Rock Climbing

We rode our bikes to where we would be rock climbing. Our students –none of whom had been rocking climbing before- were very excited. I, on the other hand, was smitten by the small cave entrances near our climbing site. It was obvious that at some point in the past, someone had enhanced the cave entrances by partially blocking them up with makeshift rock walls. They had managed to reduce the cave entrances to door-sized openings. One of them was even outfitted with a rough bamboo door. Who did this? Were they trying to keep something in? Or were they trying to keep something or someone out?

I asked Phil, one of our three guides from Dragonfly. He told me what he knew. The local villages had hid out in these caves during the Japanese invasion during World War II. They would live in them for days -sometimes weeks- at a time. The caves were used again during the upheaval that came with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

Now it was a rock climbing site for middle schoolers visiting from Hong Kong.

My students didn’t seem too enamored with the caves. They were too busy figuring how they were going to climb the fifty feet up that rock wall face. They were anxious to earn the free ice cream sundaes Mr. VanNoord had promised to anyone who managed to get to the top and ring that bell.

-Jack