“Linked Verse on Changing the Name of Nine Sons Mountain to Nine Flowers Mountain”

Li Bo’s preface to the poem:

Nine Sons Mountain lies in the southern part of Qingyang County. The mountain is several hundred meters tall, and at its top are nine peaks that look like lotus flowers. I consult-ed charts to ascertain its name, but found nothing reliable.

When the Grand Historian went roaming south, it seems he didn’t note it.²²⁵ Its story is absent from the tales of elders and also omitted from the records of noted worthies. Though numinous immortals frequent it, one rarely hears poems or rhapsodies of them. I therefore excised its old name and re-placed it in the Registry with the entry “Nine Flowers.”

At that time I was seeking Dao along the Yangtze and Huai Rivers and rested in the home of Xiahou Huai.²²⁶ We opened up the shutters and didn’t do our hair, just sat looking off at the distant pines and snow. I wrote some linked verse with two or three fellows, one of which I pass on now:

The Very Marvelous splits into yin and yang,

this sacred mountain opens into nine flowers. (Li Bo) Layered hills retard the morning sun,

cliff tops brightening in the young light. (Gao Ji) Snow drifts glisten in ravines as dark as yin,

snow gusts fly from a yang-bright ridge. (Wei Quanyu) All colors shine from the jade-white trees,

hazy, distant, feathered men. (Li Bo)²²⁷

改九子山為九華山聯句 ^并序

“Feathered men,” that is, immortals.

The Very Marvelous, a Marvelous Something (miaoyou 妙 有) — let’s ask Laozi’s great commentator Wang Bi 王弼 (226–

249) about this:

One is the number of beginning, thus also the ultimate state of things. When you call it Marvelous Something, you’re wanting to speak of Something, but you can’t see its shape, so it isn’t Something. When you call it Marvelous, you’re want-ing to speak of Nothwant-ing, but thwant-ings come out from it to be born, so it’s not Nothing. Thus you call it Something. This, then, is the Something that is amidst Nothing. It is called

“Marvelous Something” or “the Very Marvelous.”²²⁸ A Song dynasty geography reports:

This mountain is strange and luxuriant. Its tops protrude through the cloud layer, its peaks unusual in appearance.

They are nine in number, so it was called Nine Sons Moun-tain.

At the summit are several acres of pond, and rice paddy-fields that can support a thousand people. The ponds hold fish, of which the largest are more than half a meter long.

They have large heads and ruddy tails, red fins and crimson

bellies. When people want to see them, they poke a stick in the water, and then the fish jump. Or they throw food into the pond, and when the fish have finished eating, they hide again under water.²²⁹

Fig. 36. A view of the multiple peaks of Mount Jiuhua.²³⁰

Fig. 37. Treasure Hall of the Great Hero (Daxiong baodian 大雄 宝殿) at Mount Jiuhua.²³¹

Chapter 29. Mount Lu

A Lu Mountain song that I sent to Empty Boat Lu I’ve always been that crazy man taunting Confucius,

“Ah Phoenix, too bad you’re too good.”

In this dawn I grab a green jade staff, set out from Yellow Crane Tower

to find immortals in the Five Mountains, who cares how long it takes?

My whole life I’ve loved these mountains.

Mount Lu! You’re more resplendent than anywhere below the Southern Dipper,

Folding Screen Mountain, your nine panels are made of cloud brocade,

and Boyang Lake, bright shadows of black-azure brilliance, Gold Watchtowers, two great peaks sprouting out before you, the Silver Stream that hangs off Three Stone Bridges

gazes at the waterfall at Incense Burner Mountain, a crowd of whirling peaks rising into deep blue sky,

emerald shadows and red morning clouds reflect the rising However far they fly, birds never get across these heavens.sun.

If you reach the summit, you’ll see the border between heav-en and earth

and how the vast vast Yangtze flows off with no return.

Yellow clouds ten-thousand miles, the color of driving wind, white waves at Nine River Junction, mountains of flowing

snow.

I love making this Lu Mountain song, it happened only because of the mountain!

Each time I peer into the Stone Mirror, it purifies my heart and mind,

the places ancients walked engulfed now in dark green moss.

This morning I have drunk the elixir. I’m freed from worldly feelings,

body-mind in harmony. For the first time I am complete in In the distance an immortal in the colored clouds,Dao.

a lotus in his hand, he’s off to pay homage at the Jade Palace.

We’ll tryst in the boundless unknown,

and Lu the Rambler and I will meet and roam Great Clarity together.²³²

Li Bo roamed Mount Lu in 758. Visitors had begun coming two and three centuries earlier, noting that

its peach and plum trees were already fully grown. […]

[Soon] tea was planted along its secluded streams. The Clas-sic of Tea (Chajing 茶經) has recorded the tools necessary for this method of cultivation.²³³

Seven hundred years after Li Bo, this is how Mount Lu appeared to the painter Shen Zhou 沈周 (1427–1509):

Fig. 38. Mount Lu, by Shen Zhou 沈周 (1427–1509).²³⁴ After another seven hundred years it appeared like this to Zhang Daqian 張大千 (Chang Dai-chien, 1899–1983):

Fig. 39. A part of “Panorama of Mount Lu” by Zhang Daqian 張 大千 (1981).²³⁵ At an earlier time Li Bo had said to Mount Lu:

You and I will meet again — I would not dare foreswear this oath. The cinnabar cliffs and green gorges will reflect this vow in their divinity.²³⁶

An Interlude