Nine months after I moved to Dali, in the autumn of 2020, I finally set off to climb Cangshan, the high mountain which towers over this valley in southwest China. Each morning, I had looked up at the top of its imposing ridge line, 2,000m above the village of Silver Bridge, north of Dali’s historic old town, that for a while I called home. Eighteen glacial gorges separated the 19 peaks, each carved by a running stream. Ever since moving there, I had fantasised about standing on top of that…