Fellow Virtual Travelers,
What a busy two days we've had! Yesterday (Tuesday, April 29th) was an adventure up Carefree Valley (also known as Monkey Valley). To get there was a five minute walk and a ten minute bus ride down the mountain. Hopping off at the parking lot by the entrance to the valley, we wandered around the garden areas on both sides of the river and lake. Got some good photos of white and black swans! Breathtaking!
Then we headed up the valley for a scenic hike to try and find a location we'd visited in 2003 - Zhang Senfeng's (also spelled Chang San Feng's) meditation cliff. The valley has undergone a lot of construction with concrete pathways and stairs, so we missed the correct turnoff point and ended up walking an extra mile or two. Heading back downstream, we found the location and were disappointed to find that no reconstruction of the meditation cliff has happened and the entire cliff area we'd seen in 2003 was behind locked doors.
There are many legends written about Zhang Sanfeng, with some contradictions about his birth dates, accomplishments and life.
In general, though, it is accepted that he is the founder of the Tai Chi Chuan martial art and spent some time at Wudangshan. Check out more details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Sanfeng
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T'ai_chi_ch'uan
One of the fun aspects of Monkey Valley is, well, the monkeys! We saw only three (though we heard many more chattering from hidden positions in the cliffs and trees) including a mother and her baby!
This morning (Wednesday, April 30th), we had a great blessing of interviewing a well-known Traditional Chinese Medical doctor who is well-versed in herbalogy (with specific knowledge of Wudangshan plants and medicines)! Out of around 700 known medical plants, over 400 of them can be found growing naturally on the Wudang mountains!
In the afternoon, we did a self-guided tour down the mountain to visit and photograph the Needle Grinding Well and Guan Di Temple ruins! More about those locations in future emails!
We're getting ready to go to bed for some sleep before more adventures tomorrow at the Golden Summit!
The most difficult part of putting together this email was picking out which pictures to send! We've had awesomely wonderful weather and the sights are magnificent!
Blessings,
Dennis&Anita