Two Days Living in the Mountains

These two days I am staying in a sparsely populated mountain valley. In the valley there is a small village of fewer than a hundred people. Halfway up the mountain is a place for tourists to stay, accommodating thirty or forty people. Adding villagers and visitors together, the whole valley holds fewer than a hundred and fifty people.

There is not even a bus in the village; the nearest bus stop is a three- or four-hour walk away. Such a valley is utterly unlike the noisy city. The mountain folk rise with the sun and rest with its setting, and I have come to live as they do.

After a spell of autumn rain, the mountain village is even quieter. After meals, walking through the village, one rarely sees anyone moving about outside.

The natural scenery and ecological environment here are well preserved, and the village is clean. Mountain streams gather into pools of clear water; on the hillsides and along the village roads stand towering trees, and trees a person can barely encircle are common here, some perhaps over a hundred years old.

Thanks to the support of the state's policies for new rural construction, the mountain village has been built beautifully. Only, as in most Chinese countryside, the young people have all left to work in the cities, and those left behind in the village are all elderly.

In this village there is an especially wealthy businessman who, out of love for his hometown, has invested money to beautify it and built a guesthouse in this valley, dedicated to receiving tourists who want to spend a few days living in the mountains.

But because the location is truly remote and the transport inconvenient, there are very few visitors. Yet this is precisely what I like most; if it were as bustling as a busy market town, it would lose the charm of mountain life.

I came here by chance. Here there are rolling mountains; after a spell of mountain rain, strands of immortal mist rise from the peaks. Here there are also quiet, wild valleys, through which the mountain streams babble year-round without ceasing.

There is little level land in the mountains, so the mountain folk have opened up plots at the foot and on the slopes to grow various fruit trees. Peach, mountain apricot, and plum are the main varieties. In the orchards they also set aside small plots for various vegetables and corn, living self-sufficiently.

On my walks I buy fresh fruit and tomatoes from the mountain folk; they taste far better than those bought in the city. The prices are reasonable; the villagers have no scales and do not measure—for ten yuan they give me a whole pile, enough for the whole day.

The villagers are simple and honest; on their bronze-tanned faces the smiles are plain and unadorned.

I am a child raised in the countryside; looking at them is like looking at my own townsfolk. When they give me their simple, honest smiles, I return the same.

The way country people build friendship is simple; in such friendly smiles the distance between them closes, and the transaction becomes one of friendship.

I came here for work, and for work I must leave after only two days. Coming, I knew nothing of this place; leaving, I am reluctant to go.

I do not know in what year or month I will have complete freedom, able to choose to live in such a valley, among these mountain folk, rising with the sun and resting with its setting, living in nature.

Before leaving, I took my staff and walked, measuring the whole of this secluded valley with my feet. I do not know whether I will have the chance to come again; many beautiful encounters in life are once only. Precisely because of this, they are all the more precious.