of one of China’s most famous living Taoist masters, K’uang Ch’ang-hsiu.
Master K’uang lived at the foot of Laoshan in one of the temple’s courtyards. Tourists were not allowed inside that part of the temple, but someone had left a side gate open, and I slipped through it. I saw Master K’uang in a reception hall talking to a young man. But when the Master’s attendants saw me, they waved for me to leave. As I turned to go, the young man said something to Master K’uang, and the attendants called me back. Master K’uang motioned for me to come inside the hall and sit beside him. The young man turned out to be a Taoist priest I had met a year earlier in the Chungnan mountains a thousand kilometers to the west. Adding one surprise on top of another, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the name card I had given him the year before. Even Master K’uang laughed at the serendipity.
He was eighty-eight, with a foot-long white beard, a top-knot of silver hair sticking through his black hat, and he was holding onto a cane of twisted wood. When I asked him about Taoist practice, he said it wasn’t easy, but anyone could do it, but that was all he would say. His attendants hurried him off to lunch, and I went outside with the young Taoist I had met the year before. I asked him why he wasn’t wearing his robes. He said Taoist temples were no longer good places to practice. He was going to build a hut somewhere in the countryside, in Kiangsu Province, he said. All that he owned was in his rucksack, including a flute sticking out from the top.
We said goodbye, and I continued my tour of the temple. A few minutes later, I found myself in the courtyard where P’u Sung-ling lived three hundred years ago. P’u Sung-ling was one of China’s most famous storytellers, and his Liaochai Chih-yi (Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio) was as well known in China as Tom Sawyer was in America. Among the stories he told set at the temple was one about two female immortals who decided to remain in the world as camelia trees, one red and one white. Both were as lovely as ever, illuminating his old courtyard with hundreds of blossoms. There was a bench beside one of the trees, and I sat there for what seemed like forever.
ISLANDS OF THE IMMORTALS
When forever ended, I returned to Chingtao and boarded one of the minivans outside the Chingtao train station that left as soon as they were full. Since I was the first passenger, I chose the lone seat across from the driver. Although it was a potentially dangerous spot to sit, I liked to see the road ahead. Twenty minutes later, the van was full, and we were off to Yentai. A new highway was being built across the Shantung Peninsula to Yentai, but it was only half-finished. Still, we made good time because the driver didn’t slow down for the unfinished parts. Halfway there, the sun went down, and I waited for the driver to turn on his headlights. The road only got darker. When I asked him why he didn’t use his lights, he said they didn’t work. Then he opened the glove compartment and took out a flashlight, and held it outside the window, aiming it at the road in front. I’m not kidding. A flashlight. I think he did this to placate my sense of unease. It didn’t help at all. And he still didn’t slow down. Instead, he tried to stay as close as possible to the rear of whichever truck he could keep up with. And when one truck got too far ahead, he simply pulled over and waited for another one to come along.
Three hours and 150 kilometers after leaving Chingtao, I finally checked into the Yentai Guesthouse. The receptionist compared my signature to the one in my passport and noted the difference. That was new. I told him I just arrived from Chingtao. He nodded. Apparently, my minivan experience was not unique. The hotel was at the west end of the beach, and just behind the hotel was the hill after which the town was named. In Chinese, yen-t’ai meant “fire tower.” The tower on top of the hill had been replaced by a modern lighthouse, but the former British and American consulates just below it were still there, although in ruins.
In 1858, at the conclusion of the Opium War, the Chinese signed a treaty that allowed foreign powers to set up concessions in a number of ports, such as Shanghai, Chingtao and Yentai. Foreigners mistakenly called Yentai Chihfu, which they spelled Chefoo, which was actually the name of the village on the other side of the harbor. It wasn’t much of a treaty port, because it didn’t have much of a harbor, and no breakwater at all. During the winter, winds from the north made loading and unloading goods dangerous, until a breakwater was finally constructed in 1916.
What foreigners unloaded was opium. And as to what they loaded back on board their ships, there was this note in the Enycyclopaedia Sinica of 1917: “In addition to shipping one hundred thousand coolies to Siberia every year, the chief trade is in beancake (tofu), vermicelli, groundnuts and silks; there is also a good business done in hairnets, lace and fruits; the last being due to the Reverend Dr. Nevius, who grafted foreign fruits and gave instruction to the Chinese in fruit-growing.” Yentai had since become famous for its cold-weather fruits, including apples, pears and plums. It was also famous for its grapes, which were not grown to be eaten.
Not long after the Good Reverend introduced the fruit that the ancient Greeks and Romans considered the gift of the gods, a Cantonese businessman used grapes to produce wine. That was in 1892. His wine was an instant success, and his Changyu Winery had since become the city’s best-known enterprise. The next morning, I toured its cellars, which were filled with the same huge oak barrels the winery’s founder had imported from France a hundred years ago. I also toured the bottling plant. And, of course, I visited the reception room, where half a dozen bottles were opened on my behalf. The Cabernet and Riesling weren’t bad, but the Muscat and Vermouth were so sweet even a wino would have cringed. However, I couldn’t resist buying a bottle of forty-year-old brandy for the road.
By ten o’clock my tour was over, and once again I stepped into the day oblivious to misfortune. After collecting my bag from my hotel, I boarded a bus bound for the city of Penglai, seventy kilometers to the west. It was a regular highway bus and not a minivan, but it was another strange ride. We were stopped by the police three times. And each time they stopped us, they checked everyone’s ID and searched everyone’s bags, including those on the roof. And they did this not once, but three times. Apparently, while I was sampling Yentai’s famous wines, three men entered a bank in Yentai and shot two tellers dead. But the robbers must have escaped by other means, or on a different bus. Thankfully, we weren’t stopped a fourth time, and we finally arrived in Penglai just past noon.
In China, the mention of the name Penglai often has people sighing and staring off into space. The reason is that Penglai was the name the ancient Chinese gave to a group of islands that appeared from time to time off that part of the Shantung coast. These were no ordinary islands. They were the home of the immortals. And many were the fishermen and sailors who caught the occasional glimpse, only to see the islands disappear before they could reach their shores.
The beach from which the ship bound for The Islands of The Immortals sailed.
After checking into what looked like the only decent hotel in town, I walked about ten blocks to the town’s small harbor, then hiked up the headland to Penglai Pavilion to check on recent island sightings. The Pavilion was situated on a cliff that overlooked the harbor and the Pohai Sea, where the islands were said to still appear from time to time. It was the most famous pavilion in China, and due to all the notoriety, it had long since ceased being a pavilion and had metamorphosed into a collection of shrines to various Taoist sages. In one of the pavilion’s towers, the provincial television station had set up a camera, just in case, with orders to turn it on whenever the islands appeared.
The day I visited, there were no islands to be seen, so I walked back down to the harbor. This was the harbor from which a group of Taoists once crossed the sea to those islands of bliss. They were known as the Eight Immortals, and they were led by Han Chung-li, with his fan, and Lu Tungpin, with his sword slung behind his back. They were joined by Li T’ieh-kuai, with his iron crutch, and the white-haired Chang
