He halted a moment to take another sip before adding, “So, you can forget about getting me those seasick patches, Vince. Because, as of this moment, I’ve been pulled off the crossing.”
3
The narrow, earthen footpath began at the northernmost outskirts of the village. Though he hadn’t walked its length for almost a decade, the thick jungle he was soon passing through still felt familiar. It had been much too long since he’d taken the time to hike such a wild, desolate spot, and Adm. Liu Huangtzu realized how much he missed these beloved woods of his birth.
The harsh cry of a bird drew his line of sight to the stand of massive coconut palms lining the western edge of the trail. It took him only seconds to spot the brilliant crimson plumage of the large parrot responsible for this outburst of guttural song. Twisting green vines surrounded the colorful bird. Liu gratefully inhaled a deep lungful of air heavy with the scent of wet wood and dark earth. The mad screech of a howler monkey sounded in the distance, and Liu turned his attention back to the path.
With ever lengthening strides, he penetrated deeper into the ancient jungle, the sky above all but blotted out by an interlocking canopy of thick tree limbs. The trail now followed the meander of a cascading brook, making Liu aware of the path’s slight uphill slope. This change in gradient didn’t phase the seventy-nine-year-old career soldier in the least, and he quickened his stride in anticipation of what lay beyond.
There was a noticeable band of sweat on his forehead by the time he reached the terraced stairway that he remembered from his last visit.
Without taking the time to wipe his brow dry, he initiated the rather steep climb, whose individual steps were cut from the exposed roots of the nearby trees.
At the top, a wide, dry mud walkway led him out of the humid jungle and up into a new zone of vegetation. The increased altitude here had allowed the canopy of dripping palms to give way to a gnarled forest of dwarfed oaks. A fresh gust of cool wind hit him full in the face. Liu was momentarily startled when he surprised a covey of quail. Like grapeshot, the fat, yellow-feathered birds burst from the underbrush directly in front of him, wasting no time in disappearing into the stunted trees that lay on the opposite side of the trail.
Liu cursed himself for not bringing a shotgun. Fresh mountain quail were a delicacy not to be missed!
The first of several switchbacks conveyed him farther up the mountain.
Liu was beginning to feel his walk in the back of his calves — he was thankful he had taken the time for breakfast earlier in the day.
It was hard to believe this meal had taken place barely three hours ago, while he was still at sea, aboard his flagship the Zhanjiang. As was his habit, he had awakened well before dawn. The seas had remained blessedly calm, and Liu headed topside to the destroyer’s fantail, where he greeted the new day with a full regimen of tai chi.
Breakfast awaited back in his cabin. After a glass of fresh orange juice, a slice of sugar-sweet cantaloupe, and a bowl of rice porridge, he took his tea in the warship’s bridge, while the destroyer began its cautious approach into Yulin harbor.
Waiting for them pier side was a small welcoming committee of local dignitaries. Liu immediately recognized the portly, gray-haired figure of Hainan’s senior Party commissar. Seven decades ago, they had gone to elementary school together. Now, at the end of the gangway, he accepted his old friend’s enthusiastic greeting.
His schoolmate appeared to have had his feelings hurt when Liu rather abruptly excused himself to begin his current hike. But one of the benefits of his advancing years was the right to spend his time the way he wished, without feeling guilty for doing so. Besides, there would be time for gossip later in the day. Right now, it was time to get his land legs back and initiate a long-anticipated climb that could well be his last.
The moment he left the harbor area behind and crossed Yulin’s ever-expanding streets to the wilderness at its outskirts, Liu knew that he had made the right decision. This hike was a rare chance to rediscover his youth, and in the process, channel his energies on the great challenge that awaited in the days to come.
A hand-sized, gray lizard scampered across the dusty trail ahead of him, as he started around the steepest switchback he’d yet encountered.
It was a bit more difficult to catch his breath here, reminding Liu of days long ago, when he had sprinted up this same trail, hardly breaking a sweat.
It was in 1934 that Liu was called to Kiangsi from his island birthplace to continue his education. It didn’t take long for the impressionable teenager to fall in with a young group of political idealists, led by a fiery Hunanese visionary named Mao Tsetung. Mao’s passionate socialist teachings made complete sense to Liu, who joined the newly formed Chinese Communist Party less than a week after arriving on the mainland.
Barely a year later, he was a grizzled Party veteran, running for his life along with Mao and a hundred thousand loyal cohorts on the infamous Long March.
Across the length and breadth of their homeland, they were constantly pursued by Chiang Kaishek and his bloodthirsty Kuomintang forces, the ever-encroaching Japanese invaders, and the harsh hand of Mother Nature, but still they persevered. For his loyalty, Liu was appointed to a prominent position in the newly formed People’s Republic government that was to emerge from the feudal ashes of post-World-War-II China.
With his youthful friend Deng Xiaoping at his side, Liu’s first position of real power was as a senior commissar in the People’s Liberation Army, the PLAIn 1952, he was transferred to the newly formed PLA Navy. This feeble force was composed of a handful of obsolete warships, barely capable of patrolling the new country’s sprawling coastline. Liu was a major force in the unparalleled era of naval growth that was to follow.
By 1955, he had attained the rank of rear admiral.
Liu got his first real view of the vast world beyond while attending the prestigious Voroshilov Naval Institute in the USSR. He returned to China anxious to apply the same naval doctrines that provided the foundation for the modern Soviet Navy.
Liu spent the sixties and seventies building the PLA Navy’s infrastructure, and in 1982, he was honored to become its supreme commander. Six years later, he was named ranking Vice Chairman of the Central Military and the senior serving officer in the Politburo Standing Committee. This made him the only military man among the top leadership of the entire country.
Never one to take his responsibilities lightly, Liu had dedicated his best years to the PRC. He never married; his spouse was his beloved motherland.
Much like the perennial bachelor who didn’t have children to mark the years’ passing, Liu was barely aware that most of his life was over.
There was no denying that the majority of his old friends were long in their graves. Deng’s recent passing served as an abrupt wake-up call-Liu now faced the waning years of life with only a handful of old comrades left to share war stories with.
A sharp cry from above broke Liu from the thoughts of his past. He looked up in time to see an immense golden hawk circling effortlessly.
A cloudless, powdery blue sky provided a fitting backdrop for the hawk, and Liu marveled at the size of this proud creature. From its lofty vantage point, it could see most of Wuzhi Mountain’s 1,900-meter high summit. Surely the bird of prey was aware of Liu’s presence the moment he broke from the cover of the jungle.
Suddenly feeling alone and exposed, the old soldier humped up a final series of twisting switchbacks. His lungs were heaving as he rounded the last turn. A sudden breath of cool, ocean-scented wind engulfed him. A small clearing had been dug into the summit’s southern edge. It was to this spot that Liu proceeded.