On June 11, Chengdu was cloudy, with temperatures from 20 to 28 degrees Celsius. It was good weather for an urban walk. As usual, I woke up and set out at noon. Breakfast was again the Neijiang beef noodles I had eaten the day before.

This time, when I ordered, the owner only casually asked whether I wanted chili. He no longer asked whether I wanted thick or thin noodles. After visiting the small shop two or three times, I had gained a tiny bit of “regular customer” treatment.

After lunch, I took Metro Line 6 and transferred to Line 5 toward Qingyang Palace. Line 6 was packed, and I stood the whole way. If I had taken Line 17, I probably would not have had to stand.

Qingyang Palace

After leaving the station, I followed navigation to the entrance. A notice said students could enter free with a valid ID. I took out my student card and entered smoothly. When I went in, the security guard seemed to say something to me, but I was wearing earphones and did not hear clearly.

The buildings here look much like most traditional Chinese architecture: upturned eaves, bracket sets, plaques, and couplets. But walking through it, you can spot many Daoist elements, such as bagua motifs, curling incense smoke, statues inside the halls, QR-code donation devices in front of those statues, and the occasional Daoist priest in a blue robe, hair tied up with a wooden hairpin.

The calligraphy on those plaques and couplets should have been the finishing touch of the old architecture. If you skip them, the place does not feel that different from ordinary historical buildings. But I am basically illiterate uncultured and could not understand many of them.

The bronze goat statues inside are very strange. Though called goats, they combine features from all twelve zodiac animals: rat ears, ox nose, tiger claws, rabbit back, dragon horns, snake tail, horse mouth, goat beard, monkey neck, rooster eyes, dog belly, and pig haunches.

Legend says touching the corresponding part of the bronze goat can remove pain from that part of your own body. Touching the ox nose can cure social anxiety, but you may be infected with social swagger instead. I was too socially anxious to go up and touch it 🤓

After a quick, superficial loop, I left.

Not long after walking out of Qingyang Palace, I ran into a middle-aged or elderly auntie who offered to read my palm for free. She said I had affinity with both Daoism and Buddhism, and that something major would happen to me around June or July this year.

A very Chinese-traditional style of sales pitch. I do not believe in that kind of thing, so I kept walking and gave perfunctory replies. She slowly lost patience and stopped talking nonsense with me. I seem to have run into palm readers before too, probably after visiting Chengdu Zoo and Zhaojue Temple, when I was looking for the metro station outside the temple.

I also remember a more modern sales pitch at Chengdu East Railway Station. A man picked me out from the crowd and promoted an acne clinic to me. That one had real attack power 🥹

Riverside Walk Outside Baihuatan Park

After crossing the bridge over the Nanhe River, the entrance to Baihuatan Park was near the bridgehead. This is an open park without walls. The waterside directly connects to the riverside path, so I planned to wander along the river first. I could turn into the inner park at any time.

For length, this post only records what I saw along the riverside. I will write about the park interior later.

Part 1

After I had rested enough, I went to look for it and found it sitting quietly by the water, facing the river. I reached out to signal to it, and it walked toward me. Then I sat back on the stone ledge and gently patted the stone beside me. The little guy seemed to understand the hint. Who said hakimi have small brains? It obediently jumped up and sat next to me.

The riverbank was lush with trees all the way. On the way, I saw an old man in a newsboy cap, or maybe a cowboy hat, I cannot quite remember, setting up an easel and painting the river and woods in oil. When I returned after finishing the loop, his second painting was already more than half done.

Part 2

I also saw a rope stretched across the water, covered with colored strips of cloth. Similar facilities can be seen on many rivers in Chengdu. They are probably resting points built for waterbirds that stay in deep-water areas.

Two night herons and four or five egrets were perched on it. For what a night heron looks like, see this photo on Xiaohongshu. Unfortunately, the river was wide. I could not see the details of the distant birds with the naked eye, and my phone camera was helpless too. Next time I should perhaps bring binoculars.

I had already sensed the local attention to bird protection from the concluding text I read when visiting Chengdu Natural History Museum’s Tianfu Wings Hall, and these facilities show the actual work people are doing.

At a nearby river sluice, quite a few grey herons were also “washing their feet.” After the river passed through the sluice, it suddenly became fast and surging, somewhat like Feishayan, which I had visited earlier at Dujiangyan.

Part 3

There is a covered bridge over the river named “Canglang Bridge.” Its grey tiles, red pillars, upturned eaves, and nearby pavilion are all in a pseudo-classical style. From the opposite bank, you can see Sanhua Tower and several modern office buildings, while the river reflects the bridge corridor and high-rises.

The name Canglangláng has several allusions:

During the reign of King Huai of Chu, Xiong Huai, Qu Yuan was once deeply trusted and strongly advocated reform. But as old aristocratic forces pushed him aside and slandered him, Qu Yuan gradually lost King Huai’s trust and was exiled north of the Han River. Later, King Huai trusted Qin, went to Wuguan for a meeting, was detained, and eventually died in Qin.

Zilan, as King Huai’s extremely filial son, also managed to provide an assist:

At that time, King Zhao of Qin had marital ties with Chu and wanted to meet King Huai. King Huai wanted to go. Qu Ping said: “Qin is a land of tigers and wolves; it cannot be trusted. Better not go.” King Huai’s youngest son Zilan urged the king to go: “How can we cut off Qin’s goodwill?” King Huai went in the end. Entering Wuguan, Qin set ambushes to cut off his rear and detained him, demanding land. King Huai was angry and refused. He fled to Zhao, but Zhao would not admit him. He returned to Qin and eventually died there before being brought back for burial.

Sima Qian, “Biography of Qu Yuan”

After King Huai died, King Qingxiang of Chu took the throne. Qu Yuan still had no power, and under pressure from Zilan and others, he was exiled again.

At this time, Chu’s power was declining, while Qu Yuan wandered through the Yuan and Xiang river regions with deepening grief and anger. The piece Yuyú Fufǔ is set in this period. According to tradition, when Qu Yuan was living in exile by the Xiang River, he met a fisherman. The two discussed an attitude toward the world summarized as “all the world is muddy, yet I alone am clear.” When they parted, the fisherman beat time on his oar and sang:

When the waters of Canglang are clear, I can wash my hat-strings; when the waters of Canglang are muddy, I can wash my feet.

In the song, “Canglang” was originally the name of a body of water. Later it gradually became a representative image in Chinese literature, carrying an attitude of adapting to the world as it changes.

During the Qingli era of the Northern Song, Su Shunqin named his garden “Canglang Pavilion,” probably from this allusion.

But Chengdu’s “Canglang” is more likely, together with Baihuatan, a tribute to Du Fu’s regulated verse “Madman”:

West of Wanli Bridge stands a thatched cottage; the waters of Baihua Pond are my Canglang.
Wind holds the green bamboo, slender and pure; rain wets the red lotuses, slowly fragrant.
Old friends with rich salaries send no letters; hungry children wear faces of sorrow.
If I am to fill a ditch and ravine, let it be with looseness and freedom; I laugh at this madman, crazier still in old age.

Yesterday’s post recorded my visit to Du Fu Thatched Cottage. I plan to talk about Huanhua Creek and Baihuatan there, so I will not expand on them here.

Part 4

I walked to the other side of Canglang Bridge. There was not much scenery there, so I turned back to the riverside path and continued forward until I saw another entrance to Baihuatan Park at the end of the path. If I remember correctly, it was the east gate.

In the square in front of the gate, several aunties were dancing a “traditional-style” square dance to music. I sat nearby on a bamboo-and-wood bench to rest. The backs of the two connected seats were hollow-carved with two lines of poetry:

From the nine heavens opens a Chengdu;
ten thousand households and gates enter the painting.

These two lines come from Li Bai’s Songs on the Retired Emperor’s Western Tour to Nanjing, and they are also quoted in Chengdu Museum.

In Songs on the Retired Emperor’s Western Tour to Nanjing, “retired emperor” refers to Xuanzong after abdication, and “western tour” is a high-EQ way to describe fleeing.

The lines immediately after the two on the bench are:

Grasses, trees, clouds, and mountains are like brocade;
could the Qin plain ever compare with this place?

They mean that the landscape of Shu was as beautiful as brocade, and that even the eight-hundred-li Qin plain around Chang’an could hardly compare. Even so, read against the background of Xuanzong taking refuge in Shu, the lines feel somewhat thought-provoking. Reading them now, they resemble the Southern Song line several centuries later: “The warm breeze makes tourists drunk; they take Hangzhou straight for Bianzhou.”

I have not read enough biographies of Li Bai to judge whether the original poem was quietly satirizing Emperor Xuanzong. What I can confirm is that Li Bai sincerely admired Chengdu.

After finishing the riverside walk and resting briefly, I turned into the park and began visiting its interior scenery.

Epilogue

A few closing thoughts. As the saying goes, “Good news never leaves the house; bad news travels a thousand li.” Today’s social media always seems to prove it. Conflict is the easiest thing to attract attention. People post bait to make the comment section tear itself apart, and then the publisher harvests all the traffic. This trick is so common that I am too lazy to give examples.

But in fact, just like the “bird perches” I happened to see on the river, many things that make the world better are happening all the time. They just make much less noise.