The Healing Power of Mount Qingcheng—Chengdu Travel Diary—4

Ah, Monday again. I’ve been through countless Mondays, but I still can’t get used to them 😭. Don’t want to go to school, don’t want to go to work 😂😂😂.

  Our Chengdu trip had reached its last day, and we headed to Mount Qingcheng as planned—the one from “Bai Suzhen at the foot of Mount Qingcheng.” But if we actually ran into “Bai Suzhen,” we’d still be a little scared 😶‍🌫️. Getting there from Chengdu really is convenient, just like getting from Beijing to the Badaling Great Wall: there’s a direct high-speed train. Fantastic. Though the more I looked at this high-speed train in Chengdu, the more it looked like a subway train, or even a regular train.

A little over twenty minutes later, we arrived at Mount Qingcheng. You actually pass Dujiangyan on the way, which is also well worth visiting, but we were a bit short on time this trip and had to pick and choose 😁.

  My first impression after getting off the train was how incredibly fresh the air was. You could really feel the moisture in it—something unimaginable for someone who’s spent years living in northern China. It felt so good. You could already see some mountains as soon as you got off, too, all wreathed in ethereal mist.

  Then we set off up the mountain. Mount Qingcheng has a front mountain and a back mountain. If you’re there to hike, I’d personally recommend going straight to the back mountain; the front is a bit more commercialized. After buying tickets for the bus to the back mountain, we quietly waited for it to fill up before leaving. Just our luck, we were the first ones aboard 😭😭, which meant we had the longest wait of anyone on that bus. After a thirty- or forty-minute ride, we reached the ticket office.

Even after buying your admission tickets, there’s still some distance to cover before the actual hike starts. I strongly recommend taking the sightseeing shuttle up, because it’s quite a long walk to the trail entrance. Ride whenever you can 🤒. Another twenty minutes or so on the shuttle, and we finally reached the trail entrance. Oh, and you can buy a bamboo pole to use as a walking stick from one of the stalls along the way. They’re usually three or four yuan—very cheap, but incredibly useful.

  Finally, it was time to start climbing. My most immediate impression on entering the forest was that everything was damp, with the sounds of water all around me. It felt completely different from the mountains I’d climbed in the north, like Fragrant Hills and Wulao Peaks. There wasn’t a hint of dryness here. In fact, from about ten minutes into the hike until we got back down, I felt damp all over
, and although that feeling really made me want to jump into the water for a bath, it was still so much better than the dryness on my previous hikes. Then there were all the little streams and waterfalls coming into view. I really got to experience what “green mountains and clear waters” means.

Here are two more short videos to enjoy:

There are also two underwater videos you can take a look at.

Anyway, I personally think photos and videos sometimes just can’t capture what it felt like to be there. I highly recommend coming to experience these green mountains and clear waters for yourself.

    I rarely spent much money on previous hiking trips. At most, I’d buy a bottle of water on the mountain, and that would be it. But this time we had fruit, panda bamboo shoots, cured pork, and more. I wouldn’t exactly call it a bargain, but prices on the mountain were basically the same as down below, which made spending the money feel pretty satisfying. I even thought that if I came again, I wouldn’t need to bring any water at all—buying mountain cucumbers along the way would do the trick. They’re usually ten yuan for three, and they’ll even peel them for you. Very reasonable, and more importantly, they really are delicious, with a tiny hint of sweetness.

Along the way, we also had fruit like mandarins and watermelon. Seeing the mandarins soaking in a basin of mountain spring water instantly made me think of summer evenings.

    Continuing upward, we reached the Baiyun Mountain Cableway, which I also highly recommend taking. For 40 yuan, you really can’t go wrong—it’s absolutely worth it. Compared with this, the cableway I took at the Great Wall before was honestly a total lightweight. It happened to be a gloomy, rainy day, with thick fog everywhere, so it felt like we were slowly making our way into a fairyland.

The whole cableway ride felt like it lasted nearly half an hour. It really was long. Halfway through, it suddenly started raining. Luckily we’d brought an umbrella, which kept some of the rain off; otherwise, we’d have been completely drenched. Hahaha, quite an experience.

    Finally, we reached the summit. The fog was so thick that day that we could barely see anything below—just a sea of white. We didn’t get that feeling of looking down on all the other mountains, but on the way down, with mist all around us, we felt like immortals descending to earth. But wow, the way down was long. We walked and walked, for a really long time, and it was pretty steep too. After all, going up is easy; coming down is hard. About halfway down, we spotted people climbing up while carrying children. Honestly, I wanted to talk them out of it. Taking children up in their arms like that was seriously brave. Respect. Farther down, we found a whole crowd backed up together. Looking ahead, we realized there was a stretch of water that you had to cross by boat. I mean, okay, but isn’t that basically a monopoly?。

    Once we crossed the river, we were finally almost down. The descent took nearly three hours. We were absolutely exhausted, which is why I said earlier: ride whenever you can. Near the bottom, we spotted something fun: lots of people playing mahjong at the foot of the mountain. Wow, that really is the life. I’m jealous.

    

    Finally down the mountain, I saw the kind of cured pork I’d previously only seen on TV (maybe I’m a bit of a bumpkin
）

    

    At last, we dragged our tired feet off to begin the journey back. Our high-speed train passed the Min River—the river at Dujiangyan. It was so wide! Next time, I’ll go see Dujiangyan.

    Back in Chengdu, we also had sweet-skinned duck from Bilibili food creator Wang Gang’s place.

We tried rice cake and cold dressed vegetables too. Watching the rice cake being made was so soothing.

Finally, a two-liang serving of beef noodles brought the day’s trip to a perfect close.

(For the first time, I got a sense of how much two liang actually is. I remember I couldn’t even finish that meal）

Finally, the end. Time to get ready to watch the tech world’s Spring Festival Gala: the Apple WWDC keynote.