China Trip Notes, Chapter 2: Cold Mountain (05.22.2008)

Children, I implore you
Get out of the burning house now.
Three carts await outside
to save you from a homeless life.
Relax in the village square
before the sky, everything’s empty.
No direction is better or worse
East is just as good as West.
Those who know the meaning of this
are free to go where they want.

--Hanshan, 7th century, from Poem 253, translated by Red Pine

It is Thursday morning in the 2500-year old city of Suzhou (pronounced Sue-Joe.) Wikipedia tells us that Suzhou is located on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Lake Taihu in the province of Jiangsu, China. One of the oldest towns in the Yangtze River basin, with a current population of around 6 million, it was originally called “The Great City of He Lu,” after the king who founded it in 514 BC (!). Suzhou is especially noted for its stone bridges, pagodas, and incredible gardens (more on those later.) It’s a main center for the silk industry, and one of the cities located on the thousand-plus-mile Grand Canal, the longest canal in the world, completed in the 6th century AD and stretching all the way north to Beijing. This location, on an important ancient trade route, is one reason why Suzhou is the fifth most prosperous city in China (with a few bad moments, having been sacked in 1130 by the Jin and again in 1275 by the Mongols, and severely damaged in the 1860 Taiping Rebellion and the 1937 Japanese invasion.) Since the 1980’s the city has been the site of a lot of restoration, and some of its classical gardens are on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, (including the Humble Administrator’s Garden, which is on the Top Ten.) Suzhou has a very strong cultural heritage, with its own dialect and regional cuisine as well.

Our first hotel in Suzhou (Suzhou Pinghe Hotel) was on the outskirts of the city, in an area called Maple Bridge.You can see the canal, and the very picturesque marine vehicles traversing it, from the hotel. The hotel appears to be brand new; but oddly, it is situated up against a military base on one side and a series of hovels in a very poor neighborhood on the other. The hotel was still under construction (as we found out the next morning, when they started banging bricks around and cutting pipe at 6:30 in the morning.) The rooms were modern and well-equipped, but had some curious features; the bathrooms within the rooms had glass walls, so there was absolutely no privacy between roommates; the shower heads were not above the tub, but next to the tub faucets, and they were pull-out deals like the ones we have in kitchen sinks -- so you had to sit in the tub in order to shower (unless you wanted to spray water all over the bathroom.) The group meals were taken in an area off the lobby; various stir fries, rice, steamed breads and dumplings of various sorts; and in the morning, fried eggs and instant coffee for the westerners.

Coyotebanjo and I had awakened early, and went for a walk. We passed the hovels, all of which had little carefully tended vegetable gardens in front of them and in the patch of land across the drive. I paused to observe the beautifully tied bamboo trellises. The occasional small child stared at us; a yellow cat snoozed on a rickety chair. Since this part of the town is fairly modern, we were actually on a quest for a coffee place, which we did not find; however, we did see boats on the canal; an old woman sweeping the street with her Chinese-style straw-broom; and an old man doing Tai Chi in his back yard. The streets were just getting busy (it was not yet 8 AM). We saw various parks, and observed a sign indicating that “Hanshan Si” (a temple) was within walking distance. Hanshan, as in Cold Mountain, as in Zen poetry – down the street, two kilometers? We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Since this morning was “free time,” we resolved to go there after breakfast, and headed back to the hotel, where we ate; in my case, fried rice with egg and veggies in it, some steamed-bread-buns like the Tibetan monks in Bloomington make, a fried egg, and some instant coffee; and then Coyotebanjo, Coop and I set off for Hanshan Si.

The three of us decided that we would walk, and set out from the hotel, onto the main road, and over the bridge. It was tropically hot, and I would describe the air as being something between soggy and waterlogged. We got to the general area, sweating buckets of course, and paused first to have some fun poking around in the shops. These little markets sell everything from silks to teapots to embroidery to musical instruments, most of it aimed directly at the tourist trade.

I greatly appreciate traveling with Coyotebanjo and Coop. They are the original “No Whining” travelers. They inspire me to get past being half-dead from heat prostration, and to see the humor in being passed a dish of Eel Paste. They have no shyness about talking to vendors, meeting people, or buying bottles of stuff to drink that only have Chinese lettering on them. If it looks good, they’ll chance it, and if it tastes like lukewarm tonic water or tea with 4 packets of Splenda, they’ll just chug it down anyhow.

Having refreshed ourselves with some of these mystery beverages, we left the market, and entered the gates of Hanshan Si: Cold Mountain Temple.


Most people know of the Hanshan Temple because of an extremely famous poem written by 8th century poet Zhang Ji (“The Boat Anchored at Maple Bridge at Night,” or “The Night Mooring at Maple Bridge.”) In Zhang Ji’s poem, which appears regularly in Asian poetry anthologies and the textbooks of Asian school kids, the sound of the Hanshan temple bell figures prominently:

月落烏啼霜滿天，
江楓漁火對愁眠。
姑蘇城外寒山寺，
夜半鐘聲到客船。

Yuè luò wū tí shuāng mǎn tiān,
Jiāng fēng yú huǒ duì chóu mián.
Gūsū chéngwài Hánshán Sì,
Yèbàn zhōngshēng dào kèchuán.

As the moon sets,
a crow caws from the frosty sky;
the river maple and the fish boat torch
answer the sleeping sadness.
Outside Suzhou city,
the sound of the Han Shan Temple’s midnight bell
reaches the ferry boat.

(translation from Wikipedia)

However, to Zen practitioners, Hanshan Temple is more famous because of Hanshan himself, a 7th century Bodhisattva poet-monk whose name means “Cold Mountain.” Jack Kerouac dedicated his book “The Dharma Bums” to Hanshan, and poet Gary Snyder translated a number of Hanshan’s poems (although the first complete English translation of all the poems was published in 2000 by Red Pine, titled The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain.) The temple here in Suzhou, in which we were (incredibly) standing, was the residence of Hanshan and his disciples Shide and Fenggan.

The temple was very beautiful, quite a moving experience. There is a two-story pagoda; golden Buddha statues; a fantastic building with a huge Kuan Yin statue and “500 Arhats” room; various temple buildings (mostly white with black, brown, gold trim, and the stunning, characteristically Chinese curved and tiled roof architecture). There is another building with large statues of Hanshan and Shide. The grounds were very crowded. Monks in orange-brown robes, obviously affiliated with the temple, moved around and about the various buildings, which are built in such a way that they catch the breezes, despite the heat. As with all the temples and gardens I saw, water and stone are important parts of the landscaping; in this case, there is a pond with a bridge and various goldfish and carp swimming below.

Did Hanshan really exist? There is apparently some debate about that. I have no idea if he really existed (or if I do, for that matter.) Whether Hanshan existed or not, he exists here in this temple, as do the poems he wrote on the rocks and trees of Suzhou.

And the temple bell still rings (not the original one, but one presented to the temple by the Japanese a hundred years ago.) People file in and out of all the altar-buildings, bowing three times and praying. I’m not talking about tourists, here, or new age trekkers; I’m talking about the Chinese people. Hundreds of them. People who just lost 80,000 friends, relatives, and fellow citizens in one of the worst quakes in living memory.

Since I came to Cold Mountain
how many thousand years have passed?
Accepting my fate I fled to the woods,
to dwell and gaze in freedom.
No one visits the cliffs
forever hidden by clouds.
Soft grass serves as a mattress,
my quilt is the dark blue sky.
A boulder makes a fine pillow;
Heaven and Earth can crumble and change.

--Hanshan, 7th century, Poem 26, translated by Red Pine