Asia > China > Anhui > Jiuhuashan > Articles > A Conga line to Paradise

“I am here to save my husband,” the old woman said. Clouds blew through the doorway and eddied about her tiny bound feet.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Hell,” she said. “He is in hell.” She drew a photograph from her bag and tipped it into the light: a bony man in front of a mean village house.

“He ate meat,” the old woman explained. “And he was unfilial.” The sound of gongs and chanting came in with the clouds. In the temples the monks were stirring.

She had crossed half of China on her mission. Jiuhuashan, one of China's four Buddhist holy mountains, is barnacled with temples dedicated to the Lord of the Underworld, Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, a surprisingly benign fellow. His hell was nasty enough but he was open to persuasion. It was a matter of knowing whom to bribe. The temple abbots, who were on a first name basis with the Bodhisattva, were a good place to start.

The old woman smiled at me. Her lips creased like parchment.

“We will find him,” she said, patting her wallet.

I had come up from the Yangtze, crossing the river on a flatbed ferry and taking a road south through the province of Anhui past farmyards of geese and bicycles. The flooded rice paddies had made a mirror of the landscape. Across the glassy terraces, ploughmen and their buffalo waded through their own reflections.

On the slopes of Jiuhuashan the road climbed through ragged forests of pine and dog roses. Waterfalls, delicate as lace, threaded bodices of bamboo. Higher still the clouds came down to meet us, and in their white light we saw shaven-headed pilgrims climbing the stone stairways. Beyond the clouds we emerged into an outpost of heaven where monks flitted between the golden-roofed temples and the dance halls.

Pilgrims have been coming to the temples of Jiahuashan, the Nine Blossom Mountain, since the days when China was only outlandish rumour in the streets of Rome. Holy men climbed the sacred stairways to gossip with departed souls. Emperors who rarely left the Forbidden City were carried aloft on sedan chairs through its pine trees like pale Buddhas. Poets made it a metaphor for renewal, and ordinary folk flocked to it to cut a deal on behalf of their dear departed.

At the temple opposite the guesthouse a crescendo of cymbals announced the mass for the dead for which the old woman had paid. Beneath three gold Buddhas, each as tall as the Sphinx, a row of ecclesiastical dignitaries sat at high table wearing pantomime crowns. Gongs sounded and the low table monks laid their mugs of tea aside and began to mumble the sutras into an incense laden twilight.The old woman hovered on the threshold like an unexpected guest, kneeling and kow-towing to the instructions of a young monk with the charm of a traffic cop. The walls had been adorned with the names of her husband's ancestors. On a ledge a banquet had been laid out for these departed souls, come to testify for the deceased. Liberal supplies of drink had been laid on in the hope of making them friendly witnesses.

Outside in the temple forecourt pilgrims were queuing up to shoot craps. In some instinctive expression of yin and yang, the town that has grown up amidst the sacred shrines catered to more profane instincts. In the alleys of souvenir booths there was a carnival atmosphere with the latest pop songs, swathed in steam, drifting from the dumpling shops. Pool tables lined the roadside. Games of chance boasted prizes of Marlboros while fortune tellers offered shortcuts past the arcane rituals of the temples at bargain prices.

On the edge of the town the dance halls were in full swing, their coloured lights spinning across steamed windows. The music was Chinese pop songs from Taiwan and Hong Kong, but when the young couples took to the floor it was to perform the steps of sixty years ago: the fox-trot and the two-step. China was full of such anachronisms, from spittoons to steam trains.

In the morning at breakfast I found my guide waiting. He was a round shiny man, bubbling with enthusiasm and bad jokes. In this anteroom of the eternal he was irreverent and irrepressible. I couldn't think who he reminded me of until he asked me if I had read Pickwick Papers.

The morning was full of blossoming azaleas and terraces of tea where nuns were harvesting an early crop. We climbed through the drone of cicadas to Roushen temple where a straw-hatted pilgrim, footsore in cotton slippers, was fetching prayers out of a box. The prayers were written on scraps of rice paper. He lit them at an iron cauldron then handed them to the morning breeze. His hopes flared briefly then drifted away over the tea plantations, shards of grey ash.

Inside the temple Pickwick rubbed his hands and led me down a long stairway. This way to Hell, he called cheerily. We passed into a lower hall where hideous figures in dunce's hats, the wardens of Hell, stood about in playpens, sticking their tongues out. The walls were crowded with scenes from the Underworld, a place of lumbering bureaucracy where mandarins sat behind desks piled high with damning evidence. Beyond, the torturers were at work. The paintings were X-rated violence, garish and unflinching. Gleeful green-faced devils boiled miscreants in oil while others sawed them in half like demented magicians.

Round a corner, demons were busy pulling out tongues with red-hot tongs. Giggling like a cruel schoolboy, Pickwick waved me eagerly from one scene to another until Paradise brought him up short. It filled a wall, a carved fairy land stretching out of sight into the recesses of the ceiling. On hundreds of rocky promontories stood placid contented souls. There was no death, no conflict, no desire here, Pickwick explained, in chastened tones. After the lively interest of Hell, Paradise seemed a dull place and we found ourselves drifting away, bored.

Back in the sunshine we climbed a pilgrims stairway through slopes embroidered with vegetables. In a blue swath of wild flowers we found a tiny cave temple. Tattered banners hung about a shrine between walls blackened with incense. A single nun came smiling out of the gloom. She greeted us, as they all did, with the name of the Lord of Paradise, Amitabha.

The nun already seemed to inhabit the paradise of the temples. Hers was a life of dreary contentment, devoid of desire. I asked about her past, her parents, her childhood but the questions seemed irrelevant to her; her past was an old skin she had shucked off. The present was an unending cycle of chanting, gardening, frugal meals and early nights. As a cure for ageing, this regime was better than a face-lift. The nun was thirty but looked twelve. Sadly she had the conversation of a twelve-year-old as well. Above us we could see further temples set into the cliffs. The pilgrims plodded onwards and upwards, their steps lightened by the promise of salvation. Those lucky enough to afford sedan chairs shot past in the fast lane, their bearers executing hand brake turns on the winding path. Through the trees came the sound of firecrackers warning the Buddha of the pilgrims' approach.

Unfortunately Pickwick's favourite restaurant stood on the path to enlightenment and we got no further than a good lunch. He commandeered a window seat and ordered a sizzling array of dishes. Beer arrived and a terrible white lightning that the Chinese refer to as white wine. It smells like surgical spirits and has the kick of an aggrieved buffalo. Pickwick embarked on a series of toasts, each ending with the same flourish - gan bei, bottoms up. It was like lunching with a Cossack. I have a vague memory of dancing the samba and reciting Robbie Burns. We went home in a couple of sedan chairs. On the way I taught my bearers all there was to know about Country & Western music.

In the evening things had so lightened up in the temple that I suspected the monks of lunching in the same restaurant. They had embarked on the second installment of the death mass. I found them dancing the hokey-cokey with the old woman through the temple halls, chanting like football supporters, Ami-ta-bha, Ami-ta-bha.

The previous evening's rituals had secured the release of the old man's soul from the Underworld, and tonight's knees-up was a send off into Paradise where Amitabha waited to welcome him. The old woman waved gaily at me and spun away beneath the prayer flags with her clerical hoofers. She cut quite a dash, and I noticed the abbot joining the queue to mark her card.

Later I climbed the road into darkness. The lighted monasteries were dotted about the slopes like fallen constellations. A crescent moon lay on its back, its feet in the air, gliding down a milky sky towards the Yangtze. Dawn was still hours away but already there rose from the hillsides the sound of gongs and sleepy chanting. The monks were putting in an early morning call to Paradise.

Articles

• More from Stanley Stewart