If you are close enough to see finer-scale features on the side of a mountain, he says, it is too late.

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Back then, the locals could not begin to understand why would ever scale a mountain unless you had lost a goat up one.

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Many of the pictures, though, were large-scale canvases of misty lakes, pagodas and jagged mountain tops, portraits of cheeky Chinese boys or archly posing Chinese beauties.

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