The First Day of Bigu - 30 August 2026辟谷第一天

On 30 August 2026, a small group began a bigu retreat at Wudang Mountain. Bigu (辟谷, bìgǔ), literally “avoiding grains,” is a Daoist practice with a long history, traditionally kept alongside stillness, gentle movement and reflection. The photographs from that first day are few and unhurried: a walk out past old walls, a long sit on a mountain trail, and a conversation around a low table indoors. Read now, they sketch the shape the following days would take.

Setting out

The day begins on a wooden footbridge with a worn, curving handrail. It runs past an old wall of grey brick and a dense evergreen shrub, and four people cross it in single file: three in loose white cotton, one in navy, sun visors pulled on against the light. Nobody is in a hurry.

It is a short crossing, only a few steps over a planted bed. Still, it has the feeling of a threshold. Behind them are the rooms and courtyards where the retreat is based; ahead are the hills. A first day often looks like this: not a grand beginning, just people stepping out together and leaving the ordinary pace of things behind.

Out in the hills, the group passes beneath a spreading tree where the sunlight breaks into patches. One walker shades herself with an umbrella and carries a bamboo basket on her arm; another tips her head back to look up into the branches. The pace is slow enough to notice things.

Sitting on the trail

The photograph at the top of this page was taken out on a mountain path. Four people sit along the edge of the track, on grass and rock, with a steep green ridge behind them and nothing but clear sky above. The man nearest the camera sits cross-legged in white, eyes closed, hands loose; beside him a woman in navy keeps the same stillness; further along, two more in white sit among the stones. Each has left a little space between themselves and the next.

From the other end of the line, the setting becomes clearer. The trail is narrow and stony, running beneath a rock face grown over with moss and fern. A young woman in white kneels on the gravel in the foreground, her hands folded in her lap. A bamboo basket has been set down in the grass, a pink bag tucked into it. The others sit further along, turned the same way, towards the open side of the valley.

There is nothing to watch here except the mountain itself, and that seems to be the point. Sitting quietly outdoors is one of the oldest ways of practising stillness in the Daoist tradition: not shutting the world out, but letting it be present, the sound of leaves and insects and wind included.

Around the low table

Indoors, the group gathers in a tall hall with dark timber beams and white plaster walls. Light falls from a skylight high in the roof. Five people sit on woven straw cushions around a pair of low wooden tables with printed sheets laid out on top. At the head of the table, a woman in navy is speaking, one hand raised mid-sentence, a small microphone at her cheek. The others face her and listen, one of them with her hands resting on her knees.

It is an ordinary scene of explanation and attention, the kind that begins any shared undertaking. Whatever was said that afternoon, the picture keeps the posture of it: people sitting at the same height, close enough to hear, with time set aside to talk things through before the days ahead.

About these photographs

These photographs were shared from Wudang Mountain and record 30 August 2026, the first day of the retreat. This is a cultural record of one day. It does not describe what participants ate, give instructions for fasting, or offer medical advice; anyone considering a fasting practice should speak to a qualified doctor first.

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