returning home from hospital, we dined at a local rustic restaurant at the footstep of Sheshang 佘山 mountain. 
it surprises me with the taste of the food, the restaurants and takeouts in to the urban area are vile and crude in comparison. though the prices are half more higher due to being in tourism area.
it was an old Chinese brick house redecorated; truly a familar sight in the poor countryside. although it was very clean and the environs are peaceful. It was like an imitation of those old villas in Shanghai suburbs for businessmen and hovernment functionaries. or an hostel. I was fantasizing Nietzches stay in the lodges of Swiss mountains for a bit. and from the row of dingy trees outside I would almost hear birds, but there are none. it was probably a sad make-belief. the waning pale afternoon Sun almost made the table look like an old Chinese study. I would imagine it to be quite enjoyable if i were to read and listen to music for a few days in a room with a study table and chair like this in a hostel or lodge the countryside. above all, it feels invigorating to be able to feel the mountain. even only at its footstep and having but a glimpse.
I recall my journey to yangdang 雁荡 mountain in elementary school. it was only when i breathe the air i found how oppossive the polluted air of Chinese coties and towns are. The green were not ill, thin and marked by repugnant smells. they were clean, prestine, and cold. i dont remember anything else apart from a huge lake full of the most clear and green water from upstream in the mountains. I'd imagine there was wormwood in it and makes people forgetful.
the water was cool, bitter and sweet.
Romans and Brits (and americans too, senators and moneymill owners) also have a habit to "go low" to isolated rural communities and spend time " vacating" themselves. I suppose either they also know no one is going to be inspired like a poet in a setting full of smokestacks and they need metaphorically defaecate their rutted Anglo-Saxon bad thoughts and air. or tgat they'd imagine themselves Lords of an Empire and "going low" slumming again. the pomposity overstates itself. they also seem to like to travel to uni towns in the countryside. they  travel to Edinburgh where I spent a long winter being confined and sick. not sure whats there to see though, a university town full of supermarkets and office buildings that are half sham historical sites. dishevelled, empty churchs in disrepair.  or made into tourist traps with souvenir shops. illness, poverty, town vs gown, restaurants charging twice the normal price, pubs full of stinky, sorry, uninspired dullards- swinish students and worker bees,  and their attempt to make their piteable existence intersting by drinking, joking, fighting and f*cking. candy shops and toy shops with glass windows lining the sides of road on the hills selling things you buy in supermarts.
the mountain in edinburgh was black, big and intimidating, but very low and shallow. people would spend 20 usd or so for mountainclimbing equipments and find nothing on the top. then they chat, take photos and eat at a tourist trap restaurant that is made of synthesized glass. and post things on SNS.
Where have the ancient mountains and their pastoral towns gone? my Greek hills, my Chinese mountains, my English green hillocks, my Japanese mountains. my Alamut. my Xanadu.
Hourai is an eastern mystery.

i feel sad playing touhou. the creator of that game lived in the real mountain like Nietzsche. I only knew and know of them.