South of the Yangtze by Bill Porter (PDF)

Description

Chinese civilization first developed 5,000 years ago in North China along the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. And the Yellow River remained the center of Chinese civilization for the next 4,000 years. Then a thousand years ago, this changed. A thousand years ago, the center of Chinese civilization moved to the Yangtze. And the Yangtze, not the Yellow River, has remained the center of its civilization. A thousand years ago, the Chinese came up with a name for this new center of its civilization. They called it Chiangnan, meaning “South of the River,” the river in question, of course, being the Yangtze. The Chinese still call this region Chiangnan. Nowadays it includes the northern parts of Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces and the southern parts of Anhui and Kiangsu. And some would even add the northern part of Hunan. But it’s not just a region on the map. It’s a region in the Chinese spirit. It’s hard to put it into words. Ask a dozen Chinese what “Chiangnan” means, and they’ll give you a dozen different answers. For some the word conjures forests of pine and bamboo. For others, they envision hillsides of tea, or terraces of rice, or lakes of lotuses and fish. Or they might imagine Zen monasteries, or Taoist temples, or artfully–constructed gardens, or mist–shrouded peaks. Oddly enough, no one ever mentions the region’s cities, which include some of the largest in the world. Somehow, whatever else it might mean to people, Chiangnan means a landscape, a landscape and a culture defined by mist, a landscape and a culture that lacks the harder edges of the arid North.In the Fall of 1991, Bill Porter decided to travel through this vaporous land, following the old post roads that still connected its administrative centers and scenic wonders, its most famous hometowns and graves, its factories and breweries, its dreamlike memories and its mist, and he was joined on this journey by his poet and photographer friends, Finn Wilcox and Steve Johnson. South of the Yangtze is a record in words and black and white images of their trip.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I nice read and musings of someone who obviously love the travel into his “adopted” land. Just wished names of places were in hanyu pinyin so as to make it easy to located them on a modern map.

⭐This is another highly enjoyable travelogue by master translator and raconteur Bill Porter, describing life on the road visiting historic sites related to the most sophisticated and charming elements of one of the world’s most civilized cultures. Bill captures brillantly the contrast between the lesser element of a lesser age and the high culture and literature that has defined his life and loves. A wonderful addition to your library of topics on China or travelogues.

⭐I’m a big fan of Bill Porter/ Red Pine. I have been to China many times, & feel he gets it. He does not romanticize China, ancient or modern; but does have an affection & appreciation of China & its people.

⭐An excellent book written with humor and interesting fact. BIll Porter, the author, is a fine writer with a good sense of the long history of China. There are almost too many facts to learn in this book!

⭐This is a breezy and interesting travelogue about three middle-aged men long interested in Buddhism. As Americans they have had to go abroad to find the roots of their adopted religion. The first-person writer has even learned Mandarin in his religious pursuit. So this time the three friends, in scruffy-casual clothes and beards, head to China in 1991.I am no fan of Buddhism. What I enjoyed is the straightforward description. Travel independently in China and learn all about paranoid cops who want them gone, for the simple reason that freedom of assembly is illegal. Therefore these three big foreign devils with beards and hiking boots, by standing on roadsides to hail a bus or taxi, and attracting a big crowd of local yokels who have never seen Nonchinese of any color, are considered instigators of assembly. Illegal!!!They systematically pursue their visits to ancient temples and birthplaces of holy men. Many such monuments had been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution or if saved, is simply neglected in Communist China. So these three burly fellows have to really push hard and keep trying to find these old obscure places. Locals usually are clueless. The ancients seem to be erased in the public mind. Then finally far behind a rice field or out beyond a bamboo forest is the original home of a great priest or Buddhist writer.They have a plan of what they want to see, and they have loosely mapped it out. Yet in the small details of everyday aggravations and all the price negotiations and lack of hot water or unspeakable toilets etc, we armchair tourists can catch a true glimpse of life on the road in The back roads of China.He does not shirk mentioning Mao’s murderous destruction when they visit his family’s old farmhouse. Interesting that the KMT had destroyed it but that it was rebuilt to the original layout. Mao came from a very comfortable countryside background and travelled about as a young man, often working with Christian missionaries in the poor villages. It was from them that he learned the importance of boiling water for sanitation and the idea of simplifying Chinese writing or even Westernizing the spelling to the Latin alphabet as they had done. He did simplify it and did push through literacy campaigns as the missionaries had begun before.In Nanchang, a big city, they visited the Memorial Hall to the Martyrs of the Revolution. Our writer says that this is a period of Chinese history they knew almost nothing about because they grew up in the Cold War. I laughed out loud at this disingenuous. Here is Bill Porter, a man devoting his life to obscure pursuits in all studies of Buddhism, undertaking a difficult independent trip through a communist country, and even learning Mandarin!!! Yet he never did find out about the Cultural Revolution because his fifth-grade teacher painted Russia and China red on the wall map?!! Puh-leaze! How about admitting that such a horrendous attack on its own history, quite specifically Buddhism, is why he doesn’t WANT to know what Mao and his henchmen and sheeple Red Guards did to the great Tombs, temples and monuments he would like to visit? Which are now mostly neglected and abandoned IF they survived???!He further puts his foot deeper down his throats when he compares Mao’s bloodthirsty genocide–the deaths of millions and utter destruction of culture to the McCarthy era in USA. Did the USA government killMillions by starvation, destroy the intelligentsia, burn down properties by the tens of thousands, send millions to slave labor in the countryside, arrest the doctors and leave people at the hands of barefoot nincompoops, and completely ransack its own historical legacy?!No. it simply told the world that Communism is evil and those pushing its agenda are suspect.In spite of these side comments of fake ignorance (the writer is too educated to play this game), I have to say I enjoyed the book since I too travelled independently in China for one month in 1990. We were two ladies with backpacks on trains and buses and bikes and ferry boats and once a rickshaw. Also an airplane when we could not face another jammed train. So much of what Bill Porter tells you is true travel adventure as one would face in China then: misunderstandings, good food and then bad food, their curious racism (it is there but not always negative…they want to know how we live and think and eat and so on). I have been told by many local Chinese visitors here in San Francisco that things have improved enormously. If you stick to the main cities…. the countryside is still full of HAR WOK.I almost wished I could have read this while I was there those 27 years ago, lost with other big nose foreign devils studying our Lonely Planet guides. Those off-the-beaten-track places where the ancient wise men lived or were buried seem to be in gorgeous remote countryside. With no comprehension of written characters or spoken languages, we could never find them. These three fellows, now getting old, were very very persistent and willing to put up with long walks and long waits and total misinformation in some cases, without giving up, or at least getting some food and beer and sleeping on their frustrated days. I admire this. I was there.

⭐I always enjoy Bill Porter’s books. This one is an account of his 1991 travels around China’s heartland together with two even more prodigiously bearded companions. The prose is gently serene, never wooden or over-complicated. The photographs are excellent. At the time of these travels, Bill had already spent around twenty years immersed in Chinese language and culture, first in Taiwan, then Hong Kong, and he manages to convey this depth of understanding to the reader without lecturing or over-intellectualising. As a result, a certain clarity shines throughout this account, not just in journeys to the out of the way hermitages and caves of long-dead poets, such as Stonehouse and Cold Mountain, but also in more seemingly mundane visits such as to workshops manufacturing ink, ink-stones and porcelain. All in all, a joy.

⭐an interesting if slightly out of date book

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