Gao Ming stirred his cappuccino in a downtown cafe in Beijing with a weathered hand battered by a lifetime spent outdoors.

The 39-year-old photographer who works for the Beijing Evening News had just finished a half-year self-funded project photographing the workings of the mail service in China's hinterlands with his 33-year-old friend Guo Tieliu, also a photographer, working with Beijing Morning Post.

The two pals did not expect their project to end up as an emotional salute to the hundreds of thousands of Chinese rural post people who are working in unimaginable hardships, difficulties and sometimes outright danger.

"I'm glad that we are able to share some of their stories with the public," said Guo, who used all the vacation he could beg from his boss to complete the project, including the one-month paternity leave granted to him for tending his wife's childbirth.

When the photos were exhibited in the Sun Dong An Plaza from November 26 through 30 last year, their mobile phones and the visitors' book in the exhibition hall were full of messages and words from deeply touched visitors.

Hamlet in Guizhou

Like any other town in China, there is a post office in Zaibian, a small community in Congjiang County of Southwest China's Guizhou Province.

Besides a director, Meng Jintun, a 34-year-old postman of the ethnic Zhuang people, was the only employee of the post office.

Meng was one of the most welcomed people in that area, because in many of the dozens of small villages scattered in Zaibian's deep mountains, Meng was the only person the villagers saw who came from the "outside world," and brought to them news and messages from distant places.

Gao and Guo persuaded Meng to let them accompany him through his regular post route.

"He was rather happy to have some companions, for it was a long and lonely trip," said Gao Ming. "But then he told us that there was nothing like a regular post route for him," he added.

The country roads in Zaibian were a maze of rugged zigzag tracks winding over mountains, valleys and terraced fields. In order to send out mails as quickly as possible, Meng took shortcuts any time he could.

"Some paths were worn by him alone," said Guo. "He was in the habit of carrying a hacking knife with him in order to cut off the shrubs and branches in his way. Part of the tracks he walked on are very steep and slippery, and there are rivers which he has to wade through."

The distance of Meng's post route varied from 40 to 100 kilometers. It depends wholly on the destinations of the mail.

"Usually he could store the mail a little and then deliver them together through one trip. But if there was an express mail, he must deliver it out without any delay, even if that means he has to march 60 kilometers at night," said Gao.

Before they set out, Guo and Gao watched Meng sort out the letters, parcels and newspapers to be delivered and pack them into three postbags.

"All these things weighed up to 40 kilograms - an awesome load for someone who had to trek a long way on the mountains," Gao said.

But then to their bewilderment, as if the packages were not heavy enough, Meng fastened further into the shoulder pole with which he carried the postbags and a bamboo basket which encased a little pig.

"It was actually one of the livestock he bought for a farmer living in an isolated village," Guo explained.

"Later we found out that it was a common undertaking for the rural post staff in Guizhou Province to bring goods for the rural folks on their way free of charge. It was actually a diplomatic tactic. Because by keeping on good terms with the folks, the staff would make them more willing to subscribe to a newspaper, which would in turn increased the revenue of the post route, and he got paid more," said Guo.

Mountainous trek

On May 21, 2004, Tashi Tseten, a 32-year-old Tibetan postman working in the Liangshan Mountain area of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, met Gao Ming and Guo Tieliu in a small bar outside the post office where he worked at.

Tashi Tseten's working life had mostly been an endless trek over range upon range of great mountains, transporting mails from Chagborang District to the 230-kilometre-away Donglang, one of the five settlements belonging to it.

With an average altitude of 4,000 meters above the sea level and more than 10 mountain passes up to 5,000 meters high, the trip could only be made through a path worn by ancient horses, which is still the most practical means of transport.

According to locals, every time the government officials of Donglang were summoned to attend meetings in the county, they had to first be driven by a tractor, then ride a horse and then a motorcycle, and finally take a long-distance bus to get there. The whole journey would take four days.

A loyal companion trudging with Tashi Tseten was an 8-year-old mule called Huani, who carried for the postbags, his spartan food supply and a simplistic camping outfit. At those altitudes mules and horses would show the symptoms of oxygen deficiency as well as humans. Unwilling to aggravate the animal's agony, Tashi Tseten seldom rode Huani, but just held the reins and walked ahead silently most of the time.

Perhaps because of the rigours and dangers along the way, the trip compensates its trekkers with extraordinary beautiful scenery. After Guo and Gao set foot on the six-day post route with Tashi Tseten, they found "the flower of wild azalea the size of bowls blooming all over the mountain slopes," and as they walked on, "the spectacular sight of the famous Gongga Snow Mountain suddenly loomed in front of us like a wide-screen movie."

"It is hard to imagine the hardship only until you go for yourself," Gao said, recollecting the "hardest experience" in his life.

"There was no village along the road and almost no traffic. Tashi Tseten had to sleep in the wilderness, making his tent by simply spreading a plastic cloth over a stick and then fixing the four corners."

The first camping spot of their journey was a place called Leech Ditch, where there were water and grass to feed the animal but also fierce leeches. Tashi Tseten sprinkled a circle of salt around their tents to protect them from being stung by the leeches, but the mule had no place to hide. In the morning, Guo and Gao watched Tashi Tseten tear away a dozen of leeches by his dagger from Huani's legs, which were quickly smeared by trickling blood.

According to officials in the Post Bureau of Sichuan Province, because of the complicated geographical features in western Sichuan, today there are still more than 40 long-distance post routes on which postal service staff use horses. Among them, a six-day route is not particularly long. The longest one takes 15 days.

Another hike

On June 12, 2004, Nyimalhamo, a rural postwoman of Deqen County in Southwest China's Yunnan Province, sat quietly in front of the tin hut which was the post office of that part of countryside, worrying slightly about her 3-year-old son who had a fever that morning when she left him with her mother.

Nyimalhamo's work was to send mail from the town to its 33 villages, which covered an area of about 900 square kilometers and had a population of about 5,500. She made a tour around the area once a week, taking five to seven days to finish the 350 kilometers trip on foot and sometimes by hitchhiking.

Traveling with Nyimalhamo, Guo and Gao were astounded to find they had to pass across the big, torrential Lancang River to get to a village on the opposite side by performing a breathtaking cable-slide.

"There was no bridge above the river, but only two steel cables, both with one end higher than the other," Gao described.

One metal clasp with a grooved wheel and two belts comprised the entire device helping people cross the more than 60-metre-long river.

One needs first to buckle the clasp to the cable. Then, holding the clasp with both hands, with hips sitting on one belt and the other belt surrounding his back from under the armpits, with a kick, the passenger would be shot out along the cable at great speed.

Their first try of crossing the river was one of the most thrilling experiences in Guo and Gao's lives.

"The river was a reddish brown, rushing and roaring with horrifying fury, with many eddies swirling fiercely here and there," Guo recalled. "If one slipped, there would be no chance of survival."

He added: "The first time when I slid over, I was so wrapped with terror that I did not remember at all how I managed it. After I landed safely they told me that I had leaned my head too close to the cable, and that if I had not worn a cap at that time, I would have had my scalp severely cut."

Lake journey

While Nyimalhamo's job astonished Gao and Guo by its regular exposure to risk, to go through the routine everyday of another rural postman about 1,800 kilometers away in the area of Hongze Lake of East China's Jiangsu Province made them feel exhausted.

As the fourth biggest freshwater lake in China, Hongze Lake feeds a large amount of the fishing population. Most of them inhabited on boats on the lake, and find themselves constantly on the move. Among the more than 16,000 residents in Laozishan, a small town where the 40-year-old ex-teacher Tan Zhenya served as its only postman, there were up to 8,000 people leading a drifting life on lake.

Each day Tan started his work at daybreak, busying himself delivering mails for the townspeople on land until 11 o'clock. Then he would go to the lake as quickly as he could, and started to send letters for the fishermen's families living on the lake. In most cases, when he sent off the last letter to its destination, it would have already been dark.

"It was a very trying work, to serve such a vast area for such a great number of people who constantly changed their location," said Gao.

The situation was worsened by the fact that the water of the Hongze Lake had become more and more shallow during the last century. As a result, Tan had to get off and push the boat forward constantly over the lake bed which struck the bottom of his boat.

"Sometimes he had to punt several kilometers to sent a letter to a boathouse moored in a distant corner of the lake."

Six years ago, when the boathouse school in which Tan taught was closed, he quickly found himself the job of a postman. As he admitted, he rather loved to be a postman just as to be a teacher, for both jobs gave him the satisfaction of being helpful to others. The townspeople used to call him Teacher Tan. Now they greeted him as Xiao Tan (Little Tan), but in the same warm and cordial manner.

(China Daily January 25, 2005)