No going back, or, youthful bravado at the Baochan Mountain Cave.

• Author: Pease, Jonathan

Wang Anshi's travelogue about the Baochan Mountain Cave is best known as a stern plea to ignore the throng and explore our surroundings. Pithy and plain, almost devoid of description, it has been anthologized, translated, annotated, and held up as a model essay for young people to learn from. (1) Yet--and this may be part of its appeal--it also exhibits an off-kilter quality, a sense of incongruity that nags around its edges. The oddness sharpens when we ask a rather obvious question about Wang's outing. An answer to that question may be found by decoding what seems to resemble a clue, set in plain sight within a single word. Could Wang's stern lecture contain remnants of an inside joke? Does his spirit of delving for knowledge extend to analysis of word-play--always a risky philological method? As a step toward approaching these issues, it might make sense to look behind the essay and try to reconstruct the trip: who the explorers were, and what they were doing there.

The year was 1054. Wang Anshi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1021-1086)--who would later become Grand Councillor, architect of state reforms, compiler of new glosses on the Classics and the lexicon itself--was thirty-three, living at home in Jinling [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (modern Nanjing). He had recently finished a two-year stint at Qianshan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], up the Yangzi River in what is now Anhui province, as assistant prefect (tongpan) for Shuzhou [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]. During his Qianshan appointment he had written a sizeable number of poems, and some essays, that depict him seeking affirmation or guidance from the wellsprings, brooks, peaks, and pools that he saw on his official rounds. His younger brother Wang Anguo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (1028-1074) accompanied him on many of these excursions. Sometimes they wrote poetry together, most notably two long rhyme-jousts inspired by the mysterious hauteur of the Jiuhuashan mountain range. (2) The final and best-known of these explorations of truth from the Yangzi River landscape came on a midautumn day when Wang and a group of intimates went upriver about fifty miles from Jinling to Hanshan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], where they explored a cavern at Mount Baochan: (3)

RECORD OF AN EXCURSION INTO BAOCHAN MOUNTAIN

Mount Baochan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is also called Mount Hwah [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], or "Flowering Mountain." Huibao [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], a Tang-dynasty man of Buddha, first built a dwelling at its foot and in the end was buried there, for which reason it was later called Mount Bao-Chan, i.e., "the Mountain of Chan Master Huibao." What is now called the Huikong Chan Monastery was Huibao's hut and tomb.

Five leagues east of the monastery is what is called the Huah-Yang Cave, thus named because it is on the yang or south side of the afore-mentioned Mount Hwah, or "Flowering Mountain." About a hundred paces from the cave, a stone tablet lies toppled across the path, its inscription blurred and bleary, the only characters on it that are still recognizable being Hua shan [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], or "Flower Mountain." The current rendering of "Flowering" (hwah) as in the phrase "Flowering and Fruiting" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], is likely a garbled pronunciation. Down in that flat, broad area, a spring gushes out sideways, and visitors have left a substantial number of autographs and records: this is what is called the Front Cave. But up the mountain, five or six leagues in, sits an opening dark, deep and absolutely frigid to enter. When asked its depth, even the heartiest explorers have not been able to plumb it. That is what is called the Rear Cave.

I went in with four others, carrying torches. (4) The deeper we went, the harder it was to move forward and the weirder the sights became. One person who had grown slackish (dai [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) and wanted to leave, said "If we don't exit now, we will use up the torches!" So we all came out with him. (5)

We probably had spelunked less than one-tenth of the distance that those heartier explorers had reached, yet even so, when we looked on either side within the cave, those records left by visitors had already grown sparse. Most likely even fewer people had reached the greater depths. At that point I had still been strong enough to go in farther, the torches still held enough light, and after we came out there was some blaming of the person who had wanted to turn back. I too felt Regretful (hui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) that by following him I had not got my full complement of fun from our exploration.

And that made me sigh! Ancient people learned so much from watching sky and earth, mountains and streams, grass and trees, fish, insects, birds and beasts, because their deep curiosity extended everywhere. Flat places close at hand attract travellers aplenty, but few go where it is dangerous and far. Yet the strangest, grandest, most grotesque and unusual sights of this world are often found in those dangerous, far places that people seldom reach. People without a strong will (zhi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) cannot reach those places. Nor can those who do have the will, do not stop just because others stop, but lack the physical strength. Nor can those who have both will and strength, do not turn slackish just because others do, but have nothing to guide them once they reach the dark, confusing depths. When it is someone else who does not reach those places even though he has the strength, we might poke fun at him; when it is our own self, we feel Regret ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). However, if we have fully used our will, even if we do not actually reach the goal, Regret can be absent ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), and who would ever poke fun at us? This is what I learned.

And by that toppled stone slab I grew distressed that the ancient writings are not preserved. Who can count how often posterity has garbled what was handed down to it, until no one even knows the name? That is why people of learning have no alternative but to think deeply and make their choices with great care.

The four men were: Xiao Jungui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (or Junyu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), of Luling; Wang Hui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (or Shenfu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), of Changle; along with my younger brothers Wang Anguo [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (or Pingfu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), and Wang Anshang [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] (or Chunfu [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]).

Recorded by Mr Wang of Linchuan, on the ___ day of the seventh month, in the first year of Zhihe [1054].

There really should be no hidden meaning here. Wang sets his point in full view, and reinforces it by constantly repeating two words: wei [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "this is what is called" (five times), and zhi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] "reach" or "attain" (ten times). The message seems to be that we should learn to look; not just accept what things "are called," but wade straight into the landscape, to physically "reach" every corner. We must be accurate, vigorous, and not succumb to others' inertia. Human beings, "slackers" by tendency, will mistakenly call a mountain "Flowering Mountain" for generation after generation because this is "what it is called," even while they literally stub their feet against a fallen stone that labels it "Flower Mountain" in big script. After centuries of that kind of inattention, people stop using even the wrong name, because it too is forgotten. Instead, the working name becomes "Monk Huibao's Mountain," after someone who happened to live there once. Within the mountain hides a natural landmark that can demonstrate how such laziness occurs: a cave whose freezing darkness saps travellers' interest, so that they turn back the minute their least ambitious member decides he has had enough. Consequently they never see the wonders within. How shameful compared to the ancients, who amassed their knowledge--their legacy to us--only by taking dangerous paths, ignoring warnings, criticisms, and whining. They cultivated Strength, maintained their Will, and in the end "reached" the depths.

These depths seem to be more physical than metaphorical. When Wang mentions knowledge about the physical world, it may be misleading to assume that he takes moral, ethical or emotional exploration as the main area of the ancients' daring sorties. The word zhi [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] ("reach") should indicate that knowledge is something we literally go to. Lazy, hearsay information, things that people talk about (wei [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]), will lead to nothing real. Wisdom comes from listening to birds, watching beasts, climbing hills, and--while we are at it--calling actual things by their right names. It is indeed a sober charge Wang has left for posterity, and he joins Ouyang Xiu, Liu Chang, and other serious Confucians in giving us this command, tinged as it is with three mentions of "Regret" (hui [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]). (6)

Such is the cave's general message: succinct, sincere, reinforced with time-honored literary techniques. But a sense of unease persists. Rather like Su Shi's "Second Red Cliff Rhapsody," in which the poet suddenly ditches his guests to scramble up a bluff on an awkwardly spooky evening, the Baochan piece seems to have left something unsaid. (7) This is not a matter of neglecting to describe the cave: cursory or non-existent descriptions are fairly common in Tang and Song travel pieces. Something else seems to be causing the oddness--perhaps a problem with knowing how to gauge the essay's attitude and tone. To put it bluntly, it can be hard to read this piece without asking a basic...