Early summer on Nanbei Lake: a team adventure
Minton Law Firm spent 17 and 18 May at the Nanbei Lake scenic area in Jiaxing, combining a visit to its revolutionary sites with an orienteering race across the surrounding hills. Drawn by lot into four teams, staff crossed the lake in pedal boats, followed clue cards through a series of checkpoints and climbed to the top of Gaoyang Mountain, where the Tiger team was first to arrive at 17.35. The two days were meant to give the team a rest at the start of summer and to test how well they work together.
A little rain at the beginning of summer, and new green throughout the courtyard.
With the season at its most inviting, colleagues from Shanghai Minton Law Firm set off on 17 and 18 May on a team-building trip that combined a visit to sites of revolutionary history with exploration of the countryside, bound for the Nanbei Lake scenic area in Jiaxing. The plan was to cover the ground on foot, to take in both the history and the present of the place, to record every moment on camera, and together to make a summer memory worth keeping.
Afternoon sunlight fell through the leaves like scattered gold, laying a thin veil over the wooded hillside. With that veil over the scene, the orienteering race began. Everyone drew a lot and was formed into four teams, the Lions, the Leopards, the Tigers and the Flying Dragons, each receiving its own flag.
Carrying their flags, the four teams boarded pedal boats and set off across the wide expanse of water, racing one another from the start of a course that would call on wits, courage and strength in equal measure.
The group came ashore at Bailuzhou and ran to the Jiugu Trail trailhead to begin the climb. Following the clues in the envelopes they had been given, team members searched the woods for what had been hidden, the first checkpoint, "treasure in the envelope". Every team came away with a golden ingot and the task completed. The route then led on to the Bagua Terrace at the old walls of Tanxian, where a game called "one step to immortality" was played: each team crossed a stretch of ground on a limited number of cardboard sheets, keeping balance and speed at once. Caught on video, the tension and the laughter of that stretch became the record of the second checkpoint. A quiet path between Tanxian and the village primary school took the group around the back of the old walls, and a winding way opened unexpectedly onto the finish, reached by following the signs: the summit of Gaoyang Mountain, the highest point in Jiaxing.
The Tigers were the first team to reach the top with all members present, at 17.35, and completed the two checkpoints that mattered most, "love pledged at Minton" and "the peak moment". The Leopards, the Lions and the Flying Dragons followed. The results were not the same, but the willingness to test the limit and the spirit of pulling together as a team deserved equal praise.
From the summit the group took in the view of hills meeting water in a single frame, and traded cheerful complaints about the "moving" moments on the way up. A team photograph was taken at the top. What the camera held was not only a row of smiling faces but the shared effort of the people in them.
"From whose house does the sound of a jade flute come drifting, carried on the spring wind across the city of Luoyang?" The two days in Jiaxing were like a slow pastoral song, a harbour away from the noise for colleagues working under pressure. There was time on the water, drifting on the lake and letting the tiredness of the season go; time on the heights, looking out from the highest point in Jiaxing and loosening stiff shoulders; and time in the woods, walking in the clear air among the trees and waking up again, so that a busy season took on some of the openness and light of early summer.
Whether the two days were pain mixed with pleasure or pain and nothing else, the Nanbei Lake trip, with its teamwork and its willingness to take on a challenge, will stay with the people of Minton as a memory.