T’an Yüan-ch’un (1586–1637)
When T’an Yüan-ch’un first met his fellow townsman Chung Hsing in 1604, despite the age difference (T’an was twelve years younger), the two started a lifelong friendship and literary camaraderie. They jointly compiled the poetry anthology Destination of Poetry (Shih kuei), divided into volumes on pre-T’ang and T’ang poetry. Upon publication in 1617, it won them immediate recognition from scholars nationwide, as well as the reputation as founders of the Ching-ling school, named after their hometown in Hu-kuang.
The success of the anthology seems not to have had any positive impact on T’an’s pursuit of an official career. He was admitted to the national university in the capital in his late forties. It was not until 1627, two years after Chung Hsing’s death, that T’an passed the provincial examination with first honors, but all his subsequent attempts in the metropolitan examinations failed, and he died in an inn not far from Peking on his way to another examination.
In literary history T’an was known primarily as Chung Hsing’s younger ally, and his poetry has generally been regarded as carrying to further extremes their critical arguments promoting intricacy and profundity. Ch’ien Ch’ien-i ridiculed the two, especially T’an, as “poetic monsters,” not without some justification. Even at his best, as displayed in our selection here, T’an’s prose, like his poetry, frequently baffles its reader (let alone its translator) with occasional incoherence and obscurity. The Sung writer Su Shih wrote two rhapsodies on his visits in different seasons to the Red Cliff along the Yangtze. T’an accepted a similar challenge in writing about his three visits to Black Dragon Pond.
First Trip to Black Dragon Pond
Most of the resorts around the White Gate1 are on the waterfront. The Swallow Rock2 is a nice place for sightseeing, but it is too far away. Among the lakes worthy of a visit, Mo-ch’ou3 and Black Turtle4 are nice, but they are outside the city wall. Among the rivers worth seeing, the Ch’in-huai5 is nice, but too many people go there, day and night.
Now, Black Dragon Pond is inside the city, it is within easy reach by sedan chair, and, unless they really have some related business, gentlemen and ladies hardly ever go there; hence it is free from all three shortcomings of the other places. In 1612 I passed by the place and took a cursory look at it.
In 1619 my friend Mr. Mao Yüan-i6 happened to have a veranda constructed above it. The veranda was not yet walled up. To its left there was a tower that was yet without its windows and balustrades. Both a gazebo on the waterside and a jetty paved with bricks were beginning to take shape. So he invited me to go there to have a look.
We ascended the tower; there was not much to see except the green mountain ridge in front, the verdant mounds around the pond in the back, and the deep and quiet pond itself. A neighbor’s boat emerged, from aboard which Mr. Sung Hsien-ju and Mr. Fu Ju-chou looked at us, moving back and forth across the autumn scene.
Mr. Mao said, “Early autumn is nice weather. I shall ride the high tide with you, not in a boat, but on a raft.” The raft, structured like a canopied tent, was being built on a wooden scaffold consisting of red-painted posts. The work was completed in three days.
Second Trip to Black Dragon Pond
The water of a pond should be clear. Woods reflected in the pond should be still. A raft should be steady. A gazebo and a veranda should be bright and open. On the Seventh Evening the River of Stars in the sky should be visible, and those who celebrate that evening should be at leisure and feel unrestrained.1 Yet the Creator surely isn’t making all those nice things for my sake, or is He?
Mr. Mao is a native of central Yüeh, so his servant boys are good at using punt-poles and oars. When we came to midstream the wind turned furious, so we could not make it to the headwaters. In a short while we arrived at the fishing dock, had the raft moored, and cast our fishhooks.
A drizzle soaked the canopy,2 but no one wanted to go ashore. After a while it started pouring. All seven gentlemen and six courtesans stood under the canopy, each holding an umbrella, but their clothes still got wet. A windstorm started, and the pond turned wild. Scared, the courtesans rushed ashore, taking no thought of their silk gauze stockings. The gentlemen also moved up to the new veranda.
We had barely sat down when a rain flew down from the treetops. It whirled around us all the time. It splashed on the pond, but seemed to be hitting against it rather than pouring into it. Suddenly a thunderclap burst forth. The courtesans all covered their ears and tried to take refuge deep inside. Lightning and thunder came one after the other. The lightning was even more spectacular: its dazzling light shot twenty-five to thirty yards deep into the water, sucked in the light of the waves, sent it back up to the raindrops, and flashed like gold, silver, pearl, and shell for quite a while.
I doubted whether one should ever build a house by a dragon’s cave in a pond and was in constant apprehension. Everything changed so suddenly that I could neither hear the laughing and talking of others nor see anything in the somber darkness; a pandemonium seemed to be close at hand. And yet some gentlemen who had gusto were enthusiastic about it. So we lit up the lanterns and started drinking, and found it somewhat easier to stand against the vital force of the wind, rain, thunder, and lightning. A courtesan suddenly arrived in the dark; only then did I realize that the vast chaos was all over the pond, or perhaps it rose right from the pond itself. On being asked about the conditions on her way here, the young lady replied that it was not like that everywhere. Wasn’t that strange indeed?
The one who initiated the party was Mr. Wu Ting-fang from Tung-t’ing, and the six guests were Mr. Mao Yü-ch’ang, Mr. Hsü Wu-nien, Mr. Sung Hsien-ju, Mr. Hung K’uan, Yüan-i, and myself; plus Ting-fang, that made us a group of seven.3
Third Trip to Black Dragon Pond
When I made my first trip to the pond, I turned left at the Overland West Gate1 and walked along the inside of the city wall. Reeds grew into a jungle there, but I could catch glimpses of the pond in the spaces between them. During my second trip there on the Seventh Evening, I saw on my way along the city wall first a stretch of weeping willows, then a stand of bamboos, and when the bamboos came to an end, there appeared the green reeds, extending all the way to the gardens.
Five days later Hsien-ju called for another party. Yüan-i, sitting up in his Luxuriance Tower, was not there yet. Mr. P’an Ching-sheng and Mr. Chung Hsing had arrived from Luchow. The Lin brothers and I had come southward, following a footpath from the Hua-lin Garden and Lord Hsieh’s Mound.2 We all gathered by the pond. The spirit of the pond had once made its power felt, and a shrine to worship it was built there.
The ridges of the encircling hills were undulated. From high up, beyond the tops of the trees, a waterfall fell into the pond. Cooler Hill3 looked like a belt. At its back there was an overgrowth of shrubs where water also flowed into the deep pond through troughs from the houses around it, so the pond was as deep in winter as in summer. Although the tower was more than ten yards away, it looked as if it were standing right in the pond.
The raft could go anywhere on the pond, so it was almost like staying in a waterfront veranda. North of the pond, the lotus leaves were not yet withered and were just sending forth an autumnal sweet scent, so we gave instructions to move the raft there first. But then we fell in love with the woods across the pond and the dots of crimson walls that decorated the dark emerald, so we had the raft moored there instead.
When we first went ashore the foliage seemed impenetrable, but then we suddenly found a path and after a while we climbed atop the ridge. Beyond the hills were wilderness and quadrangular ponds, distant lakes and nearby gardens. Pointing at the view, Mr. Sung said to me, “This is indeed a hideaway fit to live in. If one could build a house at the foot of the hill, open a path leading up the hill, look down upon the clear and open pond, and take in the greenness in the front and back, one would not regret getting old here in a world of peace!” After a while Mr. Mao arrived, and he was also told the idea.
At that moment the setting sun was being trailed by the moon, and colorful clouds rose in all directions. In the crimson light the earth turned watery, and the sky glowed with various colors. At first the red light was at the waterside. Then it went over the left half of the pond. Then it rose beneath the lotus leaves, and in a short while the entire pond turned red. With the bright clouds in the background, the five colors mixed with one another in variegation.
We descended the hill and looked for the raft. By then moonlight was already waiting for us over half the pond. So we punted the raft back and had it moored under the weeping willows by the new gazebo. We looked at the moon that drifted over the waves; several tens of its golden beams reminded me of the reflection of lightning on the Seventh Evening. The drooping branches of the willows prostrated themselves in front of the moon. Oh my friends, on a bright evening like this, would you ever recall the wind and rain at our last party?
We helped one another climb up the tower, looked all around, and forgot to leave. A lantern happened to light up in the lush foliage; it was quite lovely. Someone said, “This is the lantern from a fishing boat.”