The Hollow Valley's Orchid: A Visit to Contemporary Chinese Hermits (Part 5)
The chapter on the western mountains in this book begins with those south of the Three Gorges, then proceeds westward along the Zhongnan Mountains and the Kunlun Mountains all the way to K2, surpassing even K2. Among their mysterious peaks lies the earthly capital of Di (the highest of the heavenly gods), where also resides the home of the Queen Mother of the West (the moon goddess, bestower of the elixir of immortality). Additionally, there are other mountains where shamans collect ingredients, brew their own elixir of immortality, and ascend to heaven; there, even those who die early live for eight hundred years. During this period, they do as they please and enjoy themselves to the fullest; it is the place where the sun and moon sleep; there, everything is possible; the animals there are bizarre, unbelievable, and indescribable.
Recent archaeological discoveries provide more evidence, reflecting that Shamanism was far more important than previously recognized, and the hills and plains north of the Zhongnan Mountains were the earliest home of Shamanism in China. Archaeologist Zhang Guangqi (transliterated) believes that Shamanist sects were the most important component of early Chinese civilization. However, Zhang also stated that to communicate with the spiritual world, shamans often required a little help; in this regard, sex and wine were important, as well as drugs.
South of Lanzhou, not far from the Niao-Shu Mountains, lies a Neolithic village. There, archaeologists discovered a pottery jar containing carbonized buds of cultivated hemp. Paleobotanist Li Huilin believes that the cultivation of hemp originated in this region. Here, it was used both as a textile fiber and as a drug. According to Li in the book The Origins of Chinese Civilization edited by David N. Kupper, "Northern nomadic peoples were practitioners of Shamanism; evidently, they used this plant as a drug and carried it westward to Central Asia, West Asia, India, and other regions. In those places, it was mainly used as a hallucinogen rather than a textile fiber" (pp. 31-32). The four lines from the Chu Ci · Da Si Ming demonstrate the importance of this plant to early Chinese shamans:
One yin, one yang,
None know what I do.
I pluck the sparse hemp's jade flowers,
To give to those who dwell apart.
At the site where hemp was found, a radiocarbon test dated the site to over 5,000 years ago. At the same site, archaeologists also discovered a bronze knife clearly used for sacrificial rituals. This not only indicates that the earliest bronze artifacts found so far belong to China but also reflects the great importance of Shamanism—it could use certain special implements, whereas other secular or pagan rituals could not.
Another even more important discovery regarding the development of Shamanism in China is at the other end of the Zhongnan Mountains. Six kilometers east of Xi'an lies the Banpo site from the Neolithic period. Among the various artifacts excavated there are the earliest forms of Chinese writing and the earliest examples of Shamanist art: a fish-spirit mask of a shaman, and something that looks like the prototype of twin dragons—which Chinese shamans relied upon during their journeys to the heavenly realm.
Throughout the fifth millennium BC, or 7,000 years ago, the Banpo site was continuously inhabited. It is one of the best examples of the Yangshao culture in China. Following the Yangshao culture was the Longshan culture of the third millennium BC. When Yu the Great established the Xia Dynasty at the end of the third millennium BC, he and his ministers could only have compiled the Classic of Mountains and Seas—a Shamanist guide to the sacred world—on the foundation of the Yangshao and Longshan cultures. Although the artifacts unearthed at Banpo and other Yangshao-Longshan sites cannot definitively prove anything, at least we can infer that no later than the fifth millennium BC, someone sought to leave this earthly kingdom to communicate with the spiritual world, and they did so near the Zhongnan Mountains.
So how did shamans become hermits? Until the end of the third millennium BC, shamans still occupied an important position in China's Neolithic culture. However, during the third and second millennia BC, that is, during the period of the initial dynastic states, urbanization and social class differentiation became the main characteristics of these dynastic states. The emergence of urbanization and social class differentiation led to a survival crisis for individuals like shamans. With the development of urbanization and social class differentiation, the decision-making process became increasingly bureaucratic, and this change increasingly cast doubt on the status of shamans. In the book The World of Thought in Ancient China, Benjamin Schwartz summarized and generalized the ambiguous role of shamans in Neolithic society (a society evolving into a higher civilization):
Mircea Eliade defines shamans from this perspective: they possess the power, through experiences of ecstasy or possession, to free their souls from the bondage of the body in order to communicate directly with the gods. Shamans may wander in the world of spirits, or they may endure the possession of spirits through procedures similar to ecstasy (referring to possession). Maspero believed—and I believe he is correct—that during this long process, Shamanism could not adapt to the state religion forming in China. This religion could not have any affection for an independent religious force (referring to Shamanism). Shamanism approached the gods directly through ecstatic experiences, which was considered to trespass upon the official channels of ritualized communication with the gods. (p. 36)
The influence of shamans was overshadowed by the influence of bureaucrats. By analyzing the oracle bone inscriptions of the second millennium BC, Dong Zuobin pointed out that faith in spirits was continuously weakening, and sacrifices to natural gods and mythical ancestors were gradually disappearing. The rituals for communicating with spirits became so ritualized that just as the shaman drank the medicinal wine, his bureaucratic successor would spit it out. This ritualization determined the fate of Shamanism in the court—in the court, the shaman's process of communicating with spirits was replaced by ritualistic behavior. It was believed that these behaviors themselves were efficacious, unaware that they had been severed from their root—Shamanism.
With the development of civilization, shamans began to become closer to the mountains rather than the city centers. The Classic of Mountains and Seas tells us the names of some of these shamans, the most important of whom lived in the Zhongnan-Kunlun mountain range. This marks the beginning of the hermit tradition that continues to this day.
The hermit tradition has endured because the Chinese have always respected the past, and hermits have preserved the most important factor of that 'past'—its spiritual tradition. With the development of civilization, this tradition was neither lost nor forgotten. Quite the opposite, in China, hermits have always been the most respected people because hermits are sages. They can see what others cannot see and hear what others cannot hear.
When emperors, kings, tribal leaders, and leaders of early Chinese culture wished to communicate with natural forces and the gods outside the city walls and within human hearts, they would turn to hermits. Hermits can converse with Heaven. They are familiar with the signs of Heaven and speak the language of Heaven. Hermits are experts in the affairs of both the living and the dead, akin to shamans, gods, herbalists, and surgeons. Their world is much larger than the walled city world. Hermits are not swayed by the various values imposed by illusions and customs; they have always been an indispensable part of Chinese society because they carry the oldest values of Chinese culture. If there is no objection, they represent the past of Chinese mythology and legend, a past no more clearly manifested than in the various faces of the Moon Mountain—whether it is called Kunlun, Zhongnan, or simply the Southern Mountains. In the Classic of Poetry, there is a prayer expressing reverence for the Southern Mountain:
Like the moon in its fullness,
Like the sun rising,
Like the longevity of the Southern Mountain,
Unwithering and uncrumbling.