The Love Stairway
01 The Tradition: A Front Tooth
As a boy of 6, Guojiang Liu was not sure what great expectation was about. But on that restless spring morning, he knew he expected something really great. He wanted his front tooth to grow back.
Amid other kids around his age, he had been running after the wedding sedan chair for a long time. A wedding always brought hectic and fun to this little, remote village located in west China, especially for kids. Chasing the shoulder-carried sedan, they could peep into the beautiful bride who was behind the sedan curtain and silk red veil, snap wedding candies, and dance around the firecrackers. But Guojiang had a special mission this time. He had lost his front tooth for a couple of weeks. He was told about a tradition where he needed to get a bride to finger touch his gum to make the tooth grow back. He ran and ran until no more kids trailing the sedan. A man in the wedding group came to him, smiling. Guojiang showed his fallen tooth and told his story. Nobody doubted a tradition at that time, whether a adult or kid. He was brought to the front of the sedan. The men yelled some words and the sedan stopped. A pale hand poked out of the thick curtain and crossed a seemingly ocean distance; the forefinger touched his gum. The other end of the arm, a fine, shy face of unworded beauty. An electric shock went through the feeble body. Guojiang went blank for a long time.
The bride was Zhaoqing Xu. She was 16.
Her face imprinted in Guojiang’s mind like forever. The little boy was not sure how to grab the feeling, rather than he would do anything for her. But he had no idea at that time that this anything included chiseling a mountain stairway of 6802 steps on bare rocks, and a half-century of commitment.
02 Runaway
Their second encounter happened ten years later. Guojiang was 16, and Zhaoqing 26. Devoting all her energy to the new family, Zhaoqing’s memory, if any, stayed not long about the little boy with a missing front tooth. When they happened to come by each other in the small village, she barely paid one more glance to the timid boy. But her face in Guojiang’s mind never faded. As a teenager he was not sure how to interact with her when passing by, but he deemed it sufficient to just relish the feeling generated by the passing silhouette.
Until one day when he saved a drowning mom and her son.
Zhaoqing’s poverty-stricken family got one more blow in that year. After having four kids, she lost her husband to meningitis. A young widow was widely considered bad luck at that time. Her husband’s parents refused to help; the neighbors chattered about the foreign woman as the bane of the village. She struggled to feed the four kids on her own. Whether working at the little soil or getting to the mountain high for food supply, she had to carry the kids on her back. She couldn’t even afford salt. One day, she went to the river to fetch water with one of her kids. They slipped into the river. Guojiang happened to pass by. He jumped into the river and saved them.
Knowing all her misfortunes, he was too shy to come to her aid. This incident burned down the last thin restraint. He started to visit her and helped her hoe, fetch, log, all labor works. Soon gossips arose around the neighborhood. He didn’t care. Sometimes she was daunted. She tried to hint at him, later on avoid him. That didn’t stop him either. Still he was not sure how to interact with her. His feeling was the same as the little boy on the wedding day, who would do anything for her.
He did it for almost four years rain or shine. One day, when he was 19, he told her he wanted to protect her for the whole life. This came after a long-time consideration. In tradition, loving a widow and marrying an older woman were both deemed extremely treacherous. He asked her to run away with him. She was already long tired of the chatters in the neighborhood and the cringey feeling whenever he came. She nodded in bitter silence. One morning, they ran away with the four children.
They met to follow a tradition. They ran away to break another.
03 Happy Life in No man’s Land
Climbing up almost 5000 feet in the deep mountain, they found two deserted cottages. They settled down there. He fished, she hoed, the four kids grew up with self-sufficiency. The couple had four more kids. The big family lived in a no man's land for many happy years. Guojiang later built a small bee farm. He went down the mountain selling honey time by time. On that day, Zhaoqing would be sitting at the wood bridge down the slope, waiting for him.
There is no lack of passion when it comes to run away, what’s lack is the power of will to stay together for life long. Mundane life would drive people apart, not to mention the hardship. When many families fell apart in face of slight hardship, this couple didn’t budge in the harshest life possible. They couldn’t remember how many times the cottages were blown off. They stayed in the cave and rebuilt them after the storm. Pests destroyed the soil, they seeded again until the sprout came out.
04 6208 Steps
Life was peaceful in that quiet mountain nook. It also ran on its natural course. The kids went down to the village or even further one after another. But the couple had no interest to move back where they used to be considered utterly ominous. And they really enjoyed living this timeless life.
Striking them along with the lonesome was aging. There was only one little path, rugged and steep, coming down the mountain. It was not a problem at young ages. But growing old, going down the mountain, though so few times, was increasingly tough for Zhaoqing.
She fell down once, bruises all over her. Guojiang kicked himself for failing to deliver the promise — protect her for the whole life. Almost immediately, he decided to build a mountain stairway for her. It was like the lightning feeling that hit him on the wedding day, only this time he knew what to do.
He bought a set of hammer and chisel. Since then one more routine was added to his daily life. After farm works, he went down the path, sat on the rock or cliff, chipped and chipped. The loud thump echoed from afar around the mountain tops.
After 50 years and over twenty chisels and hammers, he chipped out a stairway of 6208 steps.
Zhaoqing said to a reporter many years later, “He came back home in dark every day, dusty and exhausted. I held his hands, full of scars and callus, fell into tears. He smiled all the time. He told me that it would be much easier for me to come down the mountain once the stairs were completed. But it’s funny that I came down the mountain so few times in my whole life.”
05 Discovery
One day in the fall of 2001, a group of hikers was climbing a mountain in west China. All of sudden they found themselves trailing on a hand-hammered stairway. The chisel lines looked new with sand and gravel spread on the surface to make the steps anti-slip. Utterly intrigued, the crew climbed along the stairs. They were led to the very top of the mountain. For one moment they found themselves faced with a flat field where two muddy cottages stood, an elder woman sat in the front sewing, and an elder man worked aside logging. Some of the hikers pitched themselves to make sure they were not entering a dreamland.
The woman came forward to greet them. In the following talks, the hikers were incessantly shocked as the story laid out. One of the biggest shocks was when the couple casually asked, “Is Chairman Mao still doing well?” Mao died 25 years ago.
The hikers left, greatly shocked and touched, and brought the story to the outside world. Zhaoqing and Guojiang had no idea that a surprising visit would bring their quiet life to an end. By 2006, they became national news by being listed as one of the top 10 love stories of modern China. A tourism resort was built by the local government, upon the little field on the mountain and the 6208 rocky steps. A great boulder monument erupted at the mountain foot: “The Love Stairway”. It seemed the old couple could do little about all the movements. They smiled at every visitor, telling their story like telling others. Nobody could get deep into their mind. While their life was largely interrupted, they tried hard to maintain the routines, farming, sewing, logging, fetching, and staying together.
06 The End, the Tradition
One night in the winter of 2007, Guojiang came back as usual after checking on the crops. He suddenly fell headlong to the ground. Zhaoqing shook him and yelled, “Get up, you little boy!” It was the first time that he didn’t respond to her. Over 80 years old, she stormed down the mountain stairway in pitch dark, running to their third son for help.
It was the first time she went down the stairs alone. Before that, he held her hand every time, or half held her body. For so many years, he never allowed her to walk down herself. The winter in west China was cold and wet; she fell down countless times and got up and kept running. She ran for almost two hours to get her child bruises and mud all over her body.
They got him to the hospital, where he stayed in coma for six days. After that, he died of hemorrhage.
She and her children tried many ways to wake up him — -again some traditions. They were told putting something significant along the pillow might be able to wake up a person from coma. Guojiang was careful enough to get the marriage certificate in the early years to make their life legitimate. Now they put the certificate and a set of chisel and hammer aside his pillow. Whether it was a true science or a tradition, it didn’t work out this time. She held his hand, every single second, for six days.
He was buried along with the cottage. Their children asked her to move down and live with them. She denied it immediately. “I live where your dad stays. He will feel lonely without me.”
He passed away in 2007, at 71. She passed away five years later, at 87. She said, from 1956 to 2007, we had the happiest time in our lives. 51 years, that’s more than enough.
In tradition, Zhaoqing was buried alongside Guojiang. There were some bad traditions in the middle, but the story started with a beautiful tradition, ended with another.
