Author finds spirituality in life's realities

A new nonfiction book, Resign to the Mountain, which chronicles a former editor's eight-month experience as a volunteer hermit on Wudang Mountain, a Taoist site in Hubei province, was recently published by Beijing-based New Star Press.

According to the book's author, Li Chuang, the journey began as an escape from professional burnout. Diagnosed with somatic symptoms from anxiety, he found his five-year career as a humanities editor unsustainable. "I saw what the next decades would look like if I kept going," he says. In 2019, he quit his job without a backup plan. He began running a small convenience store until a friend suggested he visit the Taoist temple on Wudang Mountain.

Li holds a background in anthropology, a discipline that shaped his approach to the Wudang experiment. As he explains, "fieldwork" is an instinct for anthropology students — to understand a culture, one must first "be there". This perspective turned his personal escape into a form of participant observation of Taoist monastic life. He applied to the temple's volunteer program with an almost blank application, testing whether a "good-for-nothing" could find a place there.

What unfolds in the book is not a mystical enlightenment tale. Instead, Li offers a "heartfelt anthropological notebook" filled with vivid, often humorous anecdotes: dealing with eccentric tourists before a mountain lockdown, enduring blizzards and insect plagues, and the quiet daily rituals of sweeping paths and listening to the abbot play the flute.

Initially seeking peace and solitude, he instead faced numerous survival challenges and witnessed the varied behaviors of pilgrims, tourists and Taoist priests. He discovered that temple life also came with its own rules of "punching in, working overtime, and writing year-end summaries".

"Through this experience, I came to realize that whether on the mountain or down the mountain, we are all still in the human world, and that learning to live alongside life's realities is itself a form of spiritual practice," says Li.

"I didn't achieve sudden enlightenment or discover the secret to immortality," Li admits. "But I came to realize that perhaps the 'truth' is the process of searching, not the result."

For Li, now a medical student after another dramatic career change, the book serves a dual purpose. "It's for readers who long for a carefree life," he says, "but it's also written for myself, to help me remember the interesting people and moments that I might otherwise forget."