Following the people in twos and threes, I sped up. There was no crowd, no crush, no wave, no noise but plenty of space for me to imagine and to relax. As I noticed, people were all adults, most seemed to have come from a polite society and were serious about their surroundings as to appreciate nature and to respect history.
The path was broad and sinuous - sometimes flat, sometimes sloping, sometimes with a steep fl ight of stairs down into a deep valley or up to a ridge, and sometimes hidden within a beacon tower. The steps were well preserved and wide. As I went further to the north, bare mountains speckled with black soil and white rocks, layered in the distant east. A small village located on a slope lay like a baguette between the foot of a bare mountain and the bottom of a colorful forest. A pair of paragliders floated in dots above the Mao slogan. A single beacon tower stood out and overtopped the trees like a monumental headless sculpture in close-up. And four beacon towers in the shape of a diamond on a mountain to the southeast looked like four statues lost in thought.