Drew Foerster

As soon as I arrived in China, I was impressed with the degree to which the Chinese people integrate both Daoist and Buddhist practices into their spiritual behavior. As soon as I flew into Shanghai, I visited a supposedly Daoist temple, but inside there was a smaller temple devoted to a bodhisattva. The closest thing we have in the Western world is the small cathedral inside the famous mosque of Cordoba, Spain - but that
integration in space is a symbol of conflict rather than confluence, as is the case in China between Daoism and Buddhism.

Here is an overview of my travels in China:
1) Heaven Lake (Tianchi) in the Heavenly Mountains (Tianshan) of Xinjiang
province (6 days)

2) The oasis town of Hetian, at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains in Xinjiang
province (4 days)

3) Kongtong Mountain in Gansu province (4 days)

4) The Helan Mountains of Ningxia province (3 days)

5) Kongtong Mountain in Gansu province (4 days)

6) Chinese Magnificence (Hua) Mountain in Shaanxi province (5 days)

7) The Five Peaks (Wutai) Mountains of Shanxi province (5 days)

8) Heng Mountain in Shanxi province (1 day)

9) The Five Peaks (Wutai) Mountains of Shanxi province (4 days)

10) Northern Wudang Mountain in Shanxi province (1 day)

11) Tai Mountain in Shandong province (4 days)

12) Southern Wudang Mountain in Hubei province (5 days)

In general, traveling around China by train and bus took longer than I'd planned. One example was getting stuck at Tai Mountain when everyone in China takes a week off around National Day in October. Hotel prices on the mountain skyrocketed, so I went back to the town at the base of the mountain and tried to leave, but train and bus tickets were booked for days. I spent only one day in the Helan Mountains of Ningxia province because a local Daoist priest explained to me that there probably aren't any myths about those mountains, but if there were then the only person who would know of them was a government bureaucrat in a cultural bureau about 150 miles away. He suggested I visit the Wudang Mountains in Shanxi and Hubei provinces instead, and he was definitely right. Even though I hadn't planned to go to those two mountains at first, Southern Wudang Mountain ended being the second most interesting mountain I visited - and getting to Northern Wudang Mountain was a true adventure. I only stayed at N. Wudang Mountain for one day because, like N. Heng Mountain, it wasn't a popular enough mountain to have hotels on it, and the surroundings were too rural to have hotels either. Because the Helan Mountains were so barren of mythology, I decided to return to Kongtong Mountain where I'd been the guest of a Buddhist priest staying in the basement of his temple. And, because Northern Heng Mountain didn't have any lodging, I returned to the Wutai Mountains, where even the cab drivers and restaurant owners live, believe and know practically everything about local Buddhist mythology.

At almost every mountain I went to it was very easy to find monks and priests with
whom to sit down and chat and record myths. At Kongtong Mountain I just went hiking
to a random terrace, arrived at the Western Terrace, and Mr. Song, the resident
Buddhist priest, invited me for tea and we chatted and he invited me to stay with
him. Sometimes priests, like several at Hua Mountain and Northern Heng Mountain,
wouldn't have enough time to talk with me - They were too busy telling fortunes.
After some walking around and chatting with monks, though, I eventually found
someone who would sit down and teach some mythology. Perhaps the biggest contrast
between my ability to find a monk who knew and would discuss myths at a particular
mountain were the Wutai Mountains and Tai Mountain, the most important mountains in China for Buddhism and Daoism, respectfully. In the Wutai Mountains, even my cab
driver and restaurant owners knew local myths and could recite them from memory,
let alone monks and pilgrims would hike around the mountains bowing after every
single step in a gesture of humility. However, even in the most important Daoist
temple on Tai Mountain, where the emporers used to come to make sacrifices, not a
single Daoist priest knew any myths, and didn't even have any copies of the Dao De
Jing or books with myths in them to sell. They helpfully directed my attention to a
nearby vendor who had mythology books but no Dao De Jing, and went back to smoking cigarettes, reading the newspaper and chatting, just like everyday Chinese men except in a Daoist priest-like costume.

Unlike the Daoist priests on Tai Mountain, Daoist and Buddhist monks elsewhere
treated their creed as something more than an easy job on the state payroll. They
seriously practice their traditions, and apply the philosophy of their religious
traditions to their lives. Perhaps the best example of this is Mr. Song, the
Buddhist monk with whom I stayed at Kongtong Mountain. Even though he's a Buddhist monk, I'd go hiking with him every day to a nearby peak where he would burn incense, and on the way back he'd collect mushrooms. Every evening he, and friends of his who work for the mountains tourism services, would sit down to eat mushrooms and pinenuts, which according to Daoist mythology are the staple diet of those who wish to live in the mountains and attain immortality. Unlike most Chinese I talked with on trains and cabs, Mr. Song did not pepper me with questions about prices and wages in America - We'd talk about hiking, and finding local Daoist monks, friends of his who are experts in the local mythology. Without a doubt, this Buddhist monk, practicing both Buddhist and Daoist traditions, was the most fascinating character I met during my adventure in China.

Before experiencing religion in China itself, I had learned, and thus knew
intellectually, 1) that the Chinese blend their practice of Buddhism and Daoism on
an individual scale, and 2) that Buddhism has been the stronger of the two
traditions for the last millenium or so. Knowing these facts intellectually, though,
does not do reality justice. To hike along with a Buddhist monk on Kongtong Mountain
who in one breath invokes the name of a bodhisattva and in the next gathers
mushrooms in preparation for Daoist immortality, is a far cry from knowing
intellectually that many Buddhist gods are inspired by Daoist gods in the same way
that the Roman pantheon correlates with the Greek pantheon. Furthermore, the
contrast in practice of spiritual traditions between the most important mountain for
Chinese Buddhists, the Five Peaks (Wutai) Mountains, and the most important mountain in Daoist mythology, Tai Mountain, could not have been greater. In the Wutai Mountains, my cab driver one day showed me a secret book he'd received from his Buddhist meditation master that non-devotees are not supposed to peruse. He only
felt comfortable showing it to me because he knew that I could not easily read it.
This is the same cab driver who worships at a local dragon monument, and who, like a
local restaurant owner I got to know, can rattle off whole mythological stories like
they were fresh gossip. In contrast, at Tai Mountain, the priests at the most
important temple on the mountain did not even sell the Dao De Jing or books about
myths, let alone claim any knowledge of them. In the end, I learned more about
native Chinese mythology through the Buddhists I met than through the Daoists I met.
It was from Buddhists that I learned about dragons who write poetry and cure
blindness, and magical stones that cause their local climate to become more benign
and suitable for agriculture.

I did not expect, however, that tales of true love would be so important in Chinese
mythology. While Buddhist tales would focus on Chinese dragons and tigers being
turned into immense rocks, many of the Daoist tales priests chose to tell me were
really love stories, often with no magical or supernatural aspects to them at all.
In a way, this experience is a reflection of the primary role Daoism plays in
Chinese life today, where Daoist priests on Tai Mountain entertain couples hoping
for prosperous futures foretold by divination, but yet know no mythological tales to
share.

Perhaps the most challenging part of my trip was explaining to ordinary Chinese folk
I'd meet on trains and in restaurants why exactly I was interested in their mythology. I imagine Americans would be similarly befuddled to encounter a foreigner who barely speaks English expressing a profound interest in Santa Claus carols. In the end, though, it is precisely this reaction to such tales that makes the study of them so imperative for foreigners to know about them. Buddhist myths and Santa Claus
tales are so representative of who Chinese and Americans, respectfully, are that
they are like the air they, or we, breathe - They're like the personality quirks
each person has that may be small, but yet are true indicators of what our personality is like. The Chinese nation is so large, and its people so self-absorbed, that they (like Americans) cannot understand how someone could want to study their stories, seeing as how everyone should already know about such obvious things.

On a superficial, material level, my life in the United States of course differs dramatically from the living standards experienced by most Chinese. More than that,
though, my life differs in the whole way I organize the direction of my efforts and
in the way I understand the world around me. The Chinese come from an culture with
an ancient sense of self-conciousness and feeling of specialness in comparison with
other peoples in the world. But, like the peaceful Chinese Dragons of Buddhist and
Daoist myths, while this sense of specialness may translate into a feeling of powerful confidence, it does not necessarily translate into martial belligerance. Of course, this is how Chinese people view themselves in a way reinforced by their mythology - But reality is altogether different when you have a government providing materiel support to Maoist terrorists in Nepal, decimating local cultures in Tibet, Xinjiang, in the far Southwest and in the far Northeast, bullying the Taiwanese people into acting against their wishes and best interests, claiming exclusive rights to ocean fossil fuel deposits bringing them into varying degrees of conflict with nations from Japan to the Phillippines, coddling a dictator in North Korea who starves his own people by the millions while hoarding wealth and threatening free and prosperous nations with nuclear weapons, and torturing Falun Gong practicioners and Christians at home. Whether or not other countries in the world do similar things, the Chinese people are uniquely unaware of their government's actions, at most entreating their government for some fair treatment in the same way Buddhist monks in a Chinese myth I was told politely asked an elderly dragon to get some baby dragons to stop throwing rocks around and hurting people. In the end, though, the Chinese people, like people the world over, focus most of their attention and myths on stories of love and family issues, which were without a doubt the most numerous type of local "myths" I was privileged to hear.

More than anything else, though, I believe that my adventures in China's holy mountains has made China part of my identity. While I may be European-American, the meaningful conversations with I had with the Buddhists and Daoists of China's holy mountains, and the heartfelt respect for them I now feel, mean that their attitudes towards life now form an important part of how I view my role in the world. Meeting a Daoist priest at Hua Mountain who used to be in the Chinese military not only inspires me in my own plans for my career after serving in the US Air Force, but has given me a respect for the armed forces and citizenry of the nation in the world
whose actions will without a doubt shape the world to come more than any other
nation, even the US, in the next hundred years and more. Interestingly, the people
in China whom I feel were most able to rationally discuss their nation's and the
United States' actions were the Daoists and Buddhists I met, the members of China's
armed forces I met, and above all the Daoist priest on Hua Mountain who used to
serve in the Chinese Army in Xinjiang province. Furthermore, becoming familiar with
their mythology has given me the tool to understand how they view their country, and
the metaphorical language with which to communicate my and my country's values and intentions to them. Being able to move within the Chinese people's mythology is
critical, for the mythology of a people is their identity, and when you as a foreigner can share in the knowledge and inspiration of that mythology, you then have a means to identify yourself with them, in speech and thought, in a way that brings mutual understanding and peace between both parties.