No More Learning

In the first of his two poems titled e? Returning to Live in the Countryi? he evokes that life which evades public confusion to live in accord with
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? ? ? nature and the true self. Elements of nature, mountains and hills, trees and streams, are mentioned but not described. They are there to point towards the Tao not to analyse it. The names of natural features are designed to evoke the natural framework not to provide complex metaphors. The Vortex is subtly present, as air, water, smoke, mist, and winding lanes. The life described is simple. The human need is in the end the same as that of other creatures, birds or fish. It is the freedom the caged bird wants or the fish in its pool. It allows the mind to achieve e? space and silencei? .
In the second poem it is human transience which is the theme and by implication the continuum of nature. That which has vanished is set against the continuity of that which endures. The myriad creatures are contrasted with the eternal Vortex of the natural world.
His poem e? Drinking the Winei? evokes the inner silence of the Taoist. It endorses the simplicity of life, the satisfaction to be had in
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? ? ? appreciation of natural beauty, the tranquility gained by release from action, the elusiveness and indefinability of the Tao. Wine is a way to release spontaneity, to forget the world, to become part of the Way. It is a formal irresponsibility! The poem points to the unknowable essence of the natural world and therefore of life itself, where knowing what things do never takes us to what they inescapably are, never enables us to get at their whatness, their e? quiddityi? . That they are - is mysterious. Though we push and poke at matter, though we study and analyse process, their reality in the vortex always gleams beyond us. Existence is not an attribute of things. The poem expresses the indifferent placidity of the Vortex. Filled with energy, a raging torrent, it is nevertheless detached, neutral. It is the calm surface without hostility even while it is the ceaseless movement without benevolence. Language and intellectual analysis do not get us closer to the essence. It is beyond mind and
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? words. The landscape of the poem is one of remoteness, minuteness, and rarefaction. The hills are distant, the flights of birds dwindle, the air is thinned. Light is about to fade. e? Blunt the sharpi? says the Tao Te Ching e? untie the knots, dim the glare. i?
e? Reading the Classic of Hills and Seasi? is again a poem of the simple life. e? One glance finds all of heaven and earthi? . Ti? ao Chi? ien points back to a passage from the Tao Te Ching on the virtues of non-action. The way of life recommended is neither spiritually lazy nor parasitic. The Taoist cultivates the land and garden, has an artistic sensibility and appreciation, develops the self but has compassion for others. If tranquility is denied because one is caught in the worldi? s net, it can still be an aspiration and a focus of personal values. e? Without going out, one can know the world. Without looking out, one can see the way. The further we go the less we know. Therefore
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? ? the wise see without stirring, know without looking, achieve without doingi? .
The Taoists frequently tease the Confucians. They see them as compelled to wander about in order to find employment and office, e? perching here and perching therei? . Trapped in meaningless ritual and formal law. Forced to bow to those who are their inferiors in mind and morality. e? Even for a sack of rice a month it is not worth bending to this mani? said Ti? ao Chien. e? Foolish to follow convention and propriety slavishly. i? Confucian benevolence was, to the Taoist, a recipe for intrusive intervention in a world that was beyond human direction. e? As for youi? said a Taoist to Confuciusi? s follower Tz ? Lu, e? instead of chasing after a leader who runs from one place to another you should rather follow those who escape the world entirely. i?
Confucianismi? s articulation of rites and duties is a constriction of the natural self. The intelligent should pursue their own harmony, do not require to be instructed, embrace an intuitive
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? ethics of moderation, and avoid evils by eliminating unnecessary desires. Ss ? -ma Chi? ien the great Han historian tells a story of Confucius visiting Lao Tzu at Loyang and praising the ancient sages. e? Those you talk about are all deadi? replied Lao Tzu e? and their bodies are turned to dust, only words are left. Get rid of your pride and your desires, your insinuating ways and your ambition. They are of no use to you. This is all I have to say. i?
The Taoist stories are of those who reject office rather than disturb their equilibrium. e? Better to be a live tortoise dragging your tail in the mudi? , said Chuang-tzu on being pressed to return to Imperial service, e? than a dead tortoise sacred, and covered with jewels, in a box in the Emperori? s palace. i? Or of fishermen and recluses who laugh at the useless seriousness of the committed Confucian. The legendary fisherman knows that he has to paddle in the worldi? s waters but should still wash eyes and ears in the clear stream of the Tao. He laughs and vanishes.
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? The sense of another world untouched by corruption is at the heart of Ti? ao Chi? ieni? s story of the Peach Blossom Spring, that stream which leads the fisherman to a world of happy immortals living in harmony and having no desire to return to a world they have eluded. It is a story that is akin to the Western tales of worlds of faery, where the marvellous is commonplace and where tragedy is to lose the vision. Here the remote land is lost but remains an aspiration.
There is another story of Confucius and his pupils walking by the river that pours with immense power over the falls, and winds through the rocks. They see an old man, upstream, dive into the foam and vanish and they rush to save him. But there he is standing by the bank, unharmed, streaming with water. Confucius asks him how he could survive the force of the torrent. He replies, smiling, e? Thati? s easy. I go down with the descending currents, and I come up with the ascending ones. i? The Taoist aspiration is to achieve that spontaneity
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? ? and careless calm, to accept, and not to struggle needlessly, to do the minimum in order to achieve the maximum.
The poet Hsi Ki? ang (223-262AD), writing a letter, explains his indifference to office and the attitude of the Taoist individual. e? He acts in harmony with his own nature and stops wherever he is at peace. Some people enter the Court and never set foot out of it. Others go into the mountains and never look back. . . . Wandering among rivers and hills, watching the birds in the leaves and looking at the fish in the water, is my greatest pleasure. . . . Ignoring status and fame, eliminating desire, making my mind still, my greatest goal is non-action. . . To keep to the simple ways, help my children and grandchildren, sit and talk with friends, drink wine, play music, this is the height of my needs and ambitions. i?
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? %? 0? %? ,3? ? ? ? 3,89?
At the end of the sixth century north and south were reunited by northern military power and the Sui Dynasty was founded. Within forty years it was destroyed by rebellion and replaced by the Ti? ang (618-907AD). The Ti? ang Dynasty was one of the great ages of development and consolidation in China. It looked back to other periods of transformation and cultural flowering, the ancient Dynasties of Shang and Chou, and the historical achievements of Chi? in and Han.
The Empire re-established strong central government based on the Imperial Court and on officials, trained in the Confucian Classics for public service. These officials formed an intellectual elite loyal to the throne. The borders expanded and Chinai? s cultural influence extended to Japan in the east and to Korea, and Vietnam in the southeast. Sogdiana and Transoxiana, across the mountains of the Tian
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? ? Shan and the Pamirs in Central Asia, became areas of military contention. Trade routes ran through them to the west and south. Southern sea-routes also stimulated foreign trade and cultural imports, as well as an influx of immigrant traders, artisans and students. Persians, Indians, Syrians, Africans, and Greeks all found their way to the capitals at Chi? ang-an and Lo-yang, introducing a vital cosmopolitan influence. There was substantial contact with Europe and Arabia as well as Persia and India.
It was an empire of around 50 million people and centralisation on the twin capitals gave Chi? ang-an a population of a million people, the largest city concentration in the world, and Lo- yang a population of three quarters of a million. This concentration further unified Chinese culture, and allowed it to rapidly absorb foreign artistic influences, music and dance from Asia, and new verse forms.
Ti? ai Tsung (reigned 626-649AD), the second Ti? ang Emperor, initiated a period of construction
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? both at home and in foreign policy. Border strategy based on strong fortifications encouraged trade along the Silk Routes in Central Asia. The Ti? ang Code of 653AD standardised the laws. The centre controlled and rotated provincial officers limiting the power of the provincial elites. The civil-service examinations were extended to encourage Confucian values and create a loyal cadre dedicated to public responsibility and ethical values. This system encouraged a search for talent though it remained dominated by the famous aristocratic families. Low but comprehensive taxation encouraged economic growth and brought nine million families into the tax system. Unification of north and south was aided by the continuous engineering of the Grand Canal system, built with conscripted labour, linking the Eastern capital Lo-yang to the Yangtze valley and then pushing northeast as well as further south. The canal extended twelve hundred miles with a parallel Imperial road and
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? bridges and with relay post stations enabling long-distance supply of the army.
By the middle of the seventh century China was a dynamic, cosmopolitan Empire, trading internationally, with an ordered agrarian population benefiting from land-share, two massive capitals, an educated, artistic and creative elite, and strong borders. Towards the later part of the century the Court was under the dominance of the Empress Wu, who began her career as a concubine of the Emperor.
She is an example of those women in Chinese Imperial history who from the role of concubine exerted tremendous influence over the reigning monarch, and who gained power for themselves and through the promotion of their families. The monarchy was always vulnerable to the power group from within.
She controlled the monarchy and the succeeding reigns of her two sons, whom she deposed, proclaiming herself Emperor of a new dynasty in 690AD and claiming to be a
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? reincarnation of the Buddha Maitreya as a female ruler. Tough and uncompromising she maintained a robust foreign policy and quelled internal dissent until she was finally deposed in 705 when over eighty and in ill health. The Ti? ang was immediately restored and in 712 her grandson Hs ? ang Tsung, Ming Huang the Glorious Monarch, came to the throne.
For fifty years, in a history that spans four thousand years, Chinese civilisation achieved a peak of cultural sophistication. Ti? ang China is the land of peonies and plum-blossom, moonlight and green jade, where dragons live in the lakes and turn into pine trees, where gauze- sleeved dancing girls glance from beneath green painted willow eyebrows, where peach-trees and mulberries talk to cedar and bamboo. It is the land of silk and cinnabar, cassia and pearl, a country, perfect in the mind, which the West could not have invented if it had not already existed. Tea, fine rain, lake views, gardens with curious rocks, girls with gauze veils and gowns,
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? boxes of tortoise-shell and gold, and also, behind the Imperial splendour, a vast country of villages and farms, mountains and rivers littered with the remnants of earlier dynasties. A land where Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism blended in the civilised mind in complementary subtlety. A land of technology without science, of the seismograph and the armillary sphere, magnetism and the compass, the continuous bellows and steel-making, paper and printed books, the movable stern-post rudder and vast sailing ships. A land of ? ? 907,9? ? and connoisseurs, of painters and poets, of courtesans and concubines, of lute and zither, pipe and drum.
The core Ti? ang territories were in Central China. They lay between the Wei and Yellow (Hwang Ho) Rivers in the north and the Yangtse River in the south. These are the two great water systems that cross China from the high mountains of the west to the eastern seas. On the western side of this central box, the Kialing River runs southwards from hills below the Wei
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? to meet the Yangtze at Chungking. In the centre the tributaries and lower reaches of the Han River also run southeast reaching the Yangtze near Hankow. The Han River therefore marks out the highlands of the west from the flood plains of the east. On the eastern side of the box are the provinces of Shantung and Kiangsu and the Yellow Sea.
While the centres of administrative power lay to the north and west in the two capitals of Ch'ang-an and Loyang, and the great rivers had many obstacles to navigation, it was still possible to travel extensively across eastern and southern China. Imperial roads and canals could be used wherever they existed, as well as the open stretches of the rivers. Li Po in his wanderings visited many of the towns of the north-eastern, eastern and southern provinces, Peking and Kai-feng in the north, Yangchow, Nanking, Kuikiang and Hankow in the south. Routes led to the West also. From Ch'ang-an in Shensi, the western capital on the Wei River, ran
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? the route to Central Asia to the northwest. Across the mountains and rivers to the southwest lay Szechwan and the headwaters of the Yangtze, often a place of exile. The capital of Szechwan, ChI? ng-tu, Brocade City, though it was difficult of access from Chi? ang-an, lies in the Red Basin, immensely fertile land surrounded by hills and mountains. The e? bread- basketi? of China, the Red Basin, was an ancient inland-sea. The Yangtze tributaries were canalised and cleared by Chi? in engineers and labour in 250BC. Canals, dykes and dams regulated the mountain waters to build the silt layers that fertilise the Basin. ChI? ng-tu was later the capital of the Kingdom of Shu (221- 263AD). Li Po, who as a child was brought up northeast of ChI? ng-tu, wrote a poem about climbing the high passes to reach it from the north-east. e? Shu Way is hard! Shu Way is high! Like climbing to Heaven, climbing the Szechwan Road. i?
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? Chi? ang-an the western capital had been the capital of the Han from 202BC, sited a few miles from the previous Chi? in capital burnt to the ground during the rebellion that brought the Han to power. To look back from Sui and Ti? ang to Chi? in and Han was to look back to a time of greatness, to the time of the building of the Great Wall and the expansion of the borders. In Han times Chi? ang-an provided a concentration of rich and influential families, with a common Chinese language and culture, living within a stable centralised system, and the Ti? ang Renaissance recreated this.
Chi? ang-an, (modern Xian or Sian), was sited on the banks of the sluggish Wei River, fifty miles from the junction of the Wei and the Yellow River, north of the Chi? in-ling Mountains and with the Ti? ai-hang mountains to the east. Its periods of stability and continuity were punctuated by the tremors of war and rebellion. Sacked in 26AD by the Red-Eyebrow guerrillas it was re-established in 191AD to be sacked
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? again in 311 and was rebuilt by the Sui Dynasty in 583.
In Ti? ang times the rectangular walled city, its sides oriented to the points of the compass, was laid out like a giant chessboard, a grid of a hundred and eight walled wards closed at night, with markets, Buddhist and Taoist monasteries, and Manichean, Mazdean and Nestorian temples. The outer walls, entered and exited through great gates with flanking towers, were made of pounded earth sixteen metres thick at the base and eight metres high. The rectangle of the city extended over eight kilometres north to south and over nine kilometres east to west, to cover over eighty square kilometres containing a population of a million people. The Imperial City with lakes and pools extended south from the northern wall. Its position placed the apartments of the consorts and concubines in the Yin north. It faced the Yang south and the administrative city that in turn looked out to the city wards. To the northeast of the city was the
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? Ta Ming palace and the Imperial Park. To the northwest of the city was the Emperori? s summer palace. In the southeast corner of the city were the Hibiscus Garden and the e? Serpentinei? Lake. Outside the Western Wall was the Shang-lin complex designed in Han times with gardens, halls and palaces. In one of the ornamental lakes Emperor Wu of Han had built a model of the mythical Pi? eng-lai Palace on the Islands of the Blessed in the Eastern Seas. The southern gate opened out on to a broad avenue that, like others of the cityi? s great avenues, was edged by ditches planted with trees. The Great and Little Swallow Pagodas towered into the sky. In the Ki? un-ming Pool near the city, constructed for Naval exercises was a famous statue of a whale, and near it statues of the Weaver Girl and the Herdboy, whose annual meeting in the starry sky guaranteed the cyclic movement of the cosmos.
The Wei River valley past Chi? ang-an was the main trade corridor from China to Central Asia, a continuation of the Yellow River route
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? from Honan province. Trade goods flowed to and from India and the West along the line of towns and oases forming the Silk Road. Caravans heading west from Chi? ang-an travelled the Kansu e? long corridori? , the great e? valleyi? where the Han race originated, skirting the Gobi Desert to the north and the Nan Shan mountains to the southwest. The Jade Gate, at the old town of Yumen, piercing the Great Wall, allowed them exit to Tun-huang on the edge of the Tarim Basin.
Back through the gate passed high quality raw jade, from the mountains further west, down into China. From Tun-huang they entered the hostile and arid Basin where a number of alternative routes ran west along the northern and southern edges of the Basin's barren Taklamakan Desert. There they skirted the eight- hundred-mile sea of sand dunes, lying between the Tien Shan (Celestial Mountains) range to the north and the Kunlun range to the south. One route passed by Lop Nori? s lake to reach Loulan,
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? where the caravans could provision before heading west along the Tarim River system. Reaching Kashgar at the other end of the Tarim Basin, travellers could then cross the northern edge of the Pamirs via the Terek and other passes to Fergana. Then along the chain of oases, Samarkand, Bokhara, Merv, and on to Baghdad, the Middle East and Europe. This was the trade corridor between Rome and the Han Empire.
Itinerant Buddhist monks joined the caravans along the Silk Road bringing their literature and way of life, creating the Buddhist cave complexes at Tun-huang and K'u-ch'e. They could reach Khotan in the Tarim Basin from the Indus valley to the south by crossing the Hindu Kush, over the frozen eighteen thousand-foot heights of the Karakoram Pass. This route along the south of the Tarim Basin between Khotan and Loulan was the path taken by Hs ? an-tsang the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim in 629AD, who spent sixteen years travelling from China through India and returned bringing
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? copies of key Buddhist texts. His experiences are the theme of one of Chinai? s few long novels, e? The Journey to the Westi? (Xijouyi). Travelling to the south of the Taklamakan, he no doubt experienced the ? ,7,-:7,3 or black hurricane, a dark storm of pebbles and sand lasting for hours. e? At times you hear melancholy wails and pitiful cries, and, between the sight and sounds of the desert, men are confused and lost. So many people die on the way, the work of evil spirits and demons. i?
Manicheanism, Nestorian Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedanism, and Zoroastrianism entered China along the Silk Road. Envoys from Sassanid Persia, Byzantium, and Arabia had reached Chi? ang-an by the seventh century. And as well as the traffic to the west, there was extensive sea-trade with Japan, and coastal traffic with Korea and South-East Asia. China absorbed immigrants and refugees, Arabs and North Africans, pilgrims from India, Turkoman nomads, Jewish and Muslim merchants. Chi? ang-
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? ani? s cosmopolitan population imported foreign jewels and silver, horses and textiles, raw materials and ceramics. It copied foreign fashions in clothing and hairstyles, furniture and art-objects, song and dance. New instruments and musical forms changed the Chinese native models. The Uighurs, the Turkomans of Urumqui and Turfan, produced famous wine, sending the ice-packed golden grapes called e? mares teatsi? and the best musicians and dancers of Asia to Chi? ang-an. Wealth and leisure demanded performing artists in dance, mime, music and song, and Asian songs and ballad forms stimulated new poetic patterns in the works of the intellectual elite.
The rich officials and aristocrats of the city also had second homes in the country. To the south east of the capital was the Lanti? ien (Indigo Fields) prefecture where the wealthy had their extensive retreats in the Chungnan (South Mountain) foothills and along the Wang River. Wang Wei the poet painter had a famous estate
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? here. It was a pleasant place for weary officials to escape to, where they could satisfy the desire to be close to Naturei? s force and beauty amongst relaxing scenery.
Lo-yang the eastern capital, two hundred miles from Chi? ang-an, also had its lakes and palaces, gardens and temples. With a population of three-quarters of a million it stood at the gateway to the great flood plains of the Yellow River. Less well-defended and smaller than Chi? ang-an, but with better water supplies, it was sited on the north bank of the Lo River and south of the Yellow River in Honan province. Built by the Chou it was the Eastern Han capital from 25AD and was sacked along with Chi? ang-an in 311AD though rebuilt in the 490i? s. It too was re- established by the Sui Dynasty. When Empress Wu came to the Ti? ang throne she had a Hall of Light, a Ming-ti? ang built there, to symbolise the power of the dynasty. Three tiered, its lowest tier symbolised the four seasons, the second tier the twelve double hours with a dish-shaped roof
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? supported by nine dragons, and the highest tier symbolised the twenty-four fortnights of the year.
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? %? ,3? ? ? ? ? 3,
The Chinese poets give glimpses of the life of Chi? ang-ani? s Imperial Palace. The beauty of Hibiscus Park, with its memories of the Han consorts. The crystal blinds, embroidered curtains, silk and mica screens of the Imperial apartments and terraces. The lakes and pools with their stone ornaments, fish and dragons. Lutes and pipes sounding through the gardens. The flowered skirts, the jade pendants, the gauze and crimson silks, the slender waists and green- painted willow eyebrows, of girls dancing. Wine drinking in the moonlight. Candles and silk fans, kingfisher covers and carved mirrors. Midnight visits and the exchange of poems. Scented robes and letters on coloured paper. Water clocks and chiming bells. Lacquered trays and cups. Gardens of bamboos and cassia, willows and chrysanthemums, orchids and pear trees. Mandarin ducks and lotus flowers are on the
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? ? waters, orioles are in the trees, butterflies over the grasses. The cry of the phoenix sounds, and eyes are filled with tears. There is a coolness of jade and pearl. There is a rustle of silk over dew- white steps.
Chang HI? ng describes the dancers of Huai- nan. e? Delicate snapping waists, a glow of the lotus flower, shedding crimson flame. Languid hesitant eyes, suddenly blaze with light, skirts fluttering, birds in flight. Gauze sleeves whirl falling snow, weaving the dancing hours, till white powder and willow brows are gone, flushed faces, tangled hair, gathered and held with combs. Gowns of gossamer trail.