Of Mortals and Immortals: The Role of Mountains in North America and China - Part One (VIAGGI E CULTURA) ~ di Curtis Dean Smith - TeclaXXI

 

VIAGGI E CULTURA 

CURTIS DEAN SMITH

  

Of Mortals and Immortals: 

The Role of Mountains in North America and China

Part One

    Figure 1: Tunnel View, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite NP

 

Yosemite Valley, in Yosemite National Park, California, is one of the most magnificant places to which I have been.  Tall bare granite cliffs rise above a verdant alpine meadow kept lush by the Merced River, that flows out of the valley and eventually into the San Francisco Bay.  Standing in the valley, Half Dome towers above.  I have been to Yosemite Nation Park many times, but usually as a guide for guests visiting from afar.

I recently visited on my own and had a chance to view the Yosemite Valley from a new perspective – from Washburn Point, high above the valley, where one looks out on Half Dome and other peaks at eye level.  

Figure 2: Half Dome late October 2024

It feels as though one is standing on the top of the world, with nothing but granite mountain tops as far as the eye can see.  Without a single sign of humanity, one can easily forget the social realm.  As I was gazing out in absolute awe when a park ranger came up and commented on the beauty before us.  As we chatted, me pointing to various waterfalls streaming over the smooth white cliffs and he answered my various questions, the topic came up of the recent unexpected and severe federal government budget cuts.  The ranger, whose clothes I now notices were tattered and stained, sighed, but he then waved his hand out towards the valley far below and the mountain peaks beyond and said: “It is unfortunate and will have a destructive impact on our services, but none of that is real; this is real!”

His statement hit me hard!  Suddenly, I remembered how, as a young adult, I used to climb the peaks of the Colorado Rocky Mountains and stare out over the valleys and forests below, restraining myself from acting on my impulse to run off and disappear into the wilderness.  As I now think back on this event, I think of the role that mountains play in the American psyche: beautiful yet harsh wilderness, where one goes to escape the vestiges of society.  Mountains in America are pure and pristine, still a wilderness untouched by humanity, inhabited by bears, deer, and higher up, marmots, mountain goats, and pika, but not humans.

Mountains in China, on the other hand, are not empty; they are crowded.  Chinese mountains are the realm of immortals, as mountains are the closest to heaven; the escape for Daoist recluses and Buddhist monks, as they aspire to immortality (or amorality, anātman) and wish to be far from the social realm; the domain of woodsmen, because they are uninterested in the pressures of the human realm; and finally, the hideout of bandits, because the mountains are far from the arm of the law.  Chinese mountains are pure and pristine as in North America, but they are also locations of human and superhuman spirituality.  In his “Inscription on [my] Humble Hut,” the Tang Dynasty poet Liu Yu-xi (772–842) once wrote: “It is not the height of a mountain [that is important]; if there are immortals, it is renowned.  It is not the depth of the water [that is important]; if there is a dragon, it is divine.”[1] 

                        Figure 3: Fog curls around the peaks of Mt Lushan in Jiangxi province, China

One of the most famous renowned mountains in China is Mount Lu 廬山, near modern-day Jiujiang City, in Jiangxi Provence.  The mountain was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996 and is home to many famous Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian spiritual sites.  It was during the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317–420) that Mount Lu entered the imagination of the literati and began to stound out as religious and spiritual center of activity.

When the Chinese monk Hui-yuan 慧遠 (334–416) wanted to focus on what was to become the Pure Land school of Buddhism, he became the founding abbot of Dong-lin Temple in Mount Lu, and when Lu Xiu-ming (406–477) wanted to focus on compiling the first Daoist Canon, he did so in retreat on Mount Lu.  Friend to both religious superstars was the poet Tao Qian, also known as Tao Yuan-ming (365–427).  Tao had spent the first two thirds of his life pursuing a political career, but after five attempts in official appointments, he finally gave up hope of serving a worthy government and so withdrew to his home in Chai-sang at the foot of Mount Lu. 

---

[1] 山不在高，有仙則名。水不在深，有龍則靈。

CURTIS D. SMITH

Curtis Dean Smith is a Professor of Chinese at California State University, Sacramento. He has a Ph.D in Chinese Language, Literature, and Philosophy from National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan. His areas of specialization include ancient Chinese intellectual history and Classical Chinese poetry. Other interests include playing the Chinese guqin, practicing the Chinese tea ceremony, and building vintage computers. His various publications include Tra il cielo e la terra: poesie nel cinese classico, in inglese e in italiano / A Voyage Between Heaven and Earth: Poems in Classical Chinese, English and Italian, with Barbara Carle, (Milan, 2017, 2nd edition 2019); Classical Chinese Writers of the Pre-Tang Period, Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 358 (Detroit: Gale, 2011); 李白 Li Bai  (a bilingual edition in Chinese and English of critical biographies on Chinese thinkers) (Nanjing, China: Nanjing University Press, 2010), and “Su Shi (1037-1101),” Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism. Ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 139 (Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2012. 73-274).