Tomorrow we tackle the Buddhist holy mountain, Emei Shan, and work our way up its stairs in stages for the next week, spending each night in one of the monasteries along the trail. For the Chinese, climbing this mountain is a rite of passage, a pilgrimage, and all along the route, they applaud our joining them. Here at Emei Shan, the habitat is mostly intact. Its holy status has protected the creatures that live here, including the rare and spectacular Lady Amherst's Pheasant. Slate staircases wind up the sheer mountainsides; streaming clouds and mist alternately hide and reveal the peaks, cloaked in forest. Cliff faces tower thousands of feet high, bordered by rushing mountain streams. At points where the trail is close to the road, we encounter hundreds of people: we step to the side to view a Little Forktail or a Brown Dipper at the water's edge, then take a deep breath and plunge back into the river of people. However, away from access points, the crowds thin considerably. We buy bamboo canes to keep the Tibetan Macaques at bay.


  Giant Panda in the Morning Sunlight (Colored pencil)The monasteries exist in a time warp. Plumbing is stone-age. Separate communal toilet compounds for men and women afford little privacy other than gloom and low partitions between holes in the floor. The more advanced compounds have a hose by each position, so the trough can be hosed down after use. From what I can see, everyone in China has diarrhea - and no wonder. Our acidophilus tablets have been invaluable in preventing problems.

Xixiangchi Monastery has men's and women's shower compounds. I have the room to myself (a guard positions himself outside), and hunker down to bathe out of a bucket set next to an old metal bathtub that doesn't look as if it has ever been hooked up to real plumbing. Its drain is positioned over the trough that runs across the floor. What puzzles me is this: Who packed in a heavy, claw-footed, enameled iron bathtub, over all of those kilometers of steep, slippery stairs? But as primitive as the setting is, that bath out of a bucket is sheer luxury.

Other than astonishment at the appalling state of plumbing and sanitation, I am quite enthralled by the old monasteries, established 700 years ago. Mornings begin with a pre-dawn gong that rouses the monks for morning prayer, a lovely chanting that reaches us in bed through the thin wooden walls. Evenings end similarly, with evening prayer that lasts for hours and lulls us to sleep. The buildings have a musty, ancient feel, with many dim, narrow passageways that open into courtyards. Floors are uneven, made of stone or wood. Incense and candles burn continually. Food - beer, crackers - is piled before some of the statues. High on the mountain at chilly Xixiangchi, we actually have electric blankets on comfortable beds, for 80 yuan each (about $10). Xianfeng Monastery is the most primitive and least comfortable: a small cellblock of a room holds two rickety beds. The mattress is a thin quilt stretched over several wooden planks, with large spaces between the planking. Only weariness from having climbed stone stairways for much of the day enables us to sleep, and soundly. The monasteries serve simple food, as do small restaurants at the gates of the monasteries. From one tiny, two-table restaurant, we watch four Chinese Bamboo Partridges, sunning.

The current government, we are told, tolerates the resurgence of Buddhism because it is good for tourism. The more we see of the Chinese people's attempts to recover their Buddhist roots, after nearly a century of atheistic Communism, the more it seems that the thread of that tradition has been partly lost, and they need guidance from someone like the Dalai Lama in its recovery. The people who hunger for this religion have cobbled together a mix of remembered tradition and story, but the stories do not always seem to be connected to the old wisdom. One young monk, who has mastered some English, explains a painting to us: "This is the monster who attacks all who follow the path" - and for him, the monster is real in a literal, physical way. I ask to be sure. But with just a rudimentary knowledge of Buddhism, I recognize the symbol of the Dweller on the Threshold: the monster is our own fear, an obstacle which we must confront in order to enter into a larger life. The concept is unfamiliar to the young monk.

At the foot of Emei Shan, we talk to Nathan (all the Chinese we meet have an adopted English name, as well as their Chinese names) about his efforts to support his family with a small restaurant, having lost the land they used to farm. Millions of people trying to raise themselves out of poverty face this plight. Nathan wants to accomplish the task on his own, forsaking the state-run support system that makes all decisions for people, including what livelihood to pursue and whom they can marry, in exchange for the security of state support. People who leave the system to become independent entrepreneurs have to give up that security. It is very difficult to break away from the prevailing mind-set. The word for Nathan's type of economic free-lancing translates literally as "jumping into the sea."

Coincidentally, that's exactly how it feels to be footloose in China.