Wuling Mountain, Opening the Window Facing the Sun
Wuling Mountain, opening the window facing the sun by Shen Renkang. In the past, some places with extremely beautiful scenery were often buried and even called "poor mountains and harsh waters." Because the place was blocked by transportation, remote and far away, with deep mountains and dense forests, and rarely seen human habitation... using slash-and-burn farming only produced some corn, and the yield was still very low, life was so impoverished... What is "beauty"? As history advances with great strides, the concept of "beauty" is also changing greatly. Really,...
The Wuling Mountains, opening a window facing the sun
Shen Renkang
In the past, some places of absolutely stunning scenery were often neglected, and even called “barren mountains and treacherous waters.” Because those places were cut off by poor transportation, remote and far away, with deep mountains and dense forests, rarely visited by people…… using slash-and-burn farming, only a little corn could be grown, and the yield was very low, life was so impoverished……
What is “beauty”? As history advances with great strides, the concept of “beauty” is also changing substantially. Truly, when productivity was low and food and warmth were still the top priority, who would pay attention to the strangeness of rocks and the transformations of clouds and mist? People only thought that mountains and waters which could grow more grain and save people from famine were good mountains and waters. “Beauty” was bound to the stage of “practical use”; later, when social contradictions became sharp and class struggle was intensified, “beauty” was linked to the interests of various political groups, and “beauty” lingered at the stage of “moral comparison,” where “virtue” was the concentration of class interests; afterward, people’s lives changed greatly, life was filled everywhere with laughter and joy, people pursued new “beauty,” and whatever could give people aesthetic pleasure and add color, joy, and excitement to life was felt by people to be “beautiful.” “Beauty” reached the stage of “freeing the spirit”……
The former “barren mountains and treacherous waters” have today suddenly been discovered by people to be beautiful, and moreover exceptionally, rarely seen beauty. Jiuzhaigou in Sichuan, the Wuling Scenic Area in Xiangxi, Hunan, the large karst caves in Guizhou…… in recent years these have been discovered and developed one after another. The painted mountains and embroidered waters, the tranquil and secluded scenery of these places, were created by nature tens of thousands of years ago, perhaps hundreds of millions of years ago, but people truly recognized their beauty only today, and realized that they are priceless treasures of smokeless industry only in recent years. Our opening policy has brought prosperity to tourism, and the world tourism wave has also brought ripples to us. After their lives improved greatly, people in China also stirred up an enthusiasm for traveling among mountains and waters, and gained that elegant interest in seeing the world and viewing mountains and waters…… How good! When we see travelers, group after group, dusty but full of interest, walking in scenic areas everywhere, I truly see a great profile of our life, and see that people are no longer confined to food and warmth, but are walking toward the palace of beauty and have become kindred spirits of beauty…… What a tremendous change! It has been only a few years! In the long history of our nation, these have been such brilliant and extraordinary years!
The Wuling Mountains have now opened their sun-facing windows not only to the country but also to the world, and have removed their cloud-like veils……
We set out from Changsha for Xiangxi. We were attracted by the splendid scenery of Wuling and shaken by the beauty there. Who would have thought that at some places reception stations had just been established, yet crowds rushed in impatiently, coming from Changsha, Changde, from Hubei, Shanghai…… These young university students, workers, and cadres had such keen senses for “beauty”!
The Wuling Scenic Area lies at the junction of Dayong County, Cili County, and Sangzhi County in Xiangxi. It has three parts: Suoxiyu in Cili, Tianzi Mountain in Sangzhi, and Zhangjiajie in Dayong. Among them, Zhangjiajie has been developed for several years and has received more than 100,000 guests. It is already known to the outside world, and groups of compatriots from Hong Kong and Macao and foreign tourists have come attracted by its fame. Suoxiyu and Tianzi Mountain have only just sounded the opening gong and just raised the curtain.
On Tianzi Mountain, more than 1,400 meters high, people can easily pick up fossils of seashells, small birds, fish, and leaves, so abundant in number and so complete in form. These fossils tell visitors that this area was once a sea. Countless years ago, mountain-building movements raised this place up, turning it into the Wuling Mountains, about as high as Mount Tai. Its sandy layered rock is not very solid. Through tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of millions of years of weathering and cutting by rainwater, at the junction of Cili, Sangzhi, and Dayong counties, it was cut into a grand canyon a thousand meters deep and more than a hundred kilometers long. The two walls of the canyon are sheer cliffs and steep slopes rising and falling abruptly. Within the canyon are stone peaks, stone bamboo shoots, stone pillars, stone arrows, stone halberds in thousands of forms—stout and slender, large and small, high and low…… No, they also resemble all kinds of figures, birds, beasts, and scenes; in Zhangjiajie alone, people have made statistics: there are about 3,500 stone peaks and stone bamboo shoots. Add Suoxiyu in Cili County and Tianzi Mountain in Sangzhi County, and are the makers of this peculiar stone forest not numbered in the tens of thousands! They rise from the ground and tower into the sky, exquisite and graceful, strange and rare. They do not look like sandstone peak forest, but rather like enlarged porcelain bonsai; they do not look like unintentional creations of nature, but rather like products of people’s meticulous carving.
Here the stones are strange, and the trees are strange too. In the West Sea of Huangshan, people marvel at the “Dream Brush Producing Flowers” faintly appearing in the sea of clouds, where several graceful trees grow on a slender high stone peak. Here, scenes of “Dream Brush Producing Flowers” are everywhere, and people will cheer for countless such scenes. The green pines and wild trees on the stone peaks and rock pillars, because there is no soil, often must extend a root tens of meters, even a hundred meters, before finding a trace of a crack in the stone. The conditions are difficult, just like the lives of the people of Xiangxi in the past, but one must never underestimate those small trees. They have struggled in this world for a thousand years. We call them “thousand-year small trees.” On all the stone peaks and sheer cliffs here grow these seasoned yet vigorous “thousand-year small trees,” giving the deep valleys, the strange peaks, and the hanging cliffs patches and patches of lush green color.
The slopes here are very steep! Sixty degrees, seventy degrees, eighty degrees. Mountain paths climb along the slopes. I want to sing of such mountain roads:
Thatched grass, mountain rocks, woods……
Fill the narrow space,
The mountain road bravely climbs,
Like forked, bending thunderbolts,
Leading to the mountain top.
Because tourist areas have been opened up, many such mountain roads have been paved with smooth stone steps. The stone steps are also very steep, stretching into the clouds. Laboriously but happily I tread these stone steps, and cannot help thinking:
Step by step of stone steps,
Crossing over the mountain,
Counted in thousands of li,
A climber who wants to skip a step,
Cannot do so either.
In the Wuling Mountains, nature constantly instills aesthetics into us.
We went up to Tianzi Mountain from Suoxiyu, walking along a canyon. Twenty li of steep mountain road raised us a thousand meters. In that canyon there was no artificial carving! There were ancient trees and new flowers, yellow rocks and green slopes, the long, long birdsong, the monotonous chirping of cicadas, which intoxicated me and made me recall two old lines of poetry: “Cicadas chirp, the forest grows quieter; birds sing, the mountain grows more secluded.” Are “chirping” and “quiet,” “singing” and “seclusion” not contradictory? No, here they are harmoniously and antithetically unified. Without sound, there is only lifeless dead silence, a desolate terror. Without human voices, only with cicada chirps and birdsong can one better grasp the true delight of this “quiet” and “seclusion.” I feel that every grass, every tree, every stone, every thing here is a combination and concentration of “beauty.”
While strolling on the mountain path of Golden Whip Stream in Zhangjiajie, besides cicada chirps and birdsong there is also the gurgling of flowing springs, which is the free zither and reed organ between heaven and earth. Pale green flowing water squeezes out from stone cracks, ripples over stone slabs, and roars in narrow places, adding even more spirit to this tranquility. We followed the stream and strolled in the shade of the forest, constantly feeling the sky-towering peaks around us closing in and enclosing us in the middle. Looking around, all were towering, graceful, and strange stone peaks, and we always felt that “mountains repeat and waters wind, suspecting there is no road.” Yet after turning only a small bend, we discovered a path leading to the mountain ahead, and felt that “willows dark, flowers bright, another village.” Nature really knows how to play hide-and-seek with us. It uses the technique of the unity of opposites between “revealing” and “concealing” here, making us endlessly delighted and giving us the artistic association of a thousand li within a foot. Nature understands that any art avoids blunt exposure and also avoids bewildering obscurity, seeking indirect expression within clarity and showing lingering flavor within detours. The combination of “revealing” and “concealing” must be just right. Golden Whip Stream is a naturally flavored long scroll of artistic landscape.
In the “Ten-Mile Gallery” of Suoxiyu and the “Golden Whip Stream” of Zhangjiajie, one looks up at thousands of stone forests in a thousand forms; the scenery of Tianzi Mountain is different. It is a view downward into deep valleys over a thousand meters, where stone peaks are like countless swarming arrowheads probing upward. The edges of Tianzi Mountain are all cliffs and sheer walls, so there are as many as more than 80 viewing platforms. These viewing platforms all overlook deep abysses, and the platforms themselves are all sheer cliffs. From the viewing platforms one sees clouds and mist drifting, like sea and waves, and the sharp peaks of the stone forest stretch out above the sea of clouds, like reefs on the ocean. The clouds move, but people often feel that the peak tips are moving. The flowing and changing clouds and mist make the quiet peak tips come alive and become richer. “Movement” and “stillness” here also coexist artistically. Large stone peaks are majestic and dignified; small stone peaks are exquisite and varied. Sometimes they are dense, sometimes sparse, and thus “majesty” and “grace,” “density” and “sparseness” all give us aesthetic pleasure just right and naturally, without monotony, rich in variation.
The Wuling scenery was discovered a few years ago by a painter, who called it a splendid scene “raised in a deep boudoir, unknown to people.” It still has a kind of “wild” flavor. Some say it is a Xiangxi “wild girl” carrying a basket on her back, holding a machete, wearing no makeup, and barefoot. Yes, it has no marketplace flavor. Precisely because it is “wild,” many of its peaks and waters still have no names! Now, people’s artistic creation is being blended into nature’s artistic creation. People look closely at those stone peaks and keep giving them names: “Mountain Eagle Spreads Wings,” “Conch Emerges from Water,” “Golden Turtle in the Sea of Mist,” “Meeting After a Thousand Li,” “Tang Sanzang Goes for the Scriptures,” “Heavenly Book Treasure Box”…… After the introductions, visitors shout: “It looks like it, it really looks like it!” The images are strikingly similar. But more visitors do not deliberately try to guess what those stone peaks resemble; instead they appreciate the beauty of nature’s uncanny workmanship, that naturally formed beauty, beauty with a bit of wild flavor.
Zhangjiajie is the first national forest park. Suoxiyu and Tianzi Mountain have both been designated nature reserves. Here there are primeval forests and rare plants and trees, rare birds and beasts, not seen elsewhere. The Chinese dove tree, when in bloom, is covered with white flowers, like countless white doves flapping their wings among the branches and leaves; the flower of the lobster flower is just like a fiery lobster. Have you seen it anywhere else? The water-carrying chicken has a water sac in its neck; after drinking its fill, it can go a week without drinking. The glass snake—all five organs can be seen clearly; the South China tiger, the clouded leopard, the macaques seen all over the mountain—do you not find them rare? There is also Shentang Bay. So far no one has entered it; only the sound of water like thousands of troops and horses comes out. It is still covered by a mysterious veil…… Is this not all a bit “wild”?
In the Wuling Mountains of Xiangxi, the mountains are good, the waters are good, and the people are good too. During our stay at Tianzi Mountain, the girls from Marshal He Long’s hometown performed folk songs for us for two evenings. The singing was long and deeply affectionate, bold and intense. You would feel that this singing was condensed from the vital essence of the local mountains and waters, gathered from the spiritual energy of the land, and of course also carried a bit of bold “wild” flavor. From the songs I learned about the lives of the Tujia, Miao, Bai, and Han peoples. In the old society, salt bureaus and salt checkpoints were set up everywhere, salt taxes were extorted brutally, and salt became a luxury in Xiangxi. One load of corn could exchange for only one jin of salt. Unable to afford salt, people ate bland food and could not taste even a bit of saltiness in a year. Slash-and-burn corn had low yields, and there was not enough corn to eat; more often people had to eat tubers and sweet potato vines. This singing, like the stilted houses commonly seen in Xiangxi and shaded among green trees, and like the bamboo back baskets everyone carried, added a touch of folk custom and alluring color to the mountains and waters here.
During our stay in the Wuling Mountains, down below it was bitterly hot all along, while up in the mountains it was as cool as early autumn. Later it rained for two days in a row, and the weather felt like late autumn. The mountain streams rose sharply. They rushed and surged in the stony ravines. Despite the high water, the water quality was still clear. The gurgling sound of the water had added to its crispness a bit of roughness and boldness; to its gentleness it had added force and speed. It was no longer satisfied with the tranquil reflections of rare flowers and secluded grasses on the water surface; it began to enjoy the waves several feet high struck up from the large stones of its riverbed. I want to write a few lines for this stream:
The stream is like our life—struggling on the shallows,
Rushing wildly through sharp bends,
There are broad valleys, and there are smooth stretches!
Along the way,
It has its own voice!
On the day I left Zhangjiajie, the car had already started, yet I still turned back again and again.
I want to say farewell to the ancient pines, strange peaks, flowing springs, clouds and mist here, and also to the folk songs, back baskets, stilted houses……
Farewell! You are all my teachers of aesthetics.