Chou Mi (1232–1298)
The tidal bore on the Che River 1 is one of the great sights of the world. It reaches its full force from the sixteenth to the eighteenth of the month. When it begins to arise far away at Ocean Gate,2 it appears but a silver thread; but, as it gradually approaches, it becomes a wall of jade, a snow-laden ridge, bordering the sky on its way. Its gigantic roar is like thunder as it convulses, shakes, dashes, and shoots forth, swallowing up the sky and inundating the sun, for its force is supremely vigorous. Yang Wan-li described this in a poem:
The ocean surges silver to form a wall;
The river spreads jade to gird the waist.3
As in every year, the governor of the capital appeared at the Che River Pavilion 4 to inspect the navy. Warships in the hundreds were arrayed along both banks. Suddenly, they all rushed to divide into “quintuple formation.” Moreover, there was equitation, banner waving, spear juggling, and sword dancing while afloat, just as on land. In an instant, yellow smoke arose on all sides, and people could barely see each other. The explosions on the water were deafening and earth-shaking; the sounds were like those of mountains collapsing. When the smoke dispersed and the waves calmed, there was not a trace of a hull: all the “enemy ships” had been burned by fire and had disappeared under the waves.
There were several hundred youths of Wu who were expert at swimming. They had loosened their hair and had tatoos on their bodies. In their hands, they held ten colored banners some twenty feet long and raced each other with the utmost exertion, swimming against the current, floating and sinking in the leviathan waves a myriad yards5 high. Their leaping bodies executed a hundred different movements without getting the tail of the banners even slightly wet—this was how they showed off their skill. Prominent commoners and high officials competed to bestow silver prizes.
Up and down along the river banks for more than ten tricents, pearls, jade, gauze, and silk flooded the eyes; horses and carriages clogged the roads. Every kind of food and drink cost double the normal price and yet, where viewing tents were rented out, not a bit of ground was left for even a mat. The palace viewed the scene, as customary, from Nature’s Picture.6 From this high terrace, the bird’s-eye view made it all appear as if in the palm of one’s hand. The people of the capital gazed up at the yellow canopies and feathery fans above the empyrean, just as if it were the Flute Terrace or the Island of P’eng-lai.7
Translated by Richard Strassberg
Many writers and poets since the T’ang period have mentioned the tidal bore along the Ch’ien-t’ang River as an awesome phenomenon. Known to foreigners during the last century and a half as the “Hangchow Bore,” it is a series of high waves which occurs near the first and middle of each month and crests at a height of five to six feet. The two occurrences nearest the spring and autumn equinoxes, however, often reached a height of eighteen to twenty-five feet. These used to be occasions for festivities and Chou Mi vividly recalled the autumnal one in the eighth lunar month around 1280.
Following the establishment of the Yüan dynasty in 1279, Chou Mi remained a Sung loyalist and moved to Hangchow when his family business burned down in Wu-hsing (in modern-day Chekiang). His later years were spent preserving Sung literature and culture, and he wrote several unofficial histories including Reminiscences of Wu-lin, completed c. 1280. The latter is one of the most extensive and detailed records of life in the Southern Sung capital. It contains a variety of short descriptions such as this one, in addition to poems, lists of things, and selections from other sources covering not only court life, but popular culture, scenic places, and daily life of the common people.
Today, the height of the tidal bore along the Ch’ien-t’ang River, diminished because of modern dams, can no longer be seen from the city as in the past. One must travel forty miles away to Hai-ning on Hangchow Bay for the best view, where the sixty-mile-wide bay narrows to two miles and the incoming tide confronts the outgoing flow of the Ch’ien-t’ang River.
This prose description of a tidal bore may be compared with the rhapsodic treatment of another one from a much earlier period by Mei Ch’eng in selection 124, pages 223–28, and a later poetic description by Cheng Hsieh in selection 83.
1. The Che River (Che-chiang) is another name for the Ch’ien-t’ang River.
2. Ocean Gate (Hai-men) is located on the northeast coast at the juncture of the Che River and Hangchow Bay.
3. Yang Wan-li (1127–1206) was considered one of the major poets of the early Southern Sung (see selection 58). The author of over 4,200 poems, he espoused a literary theory influenced by Zen Buddhist ideals of enlightenment and often employed illusionistic imagery. These lines, however, do not appear in his collected works.
4. The Southern Sung capital of Lin-an (modern-day Hangchow). The Che River Pavilion was located south of the city on the northern bank of the river.
5. The word translated as “yards” actually signifies a measurement eight feet in length. The description, in any event, is hyperbolic.
6. A terrace located within the imperial palace at Lin-an.
7. According to legend, the Flute Terrace was built by Duke Mu of Ch’in (reigned 659–621 B.C.E.) for his daughter Nung-yü and her husband, Hsiao-shih, an excellent flutist. Hsiao-shih summoned phoenixes with his flute, and he and Nung-yü flew off to become transcendents. P’eng-lai was one of the mythological islands where transcendents were said to dwell, located in the sea off the northeastern coast.