Island of the Buddha

A Qing Dynasty travel poem from Sichuan

On my holiday I visited Sichuan, including a trip to the giant Buddha at Leshan. I can heartily recommend this. Despite the fact that you will be gawking with a crowd, the looming presence of the statue, looing out over three rivers across the plain, is a unique experience.

The Leshan Buddha. Apologies for the poor angle - I’m not a great photographer. What makes this statue special are the birds. They fly busily in front of his calm face, and the contrasts of physical scale and time scale deliver the message of peace and detachment in an extraordinary way.

This is a panorama from the top of the Buddha’s head. The iPhone distorts the image, but you can see how the rivers roll away across the plain.

The Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) poet Zhang Wentao (1764-1814) boated up river past the temples on next-door Wuyou island, and wrote a poem about the place that has become totemic. They have it plastered on walls all over:

Curiously enough, the poem doesn’t mention the Buddha! You’d think that a 70m statue dominating the landscape would be worth a line or two, but apparently not. Anyway, I didn’t like the translation and thought I could do better.

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Written on the Boat in Jiading
Zhang Wentao

At Lingyun, on the western bank,
The river babbles by the wall,
Past the sandbar of Jiazhou,
This ancient isle.
Jumbled green reflections float
But never wash downstream; I pole
My boat to holy Mount Wuyou,
Round all three sides.

张问陶  嘉定舟中·其一
凌云西岸古嘉州，江水潺湲抱郭流。
绿影一堆漂不去，推船三面看乌尤。

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Jiading was the name of the central district of Sichuan, where all this is happening (it’s now the name of a district in Shanghai - don’t be misled if you’re googling). The sandbar of Jiazhou is visible in the panorama photo above. It’s a natural feature that regulates the flow of the river.

The beauty of this poem lies in line three, in the floating green reflections that remain constant amid the gurgle and flow of the river, despite being insubstantial. While the Buddha projects permanence through weight and solidity, these dancing reflections find a different way to overcome the unstoppable passage of the river.

It turns out that there’s a companion piece to this. I’ll see if it’s worth translating before we wind back 1000 years to the Tang.