Say, I've had my good lucks and opportunities. I once stood on a river boat looking up at the City of White Emperor in the light of dusk; climbed up the Yellow Swan Pavilion when autumn frost was at its thickest; and night-walked up to the Temple of Cold Mountain in one of the harshest winter nights. I saw many human heads holding still or moving about every place I went. I could feel that those poems which I don't need to quote for you here were recited in every heart. They came not only to see the sights but also to seek out the poems, pieces they had learned by heart since childhood. Children's imagination demands sincerity and vividness. Thus those cities, pagodas, pavilions, and temples had been reconstructed in those hearts many times over since long, long ago. And the children grew up. Since the day they became conscious of their ability to travel, they also became deeply in debt, longing to visit the sights of their poetry. They wanted to see the places for the sake of childhood, history, and many other reasons beyond language. Sometimes, this thirst becomes so strong that it's like an orphan's tireless search for her home and lost relatives.
The magic possessed by men of letters seems to be able to pick any remote corner out of nothingness in a wide world and turn it into the home village for millions. So what magic was really hidden under those ancient long coats of faded blue?
Today, guided by Wang Wei's "Song of Weicheng," I started my journey to Yangguan. Before I left the hotel in a small city, I asked a local elderly for directions. "It's far away," he replied, "and there is nothing there to look at. But that does not stop those men of books from taking on the hard road." The old man looked up at the sky, said, "It doesn't look the snow'll stop for quite a while. Please don't be so hard on yourself." I made a bow to him and turned around and marched into the deep snow.
Desert was immediately outside of the small city. Nothing but endless snow and whiteness was the desert. There was not even a wrinkle in that flatness. Traveling in other places, I always tried to spot something as my temporary destination, such as aiming myself at a tree, then a rock. But here, I opened my eyes so hard that they hurt; but still there was nothing to spot, not even a dead leaf, a dot of dirt. I had no choice but looking up. Never before had I seen such a perfect sky, not an inch was eclipsed, smooth-edged all around, tightly covering a round earth. Above this land, the sky is a sky in its real sense. Under such a sky, the land also becomes perfect land. Walking alone between this sky and this land, a midget becomes a giant. And walking alone between this sky and this land, a giant becomes a midget.
Suddenly it cleared up, the wind stopped, the sun broke out shining. I had had no idea that the snow on the desert melted so fast. In a split second, stretches of sands could be seen already, and the sands were already dry. Vaguely there seemed to be lines of smoke appearing on the horizon, without any movement, and the color were getting darker and darker. It puzzled me for a while before I realized those were shoulders of mountains reappearing out of the melting snow.
The uneven arrangement of the land appeared with a frightening pattern and left only one possible explanation: those were ancient tombs.
This place was far away from that small city and did not look to me like the cemetery for the city folks. The molehills that had once been the tombs were beaten up by wind and snow, collapsed, deserted and unrecognizable; there was not even a trace to indicate that any one had ever come here to mend them. Then why were there so many of them, and so tightly clustered to each other? Again, there was only one possibility: this used to be an ancient battle field.
Aimlessly walking amidst the numerous tombs, I started to see the images of T.S. Eliot's Wasteland. Here on the historic wasteland of China, I could hear horsehooves like raindrops, battlecries like thunderstorms, hot blood like watercascades; I could see the gray hair of aging mothers in central China, the long and frustrated looks of young wives in their southern boudoirs, the night cries of little children in their cottages along the lakes and rivers. A farewell was held under the willow tree back home; the general had his eyes widened with anger; the battle flag was making the noise in the gusty wind. All those are gone, long gone, in a bowl of dust and smoke, in another bowl of dust and smoke. I had to believe all the soldiers were facing the enemies in the north when death befell them; I had to believe every young man wanted to look back at the last moment, to cast their eyes on the land once familiar to them. Then they fell, ever so listlessly, to become sand duns.
I have no idea: had those sand duns, clusters of stars, earned a line or two somewhere in any of the official documents? As officials of documents leafed through the thicket of records, this piece of land had been buried deeper and deeper into the sands. In the mountains of our 25 history books, the chapters spent on this piece of wasteland are relatively glorious, for here had been the frontiers of many dynasties, shouldering the historical task to provide safety and prosperity for the Central Kingdom. In this sense, the sand duns here appeared self-confident, the history books on this part can still recall the old glory. Just like the dull, dry and cold land, the historical theme of this Northwestern corner also appeared simple and straightforward.
It is an entirely different story for the land inside, though. There are mountains upon mountains, rivers across rivers, flowers and plants of all kinds, shades and shadows of all shapes. The maze created by time can daze the clearest mind; the morning bell and evening drum always appear so mysterious or even sinister. There do not exist any sand duns lying on the ground wide and open; everything there appears puzzling and puzzled, in spite of the beautiful scenic views all around; and there have been who knows how many unhappy souls of wrong deaths who had no choice but to swallow their anger and agony lying deep under. In contrast, lying here naked is a chapter of glamorous history, which does not mind my fast moving feet of the 20th Century to step on them and rub on their faces.
I saw trees in the distance now and picked up the pace. Water ran under those trees, the sands seemed to tilt here and there. Climbing on top of a small sand hill and looking up, there it was, a deserted and eroded big bowl of earth on a hilltop. My instinct told me, that must be Yangguan.
More and more trees appeared into view, and there were even houses and buildings. It seemed right this way: any pass or point of military significance where soldiers used to keep their horses must have all these. After making some turns I climbed on top of yet another sand hill; at the foot of this big bowl of earth, I searched around and found a stone tablet, on it there were four carved-in characters "Yang Guan Gu Zhi" (the ancient site of Yang Guan).
I was on top of a high point from which fields in all directions could be seen. The northwest wind marched over thousands of miles then collapsed down on me. I stumbled for several steps before finding my footing. Standing still now I could hear my teeth trembling and knocking on each other. I had no doubt that my nose must have turned purple in the cold. I blew some air into my hands and used them to cover my ears and jumped up and down several times. When I calmed down, I opened my eyes. The snow did not melt here. Of course not. This so-called ancient site has lost all of its symbolic make-ups, except the ancient beacon tower, the big bowl of earth that could be seen from distance. Even the big bowl had already half-collapsed, with layers of sands and mud lying around, bushes of reeds here and there. Reeds were blown up by the cold wind, still trembling after thousands of years. The Northwest Mountains in the field of my vision were all covered by snow, drifts upon drifts, stretching endlessly to the far horizon. Whoever comes to stand here will have the feeling of standing on a rock by the ocean. Oh, those mountains, they look like an icy ocean with cold waves.
Wang Wei was really a nice guy. Writing about Yangguan of such condition, he still managed not to let out all the horror scenes and frightening sounds and shrieks. Instead, he wrote with tenderness and ease: "Here, my friend, bottoms up, there will be no friends for you once west of Yangguan." He glanced over the fresh willow trees out of the window of the Weicheng inn, then looked at the luggage of his friend, and flashed a smile while pouring wine from a clay pot. Yeah, let's do another round, my friend. Outside of Yangguan, it will be very hard for you to find an old friend to drink with you like this. That cup of wine, I know, was not refused by Wang Wei's friend. No, not even a hint of hesitation but bottoms up.
This farewell scene exemplifies the demeanor of Tang people. Most of them would not shed tears or piss and moan, no talking friends out of going afar. There was a much wider field in their vision; they had themselves a wide road as their life path. Departures were frequent, they walked away with poise and confidence. Such posture took on even a higher style in Li Bai, Gao Shi, Cen Shen. Among the many portraits painted by artists from different regions and times, it does not take one long to recognize Tang portraits: healthy both in bodily and spiritual expressions, calm eyes, with extreme confidence. When an European sees the smile of Mona Lisa, he or she recalls immediately that her natural self-confidence was born in the heart of those artists who just awoke from the horror of the Middle Ages and started to believe the brightness of the future. The smiles on Tang portraits are even more serene with less inner torments. In Europe, those artists fought a shipwrecking battle and man-handled that smile into the books of history with great stubbornness. It's not difficult to calculate how many years had elapsed between the Tang time and the European struggle. Unfortunately, the Tang Dynasty did not pass the great confidence of their artists to their children. Today the wind and snow at Yangguan appeared sad, even still bearing that uneroding power.
Wang Wei was a true genius both in poetry and painting. The distinctive line between poetry and painting as drawn by Lessing and other Western scholars did not bother Wang Wei a bit as he seemed to stroll back and forth between the two fields of arts with ease. Sadly, the palace in Chang'an only had a very narrow side door for artists who must bow their heads like servants to their powerful masters when getting in and out to provide entertainment for the rulers. The God of History, that old man with long gray beard, was so saddened that he could only look away when confronting such a phenomenon. Then he had to devote to the family records of all the kings and emperors while his hands and head shaking with age and disbelief. In our history, arts were not allowed to take too many chapters, our aspiration and appreciation for beauty are also kept to a minimum.
As a result, the colors of paintings from every corner of the states and kingdoms started to darken. And Yangguan has never received any line of poetry with tenderness and warmth. There have been more men of letters departing for the outside of Yangguan but none of them had been more than who they really were: demoted officials and exiled dissidents.
Oh, even a bowl of earth, a city of stone, couldn't bear the blow of these many deep sighs. Yangguan has collapsed, collapsing in the spiritual land of a people. It has become nothing but a deserted site, a wasteland. Behind it, sand graves are like surges of an ocean; in the front, ice waves are falling down on top of it. Who can imagine, a thousand years ago, this was the place that testified the lofty meaning of the life of many men, and the great field of vision of great artists? Who can...?
There should be some Mongolian horseback guitars playing and Qiang flutes blowing with their distinctive high-pitched sounds of extraordinary beauty and sadness, in absolute harmony with the natural sounds of this particular place that call for total devotion of any man who dares to step on this land. Sadly all those sounds have become the death music of the soldiers. Since the people as a whole couldn't bear to listen to this music, it thus disappeared, gone with the wind.
It's time to go back. It's getting late and more snow seems on its way to come down again.
(Translated from Chinese with thanks to Sanyee Tang for furnishing the Chinese text.)