by Tam King-fai
to meditate on life with their faces turned to the wall, ignoring the
possibilities awaiting them on the road. They willingly opt for their own
wrongheaded ways, and refuse to set out. There is really nothing to be
done about them. Study is but an indirect way of understanding life;
traveling is the direct way. As soon as language gets in the way, the truth
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Liang Yuchun
221
disappears. That is why I think that one can set aside the ten thousand
volumes one is supposed to read, but there is no doing without the ten
thousand li one has to traverse.
If one wishes to understand nature, there is simply no avoiding a
ZQX WV PM ZWIL *] 1 ÅVL PI PW[M _PW ZI^MT _QP IV WJRMKQ^M IZM
VW I[ KTW[M W VI]ZM I[ PW[M _PW ÅVL PMU[MT^M[ ZW]QVMTa WV PM
road. People who are on a trip think only of their destination; their
spirits are tense, and they lack the relaxed state needed to accept nature’s
JMI]a
particular valley, river, cave, or rock. Yet people on trips for the most
XIZ OW W [MM PM [IUM NIUW][ J] IZQÅKQITTa LM[QOVIML [KMVM[ IVL
without knowing the reason, follow the custom of singing the praises of
these well-known sites. With few exceptions, most travelers become slaves
to an unchanging tradition.
Why subject oneself to this? It is only by facing beautiful scenes one
has discovered by oneself that one can experience a heartfelt intimacy
IVL ÅVL WVM¼[ _PWTM [W]T UW^ML 7VM Z]V[ QVW []KP [KMVM[ UW[Ta Ja
chance, and there is no way to will them by force. It is for this reason
that the images of farming cottages one happens to glimpse while
traveling by train on business can leave a deep impression on one’s
mind, whereas the famous sites we come to admire by spending money
IVLISQVO[QKSTMI^MWVTaÆWIQVPM[MIWN UMUWZaTQSMUQ[IVLNWO
I went to Hangzhou twice this year, once in spring and once in
fall. When I was not sitting in a boat heeding the commands of the
boatman, I was on my way up the hills respectfully following orders
from the rickshaw puller. My thin travel guidebook also seemed to
possess indisputable authority. By the time I had checked out each and
every one of the so-called famous sites and returned to my train, I felt
as if a burden had been lifted from my back. When I later resumed my
normal mechanical life—freely looking here and there every day and
never having to endure the reproaches of boatmen, rickshaw pullers, or
traveling companions, or rush to see sights that should not be missed—I
was almost crazy with happiness. The scenery of Xi Ling in Hangzhou
of course gradually faded from memory until nothing was left. The pity
is that it faded away too slowly, and for a while, provided the setting
NWZ Y]QM I NM_ VQOPUIZM[ 1V Ua LZMIU[ 1 [I_ PW[M [MTÆM[[ ZQKS[PI_
men pulling me up Baoshi Hill over the rough and uneven terrain, or to
Dragon Well over roads made of rocks so slippery that one could hardly
get a footing. No matter how much I begged to be excused, they would
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222
A Garden of One’s Own
still force me to go look at the mist in the Misty Cave and the dragon
antlers at the Dragon Well. Thank goodness, West Lake no longer
appears in my dreams!
The most enjoyable sights on which I have set eyes in my whole life
are to be found beyond the window on the bus to the western suburbs.
Sitting in the bus, I let it jostle me about as it jumps up and down and
]ZV[TMNIVLZQOP_PQTM1ZaWÅVQ[PWVMWN PW[MMQOPMMVPKMV]Za
novels that never seems to end. At times, I shut the book and allow my
eyes to wander to the weather outside. All of a sudden, I am greeted
Ja I [ZMKP WN OZMMV _QP NZIOZIV ÆW_MZ[ KW^MZQVO PM OZW]VL
sky is blue beyond description. All at once, I have a feeling that spring
PI[ ZM]ZVML W PM _WZTL IVL Ua [W]T PI[ ISMV ÆQOP W PM LQ[IV
sky above. I take a closer look, but the beautiful scenery is now gone.
)TTPIQ[TMNIZMPMÅTPa[ZMM[WN BPIJMQ
this spot again, and, although everything will be the same, somehow
something will seem to be missing and thus it will be different from
today. And so the scenery of this day will remain forever in my mind.
Even the most wondrous sight becomes tiresome if we look at it
for too long. The truly wonderful scenery should be just like that—here
for a blink of an eye and then gone forever. (The major shortcoming
of marriage lies precisely in that it forces a couple to be together day
and night. All of each person’s good points are thus turned into bad
points because they become so familiar.) In both scorching summer and
snowy winter, moreover, I also often run unexpectedly into indescribably
wonderful scenes that nurture my soul. Opportunities like that are
IT_Ia[R][IZW]VLPMJMVL2][I[4].IVO_MVO[IQL¹?PMZMKIVWVM
ÅVL I JITKWVa VW OZIKML Ja PM XZM[MVKM WN PM UWWV'º3 As long as
you cultivate a sensitive mind, traveling really can provide a shortcut to
understanding nature.
Traveling not only gives us a lucid understanding of life and
nature, it is a poetic undertaking in itself, and nothing could be more
ZWUIVQK
branches—these are scenes only travelers can enjoy. Many adventures
have come to pass solely because of the wanderings of a few individuals.
The Journey to the West, The Flowers in the Mirror, Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, William Cowper’s John Gilpin, Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 3
4]AW]·¹8IQUMVº
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Liang Yuchun
223
Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, Gogol’s Dead Souls, and other incomparable masterpieces all have travel as the skeleton of their stories about life on
PM ZWIL 1 PQVS PI VM` W TW^M ¹ZI^MTº Q[ PM UW[ ZWUIVQK PMUM
in literature. Lu Fangweng is a poet with a free spirit, whose most
distinguished works are his seven-character poems about traveling. I have
chosen two of his poems at random as illustrations of the romance of
traveling.
¹:]VVQVOQVW4QOP:IQVWVPM:WILW;_WZL/IM8I[[º
On my clothes the dust of travel mingled with wine stains.
On a distant journey—no place that doesn’t jar the soul!
And I—I am really meant to be a poet?
1VÅVMZIQV[ZILLTQVOILWVSMa1MVMZ;_WZL/IM8I[[4
¹5MMQVO8MTQVO:IQVI6IVLQVO
In my travels, I covered all of Liangzhou and am now moving on to
Yizhou,
Once again, I am crossing the Lu River this year.
Rivers and mountains clamor to present themselves to my eyes,
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MW_MZ
Running into people of the Dong and Liao tribes—their language strange
to me,
The song of the boatman lingers on as I head toward Wuzhou.
I have long been used to a life on the road—home I seldom think of,
But here up on the tower, I look around, lost, as a wave of sorrow assaults
me.
Since traveling can thus awaken in us poetic impulses, we can obtain
the highest spiritual satisfaction from it. This is why traveling is the best
way to dispel our boredom. People who have fallen out of love and
are on the verge of suicide as a result can be consoled by wandering.
At times, when one’s mind is tainted by melancholy, a walk can take
away a considerable amount of one’s sorrow. Hawthorne and Edgar
Allan Poe are fond of describing people who wander endlessly back
and forth in the streets of a city with the hope of forgetting for a short
while the hunger of their souls and the sorrow of emptiness in their
hearts. Raskolnikov, in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, also wanders aimlessly after committing murder, as if taking a walk could lighten
4
Translation by Burton Watson, The Old Man Who Does As He Pleases, New York
& London: Columbia University Press, 1973, p. 9.
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224
A Garden of One’s Own
his burden. Some people are even so interested in traveling that other
interests are pushed to the side. There is such a character in Stevenson’s
¹
Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I seek, the heaven above,
And the road below me.
Walt Whitman is another poet who sings the praises of roaming
IJW] 0Q[ ¹;WVO WN PM 7XMV :WILº Q[ QVLMML I []XMZJ M]TWOa W
travel. Let me quote the sublime lines at the beginning of this poem as a
conclusion to this section:
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
What lies between our cradle and our grave is but a road. It can be
said that we grow old traveling on this road before coming to our eternal
rest. Naturally, we can expect hardship along the way, but the scenery
surrounding our fellow travelers and us is all extremely interesting, and
it’s worth all that wandering in order to appreciate it. Apart from what
this long road leads us to, we do not have any other destination. And
Ja PM QUM _M ÅVQ[P PQ[ RW]ZVMa _M _QTT IT[W PI^M TMN PQ[ _WZTL IVL
returned to the beginning. Scientists say that we will cease to be, and will
never travel on the same road. People who uphold the eternity of the
soul, on the other hand, believe that there is still a long future ahead of
us, and we can get back on the road again millions of times. All of this
is in the future, so who cares? Maybe this road too will one day cease
to be. For now, let us walk on the road before us. The most important
thing is not to go through life with our eyes closed, oblivious, and in the
end fail to see the world around us.
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qr
Wu Boxiao
Wu Boxiao (1906–1982) was born in Shangdong and entered Beijing
Normal University in 1925. He made his fame as an essayist, but also
pursued a tireless career in language education.
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communist inclinations, which led him to Yan’an in 1938. He joined the
Chinese Communist Party in 1941 and participated in propaganda work
with the army during the war. The experience of those years is partly
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As a writer with leftist leanings, Wu explores the experiences of
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meaning from ordinary events. His plain narration is imbued with
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of such conversations, some restful, some romantic, some secretive,
some with one’s family and friends, some with strangers, and yet some
with comrades-in-arms, in the process giving a cross-sectional view of
Chinese society.
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226
A Garden of One’s Own
Conversations at Night (1934)
I might well be a melancholy character. Otherwise, why would I have
come to prefer the dark hours of the night?
I like the overlapping shadows of people on the street at night, and
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screeching across the cool autumn sky. I like the knelling of bells deep in
the night to which the traveler distressed at sleeping on a riverboat far
from home listens so intently. I like the crashing of waves on the shore,
and the nighttime echoes from the hills far and near. I like the crowing
of roosters coming in waves, which must have roused Zu Di from his
bed to practice his sword.1 I like the continuous barking of dogs in the
dark, on back streets and in bleak alleys. I like the sound of a gunshot at
midnight, the down-and-outers who stagger down the alleyways, the jazz
that comes blaring from dance halls until daybreak. I like the brightly
lit painted candles in the nuptial chamber, and seeing the abashed
bride under their light. I like it when, deep into the night, there are still
people in the hotel calling out to attendants to bring tea. I like to stretch
languorously, drowsily open my mouth wide, and sneeze. Because I like
the night, I like all the things that come with it.
That’s right, I like the night. That’s why I also like talking deep into
the night.
The scorching part of the day is when people are busy tripping
over themselves ordering others around or being ordered around
themselves. While peasants toil in sweat and dirt with ploughs and hoes,
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of their mouths as they calculate each fraction of a cent and try to
second-guess and trick each other. The hands and hearts of the workers
PI^MJMKWUMUIKPQVM[1VPM[KPWWTZWWUPMMIKPMZ[XWVQÅKIMVW
caring whether they make sense or not. Students fool around, looking
forward to a respite when the teachers go for a short nap. Amidst all of
this bustling about, how could anyone really talk, even if they wanted
to? If you want to talk, better to wait until evening. It’s the best time by
far.
On summer nights in the villages, no sooner have you put down
your chopsticks from supper than you can see stars scattered all over the
1
Zu Di (266–321 AD), a general of the Eastern Jin, who subjected himself to a
regimen of rising when the rooster crowed to hone his skills with the sword.
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:25:12 UTC
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Wu Boxiao
227
sky. There are many mosquitoes in the yard and it is a bit muggy, so you
pick up the dogskin cushion and the water pipe for Grandpa and walk
to the edge of the village to the threshing ground surrounded by willow
trees. A crowd of people is already sitting on the ground there chatting.
Some have wrapped their reed capes around them. Some sit on stools,
others take off their shoes and sit on them like cushions, and still others
spread grass mats on the ground and lie down on them, legs folded
beneath them. They have all come out to cool off. The old grandfathers,
the middle-aged uncles, and the young brothers all warmly greet each
other:
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As they speak, some bow slightly, while others get to their feet. How
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_PQTM
Gradually they begin to talk to each other, and gradually they begin
to tell stories... the Rebellion of the Long Hairs2... the love story of
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forty-nine days and there was not a single bit of grain to harvest in the
ÅMTL[º
How interesting it is! When they come to the scary parts of their stories,
each tries to huddle closer together with the crowd. When they come to
the happy parts, everyone bursts into laughter together. They look out
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MLOMWN PM[Sa
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crowd melds together with the night. A meteor shoots across the sky, and
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A lantern passes by on the road, and the dog starts barking.
¹/WI_IaLWOº[WUMWVMJMTTW_[
2
A reference to the Taiping Rebellion, a revolt that took place in the mid-
nineteenth century led by Hong Xiuquan, a frustrated scholar who suffered
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PIQZ[º JMKI][M PMa TM PMQZ PIQZ OZW_ TWVO QV LMÅIVKM WN PM 5IVKP] Z]TM
requiring men to shave the tops of their heads.
