Thursday, June 4, 2020

Ladder of Love

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:


- 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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