by Bill Porter
The name of the garden was apt. In Chinese it means “Stay a While.” And we did. It was the opposite of the Master of the Nets Garden we visited the day before. At seven and a half acres, it’s the biggest garden in Suchou. Hence, the designer didn’t feel compelled to change a visitor’s view every few feet. He took his time, and so did we. We were actually able to walk around alone and not in a crowd. It was a simple garden but also not a simple garden. We especially enjoyed the different-shaped windows along the walkways that circled the ponds. They reminded us how our view of something is shaped by how it is framed.
After we had stayed a while and done enough strolling, we continued on to another garden a hundred meters farther down the canal. It was called West Garden Temple, after the temple it was a part of. Although the two gardens were designed 400 years ago by the same man, West Temple Garden was unique in its open, almost park-like atmosphere. There were even grassy areas where a visitor could sit down and watch the clouds overhead. In fact, that was the difference between the two gardens. In the first one, we strolled. In the second one, we sat.
But being travelers, even in such a restful place, we didn’t sit long. We went back outside and flagged down another canal taxi. We told the boatman to take us to Hanshan Temple. The tourist brochures all said the temple was named after the Buddhist poet who lived there in the T’ang dynasty before he went off to become a hermit near Tientai. But Han-shan, or Cold Mountain, as he is known in the West, never lived there. The temple was named for a nearby hill.
Suchou canal
Suchou’s Liuyuan Garden
I’m guessing there aren’t many Chinese who don’t know the poem by Chang Chi titled “Anchored Overnight at Maple Bridge”:
Crows caw the moon sets frost fills the sky
river maples fishing fires care-plagued sleep
coming from Cold Mountain Temple outside the Suchou wall
the sound of the midnight bell reaches a traveler’s boat
It’s one of the most famous poems in the Chinese language. But Chang Chi wrote that poem in 742, when Han-shan would have been less than ten. And yet, the myth of the temple’s association with the hermit has survived.
The reason we wanted to go there was to meet the temple’s abbot. Eight years earlier, I published a translation of Cold Mountain’s 300-odd poems, and a friend showed the abbot a copy of my book. Ever since then, the abbot and I had been corresponding. His name was Hsing-k’ung, and he was also an artist. He sent me paintings and calligraphy, and I sent him copies of my books. But I hadn’t heard from him for several years, and I wasn’t sure if he was still alive.
We inquired at the gate, and one of the monks ushered us into the abbot’s reception room. It looked more like an art studio. All the walls were covered with paintings and calligraphy, and half the room was taken up by a large table covered with sheets of hsuan-chih waiting for inspiration. As we entered, we saw Hsing-k’ung sitting down talking to another monk. He looked up and smiled, and we walked over and introduced ourselves. I started to tell him that I had looked forward to meeting him for many years. But I didn’t get that far. He jumped up and grabbed my hand, and never let go. I mean, for the next hour he never let go. We talked and talked, and he never let go. Finally, he got up to show us around the temple and finally let go of my hand. But then he grabbed my arm.
What he wanted to show us was the temple’s calligraphy, which included a wall on which was written the entire Diamond Sutra. It was done by one of the most famous calligraphers of the Sung dynasty, Chang Chi-chih (aka Shu-liao), and it included a colophon by Tung Ch’i-ch’ang, one of the most famous calligraphers of the Ming. The wall was a national treasure. Hsing-k’ung also showed us the temple’s famous Ming dynasty portraits of Cold Mountain and his friend Pickup. Although neither man ever lived at the temple, they had become inseparable from the temple in people’s imaginations. Of course, we said nothing to dissuade the abbot of such a view.
Master Hsing-k’ung with author (photo by Steven R. Johnson)
Hsing-k’ung also showed us where he planned to build a new pagoda. It was going to be huge, and we wondered where the money was going to come from. Clearly, the temple was doing well. Maybe it would be coming from the abbot’s paintings and calligraphy, both of which, I heard, sold for small fortunes in Japan. After showing us around, Hsing-k’ung led us back to his reception room, and he gave each of us one of his paintings. The one he gave me was of an iris and still hangs on my wall at home. Finally, we got up to leave, and I promised to send him a copy of my next book, and he finally let go of my arm.
Suchou is one of those towns where visitors never have enough time. A week would have been about right. But, as usual, we only had a day. As we came out of the temple, we flagged down a taxi and headed back to our hotel. Instead of more gardens and temples, we wanted to find out about silk. Silk was the miracle fiber that made the city’s gardens and temples possible. Money from the silk trade financed everything.
Archaeologists had found signs of early silk production near the middle reaches of the Yellow River and also in the lower reaches of the Yangtze, not far from Suchou. The materials they found dated back nearly 5,000 years. Ironically, that was the same period when Lei Tsu was said to have invented silk. Like all proper inventions, it happened by chance. Lei Tsu was drinking tea under a mulberry tree when a silkworm cocoon fell from the tree into her cup. When she tried to extract the cocoon from her tea, she caught hold of the filament and began unreeling. And so silk was discovered while Lei Tsu was drinking tea. Lei Tsu, incidentally, was the wife of the Yellow Emperor, who ruled the middle reaches of the Yellow River between 2,700 and 2,600 BC, or nearly 5,000 years ago.
Although the manufacture of silk apparently began at several places in China around that time, for the past thousand years its main center was the Suchou area. This was because silkworms only ate mulberry leaves, and mulberry trees seemed to do best around Suchou. Then, too, Suchou’s location on the Grand Canal and also near the mouth of the Yangtze guaranteed it easy access to markets, both domestic and foreign.
After stopping at our hotel long enough to drop off our newly acquired paintings, we headed for Suchou’s Number-One Silk Mill. It was a twenty-minute walk south of our hotel, beyond the city’s ancient moat. The previous afternoon, we asked our hotel to call ahead, so we were expected. A woman in charge of receiving guests led us into a room, served us some tea, and told us about the silkworm. She said each silk moth lays about 400 eggs, and as soon as the eggs hatch, the new silkworms begin eating mulberry leaves. Over the course of twenty-five days, each worm eats about twenty-five grams of leaves. As it does, it goes through five stages of development. Finally, after the fifth stage, it stops eating and begins spinning a cocoon around itself. The cocoon only takes twenty-four hours to spin, and it consists of 1,200 meters of filament—which the silkworm makes by digesting mulberry leaves. The woman who explained this process to us said that if the silkworms were left alone, they would emerge seven days later as silk moths. But if they did, they would break the filament, making the cocoons useless for silk production. To prevent this from happening, 85 percent of the cocoons are immersed in boiling water for fifteen minutes, while the remaining 15 percent are set aside for reproduction.
Once we finished our tea, our guide led us into the factory where we watched women workers sorting the boiled cocoons. After sorting, the cocoons are unreeled not just one at a time, but nine at a time. Our guide said that it takes nine filaments to form a single silk thread, a thread that is strong enough to weave and is 1,200 meters long. Nothing, she said, is wasted. Once the silk filaments are unreeled, the dead pupas inside the cocoons are set aside for use in a medicine for diabetes. Meanwhile, the resulting thread is immersed in hot wax for twenty minutes to soften the fiber and to prepare it for dying. Then it is woven into bolts and sent to other factories for dying and printing, and finally to yet more factories for cutting and sewing into garments. She said that it takes 900 cocoons t
o produce enough thread to make a silk skirt or shirt. A silk tie, she said, requires 120.
It was at this point that our guide finally led us into the factory showroom and said good-bye. The showroom was full of dresses and shirts and, of course, bolts of silk. It was all very fine and colorful, but we didn’t really want to buy anything. It had been a fairly full day, and we suddenly realized we were hungry.
Suchou was full of fine restaurants, and people came from as far away as Shanghai and Nanking to have dinner here. In fall, they come for Suchou’s freshwater crabs, steamed and eaten with soy sauce and ginger. And, of course, we were there in fall. With this in mind, we walked back across the moat and past our hotel all the way to Kuanchien Street, where many of the city’s finer restaurants were located. We thought about eating at the famous Sungholou Restaurant. But it looked too fancy for us. We were looking for something simpler. While we were walking around trying to decide where and what to eat, we saw a line trailing out the front door of a restaurant in Tachien Alley. That’s always a good sign. So we got in line. The name of the place was the Green Willow Wonton Shop. Even with the long line, it only took us fifteen minutes to work our way to the front and place our order. At least we didn’t have to worry about what to order. They only made two things: wonton soup and shrimp-and-pork dumplings. It wasn’t crab, but it was delicious. For the past thousand years, the Chinese have said people who live in Suchou are lucky. We had to agree.
17. Hermits & Pearls
It was hard to leave Suchou. On our way out of the Nanlin the next morning, we bought enough freshly-baked croissants to get us through the day. Finding a croissant in China was such a treat. But by the time we reached the long-distance bus station at the north end of town, they were gone. C’est la vie. An hour later, we were on a bus bound for Huchou and our last province. Good-bye Kiangsu, hello Chekiang.
Location of Stonehouse’s old hut
Huchou means “lake town,” the lake being, of course, Taihu. We were circumambulating it. We had already visited Yihsing on its west shore and Wuhsi on its north shore and Suchou on its east shore. Huchou was on its south shore. Huchou didn’t attract many tourists, but we weren’t going there to see anything in Huchou. We wanted to visit the mountain where Stonehouse lived. We had already visited the monastery in Changshu where he became a monk back when Kublai Khan ruled China from his pleasure dome. We didn’t expect to find Stonehouse’s hut, but we hoped at least to find his mountain.
We had visited similar sights that weren’t on the tourist circuit but that appealed to our peculiar tastes, like the graves of Tu Fu, T’ao Yuan-ming, and Ch’u Yuan. Stonehouse, or Shih-wu as he was known, was in a different class. He was hardly known outside the small circle of Buddhists who had read his poems. It was a small circle and likely to remain so. Even the people in his hometown had never heard of him. We didn’t know much more than they did, except that Stonehouse built his hut just below the summit of a mountain called Hsiamushan, which was somewhere south of Huchou. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a map with the mountain’s name on it. So we were going there blind. But lately the road gods had smiled upon us, and we thought perhaps they would smile upon us once more.
Two hours after leaving Suchou, our bus pulled into Lake City. We got out and went inside the bus station, and looked at the route map on the bus station wall. We picked a town about thirty kilometers to the south called Teching. We reasoned that Hsiamushan must be one of the mountains west of Teching. We figured if we hiked into the mountains, we might get lucky and find it. So I walked over to the ticket window and asked for three tickets on the next bus.
As I said, not many tourists, much less foreigners, passed through Huchou. When the ticket seller saw us, she left and returned a few minutes later with the station’s party secretary. He asked us where we wanted to go, and I repeated what I told the woman. He sold us the tickets, but he suggested we would be more comfortable waiting for the bus in his office. A crowd of on-lookers had already begun to form around us, and the bus wasn’t due to leave for another hour. Naturally, we were happy to accept his offer.
As he led us into his office, he introduced himself. His name was Kao Yung-k’uei. When he asked us why we wanted to go to Teching, we told him we were looking for a mountain west of Teching where a poet lived in the fourteenth century. We asked him if he had heard of Hsiamushan. He shook his head. Then he told us to sit down on the sofa, while he left to get some glasses for tea. While he was gone, I gazed around his office. What was that? Right behind where we were sitting was a detailed topographic map of the county. I was amazed and started poring over the area south of Huchou. Thirty seconds later, my eyes came to rest on, you guessed it, Hsiamushan. Eureka, it actually existed! And after 600 years, the name was still the same.
When Mister Kao returned, we told him to forget about the bus to Teching, we wanted to go to Hsiamushan. He was a true bodhisattva sent down to help others. He not only refunded our tickets, he went outside the station and arranged for a taxi to take us to Hsiamushan. While we were waiting, I continued to pore over the map. Eureka again. Just south of town was Taochangshan. Taochangshan was another mountain where Stonehouse once lived. And the temple where he lived was still there—at least the name was on the map. We couldn’t believe our good fortune. It was one thing to follow the tourist brochures and guidebooks. It was quite another to discover something of interest that no one had ever written about and to which no signs pointed. We were in traveler heaven. A minute later, Mister Kao returned and led us outside and introduced us to our driver. We told Mister Kao we wanted to go to Taochangshan then Hsiamushan, and he conveyed this to the driver. The driver shrugged and said the fee for both places would be the same, 50RMB. It was such a small price to pay, we gladly agreed. We stashed our bags at the station luggage depository and waved good-bye to Mister Kao.
About two kilometers south of town, we turned off the main road then drove as far as we could on a dirt road. When the road finally ended, we walked up a trail to what was left of Wanshou Temple. A thousand years ago, it was one of the ten most famous Zen centers in China, and it was where Stonehouse lived with his master before moving to Hsiamushan. It was also where he later gave sermons on the rare occasions when he came down the mountain.
Sung dynasty pagoda on Taochangshan
Inside the main hall, we met the abbot. His name was Fu-hsing. I had to ask him to write down the characters. They were so unusual. I had never heard them, much less seen them. Together they meant “fragrant fragrance.” It was a Buddhist name, a very unique Buddhist name. He said the Red Guards destroyed just about everything at the temple except the T’ang dynasty pillars in the main hall where we were standing, and the Sung dynasty pagoda on the ridge behind the temple. He invited us to join him for some tea and a sweet pudding made from kuo-pa, or scorched rice.
While we were eating the pudding, I showed the abbot some of Stonehouse’s poems I brought with me and asked him if he had heard of Shih-wu. He hadn’t, which didn’t surprise me. We chatted for a while, then said good-bye. The day was half over, and we were anxious to find the mountain where Stonehouse spent thirty-five years. We returned to the main road and headed south again. Even though the station manager had pointed the driver in the right direction, for the next hour we must have stopped a dozen times to ask villagers along the roadside if they had heard of Hsiamushan. Some of them had, and one of them finally directed us across some railroad tracks onto a dirt road just wide enough for a single car. The road led to the base of a mountain, and a farmer walking along the road confirmed that the mountain was, indeed, Hsiamushan. We were excited.
One poem that came to mind as we headed up the dirt road was #76 of his Mountain Poems, one Stonehouse apparently wrote on the mid-autumn moon festival:
A thatch hut is lonely on a new fall night
with white peas in flower and crickets calling
mountain moon silver evokes an old joy
suddenly I’ve strolled west of the s
ummit
Abbot Fu-hsing of Wanshou Temple
We figured his hut must have been on the east side of the summit. But we didn’t know how close we could get to the top. Our driver’s battered blue Polish taxi was having a hard time with the road. The ruts were deep from a recent rain. But the road kept going, and so did his Skoda.
Finally, a few hundred meters short of the summit, a chain barred our way. We had no choice but to stop. We got out and stepped over the chain, walked past a one-story cement building, and continued up the road. It didn’t take long to reach the top, but there wasn’t much to see. First of all, the bamboo was too high to see the surrounding countryside. Second of all, there were only two things on top besides the bamboo. One was a huge metal dish for relaying electronic signals. The other was a cement bunker. While we were standing there wondering what to do next, six soldiers came running out of the bunker with their rifles pointed at us. Ooops: It was a military installation.
Just then, the officer in charge came huffing up the road from where we had parked the car. Before he had a chance to ask what we were doing here, we explained that we were looking for traces of a monk who lived here 600 years ago. It seemed like a reasonable explanation to us. I took my copy of Stonehouse’s poems out of my bag. It was a copy of the bilingual edition I’d published in America six years earlier and included the Chinese along with my translations. I pointed to one of Stonehouse’s poems in which he mentioned living on a mountain called Hsiamushan. The officer’s eyes opened wide, and he started to read the poems. I told him we thought Stonehouse’s hut must have been just east of the summit, and we were hoping to see if there was anything left. The officer surprised us. He waved the soldiers away then pulled out his machete and led us straight into the bamboo. It was a variety known as arrow bamboo and produced the tenderest shoots. But it also grew incredibly thick. He plunged into it anyway and hacked his way through with his machete. We followed. Still, even with him leading the way, the bamboo was so dense, at times we were unable to move our arms or our legs. Somehow, though, we got loose and struggled on.