by Bill Porter
Waterfall on Lushan
In the end, the world outside was more interesting. We returned to the hotel and collected our bags, and asked the desk clerk how to get down the mountain. Unfortunately, the Lulin was located on the south end of the summit, far from public transport, and we didn’t feel like hiking to the north end with our bags. We decided to throw money at the problem and asked the desk clerk to arrange for a car to take us down the mountain. Five minutes later, a driver pulled up, and we headed downhill. It was an expensive indulgence, at 200RMB, but considering our lethargy, we agreed it was the right choice.
On our way up the mountain, we were still half-asleep and didn’t pay attention to the road. There were curves, but they actually helped rock us back to sleep. Going down was a different story, and we didn’t sleep. The driver said there were four hundred curves, and he might have been right. We didn’t count. We were more concerned with our survival. But we did survive, and in less than thirty minutes we were at the Chiuchiang bus station and grateful to be there.
Chiuchiang probably has its charms, but we didn’t stay long enough to find out what they were. After stashing our bags in the bus station’s luggage depository, we caught the next bus to Hukou. It was only thirty kilometers to the northeast and was the scene of a natural phenomenon we had heard about and wanted to see for ourselves. As it turned out, the bus ride was even stranger. By the time we got off an hour later, half the people on the bus had some of our money—and not from picking our pockets.
When foreigners came to China in those days, they weren’t allowed to get RMB, or local currency, from banks. They had to change their dollars or pounds or francs for Foreign Exchange Certificates, better known as FEC, which were supposed to have the same value as RMB. Several years earlier, when I changed my dollars for RMB on the black market, I received anywhere from 20 percent to 40 percent more than the official FEC rate. By 1991, I was lucky if I could get 10 percent more, and I was often glad to trade one-to-one just to have a supply of RMB. So when someone on the bus asked to change money, we agreed. We even agreed to change even-steven: one FEC for one RMB.
This was a busload of farmers going back to their villages, and when one of them heard we were exchanging FEC, he whispered to the others that the official rate was five to one, not one to one. Obviously, he was confusing FEC with dollars. We tried to explain, but it was no use. The stampede was on. Everyone on the bus, including the driver and the conductress, got out their wads of bills and lined up. We could hardly object. In the areas where we had been traveling, storekeepers often had never seen FEC and refused to accept anything but RMB. By the time we ran out of FEC, we had enough RMB to last the rest of the trip. Meanwhile, our fellow passengers chuckled at the thought of making a five-to-one profit off a couple of hillbilly foreigners. It was a good-natured group that dropped us off in Hukou and drove away with our money.
The reason we made the effort to come to Hukou was to see the Yangtze again. Of course, we could have done that in Chiuchiang, where we got off the boat the previous night. But as the Yangtze flowed past Hukou, it changed color. That was something we wanted to see. In Chinese, the name Hukou means “lake mouth.” In this case, it was at the mouth of one of the largest freshwater lakes in China, namely Poyanghu. Hukou was where the lake emptied into the Yangtze, and the place where people could observe what took place when their waters met was Stone Bell Hill.
From where the bus let us off, it was a ten-minute walk through the edge of a village to the park that enclosed the hill’s pleasure gardens and pavilions where many of China’s most famous poets stopped to drain their cups. Ironically, the painting Steve bought in Hsiangtan from the curator of the future Ch’i Pai-shih Museum portrayed the poet Su Tung-p’o standing in his boat beneath Stone Bell Hill nine hundred years ago drinking a toast to the moon. After paying the admission fee of 10RMB, we followed a path of stone steps to the promontory where we had a clear view of the place below which Su stood in his little boat. It was, as we had expected, a remarkable sight: instead of mixing, the blue-green water of Poyang Lake flowed alongside the red-brown water of the Yangtze without mixing. The brochure we bought at the park entrance said they flowed like that for three kilometers before they merged.
It was, indeed, a curious phenomenon. But once we had seen it, we didn’t linger. It was eleven o’clock, and we wanted to get back to Chiuchiang and Lushan. We walked back to the highway and waited for the next bus. The village below Stone Bell Hill was a farming village, and the crowd that gathered around us soon numbered in the hundreds. When this happened earlier at Huaminglou, we narrowly escaped the clutches of the local police. This time the crowd worked to our advantage. Express buses weren’t scheduled to stop there. But when one came along, it had no choice. Once more we waved good-bye to two hundred new friends.
An hour later, we were back in Chiuchiang. We had already toured the city’s most famous sight, namely, Lushan, albeit in the fog. But there was more to Lushan than its summit, and we wanted to tour its foothills as well. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any public transportation to the places we wanted to visit. So after collecting our bags, we walked outside the bus station and flagged down a taxi. After a brief negotiation, we settled on 150RMB, or thirty bucks, for a half-day circumambulation. It was already one o’clock when we finally set off. We weren’t sure where we were going to spend the night. But it didn’t matter. We were traveling, and traveling in comfort for a change.
From Chiuchiang, we followed the highway that skirted the mountain’s eastern flank for about twenty kilometers then turned onto a side road and drove into a forest. A few minutes later, the road ended at another of the four great centers of Confucian learning in China. We had already visited one of the four on Yuehlushan near Changsha. This one was called Pailutung Shuyuan, or White Deer Cave Academy.
White Deer Cave Academy’s white deer
The name came from a deer that often visited the man who first opened a school here in the eighth century. Unlike the academy outside Changsha, White Deer Cave Academy was set in a secluded forest beside a babbling stream. It was a beautiful setting. But its setting wasn’t the reason for its reputation. Its fame came from its long history as a preeminent center of learning. Although it had been a school as early as the eighth century, it wasn’t until the twelfth century that it became one of the Big Four. This was due to Chu Hsi (1130–1200), who also helped establish the academy on Yuehlushan.
Besides being governor of the province, Chu Hsi was also one of China’s most famous philosophers and commentators on the Confucian classics. Even though his commentaries were written over eight hundred years ago, no Chinese today would think of studying or discussing the Confucian canon without first seeing what Chu Hsi had to say. While he was governor, he often came here to write and to lecture. He also convinced the emperor to favor the academy with imperial patronage, and it remained a center of higher education until modern times.
As we walked through the front gate and toured its halls, everywhere hung the calligraphy of the notable teachers who had taught here, including the neo-Confucian, Wang Yang-ming (1472–1529). Like the Confucian academy on Yuehlushan, it was no longer an academy but a museum to the past. But it was still worth visiting. It was peaceful and cool in the dappled sunlight that fell through its thousand-year-old trees. And there was even a small restaurant and a dozen or so rooms for people who wanted to spend the night. If we had known that earlier, that’s what we would have done. But we had already hired our car and driver, and we had more places to see. After pausing to pay our respects before the stone statue of the white deer, we returned to our car.
Back on the main road, we continued south five kilometers and turned off again and drove through another forest to the foot of one of Lushan’s more famous peaks. It’s called Hsiufeng, or Flowering Peak, and it’s been attracting visitors for more than a thousand years. There were vendors selling food, and we suddenly realized we had missed lunch and sat down near the trailhead long
enough to have a bowl of dumplings. Then we started up the stone steps that led to the peak. We weren’t planning to hike all the way to the top. We just wanted to get a taste of the mountain. Fortunately, it wasn’t the weekend, and we had the trail to ourselves—or almost to ourselves. Shadowing our every step were half a dozen sedan-chair porters trying to convince us that the only proper way to climb the peak was in a chair. It may have been the way Chiang Kai-shek climbed the mountain, but we weren’t Chiang Kai-shek.
As we continued on, the price dropped from 50RMB, to 40, to 30, to 25 and finally 20. Still, we preferred to walk. Along the way, we passed a stele inscribed with the image of Kuan-yin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. It was carved 300 years ago and was all that was left of a famous Buddhist temple that once occupied the spot. We followed the trail further and eventually came to Dragon Pool. Just beyond the pool’s black waters, we sat down at a pavilion that offered a wonderful view of Hsiufeng. It looked like the perfect place to end our hike. It was a beautiful setting, but we didn’t give it the time it deserved. The afternoon was half gone, and we had miles to go. As soon as we caught our breaths, we headed back down and returned to the main road again.
Once more, we headed south. Ten minutes later, we began stopping every kilometer or so to ask farmers the location of the hot spring sanatorium. We weren’t interested in the sanatorium itself but in the village next to it. The third farmer we asked said we had gone a bit too far. We backtracked and parked at the side of the highway. About two hundred meters from the road was a grove of ancient trees next to a group of mud-brick houses surrounded by rice fields and mulberry orchards. This was the place we were looking for. From the highway, we zigzagged our way across the rice fields to the place where the poet T’ao Yuan-ming (365–427) built his hut in the early years of the fifth century.
T’ao Yuan-ming has always been one of my favorite poets, and I’m not alone. Most Chinese rank him among their greatest literary figures. He served as an official for a brief period, but, as he put it, “How could I lower myself, for a few sacks of rice.” At the age of forty, he retired and spent the remaining twenty-two years of his life in the shadow of Lushan writing poems and tending a garden and getting drunk with his neighbors. One of his most famous poems is the fifth of a twenty-poem series entitled “Drinking Poems”:
Dragon Pool and Hsiufeng Peak
I built my hut in the world of men
but I hear no noise of cart or horse
you ask how can this be
when the mind travels so does the place
picking chrysanthemums along the eastern fence
I lose myself in the southern hills
the mountain air the sunset light
birds returning home together
in this there is a truth
I’d explain but I’ve forgotten the words
T’ao Yuan-ming also wrote stories, one of which everyone in China knows—even foreigners. It’s called “Peach Blossom Spring.” It seems that one day a fisherman noticed peach blossoms floating down a stream not far from where we were standing. He was curious and wondered where the peach blossoms were coming from. He had never seen peach trees in that area before and decided to find the source of the petals. He walked along the shore and followed the stream until he came to a place where the water flowed out of a crevice in the rocks. With some difficulty, he managed to squeeze through the crevice. Suddenly, he came out into a beautiful valley. There were people living in the valley, but they wore old-fashioned clothes. And when he spoke to them, they answered in a dialect he barely understood. They welcomed him into their homes and told him their ancestors had discovered the valley several hundred years earlier while trying to escape the oppression of the Ch’in dynasty. No one had left the valley since then, and they were curious about the course of the intervening centuries. Once the fisherman had answered their questions, he said he had to return home. The people escorted him back to the crevice, but before saying goodbye, they asked him not to reveal the whereabouts of their valley.
The fisherman agreed, but on his way back to his village, he marked his route so he could remember how to get back. And the first thing he did after he returned home was to tell the local magistrate about his discovery. The official sent his assistants to accompany the fisherman to find the hidden valley, but they never found it again. And the location of Peach Blossom Spring remains a mystery to this day.
View of mountains south of T’ao Yuan-ming’s old home
While we were standing there in the little village where this story was written, several of the author’s descendants came out to see what we were doing. The place wasn’t on the tourist map, and the villagers had never seen a foreigner before. But they were friendly and even showed us the spot where the poet’s farmhouse once stood. The spot they pointed to was beside a small stream and next to the group of trees we had seen from the highway. The trees were ancient and must have been hundreds of years old. There was also a marker that had been put there by some government agency announcing that this was, indeed, the site of T’ao Yuan-ming’s old home. Beyond the small grove of trees and mud huts, rice fields and mulberry orchards stretched in all directions. The huge green shadow of Lushan rose on the western horizon, and one of its spurs rose to the south—the “southern hills” T’ao Yuan-ming gazed at in the fifth of his “Drinking Poems.” Again, we had to tear ourselves away. However, before leaving I asked his descendants about the location of their ancestor’s grave. They confirmed the directions I had written down from another traveler’s account, and we returned to our car.
House of T’ao Yuan-ming’s last lineal descendent
A few kilometers later, we came to a crossroads at the village of Aikou. We turned north and began driving along Lushan’s western flank back toward Chiuchiang. Two kilometers later, we turned off the paved road onto a dirt road that led toward the mountain. A sign in Chinese said NO ADMITTANCE. We told our driver to ignore it, and we continued up the road. A few minutes later, we came to the entrance of a military base. The guards were surprised. So were we. No one mentioned a military base. We got out and walked over to the gate, and said we wanted to visit T’ao Yuan-ming’s grave. The guards said no one was allowed on the base. There really wasn’t much we could say, but we asked if we could talk to their commanding officer. Maybe, we thought, they could make an exception for some poetry pilgrims.
The guards called someone on the phone, and a few minutes later, two officers drove up in a jeep. The military base was used by the navy for munitions storage and for special forces training. We could tell by the sound of gunfire that some sort of weapons exercise was in progress. When the officers came over to talk with us, they repeated what the guards had already told us. It was useless. No one, they said, was allowed on the base without permission. And clearly we didn’t have permission. We had no choice but to pay our respects from the main gate, which we did by pouring some whiskey into three cups, offering it to the sky gods, then drinking it ourselves. Then we returned to the highway and continued our northward journey along Lushan’s western flank.
The road we were on led back to Chiuchiang, but halfway there we turned off one last time. Our final stop of the day was Tunglin Temple. It was one of the most famous Buddhist temples in China. Most Chinese Buddhists practice Pure Land Buddhism, and this was where the teachings of that school were first put into practice. The monk who started it all was Hui-yuan (334–416). While he was living here, he came into possession of some newly-translated Buddhist sutras that encouraged devotees to seek rebirth in the Pure Land of Amita Buddha, the Buddha of the Infinite, where enlightenment was said to be much easier than in this land of endless distraction. Hui-yuan gathered a group of disciples and in 402 ad founded the White Lotus Society, whose members vowed to seek rebirth in the Pure Land by chanting Amita Buddha’s name, which they pronounced “Omitofo.”
The temple was still here, but it looked like we had arrived too late. Most temples closed their gates around five o�
�clock, if not before, and it was nearly six. From the dirt parking lot, we walked across a stone bridge that spanned a small stream and approached the temple’s main gate. The gate was closed, but we yelled “Namo Omitofo”—“Homage to the Buddha of the Infinite” and waited. We yelled several times, but no one answered. Finally, just as we were about to turn away, the gate slowly creaked opened. The monk who opened it said, “Omitofo” in reply. Before we had a chance to ask if the temple was still open, he smiled and asked us if we wanted to spend the night. Naturally, we accepted. We walked back to the taxi and collected our bags, paid the driver, and walked back across the bridge and through the temple gate again.
Every temple has a guest hall where visitors who want to spend the night register. The monk at the gate led us inside, and we signed our names, and the guest manager led us to a room upstairs. The monks had already had their dinner, but we had some peanuts and crackers in our bags, and that was enough. After taking cold showers, we lay down for the night and fell asleep listening to the monks ring the temple bell 108 times, once for every form of liberation from all the myriad forms of suffering, including hangovers.
