True
Story
6,000 Steps to
Paradise
1, A Stone Ladder
18 November 2006
It
was in autumn 2001. A group of explorers
had walked through a dense, primeval
forest in central China’s Sichuan
province for two days. During the time
they had not encountered a single soul,
which made them suspect that they might
have entered one of the remotest reaches
on the planet.
Soon
they once again were confronted with a
steep hill that had its peak penetrated
into the clouds. Just when they were
about to do a hard rock climbing, a team
member yelled out, "A ladder!
Someone has prepared a ladder for
us!"
He
was not kidding. Not at all.
At
the end of the tortuous trail that
supposedly no-one ever took, there it was
– a set of steps on a steep slope right
stretching toward the lofty top of the
hill, looked as if a linkage between
earth and heaven.
But
what surprised them the most was the fact
that steps were evidently not an ancient
remainder. Recent chisel marks on the
stones and fresh soil scattered around
all suggested that the steps were newly
constructed.
Mysterious
and uncanny as it seemed, they took the
offer anyway. In the next two hours, they
climbed 6000 steps wriggling their way
up.
Once
on the top, they found themselves landed
in a level field with a view bluntly
opened up before them. Under an
unblemished blue sky, mountain shore
stretched beyond sight.
All
was quiet in the vast expanse of this
untamed wildness.
Then
someone heard a noise or two from deep in
the thick woods. A thought that it might
be from a beast set their nerve on edge.
The
rustling noise among the thick foliage
became louder and near, eventually two
figures surfaced into the open.
To
the great relieve of everybody in the
team, they were not beasts, but people,
one man one woman, in their advanced
years. Both wearing old-fashion blue
outfits paled from many washes and
carrying firewood on their back, they
were like the ones from another era, an
era that the explorers only caught a
glimpse of on the movie or TV screens.
Questions
at once emerged in everyone’s mind: Who
were they? Why were they here? And what
made them roam beyond the fringe of the
civilised world?
2,
A Beautiful Bride
(References:
numerous Chinese newspaper reports, TV
programs and online medias)
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