Incidents (of Travel)

Our first stop on Dong Shan (East Mountain) was Zijin An (Purple Gold Temple). This is a small, well-preserved Buddhist temple, first built during the Tang Dynasty (618–907) and rebuilt during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912). By the sculpting technique used on the faces and clothing of its three main three statues, you can tell they were made during the Tang. At either side of the main hall are the sixteen statues of Buddhist Arhats that are the most well-known part of the temple. Allegedly they were made by the famous Lei Chao and his wife more than 800 years ago. These sculptures represent a traditional, formulaic religious aesthetic, yet for me they also manage to communicate the emotions of everyday life.

We learned that the inkslab craftsman Mr Qian has been working at the Purple Gold Temple for seven years; essentially he is employed to promote the culture and art of the past. Many Chinese citizens have learned about ancient culture through showrooms just like this one, full of inkstones with complicated decorative hollows. Mr Qian has been on television and was interviewed by newspapers and he fully believed what he was doing was marvelous and important. Yet after only a short chat with him we discovered that he actually had no idea of how inkstones should be used for calligraphy.

A local driver told us of a short cut to Moli Peak. By walking through a grove of orange trees, we would soon be on the way to top. Such a peak made us imagine something mysterious and intimidating, as the Chinese letter for Mo means not, and Li means centimetre, so Moli suggests something that is not easy to measure.

Xiao was getting tired and rested in a pavilion. I decided to climb farther. After passing through a small forest, I arrived at an abandoned building with the familiar yellow walls of a temple. Yet there was really no temple at all, only a metal stand for candles and several incense-ash bins. It looked like parts of a temple had flown in from somewhere else. Dark patches on the walls showed the age of the architecture and I imagined how the candles were brought here by old worshippers who came to pray. The temple had gone, yet their prayers stayed.

This young man was the only person we met while hiking up Moli Peak. By now it was raining heavily so we decided to rest and take shelter in a pavilion along the way. We chatted with him and he told us what he did, where he came from, the places he had travelled to and the places he planned to go. It was good to meet a fellow stranger in travel, especially one who was open-minded and talkative. Stories began to emerge. The man was only twenty-three years old and he had left home when he graduated from high school, looking for work in many different cities. It sounded like he had spent a lot of time and effort simply walking and looking, yet he had still not found a place he belonged to. He worked as a security guard at a school in Suzhou for now, and he liked to hike and travelled around the city on the weekends. He had dreams of making some “explosive” things he told us—“this pond is too small for me”. Comparing dreaming with inventing missiles, Xiao and I persuaded him to do something practical, “Missiles kill!”, the man said as he glared at us, with a spark in his eyes as if to say, “but I am a big fish.”

Moli is definitely a more appropriate name for the village than the peak itself! It is a very small village with old-style tile-house structures mixed in with newly-built villas; its narrow lanes are intricate and complicated. You will easily get lost if you come for the first time. For hundreds of years the local people have made their living from cultivating green tea (planted on East Mountain) and freshwater fishery (from Tai Hu lake). Nowadays, more and more travelers come to drink the renowned Bi Luo Chun, and to eat fresh fish and crustaceans. A few people here are getting rich. As we walked down this lane we passed many children on their way back home from school. Suzhou city center is not very far away, and neither is the big modern Shanghai, yet many people prefer to live in this village, leaning on the side of East Mountain and enjoy a slower, but healthier country life.

We knocked on a door in the lane to ask for directions back to Suzhou station. The woman who answered was so friendly that she invited us into her house. She showed us into the living room and invited us to sit,. All the members of the family were sitting around the dinner table separating baby tea leaves from old ones, while chatting and laughing.

It had been a rainy day and it became foggy as it was getting dark. Xiao and I sat in a restaurant by the lake, but we couldn’t see the lake at all. We asked the waiter to turn off the lights so that we could feel more at home in the darkness and fog. We had revisited the old haunt of East Mountain after years and everything had changed. We had expected to find out more about nature, but actually we felt there was more reality in the few strangers we talked to along the way.