HOME: Misty Rain 4

 Zhōngguó

中国

I am not ashamed at my age to stick a flower in my hair.

The flower is the embarrassed one, topping an old man’s head.

People laugh as I go home drunk, leaning on my friends—

Ten miles of elegant blinds raised halfway for watching.

Su Tung P’o

The sifting of knowledge, whether abstract or concrete, seems to be the exclusive occupation of homo sapiens—thinking man. We sort the bits of data, compare, contrast, collate, pattern, pronounce, store some, discard much, and remain ignorant of most. Is there such a thing as ‘water’? Or might it be merely a useful name for H₂ and 0? Perhaps the business of quantum physics is to apply its extremely artificial devices to give some substance to the minutiae our senses will not perceive. Perhaps the business of language is to apply its equally abstract and artificial devices to provide structure to the minutiae our senses perceive. By such elaborate inventions, and at such a cost to the imagination, we succeed in creating a world in which real things are coerced into existence.

But this bit of ratiocination is not getting us to China.

The title of this essay is, of course, ‘China’ written in both pinyin  and logogram. The languages of that peculiar country presents some interesting conundrums for the monolingual Caucasian steeped in the dogma of western civilization. The names of places and people, even when rendered in romanized script, do not come easily to the tongue. The written language—ideograms, ideographs, logograms, characters, whatever—seems undecipherable to most viewing it for the first time. If one believes the Chinese Language Institute, the written form of the language is quite approachable. Not so the spoken language. Too many inflections. We will, regardless, soldier on.

Some knowledge of how Chinese words are transliterated into our alphabet seems necessary at this point. Logograms—the preferred label these days—can be put aside for now. They are included with important terms, but only for completeness. The problem of pronunciation seems more cogent. Two main systems are found: the older Wade-Giles that was created by the British in the late 19th century; and pinyin, created in the 1950s by the Chinese government. The confusion becomes the most frustrating for personal and place names. People change their names at the drop of a hat. Places assume new identities at the whim of the current governor. Southern Chinese do not speak northern Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), and the vast geographical expanse harbors something in the neighborhood of 200 languages (or dialects or whathaveyou).

Simplification seems in order. Beijing seems like a good place to start.

Translated, Beijing  means ‘northern capital.’ Wade-Giles rendered the name as Peking; but the logogram  北京 is pronounced with a ‘B’ and a ‘J.’ Bs and Ps do  sometimes sound similar, as do Js and Ks. Ts and Ds suffer the same fate, as do ‘Z’ and ‘J’. So Zhōngguó is pronounced ‘Jong-gwor.’ Some names and terms have become embedded in English. In future, I will give names in pinyin and then, in parentheses, if appropriate, in Wade-Giles.

Another problem for travelers in China is its geographical expanse. The country sprawls over 3, 704, 410 square miles. From San Francisco to Shanghai is 6100 miles. To expedite matters when traveling long distances (further than I care to walk in two or three days and where travel by boat is not possible; suspend your belief, children, we will be a 1000 years away from cars, buses, and trains), I have borrowed cloud somersaulting from that rascal, Monkey.

The first stop on our journey is the city of Nanchang in Jiangxi province for a visit with master Matsu (Mazu Daoyi, 709-788) at the Youmin Temple. This influential teacher of Chan Buddhism lived and taught at this temple which he helped to establish. He preferred his mountain refuge up on Gonggong Mountain, but the importuning of those who needed his council brought him to the city. This venerable Buddhist figure, it is claimed, was largely responsible for the creation of the Hangzhou school of Buddhism which is a topic we will certainly ask him about.

Nanchang is located in southeastern China, 450 miles southwest of Shanghai and  81 miles south of the Yangtze River on the western bank of the Gan River just below its confluence with the Jin River. Typically, the city was named Hongzhou when it was first walled in 201 BCE, later becoming Nanchang. Then, with a change of government, reverted back to Hongzhou, and then again back to Nanchang.

The city has a subtropical climate with dry and mild autumns, winters that are short and cool, rainy springs, and long, hot, humid summers. Topographically, the province of Jiangxi is characterized by hills and mountains and the Gan River basin, bearing a rather remarkable resemblance to eastern Tennessee and North Carolina with just a few more people. The Chinese province currently contains over 40 million people; North Carolina just 10 million. In 700 CE, 200,000 people lived in the city of Nanchang. North Carolina? Might have been occupied by 100,000 indigenous souls.

Shanghai, in 700 CE was a collection of fishing villages. So the ancient port of Guangzhou on the Pearl River will be our place of entry. Nanchang is still some 480 miles north of Guangzhou. Though the Pearl with its tributaries is the third longest river in China, no direct river access is possible. Tang dynasty monks off to Nanchang from the coast used a combination of river and land routes, often making for the Gan River to get them to their destination. The journey could take two weeks or more.

Cloud somersaulting will take us to Youmin Temple in a heart beat. Simply stamp your right foot, raise your right arm, and presto chango were off like Don Quixote on Clavileño.

Despite the fine print Jiangxi can be found as Jianghan, second province from bottom on right hand side of the map. The city of Huangzhou (Nanchang) is located just below Huainan.

NOTES:

‘Visiting peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune,’ SELECTED POEMS OF SU TUNG P’O. Trans. Burton Watson. Copper Canyon Press. 1994. P40.

Wu Cheng-en, Monkey, a folk novel (New York, New York, 1958), Translated by Arthur Waley.

Yes, I know. Don Quixote's horse was named Rozinante. Clavileño was the name of the wooden horse that featured in the adventure of Part II, Chapter XLI.