Round and Square: Longevity Mountain (12)

[a] Upward

During the last two weeks of July and into early August I will be posting segments from my project dealing with five Chinese mountains that are often referred to as "the sacred mountains of China." They represent each of the "five directions" found in early Chinese thought (think of the ones you know and then add the middle as the fifth); they have figured prominently in Chinese political culture, travel, and religion for 3,000 years. I have spent almost 400 days on the mountains, and am working on a series of books that detail the mountains and their "home" areas. Mountains were said to connect earth (thought to be "square") with heaven (thought to be "round"). The entire project is called—this may or may not surprise you—Round and Square.

One volume is planned for each mountain, beginning with the southern peak, Mt. Heng, in Hunan province. The reasoning behind this choice of a starting place took me months to develop, but suffice it to say that these books will take the reader up and down each of the five sacred (sometimes called "Daoist") mountains and around the lunar calendar in an exploration of Chinese life and culture. As an introduction to the series, I have included an introduction that is based on a recent book proposal and a full "sample" table of contents. These are followed by nine "scenes" from Longevity Mountain that are meant to give readers a sense of the project as a whole. Photographs used in this series were taken during my travels, unless otherwise indicated. My photos are marked "RL."

SceneTwelve

Up to South Heaven Gate

The path has been flat for long enough, and it begins to carve its way back up the ridge. Climbing up, I approach a boulder almost the same size and shape as the Rock that Came Flying Down on Mt. Tai in 1603. This one has four characters moving upward in the direction, and grade, of the slope.

一(覽)無遺

One Glance Without Trace

[b] One glance RL

The perspectival idea is a rich one, and I am now near my favorite little resting spot on the mountain. It is just off the path on one of the steepest sections of the climb, and just ten or fifteen steps into the woods, offering a boulder, thick conifers, and a splendid view of the pagoda that follows the traveler throughout the journey up the mountain—now southwest, because the climb has taken me so far to the north that the markers I used on the first half of the mountain are well back in the distance.

I remind myself that Longevity Mountain is high and far. I don’t have much need for rest right now, but I find the site and set down my backpack. “No one” knows it is here, and I am always surprised that the occasional group of pilgrims climbs past me—just a few meters away—without noticing the foreigner on the stone in the woods. It is probably better that way, so I stay quiet, and think. Drumming through my mind is the relationship between state park beauty (the trees, the rocks—every county in the United States has such a place) and cultural inscriptions. We draw a line between them in American culture, and I am not sure that we have a place—linguistically or imaginatively—for writing on rock.

[c] Window RL

It is difficult to imagine a text by John Muir carved into the Sierra Nevada. Or a Robert Frost poem on an Appalachian mountain. When I am hiking China’s sacred mountains, fellow travelers sometimes ask me what brings me to Chinese mountains. “Don’t you have mountains in America?, they ask. The easy answer is that I teach Chinese history, and want to learn more about many thousands of years of culture. They usually assume the rest. I sometimes explain that the areas surrounding the marchmounts are windows to Chinese culture, and I learn as much from the changing life in large cities and provincial capitals such as Ji’nan, Changsha, Luoyang, Xi’an, and Datong as I do in the “little towns” at the base of each mountain.

Still, something vaguely troubles me about the relationship I have to space as an American hiking American mountains, such as Maine’s Mt. Khatadin, and the one I assume when I am in China. It seems to me that the American one is “just scenery” (stunning though it may be), and the Chinese one is history. I have to think about this more. It bothers me.

I climb off my rock (it occurs to me that I might be a sweaty version of “the thinker”), adjust my backpack, and return to the trail. I walk up a few steps and meet one of my favorite vendors—now an old friend—who, it seems, has the duck eggs, beancurd sticks, and cold, bottled water just waiting for me. I am not hungry so much as contemplative, and I could use some company. The late anthropologist Clifford Geertz began one of his finest essays (and of there are many of them) with the lines:

Human though is consummately social: social its origins, social in its functions,

social in its forms, and social in its applications. At base, thinking is a public

activity—its natural habitat is the houseyard, the marketplace, the town square.

The implications of this fact for the anthropological analysis of culture, my

concern here, are enormous, subtle, and insufficiently appreciated.[1]

[d] Text RL

I order a bottle of water, an egg, and a beancurd square. I wish to make this a marketplace of ideas, so I sit down again—this time on a stone bench near the trail—and, since the path is quiet, ask my friend what she thinks of rock inscriptions.

—What do you mean?

The writing—the writing on rocks. In China, poets have been writing and carving ideas into rock for thousands of years. The only writing we have on rocks in the United States is graffiti written by adolescents and miscreants. Things like David ❤ Linda.

—We have that, too.

—I know, I know, but I don’t think that there is as much graffiti in China.

I tell her the story behind the 1990s country hit John Deere Green, knowing that there are so many embedded cultural assumptions even in the bare story that I will never get my full point across. How do I even begin to describe writing a statement of love on a water tower?

They were farm kids way down in Dixie

They met in high school in the sixties

Everyone knew it was love from the start

One July in the midnight hour

He climbed up on the water tower

Stood on the rail and painted a ten foot heart

In John Deere green.

I conclude with a transliterated flourish—站地呀…录色 ("John Deere Green-color").

—Well, we don’t have that kind of thing. Besides, it would be illegal and very dangerous. The family would have to paint over it and punish the young man.

[e] Carving RL

—But it isn’t graffiti that interests me. When I come to China, I go to mountains to admire their beauty and to retrace the footsteps of writers whose poems I have only studied in books. I mean, Li Bo has a poem in the Forest of Poetry, right there in the rock. I could climb every mountain in the Appalachians (they are old mountains in the eastern United States), but I will never, ever see the essays of Emerson or Thoreau, or the poems of Robert Lowell or Robert Frost.

—Who?

—American writers. If they had lived in China, they might have been Wang Wei, Ouyang Xiu, Wang Fuzhi, and Guo Moruo. Americans don’t write on rocks—at least they don’t write literature on rocks. We read their poems in books, and sometimes hear them spoken. We used to memorize them, although that more or less ended with my grandmother’s generation.

—We recite them. Starting in primary school, we have to memorize many poems and recite them. I remember them even today, after forty years, and I am just a humble country woman!

—That’s what I mean. In China, the poetry is everywhere. It’s a part of school, I know, but even little children ask me to recite poems almost every time I talk to them. And then I see verses carved into rock. I mean, what do you think when you turn a corner—just like you do everyday on your way up to this place—and see a bunch of red characters on a boulder?

—It’s part of the mountain. That’s all.

She is right, and that is it—exactly. I say my goodbyes and start up a bend in the path. South Heaven Gate is just sixty steep steps up the hill. After that, I will have another hour to climb before I reach the temple on the peak.

[f] Steps RL

[1] Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 360.

Bibliography

Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Longevity Mountain 1      Longevity Mountain 2        Longevity Mountain 3    Longevity Mountain 4
Longevity Mountain 5          Longevity Mountain 6          Longevity Mountain 7          Longevity Mountain 8
Longevity Mountain 9          Longevity Mountain 10        Longevity Mountain 11        Longevity Mountain 12

NEXT

We'll take a break and return to other themes on Round and Square before returning to the mountains later this fall.

Round and Square

From Round to Square (and back)

Monday, August 8, 2011

Longevity Mountain (12)—Up to South Heaven Gate

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