Zhangjiajie Startled by Autumn
Zhangjiajie Startled by Autumn Li Yuanluo The car races a thousand li; autumn in Zhangjiajie waits for us ahead of the wheels. The novelist Sun Jianzhong and I set out by car from Changsha, accompanying the Taiwan poet Luo Fu and the Hong Kong poet Li Qing on a long journey to Zhangjiajie, which they had long yearned to see. The autumn wind of classical Tang and Song poetry comes at a call; the modern autumn rain that lasts ten days and fills the month cannot be waved away, accompanying us all along the muddy highways and winding mountain roads. At long last we arrived at…
Zhangjiajie in Autumn
Li Yuanluo
The car sped a thousand li, and autumn in Zhangjiajie waited for us ahead of its wheels.
The novelist Sun Jianzhong and I set out by car from Changsha, accompanying the Taiwan poet Luo Fu and the Hong Kong poet Li Qing on a long journey to Zhangjiajie, which they had long yearned for. The autumn wind of classical Tang and Song poetry came as soon as it was summoned; the modern autumn rain that lasted for weeks on end could not be waved away, accompanying us all the way along muddy highways and winding mountain roads. It was nearly dusk by the time we finally reached the foot of Zhangjiajie. The endless autumn rain seemed to feel that it had been too enthusiastic in touring Zhangjiajie with us, and finally waved its long sleeves in farewell. People say that touring Zhangjiajie in the rain has a special flavor, but that must be in a gentle breeze and fine rain. If it were the kind of ceaseless drizzling rain that Mr. Fan Zhongyan described as not clearing for months, that could only make one beg to be excused. To tell the truth, we were really afraid that the autumn rain, which had been so reluctant to leave us all along the way, might suddenly change its mind and chase us into the mountains.
The schedule was too tight; we would have to leave the mountains the next afternoon. As soon as we put down our luggage, Jianzhong and I took them to tour Golden Whip Stream. Both banks of Golden Whip Stream are full of perilous cliffs and stone peaks, jostling one another and squeezing the flagstone path in the valley until it was thin and long. Hemmed in by thousands of peaks and ravines, overawed by the dark green of the virgin secondary forest, we followed the flagstone path forward, as if we had come to a primeval world, and also as if we were walking through an ancient myth. On the right side of the stream is Golden Whip Rock, a pillar piercing the clouds; below the cliff the grass is deep and the forest dense, on the rock top pine branches twist and coil, and the ochre-red cliff body, as if split by a knife and chopped by an axe, bears not a blade of grass, proudly facing thousands of years of wind, frost, rain, and snow. Even more heart-stirring is the “Divine Eagle Guarding the Whip” on the left bank, a perilous peak standing in anger, shaped like an eagle. We stood beneath it to take photos, truly afraid that it might swoop down and crush us or drive us away.
It was already dusk. The valley had darkened, mist rose from the mountainside, and clusters and clumps of peaks appeared and disappeared in the evening clouds; who knew what mysterious and frightening news they were whispering. We hurriedly turned back, and迎面 came a young girl. We asked her why she was still going forward alone, not afraid of meeting wild animals or bad people? She smiled sweetly and said she was going to look for her companions from whom she had become separated. With that she drifted forward and disappeared into the deep bamboo. I suddenly thought of Luo Fu's poem “The Female Ghost” and could not help being startled: “If there is someone in the mountain's bend, clad in fig leaves and girdled with dodder,” “She couldn't be the mountain ghost Qu Yuan wrote about, could she?” Luo Fu laughed and replied: “Maybe she walked out of one of the stories in Liaozhai, otherwise how could the young woman be so bold!?” By this time, Golden Whip Stream, which had been flying flowers and rolling snow, was already in the dark night, clanging and tinkling, who knew what it was singing. I quietly said to Li Qing and Jianzhong: “Doesn't Luo Fu have a poetry collection called Magic Songs? I hear the mountain spirits come out for night strolls after dark. What Golden Whip Stream is singing is probably a magic song too!” Jianzhong, a native of Xiangxi, smiled mysteriously. Whether Li Qing, known in the martial world as the “Laughing Buddha,” smiled or not, only the night knew.
The night passed without incident. The next morning, the morning glow announced the weather forecast at the horizon: today was a clear day after long rain. Zhangjiajie is famous for its rocks, shows its beauty in its forests, and overawes the heart with its primitive ferocity. Its area is 133 square kilometers, and its forest coverage rate is 97.7 percent. It is the only national-level forest park in mainland China. Stealing a half day of leisure from our busy lives, we could only make a future appointment for Zhangjiajie's other strange rocks and waters, and decided to go up Huangshizhai from the main path. We climbed along the stone steps, passing through pine forests. “Three bitter pine seeds / rolled along the signposts all the way to our feet; we reached out and picked them up / and it was actually a handful of bird song.” I recited Luo Fu's “Entering the Mountains with the Sound of Rain but Not Seeing Rain” to the young female guide. Unexpectedly, the guide was also a poetry lover. She actually went up and talked with Luo Fu about her impressions after listening. Luo Fu, of course, could not help beaming. When we reached Hua'e Peak, its middle belly bulged while both top and bottom were thin, and its color was deep yellow, exactly like an antique wine bottle. Among our companions happened to be Wang Xibing and Jia Shaoxing from the Jishou City Winery in Xiangxi. Calling themselves “wine bosses,” they explained that the famous painter Huang Yongyu had gotten inspiration from this peak in his hometown and designed the uniquely styled and highly praised wine bottles for “Xiangquan” and “Jiugui.” Therefore, Hua'e Peak should be renamed Xiangquan Peak. The renaming was probably just their wishful wine talk. Luo Fu had been warmly entertained at the winery, and he, deeply versed in poetry and calligraphy, once wrote a doggerel poem: “The drunkard drinks Xiangquan, one drunk three thousand years. After waking he raises his cup again, the drunkard becomes a wine immortal.” Now he invited Wang and Jia to take a photo together. As soon as they stood still, he blurted out: “With a wine jar on each side of me, I'm drunk before I even drink.” The witty remark made everyone laugh, and for a moment we even forgot the soul-stirring peaks glaring at us like tigers from all around. After climbing several scenic spots, everyone was panting, just as Li Qing said: “Going up the mountain, wife-controlled (tracheitis); going down the mountain, arthritis.” I asked Luo Fu: “Tired?” This poet in his sixties actually answered without forgetting to rhyme: “Tired or not, I think of my lover who hasn't slept.” He had been back on the mainland only a few days, and he had already “creatively applied” many popular mainland terms, such as changing “wife” to “lover.” He said: “It's not easy to climb straight to the top, but if you think of it as your lover waiting for you at home, you get energized.”
We talked and laughed all the way, and all was peaceful. The joyful voices were left for the strange rocks to collect, and the laughter for the mountain spirits to record. Climbing to the South Heavenly Gate, on the left a peak stood a thousand fathoms straight, and on the right a peak, like a drunkard, swayed and staggered crookedly toward the left peak, less than a foot away, just about to lean on its shoulder, when somehow it suddenly stopped, frozen in midair, as if a master had touched its acupoint. Thus a strip of blue sky was cut between the two peaks. Tourists coming here could only pass with heads lowered and bodies bent along the small path beneath the peaks, trembling with fear, afraid that they might suddenly close and squeeze them. Because in the human world the Drunken Fist can still be pleasing to the eye, but the mountain god's Drunken Fist can only be avoided for good fortune. Luo Fu was tall and sturdy, worthy of being a fierce general of the literary Hunan army, but at this moment he too had to stoop to pass. I was afraid that the sharp teeth of the two peaks might bite him, so I urgently warned: “Watch your head!” He turned and smiled: “It's all right. As soon as I bumped into it, the stone moved aside.” When we reached a mountain ridge below Huangshizhai, the path turned and the peaks opened, and we could “ascend to the absolute top,” standing on the viewing platform and looking down at thousands of mountains and ravines like an unrolled scroll of a painting. At this moment, Luo Fu was walking at the very front, and we followed behind. In the blink of an eye, a log as thick as a sea bowl and several zhang long, like a white python emerging from its hole, flew down from the ridge straight at Luo Fu's face. Caught off guard, we instinctively cried out in alarm, fearing that Luo Fu, our guest, might meet with some mishap, because one blow would mean either death or injury. How could we bear it in our hearts? And how could we explain it to the world? In a flash, this time it was no longer the stone moving aside. Luo Fu, who was walking with his head lowered, relied on his sixth sense and suddenly dodged backward. The log, like a giant whip, whistled past half a foot in front of him, flying and dancing wildly through the mountain forest, drawing from the tourists on the mountain path wave after wave of terrified cries. Only when we saw that Luo Fu was safe and sound did we begin to calm our frightened souls. It turned out that a mountain villager logging out of the mountain had lost his grip for a moment and nearly caused a great disaster. But Luo Fu was still there talking and laughing as if nothing had happened: “We're climbing a mountain, not attacking a stockade. I never expected both battering logs and rolling stones. If I had been knocked down the mountain today, I really would have become one of the ‘gurgling’ gentlemen!” A narrow escape without danger, we had nothing else to say but to congratulate ourselves and repeatedly praise Luo Fu as a lucky general.
Zhangjiajie's peaks are majestic, strange, and steep, already breathtaking enough, and autumn in Zhangjiajie seems even more wild and untamable. Luo Fu, already 60, was also in the golden autumn of his life. After 40 years away from his homeland, encountering autumn in Zhangjiajie only increased his experience of mountains and rivers and of life. From the tree of his life, who knows what new poems, moving or even startling, would be shaken down?
September 22, 1988, in Changsha