Finding Them Gone: Visiting China’s Poets of the Past

536 Pages·2016·14.45 MB·English

by  Bill Porter

This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the
Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to
thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this
e-book possible.
To W.S. Merwin
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Note to Reader
Dedication
1. Day 1 Ch’en Tzu-ang, Confucius, anonymous (Book of Poetry), Li
Pai, Tu Fu
2. Day 2 Li Ch’ing-chao, Hsin Ch’i-chi
3. Day 3 Ts’ao Chih
4. Day 4 Juan Chi, Ch’eng Tzu-an, Pai Chu-yi, Ou-yang Hsiu, Su
Tung-p’o
5. Day 5 Wei Ying-wu, Meng Chiao, Han Yu, Tu Fu, Pai Chu-yi
6. Day 6 Lao-tzu, Li Shang-yin, Wang Wei, Juan Chi, Liu Yu-hsi
7. Day 7 Wang Wei, Shih-wu (Stonehouse), Liu Tsung-yuan, Tu Fu,
Han Yu, Tu Mu
8. Day 8 Wei Ying-wu
9. Day 9 Li Pai, Tu Fu
10. Day 10 Hsueh T’ao
11. Day 11 Tu Fu, Ch’en Tzu-ang
12. Day 12 Chia Tao, Wu-k’o
13. Day 13 Tu Fu, Li Pai
14. Day 14 Ch’u Yuan, Saotan Poetry Society
15. Day 15 Pai Chu-yi, Su Tung-p’o, Ou-yang Hsiu
16. Day 16 Meng Hao-jan, Wang Wei, Li Pai
17. Day 17 Li Pai
18. Day 18 Su Tung-p’o
19. Day 19 Tu Fu, Ch’u Yuan
20. Day 20 Hsieh Ling-yun, Huang T’ing-chien, Han-shan, Wang Wei
21. Day 21 Wei Ying-wu, Pai Chu-yi, T’ao Yuan-ming
22. Day 22 Wang An-shih, Hsin Ch’i-chi
23. Day 23 Hsieh T’iao, Li Pai
24. Day 24 Wang An-shih, Fan Ch’eng-ta
25. Day 25 Chiao-jan, Shih-wu (Stonehouse)
26. Day 26 Meng Chiao, Chu Shu-chen
27. Day 27 Su Tung-p’o, Pai Chu-yi, Lin Ho-ching
28. Day 28 Lu You
29. Day 29 Li Pai, Hsieh Ling-yun
30. Day 30 Han-shan, Feng-kan, Shih-te (Cold Mountain & friends)
Lexicon
About the Author
Translations by Red Pine & Travel Writings by Bill Porter
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Special Thanks

DAY
1
I checked out of the Beijing Friendship Hotel at five thirty, before the
sun was up. The Friendship was where all the “foreign experts” from the
Soviet Bloc and Third World stayed back in the day when China’s
Communist Party ruled a Communist country. It was where my Chinese
publisher always put me up. He was once a bureau chief in the Ministry
of Education, and I was, in an odd way, a “foreign expert.” Besides, I
couldn’t turn down free lodging, especially garden-surrounded lodging in
a city like Beijing.
Once I reached the street, I headed for the nearest subway station. It
was only a two-minute walk, but this was the end of August. I was
already perspiring. When I saw a taxi waiting at the curb, I threw my
pack in the front, climbed in the back, and asked the driver to take me to
South Station. That was where the new bullet trains left from, and I had a
ticket on the first one of the day headed south. My train was scheduled to
leave at seven, and I figured I would need an hour to get there. But I had
never been on a road in Beijing before sunrise. Once we were on Third
Ring Road, we were going one hundred kilometers per hour, in Beijing.
It felt unreal.
As I looked out the car window at the predawn skyline, I could see
the distinctive pagoda of Tienning Temple. Dating back to 1083, it was
the oldest structure in Beijing. I was actually looking for another tower, a
tower that disappeared before the pagoda was built. It would have been a
few hundred meters to the north in the ward recently reclaimed by the
Taoists of White Cloud Temple. It was called Youchou Tower—
Youchou being an old name for Beijing. One day in 696, Ch’en Tzu-ang
climbed to the top and wrote one of the most famous poems in the
Chinese language, “Climbing Youchou Tower Song” :
I don’t see the ancients who came before me I don’t see those yet to
come
facing the endlessness of Heaven and Earth I am so overcome I cry
According to the earliest commentary on the Shihching, or Book of Poetry,
“poetry is what the heart holds dear put into words” . Of
course, the poems Chinese poets wrote weren’t always from the heart. The
Chinese have had their share of head poets. But there were plenty of poets like
Ch’en Tzu-ang, and I wanted to thank as many as I could for sharing their hearts.
I had put together a thirty-day itinerary to visit their hometowns and graves, and
this was Day 1. As quickly as Youchou Tower and Ch’en Tzuang’s poem came
to mind, they vanished in the first rays of the morning sun. A few minutes later I
was at the station. It looked more like an airport terminal. It was huge: 60,000
tons of steel huge. I paid the driver the 44RMB (the exchange rate was 6RMB to