Category: China

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Hermits in China

From the China Daily website, an article on a man inspired by Bill Porter’s search for hermits related in Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits who pursued his own search for hermits.

The article is titled “Man finds spiritual life through hermits” and describes Zhang Jianfeng’s efforts to contact over 600 hermits in Zhongnan Mountain, the same mountainous vicinity that Porter explored.

URL: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-02/16/content_14627189.htm

PHOTO: Zhang Jianfeng (left with three hermits (© CFP – ChinaFotoPress)

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Ni Zan, 14th cent. Chinese hermit painter

This China Daily article highlights the 14th-century Chinese landscape painter Ni Zan (Ni Tsan), known as the “hermit of cloud forest.”

“You hardly find images of people in his paintings, except for maybe a few Taoist monks, as he regarded ordinary people as so much less attractive than what he imagined and depicted in his art,” notes Lu Li, director of the curatorial department of Nanjing Museum in Jiangsu province.

URL: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/sunday/2011-09/18/content_13727099.htm

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Bill Porter interview

A November 2010 interview of Bill Porter (aka Red Pine) in Beijing, China, can be listened to or downloaded from China International Radio’s CRIEnglish website. Porter is well-known for his books and translations, especially his 1993 Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits. In the interview (in English) Porter reflects on his life and work, and discusses the difference between the “small” hermit and the “great” hermit.

URLs:
website – http://english.cri.cn/8706/2010/11/17/1721s605500.htm
listen to audio – mms://media.chinabroadcast.cn/en/features/spotlight/2010/1117redpine.wma
download the mp3 – http://media.iphone.cri.cn/features/spotlight/2010/1117redpine.mp3

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Chinese hermit among graves

This item from the China Daily website, is reprinted in full because such news items often disappear from the web:

Elderly hermit enjoying life in mountain graves
(China Daily) Updated: 2008-10-28 09:02

A 75-year-old man has been living in open graves for about 23 years in Xinzhou, Hubei province.

Tao Shaotang left his village after quarreling with a neighbor who he suspected of stealing his money in 1984.

Tao remained homeless until 1986 when he built four rooms in unused coffin pits he found on Dahou Mountain.

With tireless effort, Tao transformed a barren hill into a fruit garden after planting scores of peach and Chinese chestnut trees. He has supplemented this income by raising bees.

Tao said he is now accustomed to living alone in the coffin pits and has refused requests of local villagers to move back with them.

(Chutian Jinbao News)

URL: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-10/28/content_7148260.htm

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“Guests of the Hills”

The Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art presents an exhibition from August 2008 to February 2009 titled “Guest of the Hills: Travelers and Recluses in Chinese Landscape Paintings.” The exhibition, to quote the Gallery’s description,

presents depictions of recluses and recreational travelers in Chinese landscape painting over a seven-hundred-year period, from the mid-eleventh to the mid-eighteenth century. Chinese landscape painting particularly appealed to members of the scholar-official class, who were intrigued by images of the free-roaming mountain sage or retired gentlemen living amid nature’s beauty. Other works depict actual excursions or journeys, or they were created as a gift for someone about to embark on a trip.

URL: http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/guests/htm#