gazing over the shrouded valley, to the mountains beyond

Sichuan's Leshan, "Happy Mountain", has that name for a reason. Believe what you like, that 70-meter Maitreya Buddha, enthroned by the river, radiates peace vibes that turn all on two legs, from man to macaque, into chattering, hospitable, opportunistic good-time charlies.

But if you continue upland, sixteen hundred meters up and away from the Buddha's beatific aura, you come to a land altogether different. The fertile wound of a glacier gouge in Saddleback Mountain, Black Bamboo Valley enjoys a reputation as a supernatural place. Enjoys, for few other than the Yi minority, who love it as they love their gods, have much truck with the place.  Spooky? Not exactly, but as you can see, it's not quite like any other place in China, or the world.

Thick, swirling, special-effect fog, creeping up softly then stopping abruptly, lends Black Bamboo Valley half its mystery.   

At thirty five hundred meters, the upper lip of the valley shows a stark face, even bathed in the first rays of the sun.

Although the sun rarely manages to set the valley aglow, rhododendrons, luminsescent fungi, and a thousand other rare ornaments make it a bright, if stately, realm.

Pristine mountain water falls down, down into virgin clefts, untrodden, impassable to any hominid able to relate the adventure. Many who tried disappeared, prompting locals with a grasp of world geography to compare it to "Baimuda", as in triangles.

Black Bamboo Valley sits high in the sky, for all that. Needless to say, don't undertake your own expedition after November.

No contenders with the ethereal outcroppings back East - the outcroppings of Black Bamboo Valley are cruder, lonelier, and crawl with far fewer humans.

The edge of the valley is literally known as "The Realm Between Life and Death", so definitively does it guard its borders with billows of fog.  

But even near its heart, by a hotspring, eternal mist indeed makes this a kingdom of, if not death, then mystery, solitude, forgetfulness.

Thus all that thrives on quiet and moisture thrives in Black Bamboo Valley. Even at thirty three hundred meters, this azalea trunk is wreathed in fluffy, afro-thick moss.  

Little wonder the Yi minority who dwell there use ritual to pierce the veil. Lucky shaman, able to do some conjuring with no crowd of tourists about. His prognostication: fog by evening.  

Fair or foul, the weather gives little pause to an Yi mother busy feeding her brood.  

The Yi and other southwestern minorities are known correctly, yet condescendingly as dancers. Goodness knows the boon to us in the materially advanced, spiritually depleted world if we took up tribal dancing again.