Interpreting Tianmen
Interpreting Tianmen by Jin Kejian. That mountain watched the small town's people busy with their days every day. After watching for so long, both sides seemed as indifferent as old neighbors. One day in late June 1965, on the eve of the college entrance examination for the previous year's schoolmates, the sky was clear and the air was fresh, and the blue sky was like washed. Suddenly, our classroom felt a slight tremor, accompanied by a muffled thunder-like echo from afar, and then we heard people's screams: "Tianmen Mountain is flooding—" The streets were empty,...
Interpreting Tianmen
by Jin Kejian
That mountain watched the townsfolk bustle through their days, and after watching for so long, the two parties grew as indifferent to each other as old neighbors. One day in late June of 1965, on the eve of the college entrance exams for the graduating class before ours, the sky was clear and bright, washed blue as if newly scoured. Suddenly, our classroom felt a faint tremor, accompanied by a muffled thunder-like echo rolling in from afar, and then we heard the startled cries: “Tianmen Mountain is spilling a flood——”
The streets emptied as everyone rushed to witness the spectacle.
In the distance, on the sheer cliff of Tianmen Mountain opposite the small town, three torrents poured down from the summit, creating a cloud-borne waterfall over 1,000 meters long. The cascade raged for 15 minutes before gradually easing and vanishing. This is an “intermittent waterfall” that one is extremely lucky to encounter in a lifetime. The ancients long ago recorded it in verse: “In June the heavenly channel sends a waterfall flying, pouring back the Milky Way from the immortal stream”; “Two white silken bands hang from the sheer cliff, watch the Milky Way pour down from the ninth heaven.”
That one breathtaking encounter drove me to resolve firmly to visit the eternal sacred mountain of the townsfolk——Tianmen Mountain.
Since ancient times there have been three routes up Tianmen, and our group chose the one over the back mountain at Daping. When the bus reached Daping, we saw the Tianmen eye to the south like an enormous oval mirror, set high in the rock face, gleaming and dazzling. This was the first visual shock. By the time we reached the foot of the mountain, the path was suddenly cut off by a sheer precipice thousands of meters high. Just as we were marveling that “the bus reaches the mountain and we doubt there is a road,” a shepherd boy pointed ahead: “The road is on the cliff face opposite.” Looking up, we saw a “path” like a vine clinging to the rock wall, faintly visible. Several of the female classmates turned pale, regretting it deeply. This was the second visual shock. But what truly terrified the soul were the “cloud-ladder immortal paths” built of tree trunks across several sheer, knife-cut rock faces—one moment of distraction and a single misstep could mean eternal regret. At that moment, I finally understood the lines the ancients chanted about Tianmen: “A single pillar holds up the sky alone, even birds find it hard to fly so high. Clouds are many and the mountain unseen, the mountain lies deep within the clouds.”
Along the way, we leapt over streams and crossed gorges, clung to vines and scaled cliffs; now strolling through secluded forests, now “boating” through the clouds. The emerald-green trees, the crystal-clear springs, the indescribable rare flowers and herbs kept our eyes dazzled. Sometimes came the gurgling of water, like an immortal elder plucking his zither by the stream; sometimes drifted the calls of birds, like immortal children whispering in the woods. Now and then a thread of waterfall flew down from deep in the mist, scattering silver spray, as if we were in Sun Wukong's Water Curtain Cave; occasionally a few ape cries echoed long through the secluded valley, stirring boundless melancholy. “Watch out!” a companion suddenly shouted—it turned out a mischievous little monkey was playing a prank, throwing wild fruit at the “pretty girls,” sending the young ladies fleeing with their heads covered, and then a stream of monkey urine poured down from the tree, making the men blush red. Sometimes those birds and beasts cut off from the human world would suddenly dart onto the path and waddle past your feet, frightening the ladies into shrieks, while they remained so calm, their bewildered eyes fixed on these uninvited guests. Only then did you realize that once humans and beasts achieve communication and live in harmony, it can produce a resonance and harmony like chords of music.
At last we saw up close the Tianmen eye breathing out clouds and mist, and we screamed and jumped hysterically!
This is a natural legend unmatched in all the world!
Records say: Tianmen is 131.5 meters high, 20 meters wide, and 37 meters deep. Its exact position is a “gate to heaven” or “skylight” carved through the sheer cliff from an altitude of 1,264.7 meters to 1,396.2 meters, which is why the common folk call it the “Tianmen eye,” or simply Tianmen. As early as the Warring States period, the great poet Qu Yuan, who grieved for his country and people, was exiled to the Yuan and Li river regions and once sang out: “Wide open, O gates of heaven! In a throng I ride the dark clouds!” At that time, Tianmen perhaps had only just begun to reveal itself. By the sixth year of Yong'an of the Wu Kingdom in the Three Kingdoms period (263), the mountain split and the earth cracked, and Tianmen Cave opened wide, shocking all of China! The King of Wu took it as an “auspicious sign” and ordered that “Wuling be divided to establish Tianmen Commandery,” instantly raising the administrative rank of this land of native tribes by two levels. By the Northern Zhou period, Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou honored it as the “Southern Sacred Peak” and changed Tianmen Commandery to Beiheng Prefecture. From then on, Tianmen Mountain's fame soared, becoming the foremost mountain of the south. Whether in early spring with “a few trees in flower atop the ten-thousand-fathom cliff, where the white ape points out the immortal's home,” or in midsummer with “birds heard singing deep in the forest, monkeys seen on rocky branches”; whether in mid-autumn with “small grass has heart while red leaves grow old, wild peaks have no intent while white clouds wander,” or in deep winter with “gazing at Tianmen through snow piled in the sky, sixteen peaks all arrayed like jade bamboo shoots,” Tianmen Mountain always changed its countenance in season, drawing literati and poets, devout men and women alike in endless succession. At the ancient temple of the spiritual spring, incense never ceased; praise poems and eulogies shone in mutual reflection.
People often call Tianmen Mountain merely “Wuling's unique beauty” or “the single pillar of the southern sky,” but that is only seeing the side it bares. When you part the flying clouds and drifting mist, you realize it is also surrounded by sixteen sister peaks and sixteen underworld grottoes. The so-called “Eight Scenes of Tianmen”—“Ghost Valley Clear Stream,” “Broken Mountain Rainbow Bridge,” “Heavenly Channel Waterfall,” “Tianmen Cave Opening,” “High and Far Resounding Bell,” “Jade Peak Clear Snow,” “Immortal Path Cloud Ladder,” and “Cinnabar Stove Flying Smoke”—are not inventions of literati but precisely a magnificent scroll formed by stars surrounding the moon, a work even immortals would find hard to match.
And most incredible of all, at the very dome of the Tianmen eye, there is a stone crevice the size of a wine cup that year-round spouts a spring of rock water, drifting and scattering like plum blossoms strewn from the ninth heaven by a fairy, and so it is called “Plum Blossom Rain and Snow.” Folk legend says that if one opens one's mouth and catches forty-eight drops of the plum blossom water, one can pass the imperial examination as top scholar. So countless visitors come here to try their luck, but alas the cave mouth has strong winds, and no matter how cleverly you try, it is hard to drink those forty-eight drops. In those days people blamed Tianmen for the world's many disasters and the people's poverty, on the grounds that Dayong's vital essence and wealth all flowed away through the gate, and the feng shui could not be “closed.” A young, brave lad resolved to rid the people of disaster, so he carried two blocks of stone and climbed the mountain before dawn to patch the hole. Unexpectedly, the rooster spirit of Immortal Stream saw through the divine plan and crowed early; at once a black wind swept the lad down into the ten-thousand-fathom abyss. The two stones rolled to the bank of the Li River, one called Red Wall Rock and the other called Lone Son Rock, and they still lie there to this day.
Now we stood at the edge of the Tianmen eye, gazing out over the vast ranges, and how many thoughts surged in our hearts! “Look! Plum blossom rain!” We could hold back no longer, laughing and chattering, tilting our heads back and opening our mouths, wanting to try our “luck” too——if we couldn't become “top scholars,” at least getting into a famous university would do!
When the setting sun hung over the distant mountain pass, we finally climbed to the summit. Although the young women came from the small town, pretty and delicate yet able to endure hardship, they were frightened to tears by the mountain leeches clinging to their bare legs. An old farmer tending the herb fields on the mountain took off his straw sandals and gave a few whacks, and the blood-swollen leeches dropped off.
Before it grew completely dark, we quickly split up to gather dry firewood and cook supper.
Only then did I casually notice that the summit of Tianmen Mountain was originally a giant viewing platform of about two square kilometers, preserving stretches of primeval forest, rare southern plant communities, and a treasure house of medicinal herbs. Moreover, in the ruins of the ancient temple, I discovered a stone pillar couplet: “Beyond heaven there is heaven, and heaven is never night; on the mountain there is no mountain, and this mountain alone is supreme.” I was shaken by this masterly hand! It seemed this was no ordinary place.
This is a height where you can pluck the stars—precisely the feeling of “the sea reaches boundless where heaven becomes its shore; climbing to the mountain's utmost peak, I am the summit.” Here at the very top of the mountain at 1,518 meters above sea level, it seemed the world held only us few men and women who had “eloped.” We danced madly and wildly around the campfire, shouted without restraint, strained our throats to sing, sang many “petty-bourgeois” songs we dared not sing at school, told many stories and bits of social gossip——at that time, we seemed to sense a special climate of “the wind sweeping through the tower heralds a rising storm in the mountains.” That night, we were so fevered that we even dared to declare to the world: the fire of Tianmen Mountain tonight will one day burn across the globe!
——Our whole group had become saviors determined to “liberate all mankind.”
The firewood gradually burned out, the mist was like tangled rain, chilling to the bone, so we had to correct our disordered nerves and, without avoiding any impropriety between men and women, squeezed together in the broken temple of Tianmen Mountain Monastery to endure that stretch of darkness before dawn.
In a dream that carried the fragrance of women, I seemed to see strange-looking ancients entering one by one through the temple gate, gathering in a circle before the incense table of the disheveled Patriarch to “hold a meeting.” In order they were: Huandou, exiled by Shun to Mount Chong; Chisongzi, the rain master of Shennong; Guiguzi, the strategist of the Warring States; Qu Yuan, the grandee of Chu; Zhang Liang, the Marquis of Liu of Han; General Ma Yuan, the Wave-Subduing General; Monk Danzi, founding patriarch of Tianmen Mountain; Sun Xiu, King of Wu; Zhou Ji, the interior secretary of Yidu; Yuwen Yong, Emperor Wu of Northern Zhou; Zhou Pu, the recluse of Later Jin; Tian Xilu, founder of Tianmen Academy; Yang Zhou, Hanlin edict attendant of the Yuan dynasty; Zhang Dui, Hanlin compiler of the Yuan dynasty;
Zhu Ruhui, Prince of Wuchang of the Ming dynasty; Yefu, a general under Li Zicheng of the Ming dynasty; and also Liu Mingdeng, the Taiwan commander-in-chief born at the foot of Tianmen Mountain, and Du Xinwu, the great martial arts master of a generation……
Actually, I did not know them; it was thread-bound books and legends that told me of them. They were all recluses of Tianmen Mountain or historical figures entangled with the interpretation of Tianmen. That night, in my dream I secretly listened to their conversation, hearing a whole night of “ghost talk” about Tianmen Mountain. At that moment, I saw Mr. Zhang Dui, the one missing a front tooth, shaking his head and chanting the poem “Picture of Tianmen Mountain” he had just finished, in which he wrote of touring Mount Jing, climbing Mount Hua, ascending the Taihang Mountains, visiting Mount Kuang…… truly having seen all the famous mountains and great rivers of the world. Then, with a turn of his great brush, he wrote: “This year I go straight up to Tianmen Peak, only now do I feel my former delight was shallow. Tianmen Cave opens and cloud vapor flows through; Jiangdong and Mount Emei all bow before it!” And he instructed his beloved: “When success comes one day, return early; let us be neighbors and live at the foot of the mountain.”
I felt a pang of shame in my heart, realizing that my understanding of Tianmen Mountain had indeed been shallow. Then I thought again: this “scripture” of Tianmen Mountain, beginning in primeval chaos and spanning more than four thousand years of civilization, how could our generation ever decipher it?
“Ah ah——get up quickly and watch the sunrise at Tianmen——”
Suddenly, a series of calls disturbed my dream. I gave a start, the ancients vanished in an instant, and my male and female classmates were nowhere to be seen. I rushed out of the temple gate and truly saw a thread of orange-red already appearing in the east, with clouds surging like a sea around Tianmen, and we were on a lone island amid waves beating the shore. I could not help but run excitedly toward the mountaintop, and from afar, afar, stretch out both hands——assuming the posture of one about to hold up a new life……
No one expected that the following year (1966), the “unprecedented Great Cultural Revolution” broke out. The classmates of former days each took a different viewpoint from then on, and even several pairs of secretly betrothed “deeply affectionate sweethearts” turned against each other. I did not understand why this was. I only felt that Tianmen Mountain was like an unfathomable prophet, watching with cold, stern eyes the people of the small town below the mountain and the countryside, watching them live their days, watching how they wove their own life stories. Then, casually, in broad daylight, it released a surge of “heavenly water.” Like a wordless heavenly book hung high on a ten-thousand-fathom cliff, left for people to interpret. And this kind of “hint” has appeared many times over past and future ages and been verified many times.
I do not know what will happen tomorrow.
Tianmen Mountain, I truly cannot read you.