finding Buddha.

The first three hours were a treat. Clean air, waterfalls, birds singing. Hey, I thought. This is gonna be a piece of cake.

Hmm.

I went to Emei to escape the heat. I escaped it alright. I got fog, rain and a wet ass. The promised breath-taking views were lost to white mist. My hair smelled like sheep dags.

Tourism has, like a lot of good stuff, reduced an otherwise sacred Buddhist mountain to yet another tick-box on your average tourist’s Must-Do list. What I thought was going to be a taste of China’s wilderness turned out to be [yet another] battle to hang onto my pennies.

My mission begins at 9am. Fork out 40 yuan for a bus to foot of said mountain. Set off. Fork out another 150 yuan for a ticket to get on mountain. Dodge hawkers proffering jade necklaces, ugly statues, dried meat and other wares one would find cumbersome to hike with.

Track is meticulously furnished with concrete steps and guard rails [crafted to vaguely resemble tree limbs]. Snack vendors are ubiquitous. Prices are extortionate; a two-yuan bottle of water has shot up to eight, a mouldy apple is five, a beer fifteen. Chocolate is out of the question.

Two hours. Meet two nervous young Chinese guys who cordially ask me to join them. Conversation is limited; their English is poor, my Chinese is worse. We plod on in amiable silence.

Seven hours stiff uphill slog and I concede to paying eight yuan for a 500ml bottle of Coke [RRP: two-fifty]. Best damn Coke of my life. Plod continues.

Debate arises as to where – and when – to stop for the night. Fog is thickening. Every rock, tree and concrete step starting to look the same. Exhaustion is claiming my two buddies, yet they turn their noses up at modest monastery accommodation in favour of supposedly superior facilities two hours further.

Plod on.

Eight hours. Have visions of boys [and myself] being carried off mountain in body bags. Mother Hen takes over; we turn back.

Wind up at family home-turned-hotel: soggy wooden shack divided into poky rooms. Damp bedding, naked wiring. Chooks. Insects. But, a roof. And, inexplicably, electric blankets and a TV.

Housewife feeds me a huge plate of oily grey eggs; divine. Boys decline; declare place to be ‘dirty’ and go to bed.

More weary travellers arrive. One nonchalantly unpacks a Bible, a laptop and Sheryl Crow. Bemoans lack of network. I go to bed.

Day two. Rooster crows at four a.m. At four-thirty. At five. At six-thirty, we leave.

Rain. Fog. Concrete steps.

Silence.

Six kilometres from summit and my company suddenly make a beeline for the cable car. Cannot fathom squeezing out another 120 yuan; stagger on alone.

Pace slows to crawl. Concrete steps are vertical. More jade necklaces, stuffed monkeys and throngs of babbling Chinese tourists [fresh from air-conditioned coaches].

Golden Summit.

Forty kilometres. Clear skies, tree tops and a bloody great gilded Buddha.

I’m buggered.

Happily pay 50 yuan for the hour-long bus ride down the mountain. Later, tend to muscular ailments with [eight yuan] beer.

And leave Emei on the next train.

bittersweet

I've barely got my chops around the chopsticks before she asks again. "How is it?"

Three pairs of eyes eagerly watching, waiting, over steaming bowls of soup, fried egg, shredded potato and tofu.

Delicious, I say. So good. Amazing. Zhenda hao chi.

It's not enough. Grandma keeps telling Vivian to make me eat more; Grandpa keeps gesturing towards the egg and chilli. Vivian keeps ladling rice into my bowl. Grandma wants to cook me some eggs to eat on the train tomorrow. Grandpa gives me a package of 'special Chengdu food'. All three implore that I am very brave [crazy] for travelling on my own and that if I come back to Chengdu, I must eat with them again.

I've known Vivian for all of twenty-four hours. She and I were obliged to meet purely because I know David. She knows David. I was going to Chengdu. She lives in Chengdu. I am foreign. She is Chinese.

We meet at my hostel, she having bullied her non-English-speaking workmate into playing chauffeur for the evening. She takes me to dinner. To lunch. To the zoo. To a temple. To Chengdu's most-touted tourist attractions. To another temple. And, finally, to her grandparents' home for a real, hone-cooked Chinese meal.

And I can't pay a cent.

I am Chinese, she tells me. It is the Chinese way.

I have to physically restrain her when I slip away to pay for our smoothies at the cafe. The only chance I got to pay for anything.

Boy, did it piss her off.

It is our way! she protests.

Later, softened by half a Beer Lao, Vivian tells me she hates China.

She hates the people. She hates the government. She hates Mao. She hates that, at 26 [a week younger than me] she is 'too old' to be single and her family are constantly urging her to get a husband/house/baby.

I want to travelling, she sighs. I admire you. In China, no people can do this.

You are lucky, she says again and again.

I run out of excuses. Vivian - intelligent, sweet, educated - is probably right. She, like her friends and workmates and nearly every other woman in China, will live with her parents until she is bundled off to a suitable gentleman and a life of domesticity. A house to clean, a child to raise and elderly parents to care for.

I - educated, aimless - am free to do whatever the f*** I choose.

And I will.

Last night, Vivian and I parted with the usual promises to keep in touch. That, if she ever visits New Zealand, I will return her hospitality.

I'll probably never see her again.

Oh sure, I felt a bit crap. A bit guilty. A bit ashamed of the fact I'm so damn lucky and she isn't.

For, maybe, ten minutes.

ce la vie. My only luck is not being Chinese.

As far as I'm concerned, I've worked my arse off to do what I'm doing. I'm damn well gonna reap the rewards.

And I'll have a beer for Vivian.