1910: Hometowns

Down to Jiangling by Li Bai

Morning goodbye to Baidi* amidst the colorful clouds,
In one day, cross a thousand miles to Jiangling.
On both banks, monkeys call without ceasing,
Swift boat passed ten-thousand mountain ranges. 

Jiangling was Li Bai's hometown.

Usually when you say goodbye to something, you feel sad. Plus the monkeys calling would make one sad. He doesn't mind because he's going home. 

*Baidi was an important historical city, Liou Bei asked Zu Geliang to take care of his son before he died. The Yangze River dam flooded this valley town.


1910 - age 9

This was the third year of private neighborhood tutoring. Our teacher started Confucius' sayings, Four Classics, and the four tones of words for poetry. Most kids are very interested in learning this. In the second half of the year, our teacher asked us to write sentences and short articles. The short articles had a format to compose them in: beginning, middle, end. After we learned the four tones, we could start to compose parallel lines. This year, we made a lot of progress in learning the classics of Chinese. 

When we had breaks, I still went to Jioujiang to visit my grandmother. Like I stated earlier, she was a Buddhist and many of the same Buddhist disciples talked about a temple called Ci Yun Ge (Kindness to Maternal Family Cloud Temple). My grandmother heard the other Buddhists talk about the temple in Huangmei, Xinkaizhen. Everyone said this temple's location was very nice, quiet, and beautiful--a good place for Buddhist service. So, she wanted to pay a visit and brought me along. We rode in a boat from Jioujiang to Ci Yun Ge. When we arrived, it was exactly as described. There are 36 boroughs within Huangmei district. Xinkaizhen was one of the 36 towns. I'm from Xinkaizhen and this was the first time I went there.