Disclaimer: This post was originally written in Chinese and translated into English by GPT-5.2.
If you asked me to use one word—just one word—to describe how Yuelu Mountain makes me feel, I think I would, without the slightest hesitation, choose “charming.” Li Bai has the line, “We never tire of looking at each other—only Jingting Mountain,” and Xin Qiji has the line, “I find green mountains so charming; I expect the green mountains find me the same,” which I love most. Of course, Yuelu Mountain’s “charm” also refers to its graceful beauty and varied allure, but for me, it points more to a tacit understanding that dawns upon the heart, a lingering tenderness that makes one loath to part. I think Yuelu Mountain understands human feelings—especially mine.
However, my true bond with Yuelu Mountain came very, very late. By then I was already a junior. My story with Yuelu Mountain is not particularly dramatic, but why not tell it?
The first time I climbed Yuelu Mountain was on a weekend after freshman military training; the second time was to cope with a freshman-year ideological and moral cultivation course, so I went up Yuelu Mountain again. One was out of curiosity, one out of obligation—neither seems worth mentioning, because I can’t really remember anything. Throughout my entire freshman year, it seems I only climbed Yuelu Mountain those two times.
I don’t know why, but though less than two years had passed since freshman year ended, the freshman year in my memory already feels very old, distant, even a bit unfamiliar. There weren’t many boys in the School of Chinese Language and Literature; as a freshman just entering campus, after military training came the freshman soccer cup, the freshman basketball cup, and preparations for various individual and group events for the school sports meet—you couldn’t dodge them. And once those were done, you were immediately faced with all kinds of course papers and final exams. The second semester of freshman year was much the same: after a bit of exploring Changsha, I was stuck shuttling between competitions, classes, papers, English training, and finals, unable to move. Although I later was lucky enough to receive the National Scholarship, that was nothing more than a lucky reward. Living like a puppet—first controlled by others, then controlled by myself—busy and chaotic, like a stray dog dragging its ashen tail, wandering through a journey in anxious unease. This is not the kind of life I’m willing to live now.
Things improved somewhat in sophomore year, but without any essential change. Compared with freshman year, sophomore year had more breakthroughs, more progress; my mindset also opened up and I wasn’t so anxious. But later I discovered that although I had done so many things and created so many “records,” I didn’t truly identify with the meaning of these things in the way others did—at least, I wasn’t truly happy because of this “meaning.” I felt somewhat hollow and lost. Life in sophomore year began to become quite orderly, and I had quite a lot of time for solitude and reflection, yet I was never at ease with this order—behind this order there might also be a lack of meaning. What should I do? I didn’t know, so I could only wait and see.
It seems I only went up Yuelu Mountain once during my entire sophomore year, with friends from off campus; anyway, I only remember this one time. At that point Yuelu Mountain was not important to me, and I had no particular feelings for her. Sophomore year passed quietly.
The change happened in the first semester of junior year. In the summer after sophomore year, to add some variety to a bland life, I made a trip of more than twenty days—Changsha—Guangzhou—Macau—Taiwan—Xiamen—and later went to Hong Kong for a week, seeing quite a few mountains and waters, and also quite a few human feelings and worldly principles. Although I spent a lot of that summer on the road, I also, under pressure, accomplished something I had prepared for a year. These experiences are hard to put into words; yet it was precisely this inexpressibility and the urge to explain that forgets its words that made me begin to have a thought that seemed to come from nowhere: why not set aside some time every week to climb Yuelu Mountain, explore various wild trails and little paths, and think about life along the way? Getting up at 6:30 every day at school—does that really make sense? Life needs rhythm; it needs ritual. A weekly ascent of Yuelu Mountain—let’s try it.
And so began my “weekly ascent of Yuelu Mountain” in the first semester of junior year.
At first, Yuelu Mountain felt no different from my impressions from the previous three ascents—ultimately “plain and unremarkable.” Born in Fujian, I had mountains in my eyes since childhood; Yuelu Mountain’s shape and height are just one among countless nameless mountains. After growing up, I also visited many famous mountains and scenic spots. In terms of fame, Yuelu Mountain is far inferior to national- and world-class famous mountains like Wuyi Mountain, Mount Hua, Shaoguan Danxia Mountain, and Wudang Mountain; in cultural resonance, natural scenery, and visitor experience, it is naturally hard to compare. In terms of personal feeling, even as a local famous mountain, Yuelu Mountain does not necessarily surpass Fuzhou’s Gushan, Guangzhou’s Baiyun Mountain, Zhuhai’s Banzhang Mountain, or even Fuqing’s Wuma Mountain—just a mountain, after all. You have your special features, I have mine; that mountain, this mountain—what’s so great about it? When traveling in Taiwan, I climbed Keelung Mountain in Jiufen, and watched the sunrise on Mount Taiwu in Kinmen, captivated by the scenery—and that kind of experience is something Yuelu Mountain has never given me. Not to this day.
I find Yuelu Mountain so charming, but this is only a very personal feeling; I cannot, just because I pick up my pen to write an essay, cover up my faults with fine words. Yuelu Mountain’s charm lies not in anything else, but in the sense of familiarity, closeness, and trust that naturally arises from repeated, trivial, subtle contact—and these are precisely what we mean by tacit understanding. I think that when Li Bai gazed affectionately at Jingting Mountain, and when Xin Qiji admired the green mountains in mutual appreciation, it was probably no more than this. Yuelu Mountain was once a 5A scenic area and later had the designation removed; Jingting Mountain is a 4A scenic area; I don’t know how many A’s Xin Qiji’s green mountains are—probably 4A as well. But in any case, when a mountain and a person establish a tacit bond, the mountain’s outward reputation is all fleeting as clouds; only those with a mindful heart, from a thousand miles away and a thousand years later, seeing this mountain, this person, this feeling, this scene, can alone smile in sudden understanding—yet say nothing.
I alone love Yuelu Mountain’s endless wild trails and little paths; each time I walk them, I see something new. These wild trails and little paths lead to various places on Yuelu Mountain: Yuelu Temple, Yunlu Palace, Huang Xing’s Tomb, Cai E’s Tomb, Chen Tianhua’s Tomb, Zhang Huizan’s Tomb, Jiao Dafeng’s Tomb—needless to mention them. Even the seldom-visited yet still somewhat well-known Ding Wenjiang Tomb and the tomb of the fallen soldiers of the 73rd Army in the War of Resistance can be left unmentioned. When, by chance, I encountered a small tombstone by a small path, I realized that what truly moves people about Yuelu Mountain is not the tempestuous history she witnessed, but the memory she bears. The small tombstone was erected on an “auspicious day in May 2010,” 53 years after, to commemorate “Old Lady Zhou Qiquan, Mother Yang,” who “passed away in June 1957.” The tombstone is very small, and placed by a secluded roadside where no one notices, yet the deceased’s daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandchild could, after years of hazy time, erect a grave to commemorate long-hazy past events. I think there must be many moving little stories in it, and these little stories are intertwined with the whole uncontrollable grand history and grand backdrop, blurred and unclear. The little paths on Yuelu Mountain lead in the end to everywhere—hard to put into words. There are many small tombstones or small places like this along the way, also hard to put into words. Other mountains may naturally also have so many wild trails and little paths, but I have never walked them; and even if I did, they might not give people a sense of novelty like Yuelu Mountain does, and the small stirrings of emotion that come after that novelty. In this respect, Yuelu Mountain is unique.
In fact, each time I climbed Yuelu Mountain in junior year, I required myself to take a different route every time. Whenever I climbed, several lines from the American poet Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” would appear in my mind:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
Whenever I came to this part, my solitary walk on Yuelu Mountain took on a special charm, and each time Yuelu Mountain did not disappoint me, always giving me something new.
I enjoy the feeling of walking alone on these wild trails and little paths. Li Bai and Xin Qiji could borrow poetry or lyrics to create an aftertaste-lingering mood and get the advantage, but if you ask me to write prose to describe that sense of charm, I find it difficult—I can only repeat the same old refrain: hard to put into words. It truly is hard to put into words. Life in junior year has not yet ended; whenever I look back on the scattered fragments of the past year, I feel a reluctance, and I fear they will string together into one piece; I hope they will drift away and be hard to hold, yet they always flicker in and out. A project I prepared for a year was realized on schedule in junior year—I finally obtained the qualification to go to Canada next year for a three-month summer academic internship, counting as breaking another “record.” My freshman-year paper also finally found a home and was published in a journal. I also did quite a few other things. In academics, I have no regrets at all in my university stage. Yet the unease long hidden in my heart keeps reminding me of the importance of other aspects. I began changing my living habits, taking the initiative to try various foods, to carefully experience the beauty of life, to engage in broader social interaction, to face my emotional needs directly… to discover a truer self. Yet some changes come with growing pains; at the same time, people’s hearts are hard to fathom and reality is hard to predict. I once lived quite ignorantly in my own world; when I tried to step out of it, I fell into an emotional crisis and thus a dilemma. I kept rationalizing myself, and also kept “not letting myself off,” until I finally understood how foolish and failed I was.
And Yuelu Mountain accompanied me through that stage, silently and unnoticed—the most silent, yet the most understanding of me—watching me fall, and also watching me transform, “forever bound in a loveless roam” with me. Life seems to have no rationale; however you live is right, and however you live is also wrong. Just like these mountain roads: however you walk is simply a personal choice; there is no right or wrong to speak of, though in the end there may be regrets. The last stanza of “The Road Not Taken” is:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Is the road I’m walking now really what I want? Are there other possibilities in my life that I would like more? I ask myself. Perhaps life really is, as existentialism says, complete self-choice—creating meaning for oneself. The question is: are you faithful to your choice, and do you believe in that meaning?
Kazuo Ishiguro is a writer I like. At that time I happened to be reading his The Remains of the Day (The remains of the day), and was deeply moved. The protagonist in the book, an excellent British butler, finds his meaning in life in becoming a perfect servant and serving his master to the utmost; yet long after his master has died, he only then, faintly and uneasily, realizes that he may have lived his whole life wrong. He spent his best years serving a Nazi sympathizer, and in order to do his job best, he forbade himself to love—or to be loved by—the person he truly cared about. But everything was too late; there was nothing to do except heartbreak. Yet this butler is, after all, happy—perhaps self-deceiving, but he did, after all, firmly believe what he believed, and did his duty truly and with accomplishment. His life has regrets, but that came very late; besides, before that he wasn’t confused, was he? As for having “lived wrong” his whole life—how can that be said? In the end of his Nobel lecture, Ishiguro said that he himself may have lived these years in a bubble; the world does not develop as it naturally assumes it will, and he could not help feeling depressed.
Perhaps this is life; this is existence. In the second semester of junior year, I no longer clung to a “weekly ascent of Yuelu Mountain,” and each “ascent” no longer insisted on climbing all the way “from bottom to top.” I don’t know what I will do in the future, but I’m clear about what I’m doing at present, and that’s enough. Although unease, disappointment, and confusion still rise and fall one after another, I have gradually become calm. I come on a whim and leave when it’s spent; wherever I go is wherever I go. Yuelu Mountain is my good friend; I think she won’t mind my being so capricious. Perhaps this, too, is my charm?
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