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)
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