China - Emei Shan

Mount Emei or Emei Shan is a high mountain in Sichuan province, China. Its name is usually written as "峨眉山", which is translated as Mount Emei or 'Emeishan' which mean 'high' or 'lofty'.

Mt. Emei sits at 3,099 metres (10,167 ft) and it’s the highest of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains of China. Administratively, Mt. Emei is located near the county-level city of the same name of Emeishan City, which in part of the prefecture city of LeShan.

Emeishan was too high so we need to take a cable car up to the Buddhist temple. Yet, we still need to climb up the stairs and hills just to reach to the top of the mountain. We went during Spring Season somewhere in April yet the weather was super-duper cold like the Winter Season.

Nobody and none of us can stand this over freezing cold weather so most of them esp.the old aunties actually rented the winter jackets at RMB30. Lucky I brought along my Winter Jacket although I knew it’s in Spring Season but just in case I needed it most, I have a safety jacket with me. 

Without it, I think none of us can really survived this cold. It’s -5dc with rainy season, heavy snow last night and when the wind blew through us, ‘Seram’ to think it back what we have gone through. Thank God we have survived it anyway. 

As you can see from this photo, it was not clear enough like the 1st photo because it was still raining and such bad weather.Everyone trying to go into this temple and I went in for praying. No photo was allowed inside just like any other sacred temples.

It was so beautiful inside this temple. After the praying and offering, we went out for more pictures and hope the rain would stop or else, how to go back only the God knows.

Samantabhadra  is a bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism associated with Buddhist practice and meditation, also called the Wisdom(Zi Wai Pusa). I went around the peak of Emeishan and visit as many places as possible. Never wana miss a thing here after such a hard climb up here.

Not only the long climbing up can ‘patahkan semangat kami’(dispirited) but the shivering cold inside the body once again ‘melemahkan lagi semangat kami(dispirited again). So the will power in our mental strength need to be real strong to motivate us to reach up to the peak.

We were forced to be mentally strong…Haha. In fact, while some U-turn back, I decided to stop for a deep breath and enjoy the shopping along the steep hill. And at one stop, I bought some hot potatoes and shared it with the monkeys around the forest.

Many people stopped, watched us and asked me to be careful with the wild monkeys. But when I peeled it for the monkeys to enjoy it with me, I already told them, “Be good monkeys, don’t fight or I would stop giving to any of you”(in Mandarin).

They only ate their own portions that I've divided for each of them, none of them were fighting or disturbing me. It was so fun, watching them enjoying the food that I’m enjoying as well. It felt so good as the hot sweet potato actually kept my body warm enough and gave me sufficient energy to climb up again.

Yea, there were few old-timers who rather stayed at the restaurant resting as they knew they couldn’t survived that kinda cold even with the winter jacket. And the route to reach up the peak of Emeishan was never easy for us . It was such a great experience for all of us on this hard journey up to the high mountain of EmeiShan. 

Not only it was too cold up there after a heavy snow last night, the wind and rain  falls that really testing our endurance and mental power to reach up to the mountain top. No wonder all the Chinese love this song called 'High Ge' - Mountain Top', including myself. To listen to this song, you can check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31e97P8Lc6w 

The song actually expressed my overall feelings, deep emotions and satisfaction reaching up here. Really indescriable feelings. We ended the Emeishan tour with a great Vegetarian lunch before we headed back to Chengdu. We were so tired, we fell asleep on the way back to Chengdu for more shopping trip. Such a great memory in Sichuan, China!