Another sunrise, another mountain.

Jiuhua Shan, one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China lies at the north of the Anhui province. I made my way here, first taking a train from ShaoXing to Hangzhou, and then another one tp a town called Wuhu here in Anhui. The train to WuHu is what Olli would have called a 'cattle train', a smelly, rusty, dirty thing, with some hard benches and waaaay too many people. The differences here are sometimes striking, changing from the clean and modern train i took from ShaoXing to the next one from Hangzhou, was like a leap to another world.

But, on the 7 hours journey I had the chance to get into some amusing conversations again. I was surrounded by some merchants, who had been in Hangzhou selling their things to tourists, and they, led by one especially loud and brave one, began to question me about all the usual things and more. The usual things normally include: where i'm from, what's Finland like, what's my job, how much I get paid, how easy was it for me to come to China, how much do things cost in Finland, where have I been in China, am I able to eat Chinese food and what do people eat in Finland. This last point, after my explaining the 'no rice but potatoes' thing to them, became a real joke. They found it very funny that a vegetable could be the staple food, and found a way to get potatoes into just about every sentence.

In Wuhu I stayed in a little crappy guest house in a back alley near the train station. The way you find these is that there are always stouts at the station, waiting for the arriving passengers, who will then take you to their place. The guy I followed this time looked half mad, with crossed eyes and a bizarre appearance, but I trusted my luck anyway and went with him.

But the problem wasn't him or his place. However, on the way there, when we stopped to register my arrival at the police officers of the block (apparently they wrote down the details of every person staying at one of the guesthouses), I noticed thatthe zipper of my little day backpack was open. I have no idea how that happened in the few minutes from the station, especially when i had it in front of me, but someone had been really fast when i didn't look. But, luckily they didn't get anything important or of value, having randomly reached in their catch was a half-empty water bottle and my dictionary. My camera, wallet, phone etc were all still there. Mind you, it was a good dictionary that I only found a couple of weeks ago, actually having translitterations and pronunciations of all words and not just characters!

But, here I am now, on this mountain. There's a little village with mountains on all sides of it. Peaceful and beautiful, no cars, just pilgrims. And temples everywhere. According to my books, there are about 70 functioning temples here, they are in the village and dotted all over the surrounding mountains, where you can get by stairways and little footpaths.

After staying at the temple on DongTianMuShan I thought that I really am not interested in taking a deeper plunge into Buddhism now, so I thought I'd just come here to look around and enjoy the nature for a few days. On DTMS, I really felt a little trapped, and controlled by all the rules, like there was only *ONE* way of doing things right.

But what do you know, when I was walking on the mountain today, having crossed to the other side of the mountain from the village, I stopped at a little house to take a rest, eat some cakes and read my book, taking in the gorgeous view of the valley beneath me. And so comes this monk (holding his Nokia 3310!) to talk to me. He lives in the place, with two students of his, a 74-year old woman and a 33-year-old woman. They invited me inside, and I talked with the master (what an inappropriate word this is in English, as the Chinese term - shifu- is much softer, meaning teacher-father) about this and that, about travelling and different countries and so on. And I stayed for lunch, the women prepared an amazing feast for us.

And at this place, my feeling was really really different. I felt free and relaxed, I laughed and joked with the Shifu:) And no such rules of eating just like this or sitting just like that, everyone was just being friends and being themselves.

So, the Shifu said that if I want I can come to stay there with them, to study some Chinese language and culture with them, and learn to cook Chinese dishes (after I told them I'd really like to learn to cook like the women!), and even teach him English if I wanted (he can speak a little). And if I had some questions about Buddhism or anything else, I could ask him if I wanted.

So, I need to go away for some time, a couple of weeks or so, but probably after that I will come back and stay here a little while. It really seems like a place where I can just relax and take my time to learn more about China and its culture.

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