The mythic estate is full of mythic folk
The Wang River collection (4)
Bamboo Loggers' Forest Majestic grasses veil our winding highway, Its surface scintillates with rippled jade. What loggers flee along that hidden byway To Mount Shang, to protest some tyrant's rage?
The "Four Whiteheads of Mount Shang" were respected leaders who refused to support the Qin emperor. He had unified China, but ruled as a brutal dictator. The whiteheads withdrew from public life and went to farm deep in the hills, at Mount Shang. They returned to the court when the Han Dynasty took over; the Han went on to rule for four centuries.
Interpretations of this poem vary widely. The grammar of the classical Chinese poem leaves it unclear whether it is the poet-narrator or the loggers on the road to Mount Shang. My reading seems to me to make the most sense in the context of all the other poems in the Wang River collection: Wang Wei is gently mythologising all the elements that he sees around him. In this case he imagines that unseen woodcutters heard on a bamboo path are heroic figures from history.
Pei Di's poem at the same site (prose translation):
The bright stream is winding and straight, the green bamboo are dense and deep. One path leads straight into the hills; we walk and sing look at the old peaks.
斤竹岭
檀栾映空曲，青翠漾涟漪。
暗入商山路，樵人不可知。