According to my channel online, I'm "Professional World Pilgrim".
What that entails is me visiting, videoing, and commenting on, various sacred sites, temples, and places with religious history. I try to be culturally respectful, and do my best to be balanced and accurate.
Thanks to a certain technical innovation I invented, launched, and sold at the right time, I can afford to travel low-key and make videos. There's viewers who contribute to support my work: that money goes into humanitarian causes. I'm not planning on buying an island or a jet. There's a small house in the country, and a trust to manage routine business, and that will do just fine.
As far as the channel's content goes, it's fortunate I did most of the sites in the Middle East - countries that sourced the Big Abrahamic Trio of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - a while before the recent nastiness broke out. After that, I mostly confined myself to Europe, the UK, and a few outliers like Australia and some of the safer places in Africa.
Some spots, I may have been the last to document. It's a bad thing, but many of the worse conflicts seem to involve religion.
It's also good that I got to visit a lot of First Nations sites and communities in America before the change in management. By comparison with what the USA's become, accessing China in general, and Guizhou in particular, was relatively easy.
My Asian phase is only beginning. My thought is to start with the complex syncretism of Chinese vernacular religion and tease out the various strands. A photo on the web initially inspired me: a little building, about the size of a large shipping container, perched alone, precariously, on the sheer, grey, side of a high mountain.
Flying "cattle-class", and driving from the airport, I arrive in Langdong and meet my guide to the Guizhou site, an engineering student named Yaping, in the morning, over brunch. Some rice noodles with beef, vegetables, and a very spicy sauce, accompanied the crunchy, grilled skewers. The market is just so filled with people: I start to see it as a live-action interpretation of one of Bosch's creepier paintings, so I suggest we finish eating, grab some food for later and a few bottles of water from a street stall, and head for the village where we'd leave the car.
Not far out of the little town, the two-wheel-track road has given way to a grey gravel path along a slope. Junipers and bracken ferns abound, the road follows man-made cuttings through grey-brown rock-faces, and some gully erosion is evident.
The way up continues, after meeting a slightly bigger dirt road, bulldozed with a handy bias toward the cliff-face rather than the steep drop on the other side. Steepness awaits - the answer will be to breathe properly... it's all about breath.
Now, it's rocks we get to walk on! From half the size of a human head, down to smaller than a fist, the rocks are just what's on offer for a few hundred metres, distinguished from the rocks on both the up-slope and down-slope sides mainly by the fact there's no scraggly weeds growing between those rocks designated as "path".
As the path turns to follow a curve in the mountain face, Yaping points to a spot on the vertical rock-face of Next Mountain Over: apparently our destination is about two-thirds of the way up that cliff. I think of precarious climbs in America, using shallow, grubbed-out moki steps to reach some of the less-accessible Ancient Puebloan sites, and a small precursor of falling-fear makes small, vaguely seasick feelings.
The path becomes a bit of a Goat's Hiking Experience, and the weeds now vary from knee-height to belt-height, as well obscuring most of the vertical rock-face for long stretches. Through scraggy pines, glimpses of the valley below can be seen every now and then.
The camber of the path is now sometimes inclined to the downhill slope, and weeds sometimes flop over the track, like the one obscuring a particularly loose brick-sized rock that provides me with a nasty stumble.
I gasp a short, sharp breath, involuntarily, as I pick myself up. The dismount's not one that would get many points either. I'm going to keep on, but there's a nasty sort of twinge in my ankle.
And go on we do! The climb's become steeper, with crude steps utilising some of the flat slabs of stone which comprise this part of the mountain.
There's a sudden turn, and a faded red-gold ribbon of prayer cloth hangs from a straggling shrub, tied off at head height. Why there, what for, and by who, I wonder.
A hundred metres more, and a small roofed alcove of stacked stone slabs houses a wooden effigy. Whoever it is, they're represented as helmeted, fierce, and brandishing a big stick and something round and small-plate-sized with two of their six arms. The lion, or whatever this god's mount is, looks pretty fearsome in its own right.
Yaping tells me the disc is the moon, and the other round thing, on the god's belt, is labelled "Sun". He doesn't know who the god is, though.
There's been a lot of care put into Fierce Guy's carving. Respect for culture is important, even without belief, so I appreciate the effort which went into this wayside shrine, without remarking that the historic Fremont people of the American desert could have taught the people of Guizhou a thing or two about stacking stonework.
Whether the brief pause helped, or whether old Six Arms was earning his red scarf, my walking becomes a mite easier as we continue.
A black granite slab, set on edge in concrete, appears on the cliff-ward side of the trail. It announces that the Xizhu Historic Temple is protected by the local Autonomous Prefecture. (If fear of the gods doesn't make you behave, then fear of the Prefecture's officials might!)
A few more yards, and a sudden u-turn, bring us to a sheer rock-face, as the path enters a formidable, 2-metre-deep, stone arch inset in the cliff. It's the Mountain Gate of the temple, and would have been almost completely impregnable when the older barricades and drop-bars were in place. Now, only a flimsy, damaged, plank double-door arrangement remains, and the empty holes and sockets tell the tale of grimmer, warlike times gone by.
As a jarring note, a bright red warning sign adorns the unbroken half of the wooden gate setup, warning those who enter that Something Dangerous is within. A mischievous part of my mind wonders if it's more guys with an abundance of limbs and scary transport choices, but Yaping tells me there's a bit of restorative construction work going on.
Dangerous Things? The Western kind of Health and Safety people would leap up and down, hooting and pointing, at some of the temporary scaffolding. That is, if they could tear their eyes away from the ever-present electric feed wires dangling at knee height, dragging on the ground, loosely festooning the walls and eaves of wooden buildings, and punctuated at regular intervals with unshielded light fittings. Now I know where all the old-fashioned curly fluorescent bulbs went after LED globes caught on in the West!
The stairs up from the Mountain Gate are obviously old, and weeds fill most of the cracks and joins. A roofed alcove, taller than Tiger-Rider God's, comprises an old stone back wall and side walls of modern, grey, cast-cement bricks. The colour match with the older stone is pretty good, whether by accident or design. This time, I know who two of the statues represent: the "Land God" and his consort. They aren't featured much in religious literature, but the country people always seem to make sure they are there.
The third statue has a wealth of red sashes and a menacing stance, but neither Yaping nor I know who he represents, despite his three-metre height towering over the crudely-hewn, knee-tall, Land Deities. Some of the more vine-like weeds are keen to be in the holy presence, and have penetrated the back wall of the little shrine.
As we turn up yet another stone stairway, I look aside to see the roof of the Land God shrine. The tiles are the very old, curved style, laid concave on a lower course, then overlapped convex in a second course, to cover the gaps. It's a neat arrangement. This place may be a mix of history and on-the-spot kludge fixes, but it carries the history of the people who made these gods.
The path winds on at the top of the stair. The toilet block is itself representative of the new/old mix: a very old plank building with a roof of blue, extruded-metal sheeting. Yaping, who's been up here before, says it's wise to use these facilities before ascending the rest of the way: he uses the phrase "Last Chance Saloon", with a grin.
On the same level, the Temple itself sits, along with monks' quarters, a kitchen, and some rooms for storage and maintenance. Some of the buildings are mix-and-match, made with concrete blocks, planks, rough wood posts and corrugated iron, and the liberal use of clear plastic sheeting for waterproofing also allows for a saving on windows.
The beds in the monks' dormitory are all quite old and rickety. There are large bundles of cloth bedding suspended from the rafters. Yaping makes "whiskers" in front of his face with the fingers of both hands. "Keep out rats", he says.
Going by the look of the kitchen next door, the monks might have been wise to hang the woks and cooking pots from the rafters too. No Michelin stars for you, Xizhu! (On the other hand, you're probably featured in this month's issue of Gourmet Rodent.)
The courtyard edge overlooks the cliff. Various litter defines work-in-progress, probably on the part of the Prefecture or its volunteers, and neglect from others. Overlooking all this is the Jade Emperor Hall, built in 1845 but accessed by 20th-century concrete steps. The roofs of all the buildings are covered in curved antique tiles, with fancy corners and dragon finials, plus a few dragons on the ridge capping.
New meets old yet again: the bell suspended on the Jade Emperor's portico has the patina of age, the round-topped, cylindrical shape and general proportions one might expect of a traditional temple bell. Close up, it becomes apparent that somebody has found a very clever use for a few old truck wheel rims.
I laugh. Human ingenuity is always fun when it's not doing harm.
Even a Jade Emperor is not spared the ravages of time. One end wall of the venerable hall is replaced with modern bricks, and it seems that whoever laid them was not fully acquainted with the effects of damp seepage. Still, the Emperor doesn't seem to mind the tables and workbenches strewn all over that end of his hall, or the myriad pastel-coloured plastic stools piled up. I'm sure it makes sense to the Emperor, too, that his hall is the only part of the temple long enough for a ladder to be stowed across the naked rafters.
All the statues are there: Taoist figures, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and folk-religious deities. The sizes vary, as do the carving styles and skill levels employed in the making: humans don't create their gods the same. Still, all share the same altar and offerings, and everybody gets a red cloth drape.
A pristine cathedral may be impressive, but the loosely-defined, overlapping folk theologies I see here are a living work in progress: untidiness and kludge fixes are just part of the deal. Anyway, not everybody has to deal with hauling all building materials by hand up a goat track that won't even allow use of wheelbarrows.
Yaping reminds me we have not yet reached the Guanyin Hall, that small building isolated on the cliff face, and that time is getting on. I wince, rise from the pink plastic stool, and descend the stairs to the courtyard with scarcely a hobble.
It seems that there's some law to these paths: the higher you go, the rougher and narrower the going gets. Indeed, it's all about breath, even when you're puffing and panting.
We pass a small rock alcove where another Land God and Goddess sit crudely carved, in a microwave-oven-sized niche at head height. The plaque beneath their perch honours some donors to the work of building and restoring the temple, and attests to the merit these folk have gained.
And, suddenly, things get very gnarly indeed. That Law Of Paths may work on an exponential scale. We're confronted with a stairway that is more like a stone ladder. If not for the iron grab chain loosely draped at waist height down one side, the foot of this stage would probably be liberally furnished with "so and so died here on (insert date)" plaques. I see that part of the passage is probably narrower than my burly Westerner shoulders. Here goes!
The individual steps are very shallow, forcing me to sidle up in places. My ankle is still nagging, but I hope the temporary change in load allocation is some help. Some of the crucial breaths are taken in quite sharply.
I squeeze through, being thankful this jacket's not expensive, and arrive at the top. A right-hand turn, and I face a poured concrete barrier, into which a brown, wooden door is set. It opens to a gentle push, and I face a narrow, flat, clifftop path, undercutting the mountainside. I think this may have been carved by human effort.
Along the cliff face swings the ever-present electric supply cable, with its regularly-spaced curly bulbs defying the elements. Inset in the cliff face are a half-dozen merit plaques, each commemorating the generosity of a number of contributors.
Looking up, it's quite obvious the cliff overhangs this path by a few metres at least. Possibly the dangling light bulbs don't see much in the way of rain, despite my concerns.
Looking to the right? Hey, that's crazy! I don't often see drone shots or even aerial footage taken from this height. The villages and other mountains are far off, and I get very uneasy if I look at the sheer drop directly below. It would be at least fifty metres before I even risked hitting a treetop.
At the cliff edge, people have been stacking flat rocks, one on another, probably in support of some wish-fulfilment superstition. There's probably not much risk here, but in other parts of the world, the practice is discouraged due to the risk of stackers damaging the habitat of small critters and plants in already-fragile ecosystems.
The power cable winds around a hanging projection from the cliff, a conical lump with its broad end down. I follow the wire along the path, glad that this stretch is smooth and free of trip hazards.
A plastic bucket occupies what was once a square stone reservoir. While far smaller, the bucket serves the same purpose: catching slow drips of clean water that filters down through the limestone.
Yet another merit plaque adorns the cliff a little further on. This one, Yaping says, proclaims that both Good and Bad are distinguished clearly, before going on to list a number of donors.
Looking back to the path, I can at last discern a corner of the Guanyin Hall, peeking from a prominence in the cliff face.
As we round the bend, it becomes clear that there wasn't a lot of effort put into hauling paint all this distance up such a difficult path. That's certainly understandable - I'm almost knackered, and I've got only a day pack and some supplies.
There's an empty light socket just before the door. Even the omnipresent mains cable has its flaws.
The weather-bleached planks and posts speak of many years of mountain climate. The gaps where temple doesn't quite meet cliff are neatly filled with stacked slabs of the local stone. The door is fastened by a chain loop over a nail, and (thank all the gods) opens easily.
We step into a hall perhaps twenty metres in length. An altar-cum-shelf runs at waist height along the cliff face which comprises the building's back wall. A frame of round wooden posts supports the antique-tiled roof, end walls and a front (abyss-facing) wall punctuated with wooden-shuttered windows.
The original Guanyin is, according to some legends, supposed to have achieved enlightenment and immortality as the result of leaping from a cliff: I suppose that's why Guanyin Halls tend to be among the higher parts of temple sites.
According to what Yaping tells me, this hall was a rebuild of an earlier hall which was destroyed and hurled into the valley in the early part of last century. Like that axe of George Washington's (only three new heads and seventeen new handles), nothing original remains, although the red, valley-facing patch nearest the entry is a section of an earlier incarnation of the hall.
For some reason, the far end door is already open when we enter. The grey stone floor is neatly swept, and the millet whisk broom leans against the wall. Apart from a few bagged bundles of incense sticks swinging from the rafters, the only other "furnishing" is a bell, more antique than the truck-parts one in the main temple. Its striker holds a solid river pebble the size of a clenched hand. I'm really not tempted to test it on the bell, in case the sound carries to the village: cultural respect is important!
The path from the back door is also draped with the ever-present cable and its coiled bulbs. There's a sentry-box-sized alcove hewn into the cliff, and a gold effigy of a Buddhist monk stands about a metre tall, watching as we pass. Thanks to a barrier gate, which seems to have been made from found, half-burned, planks (maybe the previous Guanyin Hall was the source), we go no further.
Back inside the hall, I apologise to the three different golden representations of Guanyin, the five golden Buddhas, and the mysterious, realistically-painted statue on the right: my ankle is too painful to ignore any more, and I really need to sit and breathe a moment.
Though every god except the Realistic Right Hand Guy has a red cloth drape, there's not a great deal of incense or bowls of offerings up here in this ramshackle Penthouse Of The Gods. I can sit between Guanyins and Buddhas without moving anything. When I do sit, and get my left boot off, Yaping looks at the swollen ankle and gives a low whistle.
"You're not walking out with that, and I don't think I can carry you down the narrow stair."
My reservations are a little more stringent. "Yaping, I don't even want to think about you staggering out that door onto a narrow cliff path with me. I have an extra parka in my pack, water and our spare food. Perhaps I'll need to spend the night here. I am sure the Prefecture wouldn't mind."
Yaping pulls out his phone, hoping to contact an ambulance service. He has no signal, and my phone also reads zero bars of service.
I assure him it will be okay, and hand over the keys to the rental car. He promises to be back ASAP in the morning with food and more help, then walks out into the late afternoon light, after leaving me his small hip flask of "strong herbal spirits".
I lean on the sill, looking out of the clifftop temple for a long time, as the sun is setting. Now looking about inside, I see that a plastic bundle is hanging from the rafters in a corner. After hopping over, one-legged, I use the bell ringer stick to bring the parcel down. Result! It's a couple of blankets - I'm not doomed to totally freeze, even if the temperature gets a lot lower.
With a little adjustment of the altar space between the Bodhisattva and Buddha zones, I'll have a place for the night: Discomfort, enshrined between Compassion and Enlightenment!
The one curly bulb inside the sanctuary is not at all bright. Fortunately I will be able to see well enough to avoid the uprights which support the roof.
There's not much else I can do except lean back on the cliff-face and enjoy a food bar and a hefty sip of Yaping's herbal remedy, which turns out to contain enough alcohol to burn, both in the throat and literally (when tested with a lighter).
Just as I'm settled and getting as close to sleep as a guy can when there's two thin quilts between body and a very stony altar, I hear voices.
Maybe it's Yaping, returning with whatever passes for the Cavalry round here. Maybe not. I've learned that it's best to shut up and observe first, so that's what I do, taking care to camouflage myself as just a pile of discarded blankets.
The curly bulb doesn't do much in the way of helping visibility. An almost-full moon shines through the open window at the far end. The back door opens. Yes, that is the door leading to nothing but about fifty yards of precipitous path and a sheer drop.
A short figure steps into the temple. Whoever it is, they shine a little in the faint light.
The visitor makes their way to the spot directly in front of the tallest Buddha, and bows three times.
There's another mumble of speech, two voices this time. I'd swear it was the monk statue from the alcove by the back gate who entered, and that Tall Buddha is having a chat with him.
What the hell is in Yaping's herbal concoction anyway? I sneak a side peek from under my nondescript hideout, and the visitor definitely has a bit of a gold tinge!
And now it's the front door... in the moonlight I see what may well be the Jade Emperor from the hall below those narrow, perilous stairs, and his entourage. Fierce Six-Arms Guy holds the door and bows. At least he's left his scary ride somewhere else.
Last in the door are Mr and Mrs Land God (Upper). That is, the smaller pair from the cliff alcove, not the ones from Six Arms Fella's shrine. I still think this Mr Land God has a face that looks a lot like a barn owl's.
A small gust of wind wafts both doors gently closed. The window shutters gently click and seal themselves.
Tallest Buddha nods, as the visiting deities cluster in front of the altar (or, from my perspective, my bed, where I huddle, trying to be still as possible). The cylindrical bell gives a deep, sonorous chime, and the murmuring stops suddenly.
"It is said that Heaven seeks order. Let us remember that Heaven is itself ordered by those who live below us! We are all influenced by our believers.
"Mortals give us image, and shape our nature. While I still, in essence, transcend the problem of attachment, I am at once shown as many various Buddhas, whether I be Maitreya, shaped in the image of a fat old monk because he once joked that the Buddha looked like him, or covered in lamp-holders as my distant-past self Dipankara.
"Guanyin is here, using the 'she/her' pronouns, but in India the mortals see a male Bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara.
"Indeed, as my quiet self near the far door reminds me, I have even been inducted as a saint by the Christians, under the name Josaphat. The ikons of Josaphat do not argue about authenticity, but act in their way, according to the power given by their few believers.
"Believers may give us power, but they are parsimonious - not so devout as to waste prime farming land on a house for gods who could just as well be placed up an impossible hill, but devout enough to build the house and bring us incense with their petitions.
"We, in turn, reward merit. Every holy act, every offering, every visit to a holy place: all accrue some merit...."
The Jade Emperor chimes in. "It's why I'm always checking the figures on my tablet when I'm depicted."
The seated Maitreya Buddha (not in Fat Monk mode) coughs, and continues. "As my other aspect was just saying, merit deserves reward, and Heaven seeks order."
"As mortals have recently begun greater use of the electric force of Nature, the time has come to add to the five elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water and Wood. We welcome... Lightning!"
At this point, I can't keep hidden under the musty quilts any longer. I sneeze, and simultaneously there comes a blinding flash and a tremendous explosion. All the cracks in the rear wall, as well as the few places where roof tiles were missing, light up briefly.
While my eyes swim with after-images from the Earth-Shattering Kaboom, there comes a gentle tap on my right shoulder. It's the particular aspect of the Bodhisattva Guanyin assigned to "bringing new babies", seated to the right of Guanyin herself. She looks me directly in the eyes, and I don't faint, die, or collapse in a gibbering heap. The only discernible difference seems to be that I have forgotten about my very painful ankle.
"It was decided that, as you experience a kind of birth, I would be assigned to tell you. A long and happy future awaits, Brother Loong. Breathe. Feel the currents of Heaven. You have always known the way, but now you wake as a dragon."
So it's me, then - a new major-league player. I never expected a frequent flyer program like this!
It's all about breath, even when that's a bit fiery. I can feel some changes in the "me" that does the breathing, too. Better leave via the back wall while I can: I'm sure the Prefecture won't mind fixing a bit of storm damage!
In the open, I close my eyes and concentrate on those wires strung all the way from the village below. It's surprising how intuitive the process is. Some of the old ideas that made my initial fortune have come back to me, as if they never went away. I zoom in and direct my thoughts.
Across the world, the circuits of a number of unfriendly devices bloom briefly as fierce little blue sparks chase tiny paths of least resistance, and wisps of smoke escape. Even the unfaithful will offer some form of incense.
A number of enterprises which existed to cause pain or unfair dominance are, effectively, cooked. The Great Firewall and its counterparts are no more. Business models will need to change, fast, by sheer necessity, because Things Have Been Broken as a result of my moving fast. Hey, I didn't invent the concept!
I think I'll base my new operations in Guizhou. There's huge caves, plenty of wilderness, plenty of huge solar arrays going in on mountain ridges, and a refreshing number of people with respect for the unspoken edge reality where gods and dragons play.
Of course, there's also a chilli sauce that's arguably the world's best. If I work out how to pass for human, I know a street food stall which deserves a few visits.
Time to stretch my wings. This hall of Xizhu Temple faces west, and the dawn behind the cliff is already prophetically orange.