True
Story
6,000 Steps to
Paradise (6)
1,
A Stone Ladder
2,
A Beautiful Bride
3,
A Forbidden Love
4,
A Life in the Wilderness
5,
A House on the Hilltop
6, Six Thousand Steps To
Paradise
6 December
2006
Xu came out
of the woods near her home on the hilltop
(The shot was taken not too long ago))
As Xu slipped, she lost her
foothold. In that instant of confusion,
she had no chance to think. But she was
calm; decades of mountain living gave her
capacity to respond to an emergency as
such. Her hand managed to catch hold of a
rock edge, slowly and gingerly she had
manoeuvred herself into a safe ground.
But her ankle was badly
sprained, and she had to twist off a
branch to support herself. By the time
she toiled her way up to the hilltop,
what her anxious children saw was a woman
smeared with mud all over limping out of
the woods on a cane.
When Guojiang returned and
learned the accident, he felt terribly
bad about himself. "All my
fault," he rumbled, "making you
suffer here with me…"
"Nonsense," Xu
halted his words. "Here is my
paradise."
That night hearing Xu’s
deep moans of pain during her sleep,
Guojiang kept his eyes open gazing into
the darkness. Then he stroke upon an
idea: "Why not to build a stone
ladder from the hilltop all the way down
to the foot?"
But when he told his plan to
Xu the next morning, she was only
alarmed. "You’re not serious, aren’t
you?"
"Yes, I’ll do it, I
can do it."
"No you won’t!"
Now she was really in a grave pain.
"What if you get hurt, what if you
slip in your steps …" The mere
thought of that terrified her, the rims
of her eyes became rather red.
He lingered, and said,
"… All right, I won’t do
it."
So the life went on as it
was before. Just Xu stayed on the hilltop
most of the time and tried not to venture
beyond the woods on her own, while
Guojiang developed a passion for
exploring the mountain by himself. When
he was not doing something in the
cornfield, vegetable garden, bee farm,
fishpond, piggery or chicken yard, he
would carry a tool bag and took couple of
roasted potatoes, set off hunting. But He
always returned empty handed in complete
exhaustion.
After a while, Xu started to
marvel inwardly. But whenever she asked,
he would forever blame on the bad luck
that he wasn’t able to catch or collect
anything worthy of bringing back.
One day, Guojiang left home
for his alleged hunting trip again. When
the sun began to tilte to the west, Xu
slowly trudged her way down the mountain
trial to wait for him. Unable to set her
mind in ease, she began to hum a ditty
Eighteen Visits To My Lover, which
she and Guojiang often sang together when
they worked side by side.
"The
second day of month,
I got up earlier.
Sneak out of home,
I wen to see my lover.
He lied in his bed,
Having terrible fever…"
"初二早起去望郎,
我郎得病睡牙床…"
It was a song about a pair
of lovers who were forced to live
separate lives. In sorrow and despair,
the young man fell gravely ill. During
the eighteen visits to her lover, the
girl felt heart broken when saw him lying
on his deathbed. Each time after visit,
she would go alone to a cliff side to cry
her heart out by wailing, supposedly,
this tune.
"I lifted
open the certain,
I touched his head,
It scalded my hand,
It hurt my sorrowful heart……"
"双手推开红萝帐，
我摸郎一把热忙忙…"
A sound suddenly arose amid
the dense foliage in the up slope side.
As she watched, she witnessed a hare
jumped out of the lush grass and plunged
into the thicket by the cliff edge.
Beyond the cliff on the other side was a
rocky ridge sizzling in the sun, and in
between, the gorge was deep and fed by
pure mountain spring that prattled over
the rocks like tears streaming on cheeks.
After the world regained its
tranquillity, she could hear nothing save
the flowing of the water and the signing
of the wind lamented through the trees.
Her heart turned desolated, and the
emptiness all around bore hard on her.
She tried to drive away the troubled
thoughts, and descend the steep route by
following the ragged trial leading down
to a single plank bridge, where Guojiang
would certainly have to pass on his way
up to the hilltop.
Then she stopped to listen
as she detected a high pitched voice
wafted forth:
"The third
day of month,
I got up earlier,
Pocketed some rice,
I ran to see my lover……"
"初三早起去望郎，
衣袋兜米来望郎......"
It was Guojiang singing in a
false tone. He returned earlier today,
and he had already crossed that single
plank bridge. She tried to quicken her
pace, but the ragged terrain prevented
her from moving fast. "It’s all
right," she told herself, pausing to
catch her breath, "Guojiang will
come over in no time." But the
strange thing was, after a while, the
singing voice did not drew any nearer;
and she noticed that in the background
there was a consistent sound of sharp
clink of something striking upon a stone.
Her curiosity got the better
of her, and she ventured down to the
source of the noise. Once turned a
corner, here she had a clear view of
Guojiang. She tried to call him, and her
lips moved, but not a sound her uttered -
she was spellbound by what she saw.
His shirt was off and thrown
aside, sweat oozing from his bare back.
Bent his body with his knees on the
ground, he was chipping off the sharp
edge of a slab. Around, stones evidently
moved here from elsewhere were scattered
here and there, some in a raw form,
others having already been made into
slabs. Before him a long stone ladder
winded its path down the hill to meet the
single plank bridge.
With the tears swelled in
her eyes, she slowly walked down and
stood behind him, battering to cope. When
Guojiang eventually straightened his
back, she threw her arms around him from
behind.
It took Guojiang by
surprise, but by the familiar scent he
quickly realised it was Xu. Dusted his
hands, he turned to meet her eyes.
Xu wiped sweats from his
face with her sleeve, and said "I
told you not to … Look now, how
exhausted you are …" Her words
choked themselves.
Guojiang moistened his lips
with his tongue, and cracked, "I’m
okay … hmm, guess you’re not upset
with me, aren’t you?"
Xu didn’t say anything,
just held him tighter.
7,
A Love Story that Never Ends
(References:
numerous Chinese newspaper reports and
online medias)
China
stories are told at wenhousecrafts.com
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