To go up a mountain is difficult

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thought it would be a quiet day, this Sunday, the day of rest. I did my tai chi with the retirees in the square, and they even insisted on giving me the sword to do sword tai chi and there was almost an international incident as I nearly poked the eye out of one of the participants. Afterwards I went for a run around campus and was planning on taking it easy when Mrs. Z said, "We go to ancient city," and before I knew it we were on the street outside of the school wainting for a bus, the four of us, Mr and Mrs Z and their son Zeng Xiang, who is responsible for me having internet in my room.

It has been remarked before that there is an irony in that the verb in Chinese that goes with "bus" to mean "ride the bus" is the word "sit." The irony is that one rarely sits on a Chinese bus. I had heard this tidbit of linguistic wisdom on chinesepod.com, but hearing is one thing, and experience is something quite different. And so this morning both the bus to Loadai (?) and the bus to the Golden Dragon Great Wall were wall to wall packed. About ten minutes into the trip Mrs. Z said we were going to see the "Limited Great Wall," whatever that meant. Forty five minutes and two bus trips later we found ourselves in front of what is known and the Goldne Dragon Great Wall. At least that's what they told me the sign in the background reads. Young Z informed me there are many Great Walls. He also said this was the first time he had been here.
Mrs. Z bought a bag of peaches from a lady selling them at the entrance. I looked at the temple on top and could not fathom that we could make it all the way up there. I mean, I was sure I could, but the 90 degree heat and roughly equal percent humidity would take their toll. But I had doubts about Mr and Mrs Z. Thankfully, there were breaks every couple of hundred yards, places where you could stop and find shade and get a cold beverage. " Whenver we stopped to take a break at one of these places (which was quite often, given that Mr Z was having some trouble with heat), poeple would take notice, Mrs. Z would say something to explain my presence and a few folks would chime in with "Hello" and seemed to get a kick out of my limited Chinese. It took close to two hours and most of the bag of peaches but we all made it up to the Buddhist temple at the top.

The title of this post comes from the fact that at one of the stops there was a rather heated exchange over the sheng shan nan, shia shan rongyi (to go up a mountain is difficult, to go down is easy), with some folks thinking that it should be the other way around and that it is in fact difficult to go down a mountain. It seem a no brainer to me, but on the other hand, their may be a certain hidden wisdom in the other interpretation.