Three Sketches of Suoxiyu
Three Sketches of Suoxiyu Guo Feng Yellow Dragon Cave Suoxiyu lies amid remote mountains and wild country, where monkeys roam in troops, a beautiful scenic area in northwestern Hunan that has only recently begun to become known to outsiders. I arrived there on the evening of July 11. The next morning I visited Yellow Dragon Cave. This Yellow Dragon Cave reminded me of the undersea palace in Andersen's fairy tale "The Little Mermaid"; it made me think of it as a fairy-tale world created by Nature with fantastical brushstrokes. This limestone karst cave is located on the north bank of the Suoxi…
Three Sketches of Suoxiyu
Guo Feng
Yellow Dragon Cave
Suoxiyu lies amid remote mountains and wild country, where monkeys roam in troops, a beautiful scenic area in northwestern Hunan that has only recently begun to become known to outsiders. I arrived there on the evening of July 11. The next morning I visited Yellow Dragon Cave.
This Yellow Dragon Cave reminded me of the undersea palace in Andersen's fairy tale "The Little Mermaid"; it made me think of it as a fairy-tale world created by Nature with fantastical brushstrokes.
This limestone karst cave is located on the north bank of the Suoxi. From our lodging to the site of the cave is about 20 li. Ten li of the way can be traveled by vehicle. After getting off, one walks along the stream banks, crosses stone bridges, steps across stone footings in the stream, or walks along mountain paths, field ridges, or village-side lanes. Then one reaches the foot of a hill, climbs the steps up to the hillside, and a cave mouth appears before one's eyes—this is Yellow Dragon Cave. The exterior of the cave mouth is plain and unremarkable, with only a few huge rocks lying across it. Once inside, one sees stalactites on the cave walls shaped like the roots of a great banyan tree, quite a sight. Beyond this, the path into the cave suddenly becomes narrow; after a few steps one encounters a natural little stone gate, and a cool wind blows whistling out from within the gate, making one suddenly feel cold all over. Entering this gate, the path is even narrower, like a deep, unfamiliar, damp corridor laid out on the road ahead; to what mysterious realm would it lead me? I could not help feeling somewhat uneasy. Passing this corridor in the cave, and then a great hall in the cave, suddenly a steep ridge and cliff appear within the cave, with stone steps and handrails to climb. Step by step, carefully holding the handrail, I climbed the stone steps; at mid-ridge I crossed a natural bridge, then climbed on. By this time, though within the cold cave, I already felt drenched in sweat, as if working in the fields under a blazing sun. Panting, I continued groping forward, when suddenly a world appeared that dazzled my eyes! Dimly I thought to myself, is this a demon realm? Is this a labyrinth? When I calmed myself and observed steadily, I felt this was a great palace within a cave, rarely seen in the world. The ceiling of the hall is a dome like the sky. Within the hall there are no living chambers, no inner rooms, but there are hills and valleys, level fields, and huge rocks. Countless stalagmites rise from the ground, scattered throughout. Some stalagmites are like spring bamboo shoots breaking through the soil, growing in clusters beside rocks after rain; some stalagmites are like clumps of mushrooms; some stalagmites, reaching twenty meters high, stand like ancient pines within the hall; some stalagmites stand in rows upon rows in the open plaza before the hall, reminding me of palms, of those rows of palms swaying in the wind on the beach before sunset. These countless stalagmites, their colors white or yellow or green or brown or deep purple, dazzled my eyes even more, and I marveled endlessly in my heart. Within the Dragon King Palace in this cave, there are also two divine objects that the guide calls the Golden Basin and the Silver Pool, which I also saw. The Golden Basin is a huge golden flower basin formed by stalactites; in my eyes I felt there were golden lotuses within the basin. The Silver Pool is a huge silver flower pool formed by stalactites; in my eyes I felt there seemed to be countless unfading white lotuses within it. Somehow, lingering so long in this cave, while marveling at the vastness and fantastical nature of Nature's engineering in creating this palace, I could not stop thinking of the undersea palace scene depicted by Andersen.
Following the original path out of the cave, I then learned that there is an underground river in the cave, its spring water murmuring ceaselessly in my ears. I have seen a video of Yellow Dragon Cave and know that within this cave there is also the wonder of Stone Zither Mountain. There, stalactites and stalagmites form a set of natural great bianzhong bells; lightly struck with a wooden stick, they can produce the ancient musical notes of gong, shang, jue, zhi, and yu of our country's ancient music. But because the paths within the cave at that place have not been repaired, I did not go there. This Yellow Dragon Cave is said to have a total area of over 300 mu and a length of over 20 li. What we reached was less than a quarter. I should record one thing at the end of this piece: this cave was only discovered three years ago; local young comrades such as Mao Jinchu risked danger to explore the cave; they lost their way inside, explored for a day and a night before finding the original path and returning out of the cave, but they had by and large explored the basic conditions within the cave. From this I think: all explorers, all who bravely seek, all pioneers, rightly deserve people's praise and remembrance.
Ten-Mile Gallery and Another World
The Ten-Mile Gallery is at Ganxi in Suoxiyu. Ganxi is a dry, white stream bed full of pebbles and huge, irregular round stones. It is said that its original local name was Ganxi (Dry Stream). Somehow, I seem to have groundlessly and stubbornly insisted that beneath this stream bed there must be clear springs; I seem unwilling to see it as a waterless dry stream. I deeply regret that I am not a botanist. On both banks of Ganxi, miscellaneous trees grow in profusion. Walking along the simple forest road on the left bank of Ganxi is no different from walking through a green corridor that is cool on summer days. It is said that Suoxiyu has over 500 species of trees in 83 families, among them no lack of rare plants, such as Badong manglietia, Yaoshan Reevesia, Huazhong magnolia, Chinese dove tree, and purple azalea orchid. But even if these plants were right before my eyes, I could not recognize them. I only felt that this green corridor indeed has an extremely rich variety of plants, whose flowers, leaves, stems, and vines are mostly of unusual forms, mostly rare, mostly things I had never seen before. This green corridor is rather a natural botanical garden. And so I deeply felt that a writer should have broad knowledge, including broad knowledge of biology; if so, then upon entering the natural world, one would develop even more beautiful feelings toward nature. Every natural botanical garden is inevitably also a world of insects and birds. Strolling in this green corridor, from time to time butterflies of various colors, grasshoppers, moths, and dragonflies fly about before one's eyes; the ears are filled with ceaseless insect sounds, and from time to time bird calls come from the grass and thickets.
Ten-Mile Gallery—is it ten li? Or only seven or eight li? Or is the actual journey twelve or thirteen li? No matter what, one only feels that on both banks of Ganxi, besides wild flowers and green trees, countless stone peaks appear endlessly, without cease, forming a continuous stretch of peak forest. In this peak forest, each stone peak stands there in its own posture, and from different angles each has a different posture. I arrived here at about 7:30 in the morning, and saw sunlight shining upon the stone peaks; on the red rock walls it shone brilliantly, while in the shaded places blue mist rose slowly from the crevices, or lingered densely there, the scene changing unpredictably, with a sense of mystery, an indescribable sense of beauty. Because this Ten-Mile Gallery has only recently gradually become known to the outside world, and was formerly desolate and uninhabited, each stone peak still has no name to this day. On the way back, a friend pointed to a stone peak and said to me: Could you give it a peak name? I observed it carefully: this peak's exterior is plain and unremarkable, standing there like a huge, broken city wall. But around it are many stone peaks, like eagles, deer, peacocks, and mountain pheasants, each facing this stone peak. I suddenly, for no reason, thought of the ancient saying "Great wisdom appears foolish," a rather philosophical idiom, and proposed whether to call it Ruoyu Peak (Seeming-Foolish Peak). My friend smiled and did not answer, probably thinking that I had not yet recognized the beauty of this rock peak, and that my ability was still unable to give it a suitable name.
The day after touring the Ten-Mile Gallery, I went on to tour Another World. This place is 20 li from our lodging; the vehicle drove along the pebble stream bed inside the Suoxi flood-control embankment, jolting all the way. But the vehicle could go directly to the front of the rock. On first arriving, I only felt a coolness all over, and saw several huge rock walls standing before me. After walking a few steps inward, I saw a huge rock split into a crevice; looking up at the sky from the crevice, the sky became a single line; spring water trickled in the rock crevice, the rock walls were green with moss, extremely deep and secluded. To the left of the rock, stone steps lead directly to the top of the rock wall. These stone steps number over 330, extremely steep and dangerous; I temporarily used a tree trunk as a walking stick, walking and resting, and finally climbed to the top of the rock. Upon arriving, I learned that a 72-meter-high dam had been built here; walking to the top of the dam, I saw a lake appear among the peaks, its water in places reflected by the surrounding miscellaneous trees into emerald green, in places reflected by the sky light into azure blue, extremely beautiful.
The next day, the Suoxiyu Scenic Area Administration invited several friends and me to write inscriptions in commemoration. Reviewing my preliminary impressions from the two days of touring, I composed these lines:
Truly it is a gallery of poetry—the line seems to lack new meaning, and lacks literary grace, and I do not know whether it is appropriate. But still I asked for half a sheet of xuan paper and wrote it down. I feel that writing an inscription is sometimes harder to begin than writing an essay.
The Dawn Moon
During the days in Suoxiyu, I had a thought: since I had come to this scenic area, I should observe as much as possible of its natural scenery and natural phenomena. July 13 was the fifteenth day of the sixth lunar month. I rose at midnight to look at the moon, and saw the mountains black and the moon small; the mountain forests below the moon seemed all immersed in mist. The dew was very heavy; in the end, because the place was too clear and too quiet, I had no choice but to sit a while and then return to my room. The next day, I rose at dawn, when the morning light had already appeared, and saw that in the sky there were still two or three sparse stars, and the dawn moon, pale yellow, hung slanting in the northwest.
I observed and recorded the changes in the colors of the nearby mountains and forests. I felt these were extremely subtle, indescribable changes of diversity and multiple layers. At first, I felt there was still a faint moonlight among the mountain forests, like a light layer of mist, which vanished in an instant; that is to say, at this time the influence of night and moonlight had completely disappeared, and so the mountains gradually revealed a dark blue, the trees a dark green. Then the distant mountains could also be seen clearly; they appeared gray-blue, while the near mountains and near forests appeared dark green, and were seen even more completely clearly. And during this period, in the mountain gap between two near mountains to the south (there should be a valley there), I saw from time to time gusts of white mist floating out, and their changes and changes of form were also unfathomable. In just an instant, that belt-like white mist suddenly turned into broken, drifting clouds one after another, reminding me of egrets flying in formation over the mountains……
The stone peaks of Suoxiyu belong to the Danxia landform; some mountain forms are quite close to the stone peaks of Mount Wuyi; for example, to the northwest of our lodging, there is a stone peak whose appearance is quite close to Jade Maiden Peak of Mount Wuyi. But even more beautiful than that is the top of this stone peak, where many pine trees grow. Ah, I want to say, I do not know at which instant the sparse stars in the sky disappeared; the moon turned white, and how it moved behind the pine trees of this stone peak in the northwest corner;—I watched as she descended behind the stone peak and the pine forest; I watched, and I felt she descended from there so quietly, and seemingly so calmly……
I remembered that in the winter of 1979, during my convalescence on Gulangyu, I recorded in my diary the situation of moonset and my thoughts. I wrote thus:
Morning, rose at five, after washing went to Gangzaihou. I watched the moon sinking in the west. It seems this was the first time; I knew the moon has a plain, easygoing, gentle quality.…… At this moment, I saw the moon sinking westward over the sea with a very calm mood. At this time, the sky was clear, the sea was clear, and all around was spread with clear light, very soft…… I have a thought: the plain beauty of human nature, the virtue of human modesty, are not easily expressed truly in literary works. The plain beauty in natural scenery, that warmth within gentleness, also seems hard to convey.
"Selected Prose of Guo Feng · Gangzaihou Diary"
I feel that the scene of moonset I saw on the southern seashore in 1979 and the scene of moonset I now see among the mountains of Suoxiyu in northwestern Hunan, as far as my feelings are concerned, are completely the same in sentiment.