Returning to this place after fifteen years.
I graduated in 2007 from the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Due to personal reasons, I had never quite warmed to my major. After my final exams, I skipped the graduation ceremony for a trip—almost as a form of rebellion—with one of the stops being this place.
Landing in Geneva, I took a high-speed train to Interlaken and then a mountain railway. The train clattered rhythmically, cutting through a forest alongside a stream so vividly blue it reminded me of blueberry-flavoured Slurpees. Emerging from the dense woods, the grand snowy mountain revealed itself. My first impression was of its surreal flatness. Its unvarying whiteness stripped it of depth, making it seem like a sheet of rice paper, and the few patches not covered by snow appeared like strokes of ink across this canvas.
I got off at Lauterbrunnen. Every Hong Konger who visited this little picturesque village knew of a small wooden hostel, known affectionately as “The Granny’s House”. Probably the cheapest accommodation in town, it was ideal for cash-strapped graduates like me. Of course, it wasn’t private rooms but bunk beds lined up next to each other where everyone—men and women—slept. Turning over in your sleep, you might accidentally bump into the girl next to you—I remember this well because on the first night, that girl was from Hong Kong.
A girl with hair down to her waist. She had a pale complexion and was somewhat too thin, an impression accentuated by her height, giving off a perpetually sleepy aura. Although she slept next to me, my first awareness of her, however, was earlier than that. Before sleeping, I flipped through a leather-bound guestbook, where a line was written in mature, graceful Chinese handwriting:
“How many clouds must gather to fall such bountiful snow?”
The date was that very day, and as she was the only Asian girl at The Granny’s House that night. I knew it was her.
I should have slept early, preparing for the next morning’s hike from Lauterbrunnen at 802 metres to Mount Schilthorn at 2,960 metres. But sleep eluded me. For some unknown reason, that Sphinx-like riddle echoed in my head like an overplayed song, urging an answer from me, yet remaining unanswerable.
How many clouds must gather to fall such bountiful snow?
Finally, I drifted off to sleep. Despite setting the alarm for 5:30, I overslept until 7:00. By the time I woke up, the girl was gone. Shaking off the drowsiness, I packed my gear for the hike. According to the map, the journey to the summit without breaks would take seven hours and twenty-three minutes, passing through a village named Mürren and a mountain hut called Schiltornhutte. After reaching the peak, I could take the cable car back to Lauterbrunnen, with the last one departing at 17:00. What if I couldn’t make it in time? I had no idea.
I saw her again in Mürren around 11:00. Sitting alone on a bench by the road, she took a sandwich from a paper bag, removed the Swiss flag stuck in it, scrutinising it as if inspecting the quality, then put the flag in the bag and started eating. Noticing me, she smiled; I reciprocated and moved on, finding myself a famed Rösti restaurant for lunch.
About half an hour later, after a hearty meal, I saw her again. Still alone, she was slowly ascending the trail with the aid of a hiking stick. The path was narrow, and passing her without acknowledgement seemed impolite. So, I decided to greet her.
But she beat me to it.
“Oh.” This was how she greeted me.
“Oh,” I echoed. “From Hong Kong?”
“Are you going to Schilthorn?”
“Yes. You too?”
“It’s quite cold up there,” she noted. “The temperature drops 0.6 degrees for every hundred metres ascended.”
“It must be freezing. The last cable car leaves at five. If we miss it, we might have to spend the night at the summit. You didn’t start very early, did you?”
“I’m wearing jeans,” she replied.
Her responses were that enigmatic, almost off-topic, yet not entirely disconnected. My understanding of her seemed pieced together from what she said, what I guessed, and perhaps even elements I conjured from thin air.
Her name was Kion. She had graduated from the same university as me (possibly), majoring in Physics (possibly). She mentioned not doing well in her studies, mainly due to a lack of aptitude in mathematics; or was it induction? Possibly.
“Why study a subject you don’t like?” I asked.
“Have, have you found a job, yet?” she countered, her voice breaking as we hiked the steep slope.
“How could I? I’m not even sure what I want to do.”
“I, I am going to, the observatory, you know. The observatory is fa-fascinating.” It was later that I realised she meant MeteoSwiss, the Swiss meteorological service.
She continued with a dreamy smile, “Clouds, rain, and in Swit-Switzerland, snow.”
“How many clouds must gather to fall such bountiful snow.” I blurted out.
She looked at me, surprised.
“I just happened to see it,” not wanting her to think I was stalking her, I attempted to explain myself. Yet, I couldn’t even explain to myself why that phrase clung to me, so unshakably, like a moon’s reflection on a lake. I ended up rambling whatever came to my mind. I talked about myself, like my time as an intern journalist in university, interviewing many people and covering various events. I talked about my disillusionment with the world. I complained to her that everyone wanted to use their logic to persuade journalists, who in turn used it to persuade their readers. I said I was tired of this chain of persuasion. But what do all these have to do with her phrase? I don’t know. I really don’t. The more I spoke, the more confused I became.
Kion then grew quiet.
I wanted to say more, not about myself, but about that ungraspable essence of her phrase. But as the trail flattened and then again steepened, with cows grazing in the meadows and sheep flowing like a grey-white river, eagles soaring high above the spruce trees before diving down to hunt, I found myself lost for words.
As Kion didn’t look strong, I had been worried that she wouldn’t make it to the top, but as it turned out, I was the one lacking strength. She continued at a steady pace, unfazed, while I was gasping for breath. When we reached the mountain hut at 13:30, I suggested we stop for a warm cup of Irish coffee before continuing the rest of the journey.
She nodded, and said in a tranquil tone, “Beyond the hut, there will be a lot of snow.”
The hut, built of round logs, was a cosy haven, a warm nest sheltering us from the biting cold outside. There, we sat across from each other at a table in the corner. The bearded proprietor brought us two cups of Irish coffee. An awkward silence enveloped us, and I regretted possibly ruining her enthusiasm for the hike, yet I had no solution. After all, we were hiking Mount Schilthorn; there was no convenient excuse like “I have some matters to attend to, you go ahead”.
“You can ask the clouds,” she suddenly said.
“Pardon?”
“There are clouds at the summit. ‘How many clouds must gather to fall such bountiful snow’, why not ask the clouds?”
“Okay,” I said.
Silence.
“No,” I corrected myself. “Perhaps it’s better not to ask.”
“Don’t be afraid.”
“It’s not fear. It’s just… the clouds wouldn’t answer, wouldn’t they?”
She smiled, a gentle, knowing smile.
“You don’t have to be afraid.”
Twenty minutes later, we resumed our hike. Just as she said, within five minutes, the landscape changed dramatically, and a vast expanse of snow came into view. We trudged forward, the fog thickening until visibility was reduced to almost nothing.
“This is the cloud,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. I didn’t reply, just continued to follow her footsteps silently.
At 4:20 pm, we reached the summit. There wasn’t just a cable car station, but also the famous circular Piz Gloria viewing platform, known for its appearance in a James Bond film. Normally, one could enjoy a panoramic view of the mountains from here, but today, it was all shrouded in mist.
Although everything looked the same, we walked side by side around the circular platform as if it was some ceremony, before she suddenly stopped and turned to me. “Then I will ask now.”
“Do we really have to ask?”
“Do you know the story of Orpheus?”
“The Orpheus from Greek mythology?”
“Now, as I ask, you must look away, over there. Count to a thousand and don’t look back. If you do, your question will remain forever unanswered.”
I think I might have smiled faintly.
For the next thousand seconds, I leaned against the viewing platform railing, lit a cigarette, and looked outward, as she had instructed. Still, my view was filled with overwhelming whiteness; clouds could well be gathering and making snow happily just two metres away. In this monochrome world, my thoughts drifted, primarily to the tale of Orpheus. Legend has it that shortly after marrying Eurydice, she was bitten by a venomous snake and died. Orpheus travelled to the Underworld to retrieve her. Hades agreed to let Eurydice return to the living world on one condition: Orpheus must not look back on their way out. But he did, and Eurydice was lost forever, leaving Orpheus in such sorrow that he eventually died and became a constellation in the sky.
Don’t look back, she said.
Nine hundred and ninety-seven, nine hundred and ninety-eight, nine hundred and ninety-nine, one thousand.
As expected, when I turned back, Kion was gone. Her blue coat, the jeans not warm enough for such weather, and the waterfall of her black hair had all vanished. Where she had stood, only the clouds with which she had conversed remained. Yes, I was certain that in that expanse of white, she had asked her question to the clouds, and they had whispered back the answer to her riddle.
When I returned to The Granny’s House, night had already fallen. The granny of the house, tidying up the room, asked me, “Has the Hong Kong girl already left?”
“She has”, I replied. Outside, the snow kept on falling, as it had been for thousands of years.
Fifteen years later, I returned to Lauterbrunnen again, after a short break following a working trip. This time, with my family, I couldn’t have them sleeping next to strangers, so I rented a room in a quaint hotel adorned with flourishing flowers by the river. The Alps, still white as rice paper, were as beautiful as ever, much like my daughter, who was five years old this year.
“That’s snow,” I said, holding her and pointing out the window at the snowy canvas.
“Wow,” she exclaimed joyfully. “So much, so much snow.”