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Chinese mountain hermits

The Daily Mail (UK) offers a summary (originally Agence France-Presse) of contemporary hermits in China’s Zhongnan Mountains, profiling several in an article titled “China’s mountain hermits seek a highway to heaven.” Among hermits in the article: Master Hou (pictured above), Wang Gaofeng, Liu Jingchong, Li Yunqi, and Gao Ming — the latter two are women, and, surprisingly, half of the hermits of Zhongnan are women.

Almost all the hermits are younger aspirants quitting their congested urban homes for the freedom of the mountains. Some are part-time dabblers who come to the mountains on a weekend to try out the hermit life. Bill Porter has become an inspiration to many thoughtful Chinese men and women curious about Taoism, Buddhism, and eremitism.

URL: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-2875587/Chinas-mountain-hermits-seek-highway-heaven.html

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New Yorker: “Weather Man”

The Portfolio section of the New Yorker offers an eight-photo portfolio by Evgenia Arbugaeva titled “Weather Man: Life at a  Remote Russian Weather Station.” From the text:

Vyacheslav Korotki is a man of extreme solitude. He is a trained polyarnik, a specialist in the polar north, a meteorologist. In the past thirty years, he has lived on Russian ships and, more recently, in Khodovarikha, an Arctic outpost, where he was sent by the state to measure the temperatures, the snowfall, the winds. The outpost lies on a fingernail of a peninsula that juts into the Barents Sea. …

Evgenia Arbugaeva, a photographer who grew up in the Arctic town of Tiksi, spent two extended stays with Korotki. “The world of cities is foreign to him—he doesn’t accept it,” she says. “I came with the idea of a lonely hermit who ran away from the world because of some heavy drama, but it wasn’t true. He doesn’t get lonely at all. He kind of disappears into tundra, into the snowstorms. He doesn’t have a sense of self the way most people do. It’s as if he were the wind, or the weather itself.”

URL: http://www.newyorker.com/project/portfolio/weather-man

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Chinese mountain hermit

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The Beijing Review Facebook page includes a series of 5 photos of Yang Zhongyou, an 82-year-old recluse in the Qinling Mountains, southern Shaanxi Province. He is shown “splitting wood to heat his lodge, nestled deep in the mountains.” Other photos feature his hut and sleeping place. The entry adds: “A number of secluded old men have been discovered inhabiting the Qinling Mountains in harsh conditions.”

URL: https://www.facebook.com/BJReview/posts/884058288292304

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io9: “Secret History of Hermits”

io9 is a breezy generic website serving up free-lanced cultural curiosities. One recent contribution is a little article titled “The Secret History of Hermits,” offers a quick overview to types of hermits: mountain and wilderness hermits, stylites, and anchorites. Hermitary readers will recognize the highlights presented, and note links to Hermitary content.

URL: http://io9.com/the-secret-history-of-hermits-1666040708

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“Heritage of the Desert Fathers” project

“The Heritage of he Desert Fathers” is a project based in Slovenia that intends to document historical and material sites of ancient Christian desert hermits in Egypt and Sudan. The site describes the project:

The Heritage of the Desert Fathers research project aims at mapping and photographic surveying of the locations of hermitages in the deserts around monasteries in Egypt and in the Sudan (the ancient Christian kingdoms of Nubia), in addition to the study of the ancient and modern eremetical traditions in their different psychological, theological as well as philosophical aspects.

The website includes lists of project participants, some articles to date, and a photo gallery of hermitages as well as of desert environs where the project crew works. The project holds the promise of greatly furthering knowledge and appreciation of this unique example of eremitism on such a large historical scale.

URL: http://desert-fathers.com