Last weekend, at the height of the demonstrations, we
were taken on a weekend tour to Qu Fu, the home of Confucius, and the sacred
Mount Tai. It was wonderful to get away
from the city, the smog, and the problems on campus. It was so quiet I could hear myself think
again.
Quaint old Qu Fu is positively the cleanest place I’ve
seen in China.
The Kung family, descendants of Confucius who account for
one-third the population of half a million, still has a strong influence on the
life of the town. The Kungs agreed to a train station. But that is as far as they would go to
modernize the town. The only forms of
public transportation are brightly coloured horse carriages. Six passengers face each other across an
aisle. Once it gets going, you really
have to hang on. The open-ended carriage
tilts backward at a 45 degree angle, and you feel you are about to slide off. Nobody ever does. There are also sedan chairs, which make you
sea-sick.
I did not realize how much I missed mountains until I saw
them on the horizon as the train left the plains. Mount Tai has fascinated me since I was a
child. Some of the poetry about it I
learned long ago has stayed with me. The
mental picture I had of it was of dark craggy peaks, surrounded in cloud and
mist; of ancient twisted pines, and birds.
I had completely forgotten it was May Day and a public holiday. The crowds were enormous. The narrow flight of stone steps, cut into the
mountain leading to the peak, was a Jacob’s ladder. The mountain sides are quite heavily
forested, so the view is restricted. All
along the way there are small temples and shrines, and calligraphy both ancient
and modern, carved into the living rock.
There were poems by Li Bai and Tu Fu, calligraphy of emperors, and even
a few lines by Mao hidden away in a small shrine. I enjoyed reading these inscriptions, which
were lost on my companions, who were most interested in racing up the mountain.
The path is not difficult, but steep at times and the
steps uneven. It took me four and a half
hours to get to the top. I stopped
frequently to look at a carving here and a shrine there, and to catch my
breath. I am no longer in a hurry. The tops of the mountain would make Confucius
weep. When he stood on this peak
centuries ago, he said the world could be seen from that spot. Twenty centuries later, Mao stood on the same
spot. When he was asked his thoughts, he
said, “The east is red.”
Today’s visitor sees the replica of a small Qing dynasty
town, with several restaurants, a hotel and numerous antique and souvenir shops
displaying American Express signs. There
was a great din. Hawkers hawing, radios
blaring, children screeching.
Pickpockets were rife.
At the crest of the mountain there is an ancient
temple. I nearly had my wallet lifted as
I queued for a ticket to get in. I felt
the wallet being lifted from my pocket, wheeled around and collared the young
man behind me. Perhaps I reacted quicker
than he expected, or he was hemmed in by the crowd and could not get away. I shook him until his teeth rattled, and he
dropped the wallet. Afterwards, it was
my turn to shake. I had become separated
from my companions. There were three or
four of them and one of me. So I hailed
a policeman, who probably knew them anyway.
It was a wise move. There was no
more trouble after that, but I had lost interest in the temple.[1]
Michael David Kwan. Broken Portraits, entry for 8
May, 1989.
[1] Michael David Kwan, Broken Portraits: Personal Encounters with Chinese Students (San Francisco: China Books, 1990), pp. 111-113.
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