South of the Yangtze

by Bill Porter

  After paying our respects, we pedaled on. The fog was beginning to lift, and the sun was beginning to shine through. Before crossing the bridge that reconnected with the lakeshore, we turned back along the island’s south shore and pedaled to the front of an archway that announced the presence of the Hsiling Seal Society.

  The Chinese have been carving their names on stone and metal and bone for 4,000 years, and there were few possessions more important than a person’s seal. Documents were not official without one. Signatures were fine, but they weren’t official. Only the seal made something legal. So naturally the design of a seal was something people paid great attention to, especially artists, who often had a dozen or more for different phases of their creative lives or for different kinds of paintings or calligraphy.

  The Hsiling Seal Society was founded in the 1920s by four men who wanted to study and preserve the art of seal carving, and they chose this place on Kushan for their get-togethers. After parking our bicycles, we walked through the archway and up the steps to the place where they met. In addition to a garden setting, the society possessed one of China’s best collections of seals, hundreds of which were on display. It was overwhelming, and we limited ourselves to simply being amazed at the artistry—which involved adapting the structure of Chinese characters to the shape of a stone. Even a square stone posed challenges. Over the centuries, any given character had multiple forms, hence the carver had to choose among these different forms so that all the characters in a person’s name formed one harmonious whole. Of course, there were stones of all sizes and shapes for sale, and visitors could have their name carved for a price. But a good carver usually took days or even weeks to think through the design, and I didn’t want one that said “Bill.”

  We walked back down to our bicycles, pedaled across Hsiling Bridge, and rejoined the main road that skirted the lake’s north shore. A hundred meters later, we stopped again at Hangchou’s most famous shrine. It was built in the thirteenth century in honor of Yueh Fei. When North China was invaded by nomads in the twelfth century, the Sung dynasty court was forced to flee from its capital in Kaifeng to Hangchou, where it reestablished its capital. Yueh Fei was still a boy then, but he grew up fast. When he was still a young man, he organized an army of peasants and defeated the invaders, and pushed them back across the Yellow River. Unfortunately, the Sung court became fearful of Yueh Fei’s intentions and had him executed, after which it promptly lost the territory Yueh Fei had reclaimed.

  As we entered the shrine, we stopped behind the statues of four men who were kneeling before a statue of Yueh Fei. The kneeling men were responsible for his death and were now asking for forgiveness. According to the caretaker, the statues had to be replaced from time to time. People sometimes damaged them while expressing their anger. There was now a sign asking them not to do that.

  We returned once more to our bicycles and continued on for several kilometers, all the way to the entrance of Lingyin Temple. It was located at the foot of the hills that encircled the lake and was easily the most famous temple in the Hangchou area. After parking our bicycles and paying the admission fee, we walked past a cliff carved with hundreds of buddhas and bodhisattvas. An Indian monk who came here in the fourth century thought the cliff looked a lot like one on a mountain in India, and he called it the Cliff That Flew Here. The statues were carved later in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and were still in excellent condition, thanks to Chou En-lai, who ordered the Red Guards to leave them alone. The focal point was a statue of Maitreya Buddha, the one with the big belly. There was a long line of people waiting to climb up beside him for a snapshot. It reminded us of children visiting a department store Santa Claus.

  We stood in line, too, and asked Maitreya to make us wiser. I’m still waiting. Afterwards, we entered the temple across from the cliff. Lingyin’s fame was well deserved. Everything was big. But the two most impressive features of this impressive temple were the twin pagodas in front of the main shrine hall and the buddha statue inside. The two pagodas had survived fires and wars for the past thousand years, but the buddha statue had only been there since 1956. It was the largest seated statue of the Buddha in China and was carved out of huge blocks of camphor wood. What was so remarkable about it was that the work was done in the middle of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. We couldn’t help wonder how that happened. Someone at Lingyin Temple must have had really good connections.

  After our necks got too stiff to look up anymore at the pagoda or the buddha statue, we returned to our bicycles and considered our next stop. We could have taken the cable car to the peak that overlooked West Lake. But we decided to stay at ground level. We pedaled back toward the lake, but halfway there we turned off on Dragon Well Road. I think we must have pedaled five or six kilometers, and half of that was uphill. But we were determined to visit the home of China’s most famous green tea.

  Buddha rock carving outside Lingyin Temple

  On the way up the final part of the road, we stopped to catch our breaths and met a local tea grower. His name was Hsu Shun-fu, and he offered to lead us to the well that made the tea famous. It wasn’t hard to find, and I suppose we could have found it ourselves, but Mister Hsu wanted to make sure we saw its most unusual feature: when he stirred the water, a line appeared on the surface, danced around a bit, then disappeared. We were mystified until Mister Hsu explained that the water was actually a mixture of well water and stream water of different viscosities. That explained the mystery behind Dragon Well, but it didn’t explain the mystery behind the tea.

  Mister Hsu anticipated our next question and asked us to follow him to his neighbor’s house. Other teas, he said, were picked every few months, but Dragon Well was only picked twice a year, in spring and in fall. And when other teas were harvested, one or two leaves were picked along with the bud. Dragon Well included only the bud just after it opened. And while other teas were dried in the sun, even if only briefly, Dragon Well went straight into a huge charcoal-heated wok, first for fifty minutes, then for twenty-seven minutes and one last time for eighteen minutes, a process we watched at his neighbor’s house. But the distinctive flavor of Dragon Well, or Lungching, he said, wasn’t due to the drying process as much as it was the soil. The soil in the surrounding hills was extremely sandy, and water didn’t stay on the roots long enough to effect the tea. The flavor, he said, came from the sun.

  Then he led us back to his house and made us some tea. He said when Dragon Well was first brewed 1,300 years ago, it was used as a medicine for cataracts. It brightened people’s eyes. We were too young for cataracts but not too young to feel our eyes brighten. The tea he made for us, he said, came from leaves picked earlier that year in spring. He said they had a subtler flavor than leaves picked in fall. Our first impression was one of bitterness, then came a rush of sweetness, and finally our thirst disappeared. He made several infusions from the same leaves, and we stayed until the flavor was gone. What was remarkable was that he didn’t try to sell us any tea. He just wanted to share what he knew. And we were glad he did.

  Dragon Well Spring

  We thanked Mister Hsu for his kindness and headed back to the lake refreshed. Fortunately, it was downhill. Just past where the road met the lake again, we stopped at a temple that was being restored. Its name was Chingtzu Temple. As we entered the courtyard, we were surprised at the size of the wood destined to become the temple’s new pillars. We wondered where the trees came from. Probably not China. What was equally surprising was that all the workmen were using hand tools—plumb lines, planes, squares, mallets, and handsaws. We didn’t see a single power tool, or a single nail.

  But the reason we stopped wasn’t to watch carpenters at work, it was because a thousand years ago this was Hangchou’s most famous temple, even more famous than Lingyin Temple. Over the centuries, it was the home of many famous monks, but the most famous of them all was a monk named Chi-kung, who lived here eight hundred years ago.

  In the history of Chinese Buddhism, no other
monk has been the subject of so many stories and legends. The theme, though, that runs through all the stories about Chi-kung is that he was wild and crazy and the patron saint of all those who washed away the cares of this world with a sip or two of wine. We figured he had been watching over us, and at the monastery store we bought a puppet in his likeness. All we had to do was pull a string, and he lifted up a gourd of wine. He was our new best friend.

  The temple where Chi-kung once lifted up his gourd was located between two mountains. The mountain to the south was where Sung dynasty emperors prayed to Heaven when Hangchou was the country’s southern capital. The mountain to the north was more interesting. It was called Hsichaoshan, and it was once the site of Leifeng (Thunder Peak) Pagoda, beneath which lies the most beautiful woman no one wants to see.

  The story goes something like this: once upon a time, a handsome young man fell in love with a woman dressed in white. But the woman was really a powerful white snake who wanted to live in the world of humans. Eventually the young man discovered the identity of his lover and asked a Buddhist monk to liberate him from the snake’s spell. The battles that followed became the subject of one of the most famous Chinese operas: The Legend of the White Snake. According to this story, the monk was finally able to imprison the white snake in the foundation of Leifeng Pagoda. And there she was doomed to remain until West Lake dried up, the Chientang Tidal Bore failed to appear, or the pagoda fell down. Well, the pagoda fell down in 1924. I don’t know whether that means White Snake is now among us, but in case she’s still under the rubble, the monks at Chingtzu Temple were also rebuilding the pagoda.

  Since that was pretty much it for our list of sights to see, we headed back to our hotel, then went to find a place to eat. We decided to try something other than steamed buns and passed up Dogs Won’t Touch ’Em. We opted instead for one of the city’s oldest restaurants, the Kueiyuankuan, where we filled up on eel and shrimp noodles. The noodles were great. The best noodles we had the entire trip. But we weren’t done. On the way back to our hotel, we stopped in a store that sold wine and found two more bottles of Marco Polo Cabernet. We bought both and a few minutes later sat down on the shore of West Lake and toasted all those who had sat there like us over the centuries under the light of the same moon. Where would poets be, we wondered, without the moon, and where would poets be without wine? We didn’t wonder long.

  19. Shaohsing

  Hangchou was like Suchou. It was the kind of town where there was always something more to see. But we had to be back in Hong Kong in a matter of days, and there were more places on our itinerary. Next up was a city that was even more ancient than Hangchou. It was Shaohsing, and it was only fifty kilometers to the east. We were there by nine o’clock the next morning.

  Orchid Pavilion

  From the town’s bus station, we climbed aboard a three-wheeler and told the driver to take us to the Shaohsing Hotel. Our trip was coming to an end, and we hadn’t spent nearly as much money as we had expected. So we decided to indulge. And we were glad we did. The hotel was an island of loveliness and calm in an ugly, noisy city. And it was only 150RMB for a room with a garden view. But we weren’t there to spend time in our hotel. We were there to see the sights, and we didn’t waste any time venturing forth.

  As soon as we dropped our bags in our room, we went back out onto the street and hired another three-wheeler to take us to Kuaichishan. It was four kilometers away at the southeast edge of town, and we were there in minutes. The reason we were there was to pay our respects to Yu the Great. Kuaichishan was where he was buried.

  Yu preceded us here by 4,300 years. He was the man who finally figured out how to control the flooding of the Yellow River, which he did by dredging, not by building dikes. He was also the founder of China’s first dynasty, the Hsia. Until several decades ago, historians dismissed the Hsia as a myth. But recent excavations in the middle reaches of the Yellow River have dispelled such doubts. The Hsia was real, and so was Yu the Great.

  The reason he left the Yellow River and traveled this far south was to meet with leaders of areas newly incorporated into the realm of Han Chinese culture. But soon after he came here, he died. The exact location of his grave was unknown, but it was somewhere on the mountain. Over the centuries, many emperors had come to pay homage, and a number of shrines were built at the foot of the mountain. We visited the latest version and also stopped to look at a huge rock with a hole in it. It was brought here by Yu, but no one seems to know why. The hole reminded us of the moon. Like all rulers of ancient China, Yu was a shaman and a worshipper of the moon goddess, and the hole in his rock was a perfect likeness.

  The hole was also a perfect likeness of our stomachs. Another three-wheeler took us back to our hotel, where we had lunch, and afterwards we went for a stroll on the hill behind the hotel. It was called Fushan Hill, and it was also connected, more or less, with Yu the Great. As China’s mythic past became its historic past, Shaohsing became the capital of the state of Yueh, whose rulers were descended from the wife of Yu the Great. In return for their allegiance, Yu gave his in-laws the area around Shaohsing as their fief. Around 500 BC, Kou Chien became King of Yueh and eventually made Yueh the dominant power south of the Yangtze. His palace was on Fushan, right where we were strolling. The hill was now a park. It was a nice park, though, and from the top we had a panoramic view of the city. The view, however, was depressing.

  Yu the Great grave memorial

  We weren’t alone in such an assessment. Kou Chien also found life in Shaohsing depressing, and he built a retreat thirteen kilometers southwest of town. In addition to amusing himself in other pursuits, he grew orchids. And his retreat became known as Lanting, or Orchid Pavilion. The orchids were long gone, but there was something else that attracted our interest. We walked back down the hill and hired another three-wheeler. Thirty minutes later, we arrived at Orchid Pavilion’s modern incarnation.

  In addition to ponds, pavilions, and a shrine to China’s greatest calligrapher, the place included China’s only calligraphy museum. The Chinese have always appreciated a good piece of calligraphy more than a good painting, and we went inside. Calligraphy reveals a person’s character better than a painting, if only because a person doing calligraphy can’t think of anything else while they’re doing it. It’s like being a dancer on the dance floor. The Chinese have always considered it their greatest art. And, of course, the museum included the greatest piece of calligraphy by the greatest of all calligraphers.

  The man’s name was Wang Hsi-chih (303–361), and he came here with forty friends on the third day of the third lunar month in the year 353 AD. The Chinese reserved that day for ridding themselves of evil influences by bathing in a clear stream and getting drunk. Nowadays, the Chinese celebrate the day by visiting ancestral graves, and call it Grave Sweeping Day. But its ancient roots involved communication with the spiritual world, which required ritual purification, not to mention wine. With that in mind, Wang and his friends came to Orchid Pavilion, got drunk, and communed with the muse of poetry. They sat along the banks of a small winding stream and played a game that was first played 400 years earlier along the Chuchiang Waterway near the ancient capital of Ch’ang-an.

  The rules were simple: everyone sat along a stream with ink and brush. A jug of wine was placed in a miniature boat and allowed to drift down the stream. Whenever the jug reached a participant, he had to take a drink and add a line of verse or even a whole poem to the scroll of paper. During the course of this particular party, the forty-one participants at Orchid Pavilion produced thirty-seven poems. And when they were done, they asked Wang to write a preface. It was the most beautiful piece of calligraphy ever produced by the man whom the Chinese have ever since called their greatest calligrapher.

  His preface consisted of only 324 characters and probably took no more than twenty or thirty minutes to write. But even Wang recognized it as the finest piece he had ever done. It became a treasured heirloom, and was handed down from one generation to
the next for seven generations until the T’ang dynasty. The founder of the T’ang was a great collector of Wang Hsi-chih’s work, and he simply had to have the Orchid Pavilion Preface, as it was called. When his officials found out who had it, they got the owner drunk, stole the calligraphy, and brought it back to the emperor—who considered it one of his greatest treasures. Before he died, he ordered that Wang’s calligraphy accompany him to the grave. And that’s where it still is, as the emperor’s tomb has yet to be opened. Fortunately, in the centuries before it disappeared, a number of copies were made, and we saw facsimiles for sale. But as lovely as the place was, everyone was sober. We were, too, alas. We were also hungry again.

  We resolved this crisis by returning to Shaohsing and looking for a place to eat. A few inquiries later found us sitting down in a restaurant fifty meters west of our hotel’s north gate. The name of the place was the Yuanlin, and it was delightful. The owner brought a table outside so we could dine alfresco in the adjacent park. Then he brought out the food. The chestnuts in anise were memorable, so was the carp cooked in Shaohsing’s famous rice and millet wine. Before we went to bed, we resolved to find out more about Shaohsing wine in the morning.

  Shaohsing wine containers

  We didn’t have to look very far. The city’s brewers had been perfecting their wine for at least 2,500 years. When Kou Chien wanted to rouse his army, he had barrels of this wine dumped into a stream and ordered his soldiers to drink the water. Afterwards, he ordered them to march north and attack the neighboring state of Wu, whose capital was Suchou, which they did. Nor did the fame of Shaohsing wine go unnoticed by the first Westerners who traveled to China. Following his visit to the Middle Kingdom in the early fourteenth century, Friar Odoric told his fellow Italians that Shaohsing wine was every bit as good as fine Spanish sherry. Not to be outdone, we hired a guide, and at nine o’clock the next morning, we followed the good friar’s footsteps into the Shaohsing Laochiu Winery. Shaohsing wine is called lao-chiu, or old wine, because, unlike most rice wine, it’s aged.