by Bill Porter
Nanking’s Yangtze River Bridge
Underneath Nanking’s Yangtze River Bridge
After we returned to our taxi, we told the driver we had one more place to visit. We wanted to end our day at the Yangtze River Bridge, which was located at the northwest corner of the city. We crossed the city yet again. But this time, when our driver dropped us off at the base of the bridge, we told him not to wait.
When it was first completed in 1968, the bridge was hailed as a symbol of socialist progress. Its completion, in fact, surprised many people, especially the Russians. The Russians designed the bridge. But in 1960, when relations between the two countries turned sour, the Russian engineers packed up and took their plans home. The Chinese were left with a few cement caissons and no plans. It took them eight more years, but they finally succeeded in forging one of China’s most important transportation links. Until it was built, there was no direct rail link between Beijing and Shanghai. The Yangtze River Bridge became a symbol of progress under the banner of Maoist thought, as it was completed during the Cultural Revolution.
It was impressive standing beneath its huge cement arches. We stood there watching trains and cars passing above and ships passing below. At some point, we jumped over the cement retaining wall at the base of the bridge and walked out onto the mud flats along the river for a closer look. A naval patrol boat soon chased us back. We returned to the base of the bridge and took an elevator to the roadway above. We thought we would walk across to Pukou on the other side of the Yangtze. It was only a kilometer away. But we didn’t get even halfway. The exhaust fumes were overpowering. We had to give up and head back to the city, back to our hotel, back to an early end to yet another big day.
14. Immortals & Teapots
Well, it was supposed to be an early end to another big day. But it wasn’t. We started drinking wine with dinner and continued in our room until midnight. We might not have been on vacation, but every once in a while we acted like it. So it was noon the next day when we finally boarded a bus to our next stop. It was a bus bound for Maoshan, and it was the eeriest bus ride we ever took. For the past two thousand years, Maoshan has been one of Taoism’s major spiritual centers, so we expected the only daily bus to be packed. But for the first and only time on our entire journey, we were the only passengers. We dubbed it “the ghost bus.”
Ghost bus to Maoshan
Maoshan
From Nanking, we headed east on the highway that led, well, east. It was the same highway traveled by buses bound for Suchou and Hangchou and even Shanghai. Not far from Nanking, we passed several mountains that were being torn down for their cement. Then we began crossing a vast plain. It was the Yangtze Delta Floodplain. The ocean was less than a hundred kilometers away, but we weren’t going that far. Two hours after leaving Nanking, the ghost bus turned off the highway at the village of Tienwangchen, drove north ten kilometers, and dropped us off at the base of Maoshan. It wasn’t much of a mountain. But it was the only one around, which made it look bigger. Taoists call it the eastern end of the Kunlun Range that begins in Afghanistan. The reason Taoists went to the trouble of ennobling its slopes and its summit with temples and shrines was because this was where the three Mao brothers came over 2,000 years ago.
Maoshan’s Chiuhsiao Wanfu Temple
They were grandsons of the Taoist master, Mao Meng, who cultivated Taoist yoga and alchemy on Huashan, where he was said to have ascended to Heaven in broad daylight on the back of a dragon. That was around 200 BC. Later, his grandsons took up their grandfather’s practice and traveled all the way to this mountain. No one knows why, but they chose its slopes and its summit for their new home, and they never left. Undoubtedly, it had something to do with its geomantic position. It was, after all, the only mountain around. Perhaps the Yangtze had turned it into an island at the time. Perhaps it shimmered in the distance as they approached it, as if it were one of the islands of the immortals. In the centuries that followed, many other Taoists came here to cultivate the way of long life, including T’ao Hung-ching, who completed the first compilation of the Taoist canon during his stay on the mountain in the sixth century. The canon T’ao compiled gave a prominent place to the works of the Mao brothers and their successors, and Maoshan has been a place of pilgrimage ever since—at least until recently.
Despite the mountain’s former glory, the stream of pilgrims apparently ended with the Cultural Revolution. Business was so bad, both drivers of the two motorized rickshaws that waited for pilgrims at the base of the mountain were asleep. We left them to their dreams and began hiking up the road that led to the summit. It was five kilometers to the top, and we soon realized we had bitten off more than we could chew. The pilgrim business at Maoshan was so bad there was no place to leave our bags, so we had to carry them. After about a kilometer, we saw a trail on the left that led to a small temple. We thought maybe we could leave our bags there, assuming someone was home. But just then a truck came along, and we waved. The driver stopped and told us to get in the back. A few minutes later we were at the summit, where the Mao brothers turned into cranes and flew off to Heaven over 2,000 years ago.
At 372 meters, Maoshan wasn’t an especially high mountain. But the view from the summit was impressive. Below us in all directions stretched a vast plain of rice fields and fishponds. The Taoists who lived here must have felt as if they were just a step away from Heaven, and maybe they were. It would have been a great place to meditate and practice ch’i-kung, or inner alchemy, and for the past 2,000 years Maoshan has been home to thousands of Taoists. But times had changed. Its dozens of temples and shrines were reduced to rubble during the Cultural Revolution. All that remained was the small temple near the mountain’s base where the graves of the patriarchs were located, and the larger complex at the summit.
From the parking lot, we walked up the steps and entered Chiuhsiao Wanfukung, the Palace of the Ten Thousand Blessings of the Nine Heavens—or Nine Heaven Temple, for short. There were still several shrine halls, and we visited them all. But most of the buildings were still in ruins. While we were walking around, we met a young Taoist priest and he took us to meet the abbot, whose name was Yen Chih-ken. Master Yen invited us to share some tea with him, and we actually had a nice chat. As we were getting ready to leave, he wished us success and wealth. I thanked him for his good wishes but suggested success and wealth were probably not what Lao-tzu would have wished for. He laughed, then asked us where we planned to spend the night. When we told him we hoped we could spend it on the mountain, he invited us to stay at his temple. The sun looked like it was about two hours from setting, and we were glad to accept. He then asked his attendant to show us to a room, then take us to the guest hall to register. Unfortunately, after we dropped our bags in one of the rooms and went to register, the official assigned by the government to oversee religious affairs at the complex overruled the abbot. He said it would be impossible. He said there weren’t any rooms available. This was, of course, ridiculous. We had just put our bags in one of the rooms. It was empty, and so were all the other rooms on that floor. In this case, rolling up my sleeve and showing him my scars would not have helped. This wasn’t about whether we were really pilgrims, it was about the nature of Taoism.
Taoism, not Buddhism, is China’s national religion. And its national religion has been the source for most of its revolutionary movements over the past two thousand years. Despite the government’s overt policy of religious freedom, it is still worried that such freedom might someday bring about its own downfall. Hence, Taoist centers are subject to much tighter control than Buddhist centers. There was nothing we could do. We walked back to the room where we dropped our bags and hoisted them on our backs, then went to say good-bye to the abbot. We thanked him for his offer of hospitality. He sighed, and so did we. He was the abbot, but he was not in charge. We walked back out to the parking lot and began walking down the mountain. The sun was going down, and we had no idea where we were going to spend the night.
; At least we didn’t have to walk the entire five kilometers. About halfway down, the same truck that picked us up earlier picked us up again. The driver said he brought supplies to the monastery once a day, and he was heading home. His home was in the village at the bottom of the mountain, but he drove a bit past the village and dropped us off at a place where he said the last bus of the day would be passing by. Thirty minutes later, it picked us up. And thirty minutes later, it dropped us off in the village of Tienwangchen, back on the highway that connected Nanking with the cities to the east. Since one of them was our next destination, we felt relieved.
However, by the time we got to the highway, the sun was down, and it was getting dark. Every few minutes a bus came by and we waved, but the drivers didn’t slow down. Finally, we came up with a plan. We walked down the road a few hundred meters to the village’s one and only stoplight. We figured we had a better chance of flagging down a bus if it had to stop, and the stoplight looked like the right place. Still, over the next hour dozens of buses stopped at the stoplight but ignored us and continued on. Finally, as our faith in the road gods was just about gone, a bus bound for Hangchou picked us up. It was crowded with Uighurs from northwest China on their way to work in that city’s textile factories. There weren’t any seats, but there was room for us to sit in the stairwell. It wasn’t comfortable, but at least we weren’t still waving at buses on the highway. Two hours later the driver dropped us off at the edge of Yihsing, which was where we wanted to go. Apparently, the place where the driver dropped us off was where other drivers dropped their passengers off. There were several motorized rickshaws waiting to take people into town. After a brief negotiation, one of them delivered us to the Yihsing Hotel for 10RMB. We were relieved. It wasn’t the summit of Maoshan, but we were looking forward to a hot bath and something to eat. Unfortunately, when we went inside, our bad karma was still with us. The desk clerk said the hotel was full. No rooms. When we asked where else we could stay, he said the nearest hotel that accepted foreigners was ten kilometers away in Tingshu. And the last bus to Tingshu, he said, left hours ago.
We could see it was useless to argue with him. We obviously didn’t look like the hotel’s usual clientele. Naturally, we realized he was just getting rid of us. But it was late, and we were tired, and we really didn’t have any other option. So we tried something we had never tried before. We walked over to the far corner of the lobby where there was a set of stairs going up to the second floor, and we did the unthinkable. In the space below the stairs, we put down our bags and took out some clothes, and laid them down on the floor. Then we lay down on top of our clothes and stretched out for the night. The hotel staff was aghast. They obviously hadn’t dealt with Hobos from Hell before. When they tried to evict us, we simply curled up and held our ground. This was, we said, the only hotel in town where foreigners were allowed to stay. We had no choice. We couldn’t help it if we weren’t allowed to stay elsewhere. We suggested they call the police and see if there wasn’t an empty jail cell. It was a brazen ploy. But it was like gambling with the house’s money. We figured we couldn’t lose.
Of course, the reason we dared the hotel staff to call the police was because there was no such thing as a full hotel in China. It was just a question of a person’s status in the party or the government or, in our case, a person’s persistence. In this case, persistence won out. When other guests began coming over to see what was going on, the staff finally gave up and told us to take our pick of the rooms down an adjoining hallway. It turned out that all the rooms in the hallway were empty, over thirty of them. The next morning, the hall maid told us that the manager liked to save as many rooms as possible, just in case a delegation of visiting officials showed up. Obviously, it was a state-run hotel.
We thanked the maid for the information and went to check out. It had been such a good night—the bath water was hot and the restaurant was still open when we got there, we thanked the desk clerk and told him the room was very nice. And it was—quite a change from the room at Nine Heaven Temple where we had hoped to spend the night. Then we went outside to face the day.
Outside was Yihsing. We had already visited China’s porcelain capital. Yihsing was its pottery capital. But when we asked at several nearby stores where we could see how the town’s famous pottery was made, we found out that Yihsing was not the place. All the pottery stamped with the name Yihsing on it was produced in the town of Tingshu ten kilometers to the south. It was the old story of the administrative center lending its name to anything produced within its jurisdiction.
Fortunately, buses left for Tingshu every thirty minutes—not at night, but during the day. We stashed our bags at the bus station and caught the next one bound for Tingshu. When we boarded, we asked the driver if he knew of a factory there that we could visit. He said we either had to join a tour group or hire a guide at one of the local travel agencies. In Chingtechen we hired a guide, and that worked out fine. So we assumed we would do the same when we got to Tingshu. It turned out we didn’t have to. The girl who was sitting in the seat in front of us turned out to be a potter at Tingshu’s most famous factory: the Yihsing Purple Clay Artware Factory. Her name was Chang Hsin-lan. When we asked her how long she had been making pottery, she said her father taught her when she was still a child. The road gods had smiled upon us once more. When we told her we were interested in teapots, she said they were what her factory was famous for. After we arrived in Tingshu, she led us there and even introduced us to its deputy director, Li Ch’ang-hung.
Yihsing potter Chang Hsin-lan with author (photo by Steven R. Johnson)
Artisan making teapots in Yihsing
Mister Li was also one of the factory’s master potters, and he told us everything we wanted to know about the factory and its teapots. Considering our reception at the hotel the previous night, we sensed a change in our karmic winds. Mister Li said the factory was the oldest, the largest, and the most famous pottery factory in Tingshu. It sounded like a sales pitch, but we didn’t care. We were happy, and he wasn’t trying to sell us anything. As its name suggested, the factory was famous for its purple clay pottery—which was a very nice shade of brown, as were all the factories in Tingshu.
Yihsing teapots
The clay was the secret to Tingshu’s fame. It came from two nearby mountains: Tingshan and Shushan. Mister Li said it took one thousand kilos of unrefined soil from the two mountains to produce one kilo of high-grade clay suitable for teapots or other artware. Once the clay was refined, it was distributed to more than a thousand potters. In the case of teapots, he said each worker made an average of two pots per day. However, the factory’s eleven master potters made as few as one per month.
Although Tingshu potters had been making pottery since the Sung dynasty, factory-style production, according to Mister Li, had only been going on since 1956. Since we weren’t really interested in factory-style production, we asked if we could see the factory’s small-scale production process. He smiled and nodded his head and led us into a series of workrooms where we could see the company’s master potters and apprentice potters making teapots. Among the master potters, he introduced us to China’s only living national master. His name was Ku Ching-chou. Mister Li said Mister Ku only made four pots per year and that seven years earlier when one of Ku’s teapots was put on the market, it sold for 120,000RMB, or $25,000. We stood there in disbelief. Mister Ku just laughed. So did Mister Li.
Earthenware pots on a canal barge
Altogether, Mister Li spent about an hour leading us around and showing us the production process. He was very generous with his time and showed us everything. What impressed us the most was how well lit the rooms were—with natural light, not overhead lights, and how unhurried the potters were. Once their pots were finished, they were air-dried for several days, depending on the weather, then put in kilns and fired at 1,200 degrees centigrade. Tingshu’s purple clay was so oily, it didn’t require a glaze, and teapots made with this clay were a joy to hold as wel
l as behold. They felt good in the hand. Wherever Chinese live, they all need a good teapot. And Yihsing teapots are the best. However, fame has a price. Unlike the kaolin clay of Chingtechen, Tingshu’s purple clay, according to Mister Li, was not expected to last much longer. He estimated it would be gone within fifty years. It was a sad thought.
With that in mind, we considered buying a few teapots. But when we considered how rough we traveled, we decided they would break and refrained. We thanked Mister Li for taking the time to show us around. We looked for Ms. Chang, but she was already off somewhere working on her next pot. As we walked back out onto the road, we couldn’t help noticing that the town was crisscrossed by canals, and the canals were full of barges stacked with huge clay pots and cases packed with tiny teapots. I was looking forward to making tea when I got home. Years earlier, I’d bought a teapot from Yihsing, but now I knew why it made such good tea.
15. Wuhsi & Changshu
