The tale of my Sichuan travels is written as a continuous story and starts on the entry "In Chengdu" on Nov. 5th, 2008. For context and continuity, feel free to start back at that point and read on forward first if you have not already done so.
But Larry wouldn’t give up. He continued using the large tree branch as a cudgel to beat the door while calling for help. “Someone! Help! Please come open the door! We are lost in the mountains and need to get down!”
After about 10 minutes, His persistence finally paid off, and someone called back, “Alright! Stop yelling! We’re coming!”
“Alright, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Larry put down the stick and we waited for a few minutes.
The door cracked open; a woman with a candle asked, “Who are you people?”
“We are hikers on the mountain; we were on the mountain for too long and we had gotten lost. Sorry for disturbing you, but we are trying to get down – please let us through!”
“Alright.” She opens the door, and leads us through, along with another man. The second temple is quite large as well – it was definitely no simple matter to simply try to “go around,” as it occupied not just a good deal of surface area, but also a couple floors as well.
As we walk down the open staircase, she instructed, “Continue down through the gate below. Whenever there is a fork in the road, take a right. If you run into a pavilion, turn around.”
“Thank you so much!” We had just been saved, but still quite far from the bottom. So I asked, “Are there any more locked temples on the path further down below?”
“No, you should be fine going the rest of the way. Good luck!”
After crossing the second temple, the going go even more straightforward. The stairs were well polished stones, and much more uniform, making the steps predictable, if not repetitive. We continued the same formation as before, with Baba walking in front.
Larry had an idea. “When we get down there to the main gate, or even to the next temple, let’s all talk in English so they'll think we're foreigners from America.”
“Why?”
“Because they treat foreigners better than Chinese, and we’re not really supposed to be here. We can feign ignorance and get off without much trouble.”
“Okay…”
“So your dad and I will just shut up, and we’ll let you do all the talking, since you don’t have an accent.”
I agreed, though personally I didn't think it was such a big deal.
After another 10-15 minutes, we near the gate of the third temple. Baba walked on a few steps in front of us, while I tried to walk in line with Larry in order to help shine some light in front of his step. “Be especially careful during this stretch,” Larry cautioned, “since as we get closer to the end, that’s when we all tend to make mistakes.”
“I will.”
“So many times, when we’re almost there, we get careless and there’s an accident waiting right around the corn—”
Suddenly, Larry’s walking stick snaps in half. His hands scrambled frantically in midair, flailing wildly as he sought to grasp something to help regain his balance. As he cried out in vain and lost control, he stepped on the corner of a step, causing him to careen towards the edge. The additional 30kg weight of the pack was too much, and before I could react, Larry had flipped over, his body tumbling over the side of the mountain path...
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