Mr Wong Goes West Read Online Free PDF

of creation. Heaven was above, Earth was below. The highest mountains of the Earth were sacred pillars that supported Heaven. High peaks were thus quite literally close to the divine realm.
    Another unforgettable experience he had had that year was a walk along a ridge leading to a plateau Uncle Rinchang knew; a cloud-hidden path that ran to a plain some two kilometres long between two of the mountains in the area. The old man called it the Fire Dragon’s Back, but the villagers simply referred to it as Uncle Rinchang’s Walk. There were several narrow points along this snowfield trail where the sojourner could get a full view of the valleys on each side simultaneously—they were so different they seemed to belong to distinct worlds. On the left were the snowy wastes and high mountains of the Tibetan plateau. On the right were green fields and rolling, verdant hills, which eventually become the yellow grey of the plains of the Takla Makan desert. Winter on one side, summer on the other. Cold and heat. Yin and yang.
    ‘We call this the Point of Balance,’ Rinchang said.
    Again, Wong had felt that he had learned something really important, but without really understanding what it was. All he knew at that moment was that the world was a strange and wonderful place, more curious than he had ever imagined in his childhood in the dirt-poor rural village of Baiwan in Guangdong.
    As daylight disappeared, a fierce wind blew across the ridge. It took hours to walk its length and return to their cabin. But they were warm when they reached home. Wong had been intrigued to discover that he could be in one of the coldest places he could imagine, and yet be sweating in bright sunshine under a summer-blue sky. His toes were almost frostbitten and his cheeks sunburned.
    And then there had been the time Rinchang had taken him to the Great Mother of All, visible from the foothills of the Himalayas, a long journey through Tibet towards Nepal. As they approached their destination, Rinchang had pointed ahead of them.
    ‘There. Can you see it? That is the greatest mountain in the world. Qomolangma: the Mother of the mountains.’
    ‘Where? Where?’ The young Wong had scanned the horizon ahead of them but could see nothing but sky and a few low hills. Surely one of those hillocks could not be the tallest thing in the world? He had heard much about the mountain on the borders between Tibet and Nepal. Rinchang had explained that the place was known as Devgiri, ‘Holy Mountain’, to the Indian peoples, and Qomolangma, ‘Mother of the Universe’, to the Chinese and the Tibetans.
    ‘There. Look. Keep looking. There are clouds in the way, but the Mother shines through them.’
    Wong had continued to scan the scene ahead of him, but could still only see gentle hills. And then he looked upward and realised what he was supposed to be looking at. He had been looking at the wrong part of the sky, entirely too low. The Himalayas were high in the air, far higher than anything around them. Indeed, they seemed to belong to the sky, not the earth. They stood as jagged shapes in the upper part of the sky, far above the clouds.
    That was when he realised how the concept of the divine came from the majesty of mountains. Their immensity and power and
personality
were things that commanded total respect. Now he knew why the local phrase for ‘making a pilgrimage’ was ‘paying your respects to the mountain’.
    More than four decades later, as he sat in a toilet-roll cubby in his office, Wong fell into a deep trance, his old, creaking body lost to him as he became a child, wandering the mountains of the Kunlun Shan. Why had his meditation led him to this place? Could the answer to the quandaries of his life be here?
    His heart started thumping.
    He felt himself shake.
    There was a Presence.
    A booming voice started to groan. It was the voice of God, deep and low. But what was He saying?
    ‘Git on down and shake shake shake. Move your booty and break