Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits, by Red Pine (Bill Porter), is a fascinating look at Daoist and Buddhist hermits just as China was “opening” in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
After the havoc of the Cultural Revolution, Porter was unsure if a hermit tradition still existed in China. In the middle of the tumult of 1989, he travels to the country to see if there are still religious isolates. With great physical effort, he does find some, mostly old men and women who live in isolation, mainly in the Zhongnan Mountains. This mountain range has a centuries old tradition as the site of Daoist and Buddhist temples, and hermits from both traditions. Against the odds, they survived the purge of the Cultural Revolution.
Now that China has experienced its capitalists explosion, many millennials, disenchanted with materialism, have joined the hermits in Zhongnan. The lure of these mountains continue to call, despite the erosion of personal freedoms under Chinese government rule; and attempt by the government to keep people "on the grid" to track their movements.
As much as any human institution or inclination is ineradicable, the hermits of Zhongnan are close to being what legend purports them to be, immortal.
No comments:
Post a Comment