Hollow Valley Orchid: A Visit to Contemporary Chinese Hermits (Part 1)

 Since ancient times, hermits have existed: beyond the city walls, deep in the mountains, with wisps of lonely cooking smoke drifting after the snow... Two weeks before I set out for mainland China to seek out hermits, someone in Taiwan told me that the Communist Party had long since eradicated all hermits on the mainland along with true ascetics. However, a month later, sitting in that small mud-brick temple with five young monks, gazing at the endless, azure Zhongnan Mountains outside the door, and recording the addresses of hermits, I could only smile. 
 Throughout Chinese history, there have always been people willing to spend their lives in the mountains: eating little, wearing ragged clothes, sleeping in thatched huts, reclaiming land on high mountains, speaking little, and leaving even fewer written records—perhaps only a few poems or one or two elixirs of immortality. They were out of step with the times, but not with the seasons; they abandoned the dust of the plains for the mist and clouds of the high mountains; they were ancient in history yet unknown to the masses—they nurtured the roots of spiritual life and were the most respected people in the world's oldest society. 

 Chinese people have always revered hermits; no one has ever explained it, nor demanded an explanation. Hermists simply existed: beyond the city walls, deep in the mountains, with wisps of lonely cooking smoke drifting after the snow. Since the advent of written records, China has had hermits. 

 The Chinese say their history traces back to the era of the Yellow Emperor, five thousand years ago. The Yellow Emperor was the leader of the earliest tribal alliance in the Yellow River basin known to people today, and later the people of these tribes called themselves Chinese. However, the Yellow Emperor learned how to defeat enemies and prolong his life from two hermits. From 2700 BC to 2600 BC, he ruled for a hundred years. Around the same time, Egypt built its first pyramids. 

 The Yellow Emperor rode a dragon back to the realm of immortals. Afterward, the leadership of China's nascent civilization went through several generations. Around 2300 BC, it passed to Yao. Two thousand years later, Confucius praised Yao as the wisest person because he skipped his own family members and chose a hermit as his successor. In the 3rd century AD, Huang Fumi recorded this event in his work "Biographies of Noble Scholars": 

 Yao yielded the world to Xu You, saying, "The sun and moon have risen, yet the torch continues to burn; is it not difficult for its light to compete? The seasonal rains have fallen, yet irrigation continues; is it not laborious for its benefit? If you were to stand and govern, the world would be at peace, yet I still occupy the throne. I see myself as lacking. Please allow me to yield the world." Xu You replied, "You govern the world, and the world is already governed. If I were to replace you, would I be doing it for fame? Fame is the guest of reality; would I be the guest? The tithe builds its nest in the deep forest, but it takes only one branch; the mole drinks from the river, but it fills only its belly. Return, O ruler, and rest. I have no use for the world! Even if the cook does not manage the kitchen, the priest should not cross the altar and vessels to take his place." (He refused and fled.) 

 Xu You did not accept Yao's suggestion. To clear any lingering influence from this conversation, he washed his ears by the river. But Yao was determined to find a person of excellent virtue, so he approached another hermit named Shun. Shun accepted Yao's abdication and later sought out a hermit to be his own successor. "Biographies of Noble Scholars" recorded this event again: 

 (After Yao received the final succession,) Shun again yielded the world to Juan (Shan Juan). Juan said, "In the days of the Tang clan possessing the world, the people followed without instruction, were encouraged without reward. The world was equal and peaceful; the common people were quiet, knowing neither resentment nor joy. Now you dress splendidly to dazzle the people's eyes, complicate the five tones to confuse the people's ears, and grandly perform the music of Huang Shao to dull the people's minds. The chaos of the world begins from this point. Even if I were to do it, what good would it do? I stand within the universe, wearing fur and skin in winter, hemp and ramie in summer. In spring, I plow and plant, enough to exercise my body; in autumn, I harvest, enough to rest and eat. I work when the sun rises and rest when it sets, roaming freely between heaven and earth with a contented mind. What do I need the world for? Alas, you do not know me!" Thus, he refused and left, entering the deep mountains, where no one knew his whereabouts. 

 The two stories recorded by Huang Fumi were selected from "Zhuangzi" and other works from the 4th century BC or earlier. It seems that since the beginning of recording anecdotes about early leaders of Chinese civilization, the Chinese have simultaneously recorded stories of hermits. For the past two thousand years, they have repeatedly told these stories of hermit rulers—if not striving to imitate them, then regarding them as ideal figures, treasured in their hearts. Of course, dense mountains do not act like humans. But the purpose of these stories was not to create a hermit society—let alone assuming it was possible—they were directed at those who wielded power. The message they conveyed was that the transfer of power should be based on virtue and wisdom, not nepotism. 

 These stories constitute China's earliest political criticism. But they are not just stories: there were indeed people who preferred the wilderness to civilization. This is the foundation of hermit traditions around the world. What makes the Chinese hermit tradition unique is that hermits enjoyed a high status in the society they abandoned. 

 I began to understand the Chinese hermit tradition in 1972. That year, I left the United States and moved to Taiwan, an island province of China. Taiwan is south of Shanghai, north of Hong Kong, and faces the Fujian coast across the sea. Not long after arriving, I began life in a Buddhist temple: waking before dawn to chant scriptures, listening to the bell at night, eating vegetarian meals three times a day, having one room, one bed, one mosquito net, and no money. If my legs hurt too much or I felt "deeply disgusted" with the meditation cushion, I would read. 

 Besides Buddhist scriptures, I also read Confucian and Daoist texts. Those books contained many stories of ancient Chinese hermits living in the mountains. I loved these stories very much. I could understand people who wanted nothing and only wanted to live a simple life: among the clouds, under the pines, outside the dusty world, surviving on moonlight, taro, and hemp. Besides the mountains, they needed little: some soil, a few bundles of thatch, a patch of melon field, a few tea trees, a fence of chrysanthemums, a brief rest during stormy or dark days. From the era of the Yellow Emperor to now, there must have been millions of hermits in China. But when reading their stories, I doubted whether they could exist in the 20th century. Whenever I asked the monks in Taiwan, they assured me that Chinese hermits no longer existed. After a century of revolution, war, and oppression, how could they still exist? But I still harbored doubts. 

 Three years later, I ended my temple life and secluded myself in a mountain village called Bamboo Lake, overlooking the Taipei Basin. At the same time, I began translating the works of some ancient Chinese hermits: Hanshan, Shide, Fenggan, Shiwu, and Bodhidharma. Twelve years later, in the winter of 1987, the ban on travel to mainland China was lifted, and people on the island began visiting relatives and friends they had not seen for 40 years.