The Road of Tang Poetry in Eastern Zhejiang

The Road of Tang Poetry refers to a route that zigzags through the poetic beauty and history in eastern Zhejiang, picturesque coastal province in eastern China. A great number of poets of the Tang Dynasty (618-907) came to this part of Zhejiang. This phenomenon is regarded as a miracle in the history of Chinese culture.

The route connects the picturesque Kuaiji Mountain, Siming Mountain and Tiantai Mountain in the province. The departure point is Xiling, called Xixing Town today and part of Hangzhou, on the south bank of the Qiantang River. From there the route reaches Shaoxing by the canals and Jianhu Lake, goes east to Cao’e River, and then meanders southward to Shanxi and Shiliang and Huading via Wozhou and Tianmu Mountain. This is the major route. There were two other minor routes with equally breathtaking sceneries. The eastern route takes a canal in the eastern Zhejiang, passes the north of Siming Mountain before it reaches Ningbo and Zhoushan. It then turns south to reach Fenghua, Xinchang and Tiantai. The western route includes the famous Shanyin Path, Orchid Pavilion and Five Waterfalls in Zhuji before it snakes back to Xinchang and reaches Tiantai.

In those climaxing years of the Chinese poetry, the most part of the route could be reached by boats.

Li Bai (701-762), an all time Chinese poet, visited Zhejiang four times in hisyears as a poet. He traveled along the route on three of his four journeys and reached Tiantai three times. One of his most memorable poems was written here. He even thought of retiring to eastern Zhejiang in his twilight years. Du Fu (712-770), another great Tang poet, traveled in Eastern Zhejiang for four years. Liu Changqing (709-c780), a key poet of the dynasty, lived in Wozhou for eight years.

In those years, coming to Zhejiang was one of the life’s musts for poets. Textual researches indicate that, of the 2,200 poets whose poetries are anthologized in the “Complete Poetry of the Tang”, 450 traveled this route in eastern Zhejiang, that is, 20 % of the poets in the country came to this part of Zhejiang. It is believed that this is an amazing phenomenon in the history of Chinese culture. They wrote more than 1,500 poems about this part of Zhejiang.

What did eastern Zhejiang hold for these poets?

Yu the Great was a legendary king of ancient China in its dawning years. He brought floods under control here and his great mausoleum is in Shaoxing. Gou Jian, the king of Yue State in Warring States period (403-221BC), rose from defeat and humiliation to defeat his archrival and recovered his kingdom. It featured the gorgeous beauty of nature. It was where the Chinese landscape poetry originated. Xie Linyun (385-433) lived here. He and his friends traveled in no man’s land of beauty and created nature poems, something unseen before in history. The Tang poets followed his steps to see nature that inspired poetry hundreds of years before. It was the home to the southern sector of Buddhism which first prospered in China in the Han Dynasty. Since the Eastern Jin Dynasty (316-420), the poetic beauty of eastern Zhejiang attracted Buddhist monks. Tiantai played a key role in the prosperity of the religion. Tiantai Mountain also gave birth to a famous legend of the Han Dynasty. Two men lost their way in the mountain and ran into two immortal fairies. They spent half a year with the immortals before they left for home only to find that ten generations of people had come and gone. Zhuang Zi (c.369-286BC), a famous scholar, wrote famously about an angler fishing in the East China Sea with a long pole and waiting for years before he finally landed a giant cod fish. Wang Xizhi (303-361), arguably the greater master of Chinese calligraphy, retired to eastern Zhejiang. On a fine spring day, he invited his friends to a gathering on a stream at Orchid Pavilion, Shaoxing, and wrote one of the greatest Chinese essays in memory of the occasion. And there are more.

What did these poets do in eastern Zhejiang? Some came to experience the natural grandeur, some came to enjoy a leisurely life far away from the madding world, some worked here or traveled on business, some came to explore its geographic features, resources and lifestyles, and some dreamed of it from far away. The poems they wrote about their sojourns and sightseeing are colorful and memorable part of Chinese poetry. Their footsteps and their stories in eastern Zhejiang become another part of history and culture and local folklore.

Modern scholars in Xinchang County first noticed the preference of the Tang poets in the 1980s. After systematically tracing their footsteps and doing thorough textual research, the scholars identified the three routes. Their discovery and their identifying the routes as the Road of Tang Poetry in Eastern Zhejiang have been widely recognized by the academic circles and a few national and international seminars have been held in Xinchang on the theme. The regional phenomenon reflects the cultural prosperity that eastern Zhejiang experienced in the centuries from the Eastern Jin to the Tang. The routes identified in modern times point to a unique development in the Tang poetry. Xinchang, a central stop on the routes, played an important role in this flourishing poetic phenomenon of the Tang.

Today, a string of scenic spots on the routes have been restored, connected and opened to tourists. Plans have also been formulated to salvage those sites in extremely poor repairs. Tourism developers and scholars agree that there is a long way to go before tourists can best re-experience one of the glorious parts of the Tang poetry along the routes in eastern Zhejiang.