Ladder of Love
LAW
OF ATTRACTION IS LAW OF LOVE. POWER OF LOVE CAN MAKE YOU DO ANYTHING.
SO HERE IS THE TRUE STORY AND EXAMPLE OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE OF CHINESE
COUPLE WHICH I WANT TO SHARE WITH YOU ALL.
PLEASE READ:
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A weird love story has come out of China recently and managed to touch
the world. It is a story of a man and an older woman who ran off to live
and love each other in peace for over half century.
Over
50 years ago, Liu, was a 19 years-old boy, fell in love with a 29
year-old widowed mother named Xu. At the time, it was unacceptable and
immoral for a young man to love an older woman.To avoid the market
gossips, the couple decided to elope and lived in a cave in Jiangjin
County in Southern ChongQing area.
In the beginning, they had nothing, no electricity or even food. They
had to eat grass and roots they found in the mountain, and Liu made a
kerosene lamp that they used to lighten up their lives.
Starting
the second year of living in the mountain, Liu began, and continue for
over 50 years, to hand carve the steps so that his wife could get down
the mountain easily.
A
half century later in 2001, a group of adventures were exploring the
forest, they surprisingly found the elderly couple and the over 6,000
stairs of hand carved ladder.
“My parents loved each other so much, they have lived in seclusion for
over 50 years and never been apart a single day.” Liu MingSheng, one of
their seven children said, “He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over
the years for my mother’s convenience, although she doesn’t go down the
mountain that much.”
The couple had lived in peace for over 50 years until last week. Liu,
now 72 years-old, returned from his daily farm work and collapsed. Xu
sat and prayed with her husband as he passed away in her arms.
So in love with Xu, was Liu, that no one was able to release the grip he had on his wife’s hand even after he had passed away.
“You
promised me you’ll take care of me, you’ll always be with me until the
day I died, now you left before me, how am I going to live without you?”
… …
Xu spent days softly repeating this sentence and touching her husband’s black coffin with tears rolling down her cheeks.
In
2006, their story had became one of the top 10 love stories from China,
collected by the Chinese Women Weekly. The local government has decided
to preserve the love ladder and the place they lived as a museum, so
this love story can live forever.
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READ THE STORY IN DETAIL
One of the World’s Most Amazing Love Stories Happened on a Mountain in China
BY SHELLEY JIANG ON NOVEMBER 6, 2012
In
a country where a man’s marriageability hinges on whether he owns an
apartment, and mistresses act as a status symbol for the rich and
powerful, it is not surprising that Chinese have become enchanted by a
story of love at its purest and most humble. How many people in
contemporary China—or anywhere else—would give up everything they have
to be with the one they love? More than
50 year ago, Xu Chaoqing (???) and Liu Guojiang (???) chose exactly that.
Were
Xu and Liu to meet today, they would face far fewer obstacles. But in
1956, Xu was a widow with four children, while Liu was ten years younger
than she. Criticism and gossip drove the couple to escape their village
and start a new, arduous life high up in the mountains, in what is now
southwestern Chongqing.
Not
until 2001 did they come to the world’s attention again. A research
team on expedition discovered a series of more than 6,000 steps carved
into the steep mountainside. The stairs led the researchers to the
couple, wrinkled by time but still very much in love.
These
6,000 steps were Liu’s great work of love: He carved them painstakingly
by hand, in an effort spanning decades, so that his wife could safely
ascend and descend the mountain. The Ladder of Love has since become
well-known throughout China, inspiring television and movie adaptations,
even as Xu and Liu maintained their simple mountain life. He called her
his “old lady”; he was still her “young man” after all these years.
Liu
continued caring for his Ladder of Love until his death in 2007, at the
age of 72. Xu passed away on October 30, 2012, bringing to a close a
love story that began one day in June of 1942.
First and last love
Liu
Guojiang was just six years old then, outside catching crickets when a
wedding procession entered his village, a place called Gaotan. Local
custom held that it was good luck for children who lost their baby teeth
to have a bride touch the inside of their mouth, so gap-toothed Liu
approached the palanquin. He was nervous, and bit the bride’s finger.
The curtain lifted to reveal a beautiful, sixteen-year old girl staring
at him with a trace of anger. “Little rascal, when you grow up, you
should find a pretty girl like this!” joked a nearby woman.
Later, when people asked him what kind of wife he wanted, he told them earnestly that he wanted someone like that girl.
That
girl was Xu Chaoqing, who had just married into the richest family in
Liu’s village. But 10 years later, her husband was dead of meningitis,
and she found herself penniless with four children, the youngest just
one year old. Indigent, Xu and her children survived on wild mushrooms
gathered from the woods. They could not even afford salt to season them.
She wove grass sandals to sell, one pair for five pennies.
Liu to the rescue
One
evening, Xu went to fetch water from the village river, carrying her
youngest child on her back. In the dwindling light, Xu slipped, and they
plunged into the river. Liu, who lived nearby, jumped in to save them
both.
Liu had been aware of the family’s poverty, but as a
stranger, he had been in no place to intervene. Now, he had his chance.
After rescuing Xu, Liu helped them with all the heavy chores:
Fetching water, chopping firewood, planting crops.
Three years passed, and Liu’s close relationship with Xu became the target of malicious tongues.
Girls
came by to scold Liu, telling him not to waste time with a widow. Xu’s
in-laws were not pleased either. One day in 1956, the pressure grew too
intense and Xu told Liu to stop his visits. That night, he snuck into
her house to propose. The next morning, Liu, Xu, and her children
disappeared from Gaotan Village forever.
Mountain life
Xu
and Liu started their life in the mountains in an abandoned straw hut.
They caught fish, gathered wild vegetables, walnuts, and dates, and
ground leaves into flour. Behind their hut, they planted sweet potatoes
and corn, though hungry monkeys were always eager for a share of the
harvest.
To fend off storms and wild beasts—even
tigers—the couple built a sturdier shelter. It took them more than a
year to retrieve enough mud and clay from a mountain pass, and another
year to fire their own tiles from a homemade kiln.
Xu
gave birth to four of Liu’s children high in those mountains with no
medical assistance. Her youngest child from her first marriage died, but
her remaining seven children—four by Liu, three by Xu’s first
husband—grew up and went to school in the world below. The couple
occasionally traveled to a village market to sell honey and buy goods.
But they remained adamant about continuing their mountain life, even as
their children settled down in the outside world.
A
tiny, steep trail provided the only link between their hideout and the
world below. Though the couple’s trips out into the world were rare, Liu
worried about his wife’s safety and began to hand-carve a stairway in
the mountain. Over 57 years, he broke 36 steel chisels as he built 6,000
steps. “I was worried for him, but he said, when the stairs are built,
it will be easy for me to climb down. But in my life I’ve hardly gone
down the mountain at all,” Xu said in a 2006 interview.
Rest in peace?
After
their daring retreat from Gaotan Village and from the world, the couple
never spent a night apart; now, the two are buried together on the same
mountain where the two built their lives. The story should end here,
peacefully, with little to disturb their rest but wild creatures.
The
local Jiangjin government, however, has other ideas. It has announced
that it will spend 2.6 billion RMB (about US$416 million) to turn the
area into a scenic attraction. Tourism areas in China, unfortunately,
are often synonymous with high admission prices, kickbacks to government
officials, mismanagement, environmental degradation, and limited
benefit for local residents.
The move, coming so
swiftly on the heels of Xu’s passing, has drawn outrage and anger. The
term “Ladder of Love” became the most-searched term on November 1 on
Baidu, China’s top search engine.
Chinese web
users commenting on social media saw in the government’s decision a
naked eagerness to profit from the old couple–an insult to the true,
unworldly spirit of Liu and Xu’s love.
“Utterly
shameless; beasts, don’t destroy the great Ladder of Love. Leave a pure
sanctuary for the lovers, let people reflect and muse on this story
themselves, and then let them protect it with true love and sentiment,”
wrote on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter. agreed, writing: “This poor old
couple, who has worked hard to survive all their lives, will now enrich
those who will make a fortune from their love.”
But
what ultimately stands out is still the priceless, unadorned love of Xu
and Liu–their willingness to brave material discomfort and social
condemnation, to give up the world and pursue a shared life together
over all obstacles. The outpouring of online sentiment—both angry and
maudlin—reveal a desire for a simpler world, where love and wealth are
not equated, where love simply means a happy hut in the woods.
“In
sophisticated cities the love we see is hypocritical, but the Ladder of
Love let us see a love that is pure and true,” mused . “This kind of
love cannot be expressed by money, possessions or insincere words. Their
love was very simple: To grasp each other’s hand, to grow old together.
The world may be big, but they had only each other in their eyes.”
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