A few weeks earlier than celebrations kicked off for the 50th anniversary of the first conquest of Mount Everest, a few Taiwanese climbers were celebrating the tenth anniversary of their own triumph over the world's highest peak--a climb that taught them much about themselves and won for Taiwan a place on top of the world.
In the 40 years since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953, the footprints of Taiwanese mountaineers were nowhere to be seen in the ice and snow of the world's highest mountain. Finally, on May 5, 1993, after 498 other climbers had ascended the lonely, wintry peak, Wu Chin-hsiung became the first person from Taiwan to join the exclusive club of those who have stood on the summit of Mount Everest, which at 8,848 meters is the closest a person can come to the heavens with his feet still on the ground.
The success of Wu and the international team of climbers--whose members included mountaineers from China and Tibet as well as Taiwan--became not only a pioneering adventure for Taiwanese mountaineers, but also a rare example of cooperation between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, divided since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Politics simply had no place in an expedition that would rely for the survival of its members on absolute trust and an unflagging spirit of teamwork.
When he reached Everest's summit, Wu Chin-hsiung felt as though the entire team was with him, for without those who provided their shoulders for him to lean on during the hike, he says, he would never have been able to reach the summit and make history on behalf of his countrymen. Nearing the highest spot on earth, 43-year-old Wu, the oldest climber of the team, could not help but burst into tears when he made the final step to the top. "My heart was filled with gratitude for the mountain, for the team, for my family, and for everyone who helped make this happen," he recalls. But minutes later the euphoria dampened as he remembered that "getting to the top only means the mission is halfway fulfilled." The mission would not come to a successful close until every teammate descended safely to the base camp, which was located at an altitude of 5,500 meters.
Lee Chun-jung, initiator of the cross-Strait expedition and leader of the ten-climber team from Taiwan, remembers her greatest worry at the time was the climbers getting off the mountain. "The climber gets proud after he successfully scales the summit," she says. When a climber gets carried away by victory, he might overlook the fact that descending is as dangerous as ascending. On an unforgiving mountain like Everest, any oversight on the part of the climber can be fatal (about 120 frozen corpses remain on the mountain from previous expeditions). "The primary requirement for mountain climbing is humility," Lee says. "Had our climber showed any sign of pride as he stood atop the summit, I'd have still considered our mission a failure because it would indicate that I'd picked the wrong person for the mission. Fortunately, Wu proved that I didn't."
On this adventure, Wu was the hero on top of Mount Everest and Lee, the heroine supporting the climbers from the base camp. She says the Himalayas sparked her imagination at age 13 in a geography class where she was first introduced to the mountain chain and its highest peak, Mount Everest, also known by the name Qomolangma, Tibetan for "mother goddess of the universe." Lee inherited from her father a love for outdoor activities, and began climbing mountains above 6,000 meters during the 1980s, when overseas expeditions became popular among Taiwan's mountaineers. Although none of the expeditions attempted Mount Everest back then, the Himalayas never left the lips of the climbers. And when Lee and dozens of other mountaineers, including Wu Chin-hsiung, organized a mountaineering club, they named it Himalayas after the mountains of their dreams.
Several reasons stopped the club members from putting their discussions about the Himalayas into action. Above all, the tallest peak on the mountainous island of Taiwan reaches only 3,952 meters, providing few opportunities for local mountaineers to practice climbing skills on high-altitude, ice-clad mountains. Moreover, the political stalemate between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait made it difficult for Taiwanese mountaineers to get to the Himalayas, which stretch along the border of China and Nepal. In 1982, for example, a women's climbing team from Taiwan, which included Lee, was prohibited from proceeding further from its base camp at 3,800 meters by the Nepalese government after China put pressure on the Himalayan kingdom.
The risks of climbing the world's highest mountain are also considerable. Even on lower peaks, exhaustion, high -altitude sickness, avalanches, hypothermia, or just a moment of carelessness could spell death for the climbers, and Lee knew the risks well. In 1983, she participated in an expedition to India's Mount Bhrigupanth (6,772 meters), where the heaviest casualties in Taiwan's mountain-climbing history occurred. Three members of the team lost their lives on the mountain, and the incident dampened the enthusiasm for overseas expeditions.
For Lee, however, Everest still held her imagination. She spent ten years raising funds and preparing for a trek into the Himalayas, a dream that many local mountaineers deemed impossible for political, economic, and technical reasons. To many people's surprise, this audacious mountain climber chose to knock directly on China's door.
In 1988, Lee submitted her letter to China from San Francisco with a timetable and outline of the plan. Unexpectedly, China accepted Lee's request and put her down on the long list of expeditions preparing to scale Everest. The "talks" between Lee and China became frequent after 1989, and a cross-Strait expedition began to take shape after China realized that this female climber knew her stuff.
Out of the three routes from Tibet, Lee picked the so-called traditional approach--taken by China's first expedition team in 1960. She also raised a fund of NT$10 million (US$290,000), close to her estimation when she initiated the plan. For three years without interruption before the departure date set in March 1993, interested climbers gathered every Saturday at Lee's company, I-lun Productions, to study Everest.
This group of about ten people investigated every detail of the mountain and previous expeditions up it. Since weather would be a key factor, the members traced the weather history of the mountain back 15 years. And as early as a year before they embarked on the trip, the team had stocked in Tibet essential equipment, such as oxygen bottles and furnaces.
After three years of training and preparation, the group formed a team of ten members led by Lee and including two newspaper reporters. "The first requirement to become qualified as a team member was a team spirit--that the team would always come first," Lee notes. "Physical strength was a secondary consideration." When the team headed for Tibet on February 28, 1993, its members were bound by the conviction that they would place the team first no matter what, their lives, they knew, depended on it.
In Tibet, the Taiwanese climbers met up with their Chinese counterparts. The 11-member team from China included five Tibetans and a doctor to see to any health problems. The head of the Chinese team, Tseng Shu-sheng, was chosen to lead the expedition. "The major difference between the two sides was that we made the trip out of personal interests and ambitions, whereas our Chinese teammates were athletes chosen by their country to fulfill the assignment," Lee says.
No matter what their motivations were, once the team was assembled their single goal was to conquer Everest. The expedition team set up a maritime satellite link for communications at the base camp, and every member of the team received a walkie-talkie. By April 22, they had established five more camps and deposited supplies at 6,300 meters; 6,500 meters; 7,028 meters; 7,790 meters; and 8,300 meters. The seventh camp would be anchored at 8,680 meters before the climbers attempted the final push up the 8,848-meter summit.
Even with the months of preparation, the expedition encountered the much feared, changeable weather of Mount Ever est. On March 23, two days after the third camp was erected, a fierce storm hit the camp and forced the team members at the camp to descend. It took 17 hours for Wu and his two other Taiwanese teammates to head back down to the base camp. Two climbers, one from Taiwan and the other from Beijing, suffered serious frostbite and had to quit the expedition to seek treatment. Several other climbers suffered from minor injuries.
The choice of who would climb the final stretch of the mountain and reach the summit is a difficult one for all expeditions. Originally, the Taiwanese climber chosen for the final leg was Wu Yu-lung, an aboriginal climber who was younger and faster than his teammates. Wu Chin-hsiung was to be the alternate for the final attack. "I was very content with the plan since being able to take part in this historical event was already memorable for me," Wu recalls. "Besides, contributing to the success of the team was the main reason for my presence and reaching 8,300 meters already renewed my own record of climbing higher than 7,500 meters." But at dawn on May 5, Wu Yu-lung bowed out of the final ascent to the summit because of a bad night's sleep. After a few moments of discussion and repeated consultations with Wu Yu-lung, leaders at the base camp directed Wu Chin-hsiung to join the six-person summit team.
This last-minute episode determined the way history would be written. "To forgo the opportunity of scaling Mount Everest requires much greater courage than to attempt the summit," Wu Chin-hsiung says. "For climbers from Tai wan, this could be a once-in-a-life-time opportunity." On the way up, the climbers suffered from the numbing cold. Five of them suffered from frostbite of various degrees and some required amputation of toes and parts of fingers. Wu Chin-hsiung fared well, but labored in the thin air to get enough oxygen. Wu says he was grateful for the four Tibetan climbers who climbed without oxygen so that he and the other Chinese teammate would have enough for the final ascent. In the end, Wu stood on the highest peak on earth, and then picked his way down through the ice to the base camp triumphant but exhausted. "Wu Chin-hsiung was slower in terms of speed, but he was very stable," Lee notes.
According to Wu, the high stakes of climbing Qomolangma--a matter of life and death--became a persistent reminder of the seriousness of the adventure and calmed his mind along the road. His stableness along the climb was the result of accumulated experience, knowledge about acclimatization of the body at high altitudes, and thorough preparation. "You don't want to think about cutting corners when preparing to climb a mountain of this height," the climber says. Before the expedition, Wu had conquered eight mountains--in India, Nepal, Alaska, and the Chinese province of Xinjiang--with peaks above 6,100 meters. To prepare for the Everest expedition, Wu climbed the previous year 7,583-meter Mount Changtse, north of Qomolangma.
In the eerie cold of Everest's peak, Wu learned to control his breathing and pace himself to save energy and remembered to move his fingers and toes periodically to avoid frostbite as he carefully chose his footing before each step along the potentially deadly trail. It drew on all his past experiences of climbing and required that he stayed focused each step of the way.
After the completion of the Qomolangma expedition, Wu was invited to give two speeches in Beijing, and 12 more throughout Taiwan. The same year, a book documenting the expedition was released, and in 1997, another book recording this undertaking by Wu Chin-hisung himself, co-written by a reporter, was published. Lee's own version of the Himalayan expedition is still in the works.
Lee points out that mountain climbing is about enduring hardships, but the friendships forged through climbing are very precious for they stem from pure care for others. "At high altitudes," she says, "your heart becomes broader because no mundane affairs seem to matter any more." Wu Chin-hsiung also speaks of the fascination of listening to his own heartbeat at high altitudes. "That quietness and closeness to nature can be found nowhere else," he exclaims. Wu has since become a professional climber and trains others for expeditions, and Lee has since led another cross-Strait expedition up the 8,611 -meter Mount Karakoram in China in 2000.
Certainly for both of them, Mount Everest will loom large in their climbing experience, for it not only won for the mountaineers a personal victory but also put the Taiwanese on an equal footing with adventurers from around the globe. Several climbers from Taiwan, including one female, have since followed in Wu's footsteps, leaving their own temporary tracks on top of Mount Everest.