Yesterday as we made a rough 90 km cold, rainy push from the charming — if dilapidated — old town of Chayang (茶陽鎮) south through some amply steep mountains, the last we ought to see for probably a month, something I’ve read recently popped into my head. For background, I believe I mentioned in a post some months ago the importance of geography to politics and culture after we had crossed the desolate wasteland of the North China Plain (華北平原，古稱中原). The great flatland surrounding the Yellow River, the “cradle of Chinese civilization (中華文化的搖籃),” has apparently always been extremely susceptible to sweeping political or cultural changes since the entire area is flat enough to allow for rapid horseback transit within its boundaries. As such, the language, ethnic makeup, and culture of the areas within the plain are largely identical. While that makes trade and communication vastly more expedient, it also allows for easy conquest by armies of whatever marauding warlord happens to be strong at the time and subsequent assimilation into whatever said warlord’s imperial imagination can conjure.

I can’t speak to what China looked like a hundred years ago, but I do know that the North Plain now has been the victim of several quite overwhelming imperial edicts (詔) over the previous decades, the Great Leap Forward and Scientific Development to name the two that come most to mind most quickly. Since there’s literally nowhere to hide from such movements on an open plain close to imperial power (China’s capitals have by and large been in the plain for the last two thousand plus years), the whole place is, as we found it, a dusty, polluted Mad Max-like dystopia (with Chinese characteristics, of course). It was thus with great relief that we arrived at the northern boundary of South China’s sprawling mountain ranges (take a look at this map) after our stay in Shanghai, even if it meant slower progress.

The first thing we noticed about the mountains, other than just the fact that they’re made of rock and go up and down, is that they’re blessedly green and full of forests (trees and bamboo) that are — gasp — not planted in rows. The next startling discovery was that the villages in the mountains tend to actually look Chinese, and have a very human feeling to them! Of course, it’s difficult to introduce industry into narrow valleys between the crags (by the way, around 30% of the towns and villages out here have the word keng [坑, depression] in the name), and so most of our trek through alpine China has been noticeably less polluted, sometimes nearing perfectly clear air.

One man in Wenzhou lamented the mountains that cover 70% of his province of Zhejiang to me, remarking, “We in China have too many mountains, and that’s why it’s been so hard to develop our economy. You in the US have no mountains, isn’t that right? (我們中國山太多了，所以很難發展起來。你們美國沒有山，對吧?)” It made perfect logical sense to him that mountains = great hindrance to development, the US = very developed; therefore, USA = no mountains. In Xiamen, Alexis’s friend-of-a-friend Lin Tao, professor of Japanese at Xiamen University, told us that train trips from his native Longyan (龍巖市) to his university in Dalian (大連市) used to take 18 hours, half of which was needed just to leave Fujian! And indeed n our ride from Jiangxi through Northwestern Fujian, we saw the beginnings of a new rail line intended to connect the region to the harbor city of Putian (莆田市) being blasted through the mountains — including one 9 kilometer long tunnel! — which its plentiful propaganda lauded as bringing riches and modernity to the secluded area.

Outside of modernity, development, and politics, the greatest strength of the mountains is in delineating cultures. It’s been fascinating to cross a small mountain range and find ourselves amid a completely different people, which has become a recurring theme of late. From Jiangxi, where the locals speak Gan (贛語) we crossed a giant mountain and ended up in a region speaking Minbei (閩北話), which a few days later gave way to the vastly different Hokkien language (閩南話). Just three days ago a 35 km ride across rural dirt roads lifted us from areas of Hokkien influence into the territory of the Hakka (客家人), whose language is a living fossil of ancient northern Chinese. The Hakka, escaping the “chaos of war (戰亂)” as we’re told repeatedly, rook refuge in this corner of the world from their home up in the Northern Plain over a thousand years ago. Now despite years of chaos of all sorts, the Hakka have maintained their linguistic and cultural fortitude — a feat, I have to assume, which was largely possible due to relative geographic isolation. **對了，很多客家人都說自己祖先是在唐朝末年因為所謂的《戰亂》而遷移到閩西南粵東北地區，我就開始想，戰亂這個詞、其迫文化變化的動力是個很容易想像得到的概念。我只覺得遺憾中文裡《平亂》這個詞與戰亂不對稱，因為中國近年來最巨大的變化都發生在無戰爭時期，甚至可以說是平安的時期，可是還的確很亂！而我想這個《平亂》的破壞力量更甚於客家人千多年所逃避的戰亂。

Anyway, coming back to my point from the beginning, this theme of protection from the mountains seems to be nothing new in the Chinese mentality. Just two days ago I read a particularly poignant chapter of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義) that highlighted this point. In the passage, Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮) asks for the opinion of a younger counselor, Ma Su (馬謖) about his campaign to subdue the barbarian tribes of Yunnan.

孔明問曰：「吾奉天子詔，削平蠻方，久聞幼常高見，望乞賜教。」謖曰：「愚有片言，望丞相察之。南螿恃其地遠山險，不服久矣；雖今日破之，明日復叛。丞相大軍到彼，必然平服；但班師之日，必用北伐曹丕：蠻兵若知內虛，其反必速。夫用兵之道：『攻心為上，攻城為下；心戰為上，兵戰為下。』願丞相但服其心足矣。」

Zhuge Liang asked [Ma Su]: “I have received an imperial edict to subdue the barbarians. Long have I heard of your esteemed reputation, and today I beg you for your opinion on this matter.” Ma Su responds: “I have a few words that I hope you will consider. The southern barbarians rely on the remoteness of their land and the difficult access from the outside afforded by their mountains. As such they won’t surrender to you for long. You could defeat them today, but tomorrow they’ll revolt again. If you arrive with your great army, you’ll certainly succeed in defeating them. However, once you withdraw the troops and begin expeditions northward, they’ll know there’s no longer a threat from you and revolt again quickly. According to the proper method of warfare, ‘It is utmost to attack the heart; it is second best to attack barricades. The battle of the heart (conscience) is utmost; the battle of soldiers is secondary.’ For a complete victory you must conquer their hearts, and the matter will be settled.”

I just think it’s great to know that even back then, the importance of mountains to politics (and warfare, of course) was so widely known. Incidentally, I also love that it was politically correct back in the day (yes, I do realize the book is highly fictionalized, but I’m speaking about popular ideals of the time here) to call military conquest of neighboring races “subduing the barbarians (削平蠻方)” and not “peaceful liberation (和平解放).” It is just a little strange, I think, that people like the man in Wenzhou would view mountains primarily as an economic encumbrance and not as a protector of uniqueness and identity. I’m fairly certain that whoever thought up the character for xian (仙, celestial or immortal), which literally depicts a person standing next to a mountain, would be inclined to disagree. Maybe I wouldn’t think like this if I were a poor farmer at the top of a mountain desperate for money, granted. That said, I think China’s strength (unfortunately part of its stagnation as well) is in its traditions, and thus the more different kinds of people and traditions, the stronger the country on the whole. I just have to wonder if most people here would agree with me or, given the power to level all its hills and mountains as in the novel The Giver, would flatten the place for expediency.

. . . . . .