Wealthier seek epiphany from holy mountain

This reverence is now shared by his clients, many of whom are successful entrepreneurs. After making their fortunes amid China's transformation into a market economy, some of them arrived at the mountain in search of new life goals, according to Nyima Tsering.

"The trips to Mt Qomolangma gave them new ideas on life -- they became slimmer and thriftier, and they realized they had previously demanded too much from nature, " he says. "To climb the mountain, one only needs a few things, and fame and fortune are not among them."

The first Chinese team reached the summit in 1960, when the country was struggling to build a socialist society out of grinding poverty, a legacy of the civil war.

The nation basked in glory on May 8, 2008, when a team of Chinese mountaineers took the Olympic flame to Mt Qomolangma in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics Games, which was deemed a demonstration of China's economic and social achievements over the years.

But Nyima Tsering and other younger Chinese mountaineers believe the greater significance of the activity is to make modern people reflect on themselves and their relations with the nature.

"The feeling has been growing within me all these years that mountains have life, and that we should not attempt to overpower nature, but instead we should respect and live in harmony with it, " he explains.

"Mountaineering forces us to face our true self -- the mountain sees us equally as humans, and it makes no difference whether you're a boss or a celebrity," according to Xu Huan, who joined the Mountaineering Association of Peking University in 1996.

Xu says many of her co-climbers at the association left enviable jobs in their forties and resumed mountaineering or hiking to rethink their lives.

"They are asking whether, apart from pursuing wealth, are there any other higher meanings to life?" Xu says.