The truth is, these are vacation pictures, just not mine. My landlady is Chinese. She and her husband — he's a local and attended CalPoly — own the building I live in and other property. They were very nice in selecting me over a list of others to live here. Together they own a company in China that uses giant machines to produce mainly pet products (feeders, even one that connects to a smart phone allowing you to adjust the feeding schedule no matter where you are) and now a company on the central coast that does much the same thing on a smaller scale. They are very nice people, and for more than a year now I have helped them with logos, fliers, letters, translating Chinese English into understandable English English. I wrote and rewrote a website for them. I speak exactly no Chinese, so I have no inherent advantage in translating what she writes or says in her empassioned business mode. I use my intuition and then pretend a bit. And strangely, it seems to work.

This past month she took part in a trade show in Shanghai. Before leaving with her daughter she asked if I would do a poster for the show. I said I'd be delighted to, but I'd need certain information. I'd need the size, graphics, an approximation of the text, and any particulars she thought necessary. The usual. She said that was no problem, she'd have someone send that to me. Well, what I received was mostly in Chinese from one of the Chinese employees. It made almost no sense, though if I read Chinese it might have made perfect sense. As I struggled for more information, it turned out she wanted three posters, but it wasn't clear which products she wanted featured — or perhaps I should say they wanted featured. This went on for almost two weeks until her husband called to ask what was happening with the posters. Anyway, that night and the following morning I swapped the graphics, changed the text, sent for the third time instructions on how to assemble the main poster, and sent the husband graphics (png files) of the finished posters along with files (in ai) for the printer. I made them all in the size Google told me was the largest standard metric poster size used in China. Thank God for Google. I did all that and then held my breath.

I thought the posters were stunning. They were bright white and meant to hook the customers to her booth where she could sell them. She's good at that. After the final flurry of activity I waited, and waited, and heard nothing back.

The reason for her lengthy stay, and for taking her daughter, was to visit Huangshan, which meant nothing to me, but may have left her out of touch for a while. "It's a pretty mountain," she said. At least that's what I thought she said. She was taking her daughter there.

Huangshan (Chinese: 黄山, literal meaning: Yellow Mountain) is a mountain range in southern Anhui province in eastern China. Vegetation on the range is thickest below 1,100 meters (3,600 ft), with trees growing up to the treeline at 1,800 meters (5,900 ft).

The area is well known for its scenery, sunsets, peculiarly-shaped granite peaks, Huangshan pine trees, hot springs, winter snow, and views of the clouds from above. Huangshan is a frequent subject of traditional Chinese paintings and literature, as well as modern photography. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of China's major tourist destinations. [From Wikipedia]

Well, when I saw her a few days ago she showed me pictures of the booth in Shanghai. It was less a booth and something closer to the size of my livingroom with two solid walls and two glass walls, and appeared to be freestanding. But it had in the center three beautiful posters, not as I feared they might be, but exactly as I imagined them. And then suddenly a hundred pictures of Huangshan.

This one has a rock on top that is called Monkey Contemplating the Clouds, or something close to that. There seems to be a story attached to almost everything here. On Wikipedia there's a photograph of steps carved into the granite. She told me there are 1,000 steps from the bottom to the top, and that five of the nine people in her group did not make it to the top. Now ten thousand in Chinese means something like "a great many." But 1,000 means something very close to 1,000 actual steps. Her legs were still sore when she told me this story. That's 1,000 steps up and 1,000 steps down. But the beauty and the memory of it makes every step worth while.

And that's the vacation I did not take. A magnificent hike to the top that I shall never forget. If you're in China, be sure to remember Huangshan.