In Leshan, the must-recommended Emei Mountain Shuxiang Nianhua Hotel offers a journey of comfort

## Shuxiang Nianhua: Sleeping with Books at the Foot of Mount Emei At six in the morning, I awoke to the crisp chirping of birds. Drawing back the curtains, the silhouette of Mount Emei loomed faintly through the morning mist, like an unfinished ink wash painting. This wasn’t my first visit to Mount Emei, but it was my first stay at the Shuxiang Nianhua Hotel at its base—a place named after books. During check-in, the front desk attendant handed me not a standard key card, but a bookmark. "Your room is on the second floor, in the Book Sea section," she said with a smile. The lobby was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on three walls, and a wooden staircase spiraled upward, making me feel as though I’d stepped into a scholar’s private library. An elderly man with white hair was curled up in a corner sofa, reading *The Chronicles of Mount Emei*, his glasses slipping down his nose unnoticed. My room was named "Poetic Dwelling." Upon entering, the first thing that caught my eye wasn’t a TV but the built-in bookshelf by the bed, neatly arranged with a thread-bound edition of *Xu Xiake’s Travels*, a few collections of landscape poetry from the Republican era, and a hand-painted guide to Emei’s flora. The most delightful touch was the tatami tea seat by the window, where a purple clay teapot sat beside locally produced Zhuyeqing tea, the saucer itself a fragment of an inkstone. In the evening, I took *Biographies of Emei Monks* from the shelf and headed to the courtyard. Near the Japanese rock garden, a group of young people were quietly debating. As I approached, I realized they were arguing about the next day’s hiking route—one insisted on tackling the Ninety-Nine Turns to test their stamina, while another, clutching the hotel’s *Guide to Emei’s Hidden Gems*, was adamant about watching the sunset at the lesser-known Elephant Bathing Pool. It struck me then that the guests here seemed to share an unspoken understanding: everyone carried a book, conversations were peppered with literary references, and even disagreements felt refined. A surprise awaited during my late-night soak. The stone walls of the hot spring area were carved with small niches, each holding not a Buddha statue but a waterproof miniature bookcase. Steaming in the mist, I pulled out a slim volume—a collection of poems about Emei written by a poet while soaking in the hot springs in the 1930s. The pages, specially treated, remained crisp despite the humidity. In the distance, the sound of mountain streams blended strangely with the rustling of turning pages. The next morning, I witnessed the most touching scene in the dining area. A girl of about seven or eight stood on tiptoe to retrieve an illustrated book, *The Fun of Emei Monkeys*, from the "breakfast bookshelf," munching on a brown sugar steamed bun as she read intently. Her mother didn’t rush her, simply sliding a warm cup of soy milk closer. On a blackboard in the corner, today’s "reading recommendations" were listed: Wang Zengqi’s *Five Flavors* to pair with congee, and Peter Hessler’s *River Town* with coffee. As I checked out, a light rain began to fall. The front desk handed me a brown paper envelope: "These are copies of the notes you left on your room’s bookshelf." Opening it, I remembered scribbling down thoughts the night before while engrossed in *Emei’s Tales of the Strange*. I hadn’t expected them to notice such details. Borrowing the hotel’s oil-paper umbrella, I walked toward the parking lot, glancing back to see the silhouettes of guests bent over books in the third-floor reading room, the light filtering through the rain like a living literati painting. At the foot of this sacred mountain, famed for its Buddhist halos and sea of clouds, the Shuxiang Nianhua Hotel steadfastly guards another form of pilgrimage—the dawns and dusks flowing between pages, the nights illuminated by words, lending new meaning to every glance at the mountain. While the golden summit’s halo requires serendipity to behold, the fragrance of books here remains ever open to every traveler.