker 1: are basically illegal in China, and they're super illegal on trains,
38:47
Speaker 1: but I didn't think about that. So I haggled with
38:51
Speaker 1: the lady and she was like, yeah, for sure, you
38:54
Speaker 1: guys are America. That's cool. I don't know forty bucks
38:57
Speaker 1: and I was like, definitely, definitely about like five dollars
39:01
Speaker 1: and she was like, no way, I need like I
39:05
Speaker 1: don't know, thirty dollars. And I was like, that's cool.
39:07
Speaker 1: We can give you fifteen is fifteen dollars okay, that
39:12
Speaker 1: seems more than fair for this, and she was like,
39:15
Speaker 1: how about twenty. I was like seventeen. And we got
39:18
Speaker 1: the knife and I was like, oh, you know, you
39:22
Speaker 1: have to take this on the train and those are
39:24
Speaker 1: expressly prohibited. And he's like, oh, well shit, because he
39:28
Speaker 1: had just bought it, and so I thought and I
39:30
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I can probably just talk
39:32
Speaker 1: to him. And so we took it to the conductor
39:36
Speaker 1: and Josh was carrying basically nothing, but you could see
39:42
Speaker 1: but he was like carrying a knife. I can't remember
39:45
Speaker 1: if it was in his hand or if it was
39:46
Speaker 1: sticking out of his tiny camel back whatever, but it
39:49
Speaker 1: was very clear he was carrying a what is either
39:52
Speaker 1: a very large knife or a slightly less than normal
39:56
Speaker 1: sized sword. So as we're passing through the gate, their
40:00
Speaker 1: security guards like, hey, hey, is that a large knife?
40:05
Speaker 1: And I told him no, no, no, it's just a
40:08
Speaker 1: souvenir from that old grandma up the place. And he
40:11
Speaker 1: was like, well, you can't take any knives on the train,
40:13
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh no, I get It's definitely
40:15
Speaker 1: not a knife. It's like it doesn't even cut. It's
40:17
Speaker 1: like a souvenir thing. And we had checked and it
40:19
Speaker 1: was a very sharp sword, like yeah, it cuts, but
40:24
Speaker 1: I was like, it doesn't even cut. She just told
40:26
Speaker 1: me it's like like a souvenir old thing, you know,
40:29
Speaker 1: it's just the old grandma sell it, which is like
40:31
Speaker 1: the old grandma sell knickknacks on the bridge all the
40:33
Speaker 1: time and stuff. And he was like, hm, really, and
40:38
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, she told me. I asked her,
40:40
Speaker 1: and she was like, not a sword. What she had
40:43
Speaker 1: told me was that it was a real sword and
40:45
Speaker 1: it was very sharp, which she was right about. But
40:48
Speaker 1: I told the security guard, yes, she assured us that
40:51
Speaker 1: it's safe. It's even safe for the train, she said,
40:53
Speaker 1: because it doesn't have a blade, and it's in its
40:56
Speaker 1: scabbard at this point, so he can't look directly at
40:58
Speaker 1: the blade, which really would have given it a way
41:00
Speaker 1: because it was razor sharp. And and he's like, well, okay,
41:06
Speaker 1: just let us throw onto the train with a sword.
41:10
Speaker 1: And Josh took that sword home. He mailed it apparently
41:16
Speaker 1: to his house. I don't know if he still has it.
41:18
Speaker 1: I should check. He did have it for years, and
41:21
Speaker 1: I was very happy when I accidentally discovered that I
41:25
Speaker 1: was talking to him lair. I was like, do you
41:27
Speaker 1: remember that mountain thing weak line for a while years
41:30
Speaker 1: later and he was like, oh, yes, I still have
41:32
Speaker 1: the sword, like I still have the sword displayed in
41:36
Speaker 1: my home, and that was pretty cool. To find out.
41:39
Speaker 1: You know, I never know how long these things are
41:41
Speaker 1: gonna go. I have like five points written on my
41:45
Speaker 1: outline that I was like, oh, I should probably mention
41:47
Speaker 1: this stuff. And now it's been almost forty five minutes,
41:50
Speaker 1: whereas all right down like a whole page and I'm
41:52
Speaker 1: done in fifteen Fascinating to hear behind the scenes stories,
41:56
Speaker 1: isn't it. I wish I had a better one. Sorry,
41:58
Speaker 1: not deleting this. Got to get those minutes up, you
42:01
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Okay, So my last story is
42:04
Speaker 1: kind of a cool down story. I started climbing mountains,
42:09
Speaker 1: not because of the very good reasons that they were
42:11
Speaker 1: in Crouching Tiger and Hit and Dragon like I didn't know,
42:13
Speaker 1: but still climb, but that I wanted some alone time.
42:19
Speaker 1: I lived when I started living in China in a
42:22
Speaker 1: very small town where I was the second white person
42:25
Speaker 1: anyone had ever seen. And I know that because everyone
42:28
Speaker 1: in the village told me that, and the first person
42:30
Speaker 1: was the guy who owned the school who hired me,
42:32
Speaker 1: who already lived there, and a ten minute bike ride
42:36
Speaker 1: outside like I went to the next village over basically,
42:40
Speaker 1: which is like ninety minutes outside of Beijing by bicycle.
42:43
Speaker 1: It's close to a populated center, I mean, and everyone
42:46
Speaker 1: there was like, whoa, there's a white person here. And
42:49
Speaker 1: that village was like, you're the first white person we've
42:52
Speaker 1: ever seen, because the guy I knew apparently never went
42:55
Speaker 1: to any of the other villages. So that was are
43:00
Speaker 1: in and of itself. But because of that, I got
43:03
Speaker 1: a lot of attention, and every now and then I'd
43:07
Speaker 1: be like, boy, everyone staring at me every single time
43:11
Speaker 1: I leave my house and not saying anything, but just
43:15
Speaker 1: staring is a lot of attent. Too much attention for
43:19
Speaker 1: me after months, So I was like, how can I
43:24
Speaker 1: like kind of get away from the pack and you know,
43:26
Speaker 1: kind of get all have some me time, get some
43:30
Speaker 1: alone time again, because I do a lot of solitary activities.
43:35
Speaker 1: And then I looked around and I saw a mountain
43:37
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, right, I live next to
43:39
Speaker 1: a tiny mountain range. Maybe I should see how far
43:44
Speaker 1: away they are. And then I just started walking toward
43:46
Speaker 1: one of the mountains and then I was, all of
43:49
Speaker 1: a sudden halfway to the mountain and it was much bigger,
43:51
Speaker 1: and I kept walking and then there was a path
43:53
Speaker 1: leading up into the mountain and it took like an
43:56
Speaker 1: hour to walk before I got to there, but I
43:58
Speaker 1: was like, okay, I can just talk to mountains, and
44:02
Speaker 1: that became regular, Like once every other day, I would
44:06
Speaker 1: probably go ride my bike or just walk to the
44:10
Speaker 1: mountain and climb up the mountain, which took forty five
44:13
Speaker 1: minutes we'll say, to the top because they were tiny,
44:15
Speaker 1: and then just walk along for hours. And I was
44:20
Speaker 1: enjoying just walking being by myself. But after a while
44:23
Speaker 1: I was like, I should do something, and that is
44:25
Speaker 1: how I started listening to audio books, which I had
44:28
Speaker 1: never listened to before, and I listened to all the
44:33
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones that were written at the time. Did
44:35
Speaker 1: not find out that that series was not finished until
44:38
Speaker 1: I got to the fifth book or whatever it was.
44:41
Speaker 1: This was before the TV show even came out, but
44:44
Speaker 1: everyone was like, this is the best series. You should
44:47
Speaker 1: totally read it. And I was like, wow, it is good.
44:49
Speaker 1: This will be such a good story. And then it
44:50
Speaker 1: just ended and he was like, it'll be out next
44:53
Speaker 1: year and now it's been fifteen years, and he was lying.
44:56
Speaker 1: And then I just kept going out onto the mountains
44:59
Speaker 1: and listening to audio books. You're listening to podcasts. I
45:01
Speaker 1: also really got into podcasts while I was in China
45:05
Speaker 1: and walking these mountains, and I still do that now,
45:10
Speaker 1: listen to something and walk around for hours. That's how
45:13
Speaker 1: I get a lot of my exercise, and that became
45:16
Speaker 1: a passion. That's how I started climbing mountains. And then
45:18
Speaker 1: I was like, well, even these dinky mountains right next
45:21
Speaker 1: to the city are really cool. What did the other
45:23
Speaker 1: mountains look like? And that's how I started going to
45:26
Speaker 1: all the other mountains, including random mountains I would choose
45:31
Speaker 1: on my offline map. There was just like a triangle
45:34
Speaker 1: and that meant that a peak was there, So I
45:36
Speaker 1: would check the elevation of a random peak. Like if
45:40
Speaker 1: I was working a lot at the time, or I
45:42
Speaker 1: just didn't have the time to go for a full trip,
45:45
Speaker 1: I would get on my bike and I would ride
45:46
Speaker 1: my bike for like four or six hours in a
45:49
Speaker 1: direction toward a peak that I saw on my map
45:54
Speaker 1: and be like, when I climb that one, it's like,
45:56
Speaker 1: you know, five thousand feet, and I'll do that, and
46:00
Speaker 1: I just it was really cool. I would go through
46:02
Speaker 1: all these new towns that I had never seen before,
46:05
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts or audio books on the way there.
46:09
Speaker 1: I had a hammock in my backpack if I just
46:11
Speaker 1: in case I stayed overnight, because you know, sometimes I'm
46:14
Speaker 1: riding my bike really far, my sleeping bag in case
46:18
Speaker 1: it got cold. If it was cold, I didn't bring it.
46:20
Speaker 1: If it wasn't. Yeah, I had a few essentials. I
46:23
Speaker 1: would grab like a beer every hour and have a
46:26
Speaker 1: beer break and then keep riding wherever I was gone.
46:29
Speaker 1: And that was so much fun, going to new places
46:32
Speaker 1: where I knew nothing, and everybody was like, what the
46:36
Speaker 1: heck is this foreign are doing here? This is weird.
46:41
Speaker 1: He shouldn't be here. And I just saw things. I
46:45
Speaker 1: just you I they're not in a book. You know.
46:49
Speaker 1: There's this Buddha that's not in a book anywhere, but
46:51
Speaker 1: it's sitting there in the mountain. And there's a mountain
46:54
Speaker 1: that's not in any of the books that no one
46:56
Speaker 1: ever wrote about, but it has a whole path and
46:59
Speaker 1: you can climb it, and there's a pagoda, and there's
47:01
Speaker 1: a beautiful like garden and there's jade sculptures, and like
47:05
Speaker 1: it's fascinating just going to random places and finding out
47:08
Speaker 1: what there is. So I loved adventuring on my bike,
47:11
Speaker 1: going to random mountains, and I guess we'll actually finish
47:15
Speaker 1: out with this story, which is fitting. It's a night climb.
47:19
Speaker 1: So I rode my bike for a few hours to
47:23
Speaker 1: one of the triangles on my map, and it was
47:26
Speaker 1: always fun getting there because I don't even know how
47:27
Speaker 1: to get there. Sometimes the roads would be closed, but
47:30
Speaker 1: there's you know, food, everything's great. So I rode there
47:35
Speaker 1: and I got there and it was like five pm.
47:38
Speaker 1: The sun was starting to set, and there's the ticket
47:40
Speaker 1: office and I was like, hello, one ticket. He was like, ah, sorry,
47:44
Speaker 1: we just closed. It's like five point fifteen. Yeah, we
47:47
Speaker 1: just closed the gates. I'm sorry. And I was like, oh,
47:50
Speaker 1: that's okay. Can you just sell me a ticket and
47:52
Speaker 1: then just let me go through and I'll come back
47:54
Speaker 1: down when I'm done. He's like, I want to, And
47:59
Speaker 1: the thing is, what I asked for almost always gets
48:02
Speaker 1: agreed to, at least in those days. It seems like
48:06
Speaker 1: it still does outside of Beijing. Inside of Beijing kind
48:09
Speaker 1: of a problem with she these days. But that being said,
48:12
Speaker 1: less than one year ago, I climbed a mountain that
48:14
Speaker 1: you aren't supposed to climb, and I went into a
48:17
Speaker 1: forbidden part of it, and the security guards were very
48:19
Speaker 1: nice and just explained to me after They were like,
48:22
Speaker 1: what are you doing on the forbidden mountain? And they
48:25
Speaker 1: let me go back down. I explained that I was
48:27
Speaker 1: just hiking the mountain and I didn't know it was forbidden,
48:30
Speaker 1: which I actually didn't know. I couldn't climb in that
48:32
Speaker 1: particular path, and they were fine about it. But in
48:36
Speaker 1: Beijing in particular, it did seem more laid back before.
48:40
Speaker 1: In those days, you were like, do you think I
48:43
Speaker 1: can just do it anyway? Though, and very often the
48:47
Speaker 1: answer from whoever was in charge was like, eh, yeah, okay, whatever.
48:52
Speaker 1: But this guy was like, no, I'm sorry, it's against
48:55
Speaker 1: the rules. I can't do it. You can't climb the
48:57
Speaker 1: mountain because it's night. It's dangerous, you know. Sorry. And
49:01
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, all right, that's okay, And so
49:05
Speaker 1: I left and I walked into the tree line across
49:09
Speaker 1: the street. I rowed my bike into the tree line
49:11
Speaker 1: across the street, pushed it in, set up my hammock,
49:16
Speaker 1: took out a beer, watched a TV show or read
49:19
Speaker 1: a book or something on I think I was reading
49:20
Speaker 1: a book actually on my phone, drank a beer and
49:24
Speaker 1: ate snacks while I waited for him to leave, and
49:26
Speaker 1: he packed up his office, he locked it, he closed
49:29
Speaker 1: the gate, locked that left and I waited like twenty
49:33
Speaker 1: more minutes, let the light get a little little bit darker,
49:37
Speaker 1: and then I walked out of the woods with just
49:40
Speaker 1: my backpack on, a couple of beers, a couple of snacks,
49:43
Speaker 1: and I climbed the I don't know, like ten foot fence.
49:47
Speaker 1: It wasn't super high and it was like a grated
49:50
Speaker 1: iron thing. So I just climbed up it, jumped over
49:53
Speaker 1: the gate and just walked straight up and climbed that
49:56
Speaker 1: mountain in the dark. Came down six hours late a
50:00
Speaker 1: while later, and it was just this great fun adventure
50:06
Speaker 1: climbing a mountain at night. It was there wasn't anything
50:10
Speaker 1: particularly remarkable other than just I found a new adventure.
50:15
Speaker 1: I got to climb the mountain. It's a Chinese mount
50:18
Speaker 1: so there's like pats and stairs, and it was a
50:20
Speaker 1: little dangerous in the pitch black, but not really dangerous.
50:23
Speaker 1: And I had my phone and I saw these fountains
50:25
Speaker 1: and statues, and it's night and there's clouds and there's ghosts.
50:30
Speaker 1: You know. The feeling of atmospheric spirit is just hanging
50:35
Speaker 1: in the air in the in the witching hour air,
50:39
Speaker 1: there was actually some cool mist and fog rolling around,
50:43
Speaker 1: and it was just this beautiful, serene, especially serene experience
50:49
Speaker 1: with clean air because I had, you know, three hours
50:51
Speaker 1: outside of Beijing, and it felt like no one ever
50:55
Speaker 1: climbed this place and it was just very cool. So
50:58
Speaker 1: I got to the top, I hung out, surprise, surprise,
51:01
Speaker 1: I had a beer, and then I climbed my way
51:04
Speaker 1: back down, went down a different path than it took
51:06
Speaker 1: on the way up, because there was a different path
51:09
Speaker 1: and it wasn't even on the it wasn't on my
51:11
Speaker 1: offline map or anything, but it just there were steps
51:15
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, it probably goes down to
51:16
Speaker 1: the bottom, and it did. I just followed it all
51:18
Speaker 1: the way to the bottom, a couple different stairways, and
51:21
Speaker 1: I got there, climbed back over the fence, went back
51:25
Speaker 1: into the forest, collected my stof actually, you know, and
51:27
Speaker 1: I napped for like a couple hours, and then I
51:30
Speaker 1: biked back at four in the morning, five in the
51:32
Speaker 1: morning or something, and it was great. And I had
51:36
Speaker 1: that kind of adventure climbing random mountains dozens of times
51:41
Speaker 1: because how fun is it to climb a mountain by
51:44
Speaker 1: yourself in the serene quiet of just natural sounds, but
51:50
Speaker 1: you have a walkway up the mountain, you have some
51:52
Speaker 1: cool music to listen to or whatever, and you're just
51:57
Speaker 1: vibing with nature and the ground at rock face or whatever.
52:01
Speaker 1: It was so cool, and so I did that all
52:04
Speaker 1: the time. Every weekend, I would ride out to a
52:07
Speaker 1: another random triangle and I always put a check mark
52:09
Speaker 1: on the once I did, and I had dozens of those,
52:12
Speaker 1: but it was just for fun. I didn't even learn
52:15
Speaker 1: the names of most of the mountains that is night climb.
52:19
Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm just sharing these stories. I hope you
52:25
Speaker 1: liked these stories. I really like talking about them again,
52:29
Speaker 1: reliving these experiences. So I'll see you on the next one.
52:35
Speaker 1: You know what, I just realized that I've only talked
52:37
Speaker 1: about the Chinese mountains, and I've been in like thirty countries.
52:41
Speaker 1: I definitely have more mountain stories. Okay, I will talk
52:47
Speaker 1: about those mountain stories on the next one. Actually, you know,
52:51
Speaker 1: that'll just be the next one, you know what, But
52:53
Speaker 1: on this one, I just thought of a very nice
52:56
Speaker 1: memory I had, So I'm going to tell you one
53:00
Speaker 1: final story with a bit of the bubbly in it
53:04
Speaker 1: that has to do with the same mountain I encountered.
53:08
Speaker 1: The aggressive monk was a bottle of champagne. It was
53:15
Speaker 1: one of my first dates after getting serious with my
53:21
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time, and we just felt very comfortable
53:26
Speaker 1: as a couple, and so we were going to hike
53:28
Speaker 1: a mountain near her hometown called Tai Shan, and I
53:35
Speaker 1: wanted to make it special, so I brought like a
53:40
Speaker 1: bunch of different kinds of snacks in my backpack, just
53:43
Speaker 1: a normal sized backpack and a large bottle of champagne
53:48
Speaker 1: that didn't even fit in the backpack. It was actually
53:51
Speaker 1: a day pack. It wasn't even a backpack. So there
53:54
Speaker 1: was a huge bottle of champagne, like six different snacks
54:00
Speaker 1: than my metal water bottle. And I was very careful
54:04
Speaker 1: to separate my metal water bottle from the champagne bottle
54:08
Speaker 1: so she didn't hear it clinking with like a package
54:11
Speaker 1: of beef jerk or something, I can't remember what it was.
54:14
Speaker 1: And this was like a three hour climb, and I
54:18
Speaker 1: didn't even want to open my bag to get my
54:21
Speaker 1: water bottle whenever we took breaks, because I was afraid
54:24
Speaker 1: she would see the champagne bottle and I would spoil
54:27
Speaker 1: the surprise. I had plan, but it was just innocuous
54:32
Speaker 1: enough that she didn't notice this giant bottle sticking out
54:36
Speaker 1: of there. And when she heard the wine sloshing, you know,
54:39
Speaker 1: it sounds like a water bottle. Yeah. So that was
54:46
Speaker 1: every twenty minutes thirty minutes because I climbed mountains a lot,
54:50
Speaker 1: and she had never climbed a mountain before, so we
54:53
Speaker 1: had to stop very often, and she would take out
54:56
Speaker 1: water and we'd sit and talk for a few minutes
54:58
Speaker 1: and then keep walking for another twenty or thirty minutes
55:00
Speaker 1: and then stop. So in the ten breaks that it
55:05
Speaker 1: took to climb this mountain, which was seventeen hundred meters
55:09
Speaker 1: like a little over five thousand feet, I don't think
55:14
Speaker 1: I drank water. I might have done it when she
55:17
Speaker 1: was talking to the monk or there was there might
55:19
Speaker 1: there must have been some point. But it took, yeah,
55:22
Speaker 1: three and a half hours something, a very long time
55:24
Speaker 1: to get to the top. And I was always so
55:28
Speaker 1: worried that like something was gonna clink in the bag
55:31
Speaker 1: or she would notice. And she even asked me once,
55:33
Speaker 1: she was like, why is your bag so full? You
55:35
Speaker 1: usually don't bring anything, and I just told her something
55:38
Speaker 1: like I forgot to take my work clothes out of
55:39
Speaker 1: there or something like that, so it's really full, but
55:42
Speaker 1: it just has my water bottle. And she was like
55:45
Speaker 1: At other times she would ask me, aren't you thirsty.
55:47
Speaker 1: I was like, no, no, no, I'm fine, I'm fine.
55:50
Speaker 1: And we made our way up the mouth. We met
55:52
Speaker 1: the aggressive monk and she was like, you should have
55:56
Speaker 1: just let him say Chinese people are stronger, and I
56:00
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, but I'm not enlightened yet. And then
56:05
Speaker 1: I mean three and a half hours later. It was
56:08
Speaker 1: a long track and it's very steep at parts, and
56:12
Speaker 1: we made it to the summit and I was like,
56:14
Speaker 1: oh my god, we're here. We're here, and I asked
56:20
Speaker 1: where we should sit, and we chose a little spot
56:24
Speaker 1: alongside the path, and she went off to go throw
56:27
Speaker 1: away some of her trash because she had snacks and
56:30
Speaker 1: her water bottle too. I think she was going to
56:32
Speaker 1: go buy another bottle of water from one of the
56:34
Speaker 1: vendors at the top also, and I was like, perfect,
56:38
Speaker 1: And as soon as she walked away, I zipped over
56:41
Speaker 1: my bag and pulled out the thing of champagne and
56:44
Speaker 1: pulled out these two glasses. I think I brought two
56:49
Speaker 1: plastic glasses or two plastic cups as well, and I
56:53
Speaker 1: laid out like beef jerky and a small piece of
56:56
Speaker 1: cake that I had bought for her, and all of
56:58
Speaker 1: these like snacks, like five or six snacks. And when
57:02
Speaker 1: she came back, the look on her face, the smile
57:05
Speaker 1: that lit up her face was exactly what I had
57:10
Speaker 1: been hoping for and why I had tried so hard
57:14
Speaker 1: to make this a surprise, because now she had completed
57:18
Speaker 1: her first hike, her first full mountain hike, like a
57:22
Speaker 1: real one. Even though there are stairs up the mountains,
57:25
Speaker 1: it's not easy to continuously climb a mountain for three
57:28
Speaker 1: and a half hours. And we poured out the wine.
57:35
Speaker 1: Oh you know what, we didn't have cups, and I
57:40
Speaker 1: realized I didn't bring cups. I just remembered this. What
57:44
Speaker 1: I did instead was I took two empty water bottles
57:48
Speaker 1: that we had, and I had my knife with me,
57:51
Speaker 1: and I cut off the top half of them so
57:53
Speaker 1: that we just had the bottom half of the plastic bottles.
57:56
Speaker 1: And those were how were plastic cups, and those small
58:00
Speaker 1: plastic cups that she appreciated because she couldn't find any
58:03
Speaker 1: cups after she realized we needed some. We're just this
58:06
Speaker 1: nice little detail in a story from a newly committed
58:12
Speaker 1: relationship where people are comfortable with each other and realize
58:15
Speaker 1: that we don't care about the cups, like we're having
58:18
Speaker 1: an experience on top of a mountain. And I popped
58:21
Speaker 1: the bottle of champagne, and she gave a cute, you know,
58:24
Speaker 1: jolt of surprise when the when it popped off. It
58:27
Speaker 1: might have been her first champagne or like her second.
58:30
Speaker 1: I know it was right in the beginning because she
58:33
Speaker 1: had never had champagne before, but we had a couple
58:36
Speaker 1: times because she had graduated in medical school or something
58:40
Speaker 1: something big happened for her, she passed a test maybe
58:42
Speaker 1: I can't remember. And I poured the champagne for her
58:48
Speaker 1: and we toasted, And then after the moment was that,
58:52
Speaker 1: I was like, ah, and I felt like my whole
58:54
Speaker 1: body relaxed in relief, like I didn't have to keep
58:56
Speaker 1: up the charade of oh, yes, I just have a
58:59
Speaker 1: super crazy stuffed backpack of clothes and normal things, normal
59:05
Speaker 1: things that don't clink around. But she was so happy,
59:09
Speaker 1: and we talked on the top of the mountain and
59:14
Speaker 1: enjoyed our bottle of wine, and she could drink. She
59:19
Speaker 1: didn't drink a crazy amount, but it was nice. Whenever
59:21
Speaker 1: we went to dinner, she would have a little to drink,
59:23
Speaker 1: which is very very rare in China. In China, if
59:27
Speaker 1: they drink half a bottle of beer, they are asleep,
59:31
Speaker 1: snoring on the table or puking. So she could hold
59:35
Speaker 1: her own. We had a few glasses of wine and
59:37
Speaker 1: then finished up our food, and we just kind of
59:40
Speaker 1: hung out on the top and looked out at the
59:43
Speaker 1: nice view, and then made our way back down and
59:48
Speaker 1: went back to Beijing. I guess I don't really remember,
59:52
Speaker 1: but yeah, that is another very nice memory of my
59:59
Speaker 1: time on Chinese mountains. I hold it very dear and
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Speaker 1: very clearly. I believe that particular adventure was on Taishan,
1:00:07
Speaker 1: which is a cool mountain you should go climb. Yeah,
1:00:11
Speaker 1: if you want to talk to me, I am at
1:00:12
Speaker 1: a bit of a rambler Gmail dot com. I will
1:00:14
Speaker 1: get back to you if I am at all able.
1:00:17
Speaker 1: I definitely read all the messages. Thank you so much
1:00:20
Speaker 1: for listening, and I'll catch you on the next one.