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I can outlast you

Two famous Chinese mountains were put up for UNESCO World Heritage status this year. Shanxi's Mount Wutai was successful and was recognized for its wealth of Buddhist architecture.

Mount Song, a Daoist peak in Henan Province that is home to the Shaolin Temple, missed the cut and had its application put off until next year.

Not to worry, writes Xie Yong in an op-ed for the The Beijing News chock full of martial arts references: the persistence of regional authorities in their pursuit of international recognition will eventually wear down the judging panel and win World Heritage status for Mount Song as well:

One of the most mocked scenes in martial arts fiction has a student coming to find a teacher to instruct him in the art, and he kneels for days before the gate as snow gathers on the ground, until finally the master, moved by his persistence, accepts him as a disciple. As I muse on such stories now that my age and reading experience have increased and my heart has grown gloomier, they seem a little off: both teacher and student are clearly scheming shortsightedly. And while the eventual outcome always has the teacher finding a disciple and the student finding a teacher, and everyone is happy, I always wonder whether, having gone through that bout of suffering and scheming, the teacher-student and student-teacher relationship will contain much sincerity at all.

These musings were spurred by the enlightening remarks made by one official from Henan's Cultural Heritage Bureau. According to the Oriental Morning Post, after examination of the twenty-seven bids for Cultural Heritage status at the 33rd World Heritage Convention, China's Mount Wutai barely made the cut, while another application, for Mount Song's historical architecture, was returned with a request for supplemental material, and its decision was postponed until next year, bringing to an end China's remarkable unbroken fifteen-year string of successful applications. As for why Mount Song's bid got "jammed," an official from Zhengzhou's Municipal Cultural Bureau who attended the convention said that the expert panel had already arrived at the decision to turn it down: "Our charge at the pass got tied up, and although things did not turn out exactly as we would have liked, we basically achieved our goals." The official said that after more than one hour of animated debate by the committee, the status of Mount Song's bid was changed from "postponed indefinitely" to "decided next year," making it an automatic candidate next year.