Through the windshield, Xi’an’s Bell Tower rose ahead of us, illuminated against the night.
Horns and engines competed in the streets below as drivers fought through traffic.
Months of planning had gone into this trip. Weeks of adventure lay ahead.
Yet it wasn’t the Bell Tower I found myself looking at.
In the taxi’s rearview mirror, I saw my wife. Just one eye—big, round, and alive—the other hidden behind the sweep of her blond hair.
She caught me staring.
She smiled.
“What are you looking at?”
I didn’t look away.
Then I reached for her hand, and we continued into the city.
That was three days ago.
~
Now we were standing atop that same Bell Tower—Xi’an unfolding in the distance.
Above us, the sun hung higher than expected.
Dani checked the time and gasped.
“Our train. It leaves in twenty-seven minutes!”
Five minutes later, Dani was waiting in the hotel lobby while I ran upstairs to grab our bags.
Below ground, the metro station swallowed us.
Five more minutes disappeared in the baggage check. Seventeen remained.
The platform overflowed onto the stairs.
Dani and I joined the crowds and pushed our way to the front with everyone else.
When the train arrived, attendants carrying padded poles shoved passengers deeper into the cars so the doors could close.
We squeezed inside anyway, though our backpacks made us the widest people in the carriage.
At every stop the crowd shifted.
We drifted away from the doors, then fought our way back before the next station.
Nobody complained. They simply flowed around us while we tried not to hit anyone with our backpacks.
Ten stops later the doors opened at Xi’an North.
Five minutes.
We ran again.
Glass gates stopped us.
Beyond them, passengers streamed off arriving trains while we searched desperately for a way through.
A guard pointed upstairs.
The departure’s level.
We took the escalator two steps at a time.
One minute remained.
Dani reached the security checkpoint first.
Her passport.
Her ticket.
Through.
Mine beeped.
The guard looked at his screen, then back at me.
He shook his head.
Beyond, Dani kept walking, carried forward by the crowd.
I tried to move to her, but arms held me back.
I waved both arms over my head, watching her slip from view.
Nothing.
Then a station employee noticed, followed my gaze, then tapped her shoulder.
She turned, and she smiled.
Ten minutes later we were sitting on the next train.
Outside the window, the city gave way to fields.
Then a mountain appeared.
At first, it was only another shape on the horizon. With every minute it grew larger, its cliffs rising like folded petals around a hidden center.
I’d stopped thinking about the train.
Huashan filled the window instead.
~
We sat in the waiting room with our bags between our feet. Rows of yellow seats were bolted to the floor, facing a giant window that looked straight toward the mountain.
From here, the five peaks of Huashan looked like a lotus flower.
I looked up, then pointed at the highest peak.
“Tomorrow.”
The sun hung low on the horizon.
“Tomorrow.”
Dani yawned.
“In the meantime, I’m having trouble finding our hotel.”
She held up her phone.
“No internet.”
I sat back down.
“Hang on.”
I unzipped my bag and started unpacking it onto the next seat.
“I have a map here some—”
“Ni hao.”
I looked up.
A man beside us wore glasses, a bowl haircut, and a black leather jacket.
He smiled.
“My name is Zhao. I’m waiting for my friend to come down the mountain.”
He looked at us.
“You look lost.”
Then he pulled out his phone.
A moment later, a new wireless network appeared on Dani’s phone.
She connected, opened the map, and soon found the street near the trailhead.
She zoomed in. Scrolled. Zoomed again.
“It’s not there.”
Zhao leaned over.
“There are taxis outside. Write the name of the street and hotel. I translate for the driver.”
Next to her, I searched my emails.
“Here it is. Huashan Fengguan Inn.”
Just then, another man walked into the waiting room.
Zhao stood.
“Excuse me, but my friend is here.”
We thanked him and watched them disappear into the crowd.
~
Outside the tourist center, a parking lot held a row of idling shuttle buses.
“Zhao said to take a taxi, but I remember the hotel was right next to the trailhead.”
Dani smiled.
“Worth a try.”
Then she nudged me toward the nearest vehicle.
The attendant stepped out as I approached.
I pointed toward the mountain and made a climbing motion with my hands.
She laughed.
Then she pointed inside the bus.
We climbed aboard.
Nobody else was inside.
Twenty minutes later, the bus was full.
The driver climbed aboard, shut the doors, and started the engine.
~
The sun dropped behind the mountain as we drove.
By the time we reached the trailhead, the town was dark.
We stepped off the bus through a gift shop and onto a narrow street.
Taxis honked.
Shopkeepers ran across the street.
“Hello! Room!”
“Food!”
“Beer!”
Then a group of old women hurried toward us, waving white cotton gloves.
One caught Dani’s sleeve.
Another held a pair beneath my chin.
“No, thank you.”
We pulled away.
The women followed us for a few steps, then turned toward another group getting off the bus.
We needed the Huashan Fengguan Inn.
Every hotel sign seemed to begin with Huashan.
None seemed to end with Fengguan.
We walked past the same stores.
Then past them again.
And again.
The light faded. The street signs disappeared into the dark.
Every time we stopped, another merchant noticed us.
Then Dani spotted a police officer.
She waved him over.
He listened, then turned toward the crowd and shouted.
The merchants scattered.
He walked with us.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then he stopped beside a small convenience store and pointed through it.
We followed him inside.
He pointed toward the back.
Behind the store was a dark parking lot.
Beyond that stood our hotel.
~
A few minutes later we were sitting on the bed of our room while the proprietor handed us a trail map.
Then he gave us two pairs of white cotton gloves.
I looked at them.
He then opened the translator on his phone and began typing.
He showed us the screen.
“Sharp rocks.”
“Rusty chains.”
“To protect your hands.”
He pointed at the map.
“What are you planning?”
We showed him our route.
North.
Middle.
East.
South.
West.
Then the cable car down and a train to Beijing.
He counted on his fingers.
Then shook his head.
He pointed to North Peak.
“First cable car.”
Then he traced a line across the map to West Peak.
“Dragon Ridge.”
Then he pointed to the cable car.
“Down.”
He tapped the map again.
“No upside down.”
I looked at Dani for help.
She thought for a second.
“He means no backtracking.”
The proprietor nodded.
“Don’t waste time.”
We put the gloves beside our bags, set the alarm for before dawn, and went to bed.
When the sun rose behind the mountain, we were already climbing.
~
A narrow ledge ran along the cliff. On our right, rock rose above us. On our left, the mountain dropped toward a rocky stream far below.
Far above, sunlight flashed from the cable cars.
Between us and them was the mountain.
Then the trail steepened.
Chains became our handrails.
Stone stairs climbed almost straight up through a narrow crack in the rock.
Moss covered the edges.
Water ran down the steps beneath our feet.
The morning sun disappeared behind the walls.
Ahead of us, a man in his twenties stopped at a landing to photograph the mountains and waterfalls.
Nearby, a girl bent to pet a feral cat.
The cat scratched her.
She pulled her hand back and looked at her finger.
Blood.
As we approached, she held it up.
“Do you have a bandage?”
We didn’t.
The photographer did.
He handed her one.
They started talking.
We kept climbing.
~
Hours later, we saw them again.
They were holding hands.
They climbed ahead of us, stopping together whenever the trail narrowed.
I looked at Dani.
A chain hung from the rock beside us. Her cotton glove caught on a rusted link.
She pulled it free, leaving behind a clump of white fibers.
She held out her hand.
I reached forward and took it.
An hour later, we ate peanuts from a small bag Dani had been carrying. The salt stuck to my lips.
She wiped her nose after and said she felt worse.
Then we started again.
The dragon began as stairs, and it kept being stairs.
They were narrow and uneven, polished smooth by shoes and rain—dark stone against bright sky.
The rail was cold metal.
I could see air on both sides if I let myself look.
I stayed half a step behind her so I could hand her water without having to ask.
When she waved me off, I put the bottle back and watched the way her shoulders rose and fell.
People passed us on the left when the ridge widened.
Most didn’t look up.
Ahead of us, the ridge kept turning.
Then my backpack shifted hard against my spine.
The left shoulder strap had loosened. I reached back, found the webbing, and felt it tearing away from the seam.
I stepped off to the side and told Dani to go ahead to the next landing.
She didn’t.
I tied the strap to itself with a knot that looked confident until I put weight on it.
It slipped.
I tightened it again.
A minute later the other strap started to tear as well, then a buckle, then a seam.
I didn’t have a needle, and I didn’t have thread.
I had sweat, stiff fingers, and a length of thick webbing that had already ripped free from the pack.
Dani tried to help, but the cold had drained the precision from her hands as well. She pinched and pulled and then let go, breathing through her mouth.
A group of tourists arrived from the cable car route—clean jackets and full water bottles.
One of them crouched beside me without asking and started working the knot with quick fingers.
Another held the strap ends taut.
Together we turned the bag into something that held.
It was lopsided.
Ugly.
Tight in the wrong places.
But it held. Barely.
I thanked them, and we started climbing again, Dani in front, me holding the strap.
Ahead of us, the dragon kept turning.
~
After eight hours on Huashan, I’d stopped noticing the stairs.
I ran them.
Granite steps gave way to handholds carved into the cliff and rusted chains dangling over open air. A climber ahead of me turned back, defeated by the slick rock. I kept climbing until prayer flags snapped in the wind at East Peak.
Then I ran to South Peak, where the trees stopped, and the snow began.
Then I turned again and went West.
The quiet trails filled with tourists who had arrived by cable car, and I squeezed past them toward one last summit before turning back for Dani.
I’d promised her that I’d be back in an hour. It’d been fifty minutes.
The crowds thickened. My quads burned.
By the time I found her, she was sitting on a bench, trying not to fall asleep.
She looked up and smiled when she saw me. Then lifted her hand and gave me a faint wave.
Together we made our way to the gondola station.
The entrance brought us to a cave bored through the final summit.
Tourists poured out.
Only we went in.
An attendant stopped us before a painted backdrop showing the very mountain we had just climbed.
“Stand here.”
We did.
“You so beautiful!”
Then she looked at me.
“You so handsome!”
The camera flashed.
I glanced past her toward the station entrance. Outside, the actual mountain stood in plain view.
Then a gondola swung into the station.
We climbed aboard, the floor tipped with acceleration, and we suddenly emerged into daylight.
The ground vanished beneath us.
Dani stared at her shoes.
I stared out the window.
Far below, the trail wound through the cliffs.
Thirty minutes later it delivered us directly into a gift store.
Rows of souvenir photos covered the walls. Three-by-fives and six-by-eights surrounded by keychains and magnets.
And there we were—our faces windburned and covered in grime, pretending to smile.
The mountain now behind us.
The wrong mountain.