Whispers of Mandarin Duck Waterfall
Whispers of Mandarin Duck Waterfall by Luo Changjiang. You said you like autumn, so we joined hands to seek the autumn Mandarin Duck Waterfall. The sunlight was warm, so warm. Though no rain falls, flowers still drift down; though no wind blows, catkins fly on their own. Walking on and on, we realized that the deeper we went, the more we entered a world far from the mortal dust, where no human voices, bird songs, water sounds, or wind sounds could be heard. The sunlight was silent. The clouds were silent. Even sighs fell to the ground like tender leaves, silent. You took what you had gathered...
Whispers of the Mandarin Duck Falls
Luo Changjiang
You said you liked autumn, so we went hand in hand to seek the Mandarin Duck Falls in their autumn guise.
The sunlight was warm, so warm. Though no rain falls, flowers still drop; though no wind blows, catkins still drift. On and on we walked, and we found that the deeper we went, the deeper we entered a world far from the dust of the world, a world where no human voice, no bird's call, no sound of water, no whisper of wind could be heard. The sunlight was silent. The clouds were silent. Even our sighs fell to the ground like tender leaves, silent. You took a butterfly you had caught, its colors and markings exquisitely beautiful, and gently pressed it into a book about Zen. In the book it was written: To listen to the sounds of the valley is the first step of Zen. ... Then, does a feeling as silent as ours mean that we have not even entered the gate of Zen, or that, in the manner of the Buddha holding up a flower and smiling, we have grasped it in our hearts and entered the realm?
At last, we heard flowing water. The spring's voice choked among the perilous rocks, the sunlight cold on the green pines. We also heard the crisp twittering of birds—perhaps the very one Wang Mojie fed, the one that always carried a quatrain in its beak? The further we went, the steeper the terrain. Because you walked with me, the silent climb gained a touch of poetic charm. We truly should thank this solitude along the way, where no ancients were seen ahead and no newcomers behind. The world is so very large, yet heaven and earth sometimes seem so very small. Having stayed too long in the clamor, one always longs for tranquility, from the outside to the inside: to sort through the days gone by, to design the years to come—all require tranquility. Here and now, how I wish no one would discover us, disturb us. According to the Zen saying "one encounter, one lifetime," one encounter is a person's whole life, and one meeting is a meeting that happens only once. Like the ears and leaves of autumn grass swaying in the wind, gathering and scattering, scattering and gathering again, yet because wind, ears, leaves, and time are all moving at once, no two gatherings are ever the same. Thinking such awe-inspiring thoughts, how could one not feel all the more that we should cherish every one of our "encounters"? Especially in such a beautiful valley, on such a beautiful autumn day...
We arrived. A huge cliff stood towering against the blue sky, and the waterfall plunged from a great height—its grandeur can well be imagined. Unfortunately, the waterfall before our eyes was no longer a "waterfall." No wonder—this year had seen more than three months of continuous drought with no rain, and surface and groundwater are, after all, limited. After lingering a while and examining it closely, I said: There's no need to be disappointed. Standing up—you and I are two sun-and-moon mountains leaning close; lying down—you and I are the Mandarin Duck Falls that never run dry! You praised this again and again, saying: Let's go back. To have found two good lines of poetry on this trip is worth it. I could hear in your voice a faint trembling, like the moisture that vibrates a flute's membrane. In the journey toward nature, people are sometimes seeking a kind of寄托, release, comfort, protection, tacit understanding, confirmation, liberation, recognition... Conversely, when faced with certain deficiencies in nature, sometimes we can only make up for them and seek balance through adjusting our own state of mind.
We turned and walked a dozen or so steps when we met someone who said the Mandarin Duck Falls were not here, but a hundred meters further on. I couldn't help but wonder: the whole way had been utterly deserted, and now suddenly someone appeared to point the way—could it be that the mountain god, to fulfill our sincerity, had deliberately arranged this in the unseen? So, facing the mountain forest, I sang out a loud greeting, and could not help but be overjoyed: Yes, this should not be the Mandarin Duck Falls; the Mandarin Duck Falls could not look like this. Then I remembered having seen the Mandarin Duck Falls in a photograph: amid deep, lush green, two white waterfalls hung from the great cliff, merged into one, then flew down into the gorge. Just from the picture one could feel a strong stirring and resonance, evoking a deep and lasting echo in the soul. And I began to imagine the symbolic meaning contained in the "mandarin duck" of the falls: independent personalities and intermingled love, like qin and se in concert—you are you and I am I, I am within you and you are within me—a male-female duet...
It was confirmed, indeed confirmed!
Yes, this was the true Mandarin Duck Falls, this was the Mandarin Duck Falls we had imagined and longed for. How silly we were—why hadn't we realized that the Mandarin Duck Falls are a waterfall of passionate emotion, a waterfall of endless love and life, and that love and life can never run dry! It is only that mature emotion, because of the maturing season, is not as excited and exaggerated as the spring flood, nor as noisy and restless as the summer torrent; at this moment, there is only a quiet warmth, a serene beauty, a—sunlight falling on leaves like fine rain, cool and gentle—a—moonlight flowing over the lawn like a holy spring, calm and still. Heard from afar, it is even like that famous melody of extremely soft and flowing beauty, "Whispers of Autumn," echoing through this deep valley among the mountains. I thought, this is what you like—autumn with true aesthetic beauty, isn't it?
Immersed in the mood of the music, you and I gazed spellbound at the flying beauty of the "mandarin" and the "duck." That original driving force of unceasing self-improvement, that intimate tenderness of cheek pressed to cheek—how it made one envy them to death. Whether the stars shift and the Dipper turns, whether heaven and earth grow old, they lean close and flow past one mountain range after another, one century after another, into one valley of legend after another. Seen from afar, it is a declaration of love and a confession of feeling; heard closely, it is a pouring out of love and a whispering of tenderness... Yes, the pillar of heaven may break, the earth may split, mountains may be leveled, summer may bring snow, but love alone must never cease. I truly cannot imagine what kind of world a world without love would be!
Admittedly, the name of the falls is a bit commonplace, a typical product of traditional Chinese culture. It naturally makes one think of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai in costume drama, Dong Yong and the Seventh Fairy, Bao Gege and Lin Meimei, and so on, while few would think of Adam and Eve, Romeo and Juliet of the Western Hemisphere. Yet this is not very important—a name is only a symbol; most important is that the essence of love is the same, and the many associations and寄托 connected with waterfalls are also相通. "The waterfall sings: I have my song when I find my freedom. ... Though the thirsty need only a little water, I gladly give all my water." The one who wrote these prose poems was a foreign philosopher, but does his song of the waterfall not equally suit the Mandarin Duck Falls, and equally evoke in you and me before it a deep understanding and impulse? For freedom, the mountain stream chose the life of a waterfall; only by becoming a waterfall did it sing its song of freedom. For a long time, I have longed for a pure land of mountain wilderness in my heart, and on that pure land a waterfall that never ceases, undefiled, unpolluted, unbound by worldly custom, freely and joyfully offering "all my water" for love and being loved... You told me that in the place where you once lived, there was a path in front of the house leading to a mound by the river, and an old couple with white hair, rain or shine, would slowly walk toward each day's dawn and sunset. I have always been moved by the scene you lightly sketched, always feeling that such harmony, quiet warmth, and serenity is truly a very beautiful mood, a very beautiful realm. My dear, in the process of walking toward and approaching the Mandarin Duck Falls, have we realized that we are also walking toward and approaching a very beautiful mood and realm?
You had me lie on my back in your arms; you said you liked sitting like that listening to me talk. So we let the Mandarin Duck Falls whisper in our ears, let the tranquil sky gently press close to your lips and mine, let the lingering feeling tangle into wild vines covering the rock walls and tree trunks. Suddenly, I remembered a very beautiful scene in a novel. The protagonist is a girl; she goes on an outing with her lover, comes to a mountain, and finds a ready-made cave, said to have just been vacated by a leopard. She steps in the leopard's spotted tracks, carries their clothes, and goes to wash them by the mountain stream below the waterfall. A little dog with a copper bell follows at her heels, shaking open a path of rose-red, grape-purple, cream-yellow lobster flowers. No one has ever seen such beautiful clouds; the waterfall is like her singing hair, and the clouds are their birthplace...
How beautiful! You said, how beautiful.
And later? You asked, and later?
Later—later we kissed recklessly, and vowed that when the leopard returned, we would let it carry us off just like that. At last, moistening her red lips that gave off the scent of clover, you said that whether this story was written by someone else or made up or adapted by me, it was all very beautiful, beautiful enough to hurt, and it also contained a hint of Zen in approaching the waterfall. I was so happy, truly willing, like a little boat plowing forward through the waves, to part the grass and bush leaves with a splash, and taking your hand, to run like a musk deer, letting the whole forest and valley give off a pleasant fragrance...
The empty mountain was wordless. Wild persimmon leaves, chestnut leaves, Paederia leaves, tulip tree leaves, red-winged maple leaves—all in a deep red intimacy; dark-green willow warblers, red-tailed water robins, fulvettas, red-billed leiothrix—all in a mint-scented gentleness; white clouds embracing secluded rocks, crouching under the clear sky with the insight that a calm heart naturally feels cool; the great cliff hung with flying waterfalls, like a black-and-white woodcut, a frame of eternal scenery nailed into the mountain colors... all together creating the mood of an autumn mountain. Light mist thin as flowing water filtered the valley into empty clarity. The earth's breath rose in wisps, carrying the season's deep fragrance; mountain colors and waterfall sounds rose in wisps, carrying the clear brightness of autumn. At this moment, we seemed truly to have entered the realm; we could not hear the sound of the Mandarin Duck Falls at all, only felt a revelation, a tacit understanding, a passion as ancient and young as the Mandarin Duck Falls, filling our whole bodies, and then gradually, in this clear, tranquil peace and serenity, metamorphosing and sublimating.
The mountains bathed in the sun's radiance, like the quiet beauty of autumn leaves.