The premise of the book is strange to begin with. An 11 km (7 mi) road with 99 bends also reaches the top of the mountain and takes visitors to Tianmen cave, a natural arch in the mountain of a height of 131.5 m (431.4 ft).
The Road to Heaven – Huashan Mountain. Only 4 stars because I thought it was a bit too heavy with the Chinese history (which is of course needed for context) and a bit too light on actual interviews with the hermits he met. The hermits are treated like zoo animals by the government, not the sages that once, as in the T'ang, influenced the course of dynasties. So much of the book gets bogged down in the author traveling around. Porter conveys the glad search for the remaining hermits and their remote temples and caves - this tradition hangs on, and there are more masters in the mountains than he'd thought. The World Wingsuit League held the first and second World In August 2016, a glass skywalk overlooking Tongtian Avenue, called the "Coiling Dragon Cliff",In February 2018, a hybrid Range Rover SUV driven by View of the Heaven-Linking Avenue from a cable car As Bill Porter relates in his congenial new book, Road to Heaven, legend has it that five millennia ago two hermits taught China’s first emperor, Huang-ti, how to … All very interesting, but sometimes overwhelming.
A good read. The first impression is that the stairs lead to the heaven, it’s like climbing towards the clouds and it’s impossible to see where the stairs end. The thread that runs through the hermit tradition is the idea of being able to engage with the world and see it clearly by disengaging from it. Also known as Tongtian Avenue (Road to Heaven), the route is … The final and most dangerous feat to accomplish is the part where you have to vertically climb a chain located on the side of the mountain. The photographs are great, too!Bill Porter, who goes by the name Red Pine for his translation work, has thoroughly entertained me with this book, while also opening up a world that I didn't know still existed. And connecting these hermits to the old ways and the old poets--Li Bai, Wang Wei, and others--makes this a fascinating read.Intriguing descriptions of, and interviews with, modern-day post Cultural Revolution Taoist hermits living in spectacular mountain caves and hidden temples of China--what's not to like? I like how you are mixing up the locations and not making them all beaches, mountains, etc.Each week you never fail to amaze me with these unique places, that in most cases so far I have never heard of. Elevating from 2,050 feet to 3,855 feet above the sea level, it has an astonishingly 45 hairpins. Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, by Red Pine (Bill Porter), is a fascinating look at Daoist and Buddhist hermits just as China was “opening” in the late 1980s and early 1990s. But intertwined with his personal narrative is a lot of history: politics, Taoism, and Buddhism in China over the past two thousand plus years. The planks are so thin that in order to keep your balance and not fall into the abyss you need to hang onto the chains that are also anchored into the rock. You are running half blind-folded and grasping at whatever possible trail you pick up. The chains and planks are the only things that are keeping you safe; there are no nets, safeguards or medical centers nearby. Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian Scholarly exiles, all historically left their mark on China and there is a long-standing tradition of respect for the Hermit.After the Cultural Revolution in China, no one believed that Chinese hermits still lived in the Chungnan mountains – the traditional place of hermits.After the Cultural Revolution in China, no one believed that Chinese hermits still lived in the Chungnan mountains – the traditional place of hermits.After the Cultural Revolution in China, no one believed that Chinese hermits still lived in the Chungnan mountains – the traditional place of hermits.After the Cultural Revolution in China, no one believed that Chinese hermits still lived in the Chungnan mountains – the traditional place of hermits.Fabulous book, and curiously, perhaps by design, reads as if it were written yesterday, though it has been thirty odd years since the events chronicled in it took place. You are running half blind-folded and grasping at whatever possible trail you pick up. The answer is simple: tea. The book, 'Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese hermits' by Bill Porter was a fascinating look, part travelogue, part Chinese history, and part religious exploration of people living in the Ching Ling mountains of China who have survived, pursued, and lived being hermits (whether religious, intellectual, or …