卷五 西湖外景

卷五 西湖外景

张岱

西溪

粟山高六十二丈，周回十八里二百步。山下有石人岭，峭拔凝立，形如人状，双髻耸然。过岭为西溪，居民数百家，聚为村市。相传宋南渡时，高宗初至武林，以其地丰厚，欲都之。后得凤凰山，乃云：“西溪且留下。”后人遂以名。地甚幽僻，多古梅，梅格短小，屈曲槎桠，大似黄山松。好事者至其地，买得极小者，列之盆池，以作小景。其地有秋雪庵，一片芦花，明月映之，白如积雪，大是奇景。余谓西湖真江南锦绣之地，入其中者，目厌绮丽，耳厌笙歌，欲寻深溪盘谷可以避世如桃源、菊水者，当以西溪为最。余友江道暗有精舍在西溪，招余同隐。余以鹿鹿风尘，未能赴之，至今犹有遗恨。

王稚登《西溪寄彭钦之书》：

留武林十日许，未尝一至湖上，然遂穷西溪之胜。舟车程并十八里，皆行山云竹霭中，衣袂尽绿。桂树大者，两入围之不尽。树下花覆地如黄金，山中人缚帚扫花售市上，每担仅当脱粟之半耳。往岁行山阴道上，大叹其佳，此行似胜。

李流芳《题西溪画》：

壬子正月晦日，同仲锡、子与自云栖翻白沙岭至西溪。夹路修篁。行两山间，凡十里，至永兴寺。永兴山下夷旷，平畴远村，幽泉老树，点缀各各成致。自永兴至岳庙又十里，梅花绵亘村落，弥望如雪，一似余家西碛山中。是日饭永兴，登楼啸咏。夜还湖上小筑，同孟旸、印持、子将痛饮。翼日出册子画此。癸丑十月乌镇舟中题。

杨蟠《西溪》诗：

为爱西溪好，长忧溪水穷。山源春更落，散入野田中。

王思任《西溪》诗：

一岭透天目，千溪叫雨头。石云开绣壁，山骨洗寒流。鸟道苔衣滑，人家竹语幽。此行不作路，半武百年游。

张岱《秋雪庵》诗：

古宕西溪天下闻，辋川诗是纪游文。庵前老荻飞秋雪，林外奇峰耸夏云。怪石棱层皆露骨，古梅结屈止留筋。溪山步步堪盘礴，植杖听泉到夕曛。

虎跑泉

虎跑寺本名定慧寺，唐元和十四年性空师所建。宪宗赐号曰广福院。大中八年改大慈寺，僖宗乾符三年加“定慧”二字。宋末毁。元大德七年重建。又毁。明正德十四年，宝掌禅师重建。嘉靖十九年又毁。二十四年，山西僧永果再造。今人皆以泉名其寺云。先是，性空师为蒲坂卢氏子，得法于百丈海，来游此山，乐其灵气郁盘，栖禅其中。苦于无水，意欲他徙。梦神人语曰：“师毋患水，南岳有童子泉，当遣二虎驱来。”翼日，果见二虎跑地出泉，清香甘洌。大师遂留。明洪武十一年，学士宋濂朝京，道山下。主僧邀濂观泉，寺僧披衣同举梵咒，泉觱沸而出，空中雪舞。濂心异之，为作铭以记。城中好事者取以烹茶，日去千担。寺中有调水符，取以为验。

苏轼《虎跑泉》诗：

亭亭石榻东峰上，此老初来百神仰。虎移泉眼趋行脚，龙作浪花供抚掌。至今游人灌濯罢，卧听空阶环玦响。故知此老如此泉，莫作人间去来想。

袁宏道《虎跑泉》诗：

竹林松涧净无尘，僧老当知寺亦贫。饥鸟共分香积米，枯枝常足道人薪。碑头字识开山偈，炉里灰寒护法神。汲取清泉三四盏，芽茶烹得与尝新。

凤凰山

唐宋以来，州治皆在凤凰山麓。南渡驻辇，遂为行宫。东坡云“龙飞凤舞人钱塘”，兹盖其右翅也。自吴越以逮南宋，俱于此建都，佳气扶舆，萃于一脉。元时惑于杨髡之说，即故宫建立五寺，筑镇南塔以厌之，而兹山到今落寞。今之州治，即宋之开元故宫，乃凤凰之左翅也。明朝因之，而官司藩臬皆列左方，为东南雄会。岂非王气移易，发泄有时也。故山川坛、八卦田、御教场、万松书院、天真书院，皆在凤凰山之左右焉。

苏轼《题万松岭惠明院壁》：

余去此十七年，复与彭城张圣途、丹阳陈辅之同来。院僧梵英，葺治堂宇，比旧加严洁。茗饮芳烈，问：“此新茶耶？”英曰：“茶性，新旧交则香味复。”余尝见知琴者，言琴不百年，则桐之生意不尽，缓急清浊，常与雨旸寒暑相应。此理与茶相近，故并记之。

徐渭《八仙台》诗：

南山佳处有仙台，台畔风光绝素埃。嬴女只教迎风入，桃花莫去引人来。能令大药飞鸡犬，欲傍中央剪草莱。旧伴自应寻不见，湖中无此最深隈。

袁宏道《天真书院》诗：

百尺颓墙在，三千旧事闻。野花粘壁粉，山鸟煽炉温。江亦学之字，田犹画卦文。儿孙空满眼，谁与荐荒芹？

宋大内

《宋元拾遗记》：高宗好耽山水，于大内中更造别院，曰小西湖。自逊位后，退居是地，奇花异卉，金碧辉煌，妇寺宫娥充斥其内，享年八十有一。按钱武肃王年亦八十一，而高宗与之同寿，或曰高宗即武肃后身也。《南渡史》又云：徽宗在汴时，梦钱王索还其地，是日即生高宗，后果南渡，钱王所辖之地，尽属版图。畴昔之梦，盖不爽矣。元兴，杨琏真伽坏大内以建五寺，曰报国，曰兴元，曰般若，曰仙林，曰尊胜，皆元时所建。按志，报国寺即垂拱殿，兴元即芙蓉殿，般若即和宁门，仙林即延和殿，尊胜即福宁殿。雕梁画栋，尚有存者。白塔计高二百丈，内藏佛经数十万卷，佛像数千，整饰华靡。取宋南渡诸宗骨殖，杂以牛马之骼，压于塔下，名以镇南。未几，为雷所击，张士诚寻毁之。

谢皋羽《吊宋内》诗：

复道垂杨草乱交，武林无树是前朝。野猿引子移来宿，搅尽花间翡翠巢。隔江风雨动诸陵，无主园林草自春。闻说光尧皆堕泪，女官犹是旧宫人。紫宫楼阁逼流霞，今日凄凉佛子家。寒照下山花雾散，万年枝上挂袈裟。禾黍何人为守阍，落花台殿暗销魂。朝元阁下归来燕，不见当时鹦鹉言。

黄晋卿《吊宋内》诗：

沧海桑田事渺茫，行逢遗老叹荒凉。为言故国游麋鹿，漫指空山号凤凰。春尽绿莎迷辇道，雨多苍翠上宫墙。遥知汴水东流畔，更有平芜与夕阳。

赵孟《宋内》诗：

东南都会帝王州，三月莺花非旧游。故国金人愁别汉，当年玉马去朝周。湖山靡靡今犹在，江水茫茫只自流。千古兴亡尽如此，春风麦秀使人愁。

刘基《宋大内》诗：

泽国繁华地，前朝此建都。青山弥百粤，白水入三吴。艮岳销王气，坤灵肇帝图。两宫千里恨，九子一身孤。设险凭天堑，偷安负海隅。云霞行殿起，荆棘寝园芜。币帛敦和议，弓刀抑武夫。但闻当宁奏，不见立廷呼。鬼蜮昭华衮，忠良赐属镂。何劳问社稷，且自作欢娱。秔稻来吴会，龟鼋出巨区。至尊巍北阙，多士乐西湖。鹢首驰文舫，龙鳞舞绣襦。暖波摇襞积，凉月浸氍毹。紫桂秋风老，红莲晓露濡。巨螯擎拥剑，香饭漉雕胡。蜗角乾坤大，鳌头气势殊。秦庭迷指鹿，周室叹瞻乌。玉马违京辇，铜驼掷路衢。含容天地广，养育羽毛俱。橘柚驰包贡，涂泥赋上腴。断犀埋越棘，照乘走隋珠。吊古江山在，怀今岁月逾。鲸鲵空渤澥，歌咏已唐虞。鸱革愁何极，羊裘钓不迂。征鸿暮南去，回首忆莼鲈。

梵天寺

梵天寺在山川坛后，宋乾德四年钱吴越王建，名南塔。治平十年，改梵天寺。元元统中毁，明永乐十五年重建。有石塔二、灵鳗井、金井。先是，四明阿育王寺有灵鳗井。武肃王迎阿育王舍利归梵天寺奉之，凿井南廊，灵鳗忽见，僧赞有记。东坡倅杭时，寺僧守诠住此。东坡过访，见其壁间诗有：“落日寒蝉鸣，独归林下寺。柴扉夜未掩，片月随行履。惟闻犬吠声，又人青萝去。”东坡援笔和之曰：“但闻烟外钟，不见烟中寺。幽人行未已，草露湿芒履。惟应山头月，夜夜照来去。”清远幽深，其气味自合。

苏轼《梵天寺题名》：

余十五年前，杖藜芒履，往来南北山。此间鱼鸟皆相识，况诸道人乎！再至惘然，皆晚生，相对但有怆恨。子瞻书。

元祐四年十月十七日，与曹晦之、晁子庄、徐得之、王元直、秦少章同来，时主僧皆去，庭户寂然，徙倚久之。东坡书。

胜果寺

胜果寺，唐乾宁间，无着禅师建。其地松径盘纡，涧淙潺灂。罗刹石在其前，凤凰山列其后，江景之胜无过此。出南塔而上，即其地也。宋熙宁间，在寺僧清顺住此。顺约介寡交，无大故不入城市。士夫有以米粟馈者，受不过数斗，盎贮几上，日取二三合啖之，蔬笋之供，恒缺乏也。一日，东坡至胜果，见壁间有小诗云：“竹暗不通日，泉声落如雨。春风自有期，桃李乱深坞。”问谁所作，或以清顺对。东坡即与接谈，声名顿起。

僧圆净《胜果寺》诗：

深林容鸟道，古洞隐春萝。天迥闻潮早，江空得月多。冰霜丛草木，舟楫玩风波。岩下幽栖处，时闻白石歌。

僧处默《胜果寺》诗：

路自中峰上，盘回出薜萝。到江吴地尽，隔岸越山多。古木丛青蔼，遥天浸白波。下方城郭近，钟磬杂笙歌。

五云山

五云山去城南二十里，冈阜深秀，林峦蔚起，高千丈，周回十五里。沿江自徐村进路，绕山盘曲而上，凡六里，有七十二湾，石磴千级。山中有伏虎亭，梯以石墄，以便往来。至顶半，冈名月轮山，上有天井，大旱不竭。东为大湾，北为马鞍，西为云坞，南为高丽，又东为排山。五峰森列，驾轶云霞，俯视南北两峰，若锥朋立。长江带绕，西湖镜开，江上帆樯，小若鸥凫，出没烟波，真奇观也。宋时每岁腊前，僧必捧雪表进，黎明入城中，霰犹未集，盖其地高寒，见雪独早也。山顶有真际寺，供五福神，贸易者必到神前借本，持其所挂楮镪去，获利则加倍还之。借乞甚多，楮镪恒缺。即尊神放债，亦未免穷愁。为之掀髯一笑。

袁宏道《御教场小记》：

余始慕五云之胜，刻期欲登，将以次登南高峰。及一观御教场，游心顿尽。石篑尝以余不登保俶塔为笑。余谓西湖之景，愈下愈胜，高则树薄山瘦，草髡石秃，千顷湖光，缩为杯子。北高峰、御教场是其样也。虽眼界稍阔，然此躯长不逾六尺，穷目不见十里，安用许大地方为哉！石篑无以难。

云栖

云栖，宋熙宁间有僧志逢者居此，能伏虎，世称伏虎禅师。天僖中，赐真济院额。明弘治间为洪水所圮。隆庆五年，莲池大师名袾宏，字佛慧，仁和沈氏子，为博士弟子，试必高等，性好清净，出入二氏。子殇妇殁。一日阅《慧灯集》，失手碎茶瓯，有省，乃视妻子为鹘臭布衫，于世相一笔尽勾。作歌寄意，弃而专事佛，虽学使者屠公力挽之，不回也。从蜀师剃度受具，游方至伏牛，坐炼呓语，忽现旧习，而所谓一笔勾者，更隐隐现。去经东昌府谢居士家，乃更释然，作偈曰：“二十年前事可疑，三千里外遇何奇。焚香执戟浑如梦，魔佛空争是与非。”当是时，似已惑破心空，然终不自以为悟。归得古云栖寺旧址，结茅默坐，悬铛煮糜，日仅一食。胸挂铁牌，题曰：“铁若开花，方写人说。”久之，檀越争为构室，渐成丛林，弟子日进。其说主南山戒律，东林净土，先行《戒疏发隐》，后行《弥陀疏钞》。一时江左诸儒皆来就正。王侍郎宗沐问：“夜来老鼠唧唧，说尽一部《华严经》？”师云：“猫儿突出时如何？”自代云：“走却法师，留下讲案。”又书颂云：“老鼠唧唧，《华严》历历。奇哉王侍郎，却被畜生惑。猫儿突出画堂前，床头说法无消息。大方广佛《华严经》，世主妙严品第一。”其持论严正，诂解精微。监司守相下车就语，侃侃略无屈。海内名贤，望而心折。孝定皇太后绘像宫中礼焉，赐蟒袈裟，不敢服，被衲敝帏，终身无改。斋惟蓏菜。有至寺者，高官舆从，一概平等，几无加豆。仁和樊令问：“心杂乱，何时得静？”师曰：“置之一处，无事不办。”坐中一士人曰：“专格一物，是置之一处，办得何事？”师曰：“论格物，只当依朱子豁然贯通去，何事不办得？”或问：“何不贵前知？”师曰：“譬如两人观《琵琶记》，一人不曾见，一人见而预道之，毕竟同看终场，能增减一出否耶？”甬东屠隆于净慈寺迎师观所著《昙花传奇》，虞淳熙以师梵行素严阻之。师竟偕诸绅衿临场谛观讫，无所忤。寺必设戒，绝钗钏声，而时抚琴弄箫，以乐其脾神。晚著《禅关策迸》。其所述，峭似高峰、冷似冰者，庶几似之矣。喜乐天之达，选行其诗。平居笑谈谐谑，洒脱委蛇，有永公清散之风。未尝一味槁木死灰，若宋旭所议担板汉，真不可思议人也。出家五十年，种种具属语中。万历乙卯六月晦日，书辞诸友，还山设斋，分表施衬，若将远行者。七月三日，卒仆不语，次日复醒。弟子辈问后事，举属语对。四日之午，命移面西向，循首开目，同无疾时，哆哪念佛，趺坐而逝。往吴有神李昙降毗山，谓师是古佛。而杨靖安万春尝见师现佛身，施食吴中。一信士窥空室，四鬼持灯至，忽列三莲座，师坐其一，佛像也。乩仙之灵者云，张果听师说《心赋》于永明。李屯部妇素不信佛，偏受师戒，逾年屈三指化，云身是梵僧阿那吉多。而僧俗将坐脱时，多请说戒、说法。然师自名凡夫，诸事恐呵责，不敢以闻。化前一日，漏语见一大莲华盖，不复能秘其往生之奇云。

袁宏道《云栖小记》：

云栖在五云山下，篮舆行竹树中，七八里始到，奥僻非常，莲池和尚栖止处也。莲池戒律精严，于道虽不大彻，然不为无所见者。至于单提念佛一门，则尤为直捷简要，六个字中，旋天转地，何劳捏目更趋狂解，然则虽谓莲池一无所悟可也。一无所悟，是真阿弥，请急着眼。

李流芳《云栖春雪图跋》：

余春夏秋常在西湖，但未见寒山而归。甲辰，同二王参云栖。时已二月，大雪盈尺。出赤山步，一路琼枝玉干，披拂照曜。望江南诸山，皑皑云端，尤可爱也。庚戌秋，与白民看雪两堤。余既归，白民独留，迟雪至腊尽。是岁竟无雪，怏怏而返。世间事各有缘，固不可以意求也。癸丑阳月题。

又《题雪山图》：

甲子嘉平月九日大雪，泊舟阊门，作此图。忆往岁在西湖遇雪，雪后两山出云，上下一白，不辨其为云为雪也。余画时目中有雪，而意中有云，观者指为云山图，不知乃画雪山耳。放笔一笑。

张岱《赠莲池大师柱对》：

说法平台，生公一语石一语；栖真斗室，老僧半间云半间。

六和塔

月轮峰在龙山之南。月轮者，肖其形也。宋张君房为钱塘令，宿月轮山，夜见桂子下塔，雾旋穗散坠如牵牛子。峰旁有六和塔，宋开宝三年，智觉禅师筑之以镇江潮。塔九级，高五十馀丈，撑空突兀，跨陆府川。海船方泛者，以塔灯为之向导。宣和中，毁于方腊之乱。绍兴二十三年，僧智昙改造七级。明嘉靖十二年毁。中有汤思退等汇写《佛说四十二章》、李伯时石刻观音大士像。塔下为渡鱼山，隔岸剡中诸山，历历可数也。

李流芳《题六和塔晓骑图》：

燕子矶上台，龙潭驿口路。昔时并马行，梦中亦同趣。后来五云山，遥对西兴渡。绝壁瞰江立，恍与此境遇。人生能几何，江山幸如故。重来复相携，此乐不可喻。置身画图中，那复言归去。行当寻云栖，云栖渺何处。

此予甲辰与王淑士平仲参云栖舟中为题画诗，今日展予所画《六和塔晓骑图》，此境恍然，重为题此。壬子十月六日，定香桥舟中。吴琚《六和塔应制》词：

玉虹遥挂，望青山、隐隐如一抹。忽觉天风吹海立，好似春雷初发。白马凌空，琼鳌驾水，日夜朝天阙。飞龙舞凤，郁葱环拱吴越。

此景天下应无，东南形胜，伟观真奇绝。好似吴儿飞彩帜，蹴起一江秋雪。黄屋天临，水犀云拥，看击中流楫。晚来波静，海门飞上明月。

（右调《酹江月》）

杨维桢《观潮》诗：

八月十八睡龙死，海龟夜食罗刹水。须臾海辟龛赭门，地卷银龙薄于纸。艮山移来天子宫，宫前一箭随西风。劫灰欲洗蛇鬼穴，婆留折铁犹争雄。望海楼头夸景好，断鳌已走金银岛。天吴一夜海水移，马蹀沙田食沙草。厓山楼船归不归，七岁呱呱啼轵道。

徐渭《映江楼看潮》诗：

鱼鳞金甲屯牙帐，翻身却指潮头上。秋风吹雪下江门，万里琼花卷层浪。传道吴王渡越时，三千强弩射潮低。今朝筵上看传令，暂放胥涛掣水犀。

镇海楼

镇海楼旧名朝天门，吴越王钱氏建。规石为门，上架危楼。楼基垒石高四丈四尺，东西五十六步，南北半之。左右石级登楼，楼连基高十有一丈。元至正中，改拱北楼。明洪武八年，更名来远楼，后以字画不祥，乃更名镇海。火于成化十年，再造于嘉靖三十五年，是年九月又火，总制胡宗宪重建。楼成，进幕士徐渭曰：“是当记，子为我草。”草就以进，公赏之，曰：“闻子久侨矣。”趋召掌计，廪银之两百二十为秀才庐。渭谢侈不敢。公曰：“我愧晋公，子于是文，乃遂能愧湜，倘用福先寺事数字以责我酬，我其薄矣，何侈为！”渭感公语，乃拜赐持归。尽橐中卖文物如公数，买城东南地十亩，有屋二十有二间，小池二，以鱼以荷；木之类，果木材三种，凡数十株；长篱亘亩，护以枸杞，外有竹数十个，笋迸云。客至，网鱼烧笋，佐以落果，醉而咏歌。始屋陈而无次，稍序新之，遂颜其堂曰“酬字”。

徐渭《镇海楼记》：

镇海楼相传为吴越钱氏所建，用以朝望汴京，表臣服之意。其基址、楼台、门户、栏楯，极高广壮丽，具载别志中。楼在钱氏时，名朝天门。元至正中，更名拱北楼。皇明洪武八年，更名来远。时有术者病其名之书画不祥，后果验，乃更今名。火于成化十年，再建于嘉靖三十五年，九月又火。予奉命总督直浙闽军务，开府于杭，而方移师治寇，驻嘉兴，比归，始与某官某等谋复之。人有以不急病者。予曰：“镇海楼建当府城之中，跨通衢，截吴山麓，其四面有名山大海、江湖潮汐之胜，一望苍茫，可数百里。民庐舍百万户，其间村市官私之景，不可亿计，而可以指顾得者，惟此楼为杰特之观。至于岛屿浩渺，亦宛在吾掌股间。高翥长骞，有俯压百蛮气。而东夷之以贡献过此者，亦往往瞻拜低回而始去。故四方来者，无不趋仰以为观游的。如此者累数百年，而一旦废之，使民若失所归，非所以昭太平、悦远迩。非特如此已也，其所贮钟鼓刻漏之具，四时气候之榜，令民知昏晓，时作息，寒暑启闭，桑麻种植渔佃，诸如此类，是居者之指南也。而一旦废之，使民懵然迷所往，非所以示节序，全利用。且人传钱氏以臣服宋而建，此事昭著已久。至方国珍时，求缓死于我高皇，犹知借镠事以请。诚使今海上群丑而亦得知钱氏事，其祈款如珍之初词，则有补于臣道不细，顾可使其迹湮没而不章耶？予职清海徼，视今日务，莫有急于此者。公等第营之，毋浚征于民，而务先以己。”于是予与某官某等，捐于公者计银凡若干，募于民者若干。遂集工材，始事于某年月日。计所构，甃石为门，上架楼，楼基垒石，高若干丈尺。东西若干步，南北半之。左右级曲而达于楼，楼之高又若干丈。凡七楹，础百。巨钟一，鼓大小九，时序榜各有差，贮其中，悉如成化时制。盖历几年月而成。始楼未成时，剧寇满海上，予移师往讨，日不暇至。于今五年，寇剧者禽，来者遁，居者慑不敢来，海始晏然，而楼适成，故从其旧名“镇海”。

张岱《镇海楼》诗：

钱氏称臣历数传，危楼突兀署朝天。越山吴地方隅尽，大海长江指顾连。使到百蛮皆礼拜，潮来九折自盘旋。成嘉到此经三火，皆值王师靖海年。郁护当年筑废楼，文长作记此中游。适逢困鳄来投辖，正值饥鹰自下鞲。严武题诗属杜甫，曹瞒拆字忌杨修。而今纵有青藤笔，更讨何人数字酬！

伍公祠

吴王既赐子胥死，乃取其尸盛以鸱夷之革，浮之江中。子胥因流扬波，依潮来往，荡激堤岸，势不可御。或有见其银铠雪狮，素车白马，立在潮头者，遂为之立庙。每岁仲秋既望，潮水极大，杭人以旗鼓迎之。弄潮之戏，盖始于此。宋大中祥符间，赐额曰“忠靖”，封英烈王。嘉、熙间，海潮大溢。京兆赵与权祷于神，水患顿息，乃奏建英卫阁于庙中。元末毁，明初重建。有唐卢元辅《胥山铭序》、宋王安石《庙碑铭》。

高启《伍公祠》诗：

地大天荒霸业空，曾于青史叹遗功。鞭尸楚墓生前孝，抉眼吴门死后忠。魂压怒涛翻白浪，剑埋冤血起腥风。我来无限伤心事，尽在吴山烟雨中。

徐渭《伍公庙》诗：

吴山东畔伍公祠，野史评多无定词。举族何辜同刈草，后人却苦论鞭尸。退耕始觉投吴早，雪恨终嫌入郢迟。事到此公真不幸，镯镂依旧遇夫差。

张岱《伍相国祠》诗：

突兀吴山云雾迷，潮来潮去大江西。两山吞吐成婚嫁，万马奔腾应鼓鼙。清浊溷淆天覆地，玄黄错杂血连泥。旌幢幡盖威灵远，檄到娥江取候齐。从来潮汐有神威，鬼气阴森白日微。隔岸越山遗恨在，到江吴地故都非。钱塘一臂鞭雷走，龛赭双颐噀雪飞。灯火满江风雨急，素车白马相君归。

城隍庙

吴山城隍庙，宋以前在皇山，旧名永固，绍兴九年徙建于此。宋初，封其神，姓孙名本。永乐时，封其神，为周新。新，南海人，初名日新。文帝常呼“新”，遂为名。以举人为大理寺评事，有疑狱，辄一语决白之。永乐初，拜监察御史，弹劾敢言，人目为“冷面寒铁”。长安中以其名止儿啼。转云南按察使，改浙江。至界，见群蚋飞马首，尾之蓁中，得一暴尸，身馀一钥、一小铁识。新曰：“布贾也。”收取之。既至，使人入市市中布，一一验其端，与识同者皆留之。鞫得盗，召尸家人与布，而置盗法，家人大惊。新坐堂，有旋风吹叶至，异之。左右曰：“此本城中所无，一寺去城差远，独有之。”新曰：“其寺僧杀人乎？而冤也。”往树下。发得一妇人尸。他日，有商人自远方夜归，将抵舍，潜置金丛祠石罅中，旦取无有。商白新。新曰：“有同行者乎？”曰：“无有。”“语人乎？”曰：“不也，仅语小人妻。”新立命械其妻，考之，得其盗，则其私也。则客暴至，私者在伏匿听取之者也。凡新为政，多类此。新行部，微服视属县，县官触之，收系狱，遂尽知其县中疾苦。明日，县人闻按察使来，共迓不得。新出狱曰：“我是。”县官大惊。当是时，周廉使名闻天下。锦衣卫指挥纪纲者最用事，使千户探事浙中，千户作威福受赇。会新入京，遇诸涿，即捕千户系涿狱。千户逸出，诉纲，纲更诬奏新。上怒，逮之，即至，抗严陛前曰：“按察使擒治奸恶，与在内都察院同，陛下所命也，臣奉诏书死，死不憾矣。”上愈怒，命戮之。临刑大呼曰：“生作直臣，死作直鬼！”是夕，太史奏文星坠，上不怿，问左右周新何许人。对曰：“南海。”上曰：“岭外乃有此人。”一日，上见绯而立者，叱之，问为谁。对曰：“臣新也。上帝谓臣刚直，使臣城隍浙江，为陛下治奸贪吏。”言已不见。遂封新为浙江都城隍，立庙吴山。

张岱《吴山城隍庙》诗：

宣室殷勤问贾生，鬼神情状不能名。见形白日天颜动，浴血黄泉御座惊。革伴鸱夷犹有气，身殉豺虎岂无灵。只愁地下龙逢笑，笑尔奇冤遇圣明。尚方特地出枫宸，反向西郊斩直臣。思以鬼言回圣主，还将尸谏退佥人。血诚无藉丹为色，寒铁应教金铸身。坐对江潮多冷面，至今冤气未曾伸。

又《城隍庙柱铭》：

厉鬼张巡，敢以血身污白日；阎罗包老，原将铁面比黄河。

火德庙

火德祠在城隍庙右，内为道士精庐。北眺西泠，湖中胜概，尽作盆池小景。南北两峰如研山在案，明圣二湖如水盂在几。窗棂门凡见湖者，皆为一幅图画。小则斗方，长则单条，阔则横披，纵则手卷，移步换影。若遇韵人，自当解衣盘礴。画家所谓水墨丹青，淡描浓抹，无所不有。昔人言“一粒粟中藏世界，半升铛里煮山川”，盖谓此也。火居道士能为阳羡书生，则六桥三竺，皆是其鹅笼中物矣。

张岱《火德祠》诗：

中郎评看湖，登高不如下。千顷一湖光，缩为杯子大。余爱眼界宽，大地收隙罅。瓮牖与窗棂，到眼皆图画。渐入亦渐佳，长康食甘蔗。数笔倪云林，居然胜荆夏。刻画非不工，淡远长声价。余爱道士庐，宁受中郎骂。

芙蓉石

芙蓉石今为新安吴氏书屋。山多怪石危峦，缀以松柏，大皆合抱。阶前一石，状若芙蓉，为风雨所坠，半入泥沙。较之寓林奔云，尤为茁壮。但恨主人深爱此石，置之怀抱，半步不离，楼榭逼之，反多阨塞。若得础柱相让，脱离丈许，松石间意，以淡远取之，则妙不可言矣。吴氏世居上山，主人年十八，身无寸缕，人轻之，呼为吴正官。一日早起，拾得银簪一枝，重二铢，即买牛血煮之以食破落户。自此经营五十馀年，由徽抵燕，为吴氏之典铺八十有三。东坡曰：“一簪之资，可以致富。”观之吴氏，信有然矣。盖此地为某氏花园，先大夫以三百金折其华屋，徙造寄园，而吴氏以厚值售其弃地，在当时以为得计。而今至吴园，见此怪石奇峰，古松茂柏，在怀之璧，得而复失，真一回相见，一回懊悔也。

张岱《芙蓉石》诗：

吴山为石窟，是石必玲珑。此石但浑朴，不复起奇峰。花瓣几层摺，堕地一芙蓉。痴然在草际，上覆以长松。濯磨如结铁，苍翠有苔封。主人过珍惜，周护以墙墉。恨无舒展地，支鹤闭韬笼。仅堪留几席，聊为怪石供。

云居庵

云居庵在吴山，居鄙。宋元祐间，为佛印禅师所建。圣水寺，元元贞间，为中峰禅师所建。中峰又号幻住，祝发时，有故宋宫人杨妙锡者，以香盒贮发，而舍利丛生，遂建塔寺中，元末毁。明洪武二十四年，并圣水于云居，赐额曰云居圣水禅寺。岁久殿圮，成化间僧文绅修复之。寺中有中峰自写小像，上有赞云：“幻人无此相，此相非幻人。若唤作中峰，镜面添埃尘。”向言六桥有千树桃柳，其红绿为春事浅深，云居有千树枫桕，其红黄为秋事浅深，今且以薪以槱，不可复问矣。曾见李长蘅题画曰：“武林城中招提之胜，当以云居为最。山门前后皆长松，参天蔽日，相传以为中峰手植，岁久，浸淫为寺僧剪伐，什不存一，见之辄有老成凋谢之感。去年五月，自小筑至清波访友寺中，落日坐长廊，沽酒小饮已，裴回城上，望凤凰南屏诸山，沿月踏影而归。翌日，遂为孟旸画此，殊可思也。”

李流芳《云居山红叶记》：

余中秋看月于湖上者三，皆不及待红叶而归。前日舟过塘栖，见数树丹黄可爱，跃然思灵隐、莲峰之约，今日始得一践。及至湖上，霜气未遍，云居山头，千树枫桕尚未有酣意，岂余与红叶缘尚悭与？因忆往岁忍公有代红叶招余诗，余亦率尔有答，聊记于此：“二十日西湖，领略犹未了。一朝别尔归，此游殊草草。当我欲别时，千山秋已老。更得少日留，霜酣变林杪。子常为我言，灵隐枫叶好。千红与万紫，乱插向晴昊。烂然列锦绣，森然建旂旐。一生未得见，何异说食饱。”

高启《宿幻住栖霞台》诗：

窗白鸟声晓，残钟渡溪水。此生幽梦回，独在空山里。松岩留佛灯，叶地响僧履。予心方湛寂，闲卧白云起。

夏原吉《云居庵》诗：

谁辟云居境，峨峨瞰古城。两湖晴送碧，三竺晓分青。经锁千函妙，钟鸣万户惊。此中真可乐，何必访蓬瀛。

徐渭《云居庵松下眺城南》诗：

夕照不曾残，城头月正团。霞光翻鸟堕，江色上松寒。市客屠俱集，高空醉屡看。何妨高渐离，抱却筑来弹。（城下有瞽目者善弹词）

施公庙

施公庙在石乌龟巷，其神为施全，宋殿前小校也。绍兴二十年二月朔，秦桧入朝，乘肩舆过望仙桥，全挟长刃遮道刺之，透革不中，桧斩之于市，观者如堵墙，中有一人大言曰：“此不了汉，不斩何为！”此语甚快。秦桧奸恶，天下万世人皆欲杀之，施全刺之，亦天下万世中一人也。其心其事，原不为岳鄂王起见，今传奇以全为鄂王部将，而岳坟以全入之翊忠祠，则施全此举，反不公不大矣。后人祀公于此，而不配享岳坟，深得施公之心矣。

张岱《施公庙》诗：

施殿司，不了汉，刺虎不伤蛇不断。受其反噬齿利剑，杀人媚人报可汗。厉鬼街头白昼现，老奸至此揜其面。邀呼簇拥遮车幔，弃尸漂泊钱塘岸。怒卷胥涛走雷电，雪移来天地变。

三茅观

三茅观在吴山西南。三茅者，兄弟三人，长曰盈，次曰固，季曰衷，秦初咸阳人也。得道成仙，自汉以来，即崇祀之。第观中三像，一立、一坐、一卧，不知何说。以意度之，或以行立坐卧，皆是修炼功夫，教人不可蹉过耳。宋绍兴二十年，因东京旧名，赐额曰宁寿观。元至元间毁，明洪武初重建。成化十年建昊天阁。嘉靖三十五年，总制胡宗宪以平岛夷功，奏建真武殿。万历二十一年，司礼孙隆重修，并建钟翠亭、三义阁。相传观中有褚遂良小楷《阴符经》墨迹。景定庚申，宋理宗以贾似道有江汉功，赐金帛巨万，不受，诏就本观取《阴符经》，以酬其功。此事殊韵，第不应于贾似道当之耳。余尝谓曹操、贾似道千古奸雄，乃诗文中之有曹孟德，书画中之有贾秋壑，觉其罪业滔天，减却一半。方晓诗文书画，乃能忏悔恶人如此。凡人一窍尚通，可不加意诗文，留心书画哉？

徐渭《三茅观观潮》诗：

黄幡绣字金铃重，仙人夜语骑青凤。宝树攒攒摇绿波，海门数点潮头动。海神罢舞回腰窄，天地有身存不得。谁将练带括秋空？谁将古概量春雪？黑鳌载地几万年，昼夜一身神血干。升沉不守瞬息事，人间白浪今如此。白日高高惨不光，冷虹随身萦城隍。城中那得知城外，却疑寒色来何方。鹿苑草长文殊死，狮子随人吼祇树。吴山石头坐秋风，带着高冠拂云雾。

又《三茅观眺雪》诗：

高会集黄冠，琳宫夜坐阑。梅芳成蕊易，雪谢作花难。檐月沉杯暖，江峰入坐寒。暮鸦惊炬火，飞去破烟岚。

紫阳庵

紫阳庵在瑞石山。其山秀石玲珑，岩窦窈窕。宋嘉定间，邑人胡杰居此。元至元间，道士徐洞阳得之，改为紫阳庵。其徒丁野鹤修炼于此。一日，召其妻王守素入山，付偈云：“懒散六十年，妙用无人识。顺逆俱两忘，虚空镇长寂。”遂抱膝而逝。守素乃奉尸而漆之，端坐如生。妻亦束发为女冠，不下山者二十年。今野鹤真身在殿亭之右。亭中名贤留题甚众。其庵久废，明正统甲子，道士范应虚重建，聂大年为记。万历三十一年，布政史继辰、范涞构空翠亭，撰《紫阳仙迹记》，绘其图景并名公诗，并勒石亭中。

李流芳《题紫阳庵画》：

南山自南高峰逦迤而至城中之吴山，石皆奇秀一色，如龙井、烟霞、南屏、万松、慈云、胜果、紫阳，一岩一壁，皆可累日盘桓。而紫阳精巧，俯仰位置，一一如人意中，尤奇也。余己亥岁与淑士同游，后数至湖上，以畏入城市，多放浪两山间，独与紫阳隔阔。辛亥偕方回访友云居，乃复一至，盖不见十馀年，所往来于胸中者，竟失之矣。山水绝胜处，每恍惚不自持，强欲捉之，纵之旋去。此味不可与不知痛痒者道也。余画紫阳时，又失紫阳矣。岂独紫阳哉，凡山水皆不可画，然不可不画也，存其恍惚而已矣。书之以发孟旸一笑。

袁宏道《紫阳宫小记》：

余最怕入城。吴山在城内，以是不得遍观，仅匆匆一过紫阳宫耳。紫阳宫石，玲珑窈窕，变态横出，湖石不足方比，梅花道人一幅活水墨也。奈何辱之郡郭之内，使山林懒僻之人亲近不得，可叹哉。

王稚登《紫阳庵丁真人祠》诗：

丹壑断人行，琪花洞里生。乱崖兼地破，群象逐峰成。一石一云气，无松无水声。丁生化鹤处，蜕骨不胜情。

董其昌《题紫阳庵》诗：

初邻尘市点灵峰，径转幽深绀殿重。古洞经春犹闷雪，危厓百尺有欹松。清猿静叫空坛月，归鹤愁闻故国钟。石髓年来成汗漫，登临须愧羽人踪。

Fascicle Five: The Outer Scenes of West Lake

张岱

West Stream

Su Hill is sixty-two zhang high and eighteen li two hundred paces round. Below the hill is Stone Man Ridge, sheer and steep and standing firm, shaped like a human figure with two topknots rising up. Over the ridge is West Stream, where several hundred families live gathered into a village market. It is handed down that at the southern crossing of the Song, when Gaozong first came to Wulin, he wished to make his capital there because the land was rich; later, having found Phoenix Hill, he said, "Let West Stream be left for now" — and from this later men named it. The place is very secluded, with many old plum trees, short and small in form, twisted and gnarled, much like the pines of Huangshan. Enthusiasts who go there buy the smallest ones and set them out in basins and pools as miniature scenes. There is the Autumn Snow Hermitage, where a stretch of reed flowers under the bright moon shows white as heaped snow — a most remarkable sight. I say that West Lake is truly the brocade ground of the south, and those who enter it grow sated in the eye with its finery and in the ear with its pipes and songs; and if one would seek a deep stream and winding valley in which to escape the world, a Peach Blossom Spring or Chrysanthemum Water, West Stream must be the best. My friend Jiang Dao'an had a study at West Stream and invited me to withdraw there with him. Being knocked about in the dust of the world I could not go, and to this day I still regret it.

Wang Zhideng, "Letter to Peng Qinzhi from West Stream":

I stayed at Wulin some ten days and never once came to the lake, yet I exhausted the charms of West Stream. Boat and carriage together make eighteen li, all of it travelling among mountain clouds and bamboo mist, until one's sleeves are wholly green. The great cassia trees cannot be spanned by two men's arms. Beneath the trees the flowers cover the ground like gold, and the hill people bind brooms to sweep them up and sell them in the market, each load worth only half a load of husked grain. In former years I travelled the Shanyin road and exclaimed greatly at its beauty; this journey seems finer.

Li Liufang, "Inscription on a Painting of West Stream":

On the last day of the first month of the renzi year, with Zhongxi and Ziyu I went from Yunqi over White Sand Ridge to West Stream. The road was lined with tall bamboo. We walked between two hills for ten li in all and came to Yongxing Monastery. Below Yongxing the hills are level and open, with flat fields and distant villages, hidden springs and old trees, each dotting the scene to its own effect. From Yongxing to the Yue Temple is another ten li, plum blossom running unbroken through the villages, filling the eye like snow, much like the West Qi hills of my own home. That day we ate at Yongxing and climbed the tower to chant and whistle. At night we came back to the little retreat on the lake and drank hard with Mengyang, Yinchi and Zijiang. The next day I brought out an album and painted this. Inscribed in a boat at Wuzhen in the tenth month of guichou.

Yang Pan, "West Stream":

Loving West Stream's beauty, I long worry that its water will give out. The hill's source falls further in spring and scatters away into the wild fields.

Wang Siren, "West Stream":

One ridge pierces through to Tianmu; a thousand streams cry at the head of the rain. Stone clouds open an embroidered wall; the hill's bones are washed by the cold current. On the bird-track the moss coat is slippery; at the houses the bamboo talk is secluded. This journey makes no road of it: half a pace is a hundred years' roaming.

Zhang Dai, "Autumn Snow Hermitage":

The old caves of West Stream are known through the empire; the Wangchuan poems are its record of travel. Before the hermitage old reeds fly their autumn snow; beyond the wood strange peaks raise their summer clouds. The odd rocks in their ridged layers all show their bones; the ancient plums twist and knot with only their sinews left. Step by step among stream and hill one may sprawl at ease; planting my staff, I listen to the spring until the evening light.

Tiger-Run Spring

Tiger-Run Monastery is properly called Dinghui Monastery, built by Master Xingkong in the fourteenth year of Yuanhe of the Tang. Emperor Xianzong bestowed on it the name Guangfu Cloister. In the eighth year of Dazhong it was changed to Daci Monastery, and in the third year of Qianfu Xizong added the two characters "Dinghui." It was destroyed at the end of the Song and rebuilt in the seventh year of Dade of the Yuan; and it was destroyed again. In the fourteenth year of Zhengde of the Ming, Chan Master Baozhang rebuilt it; in the nineteenth year of Jiajing it was destroyed again; and in the twenty-fourth year the Shanxi monk Yongguo rebuilt it. Today everyone names the monastery after the spring. Before this, Master Xingkong was a son of the Lu family of Puban, who received the Dharma from Baizhang Hai and came to roam this hill; delighting in the coiling spiritual air of the place, he settled to practise Chan in it. Suffering from want of water, he intended to move elsewhere. He dreamed that a divine man spoke to him: "Master, do not trouble about water; on the Southern Peak there is a Boy Spring, and I shall send two tigers to drive it here." The next day two tigers were indeed seen pawing the ground, and a spring came out, pure, fragrant, sweet and cold, and so the master stayed. In the eleventh year of Hongwu of the Ming, the Academician Song Lian, on his way to court, passed below the hill. The abbot invited Lian to see the spring, and the monks put on their robes and together recited a Sanskrit spell; the spring gushed and bubbled out, and snow seemed to dance in the air. Lian thought it wonderful and wrote an inscription to record it. Enthusiasts in the city take the water to brew tea, and a thousand loads a day are carried off. The monastery keeps water-tallies for verification.

Su Shi, "Tiger-Run Spring":

The stone couch stands high on the eastern peak; when this old man first came, all the spirits looked up to him. The tiger moved the spring's eye to hasten to his wandering feet; the dragon made spray to furnish his clapping hands. To this day, when sightseers have finished washing, they lie and listen to the ring of jade pendants on the empty steps. So one knows this old man is like this spring: make no thought of his coming and going in the world of men.

Yuan Hongdao, "Tiger-Run Spring":

Bamboo grove and pine gully, clean and dustless; the monks are old, and one knows the monastery is poor as well. Hungry birds share out the Xiangji rice; withered branches are always enough for the Daoist's firewood. At the stele's head one makes out the words of the founding gatha; in the censer the ash is cold before the Dharma-protecting god. Drawing three or four cups of the clear spring, I brew the bud tea and taste the new.

Phoenix Hill

Since the Tang and Song the prefectural offices have all stood at the foot of Phoenix Hill. At the southern crossing the imperial carriage halted there, and it became the travelling palace. Dongpo's line "dragons flying and phoenixes dancing come to Qiantang" refers to this, which is its right wing. From Wuyue down to the Southern Song they made their capital here, and the fine air of the place was gathered into this single vein. In the Yuan, misled by the words of Yang the Shaveling, they built five monasteries on the site of the old palace and raised the Zhennan Pagoda to press it down, and the hill has been desolate ever since. The present prefectural office is the old Kaiyuan palace of the Song, which is the phoenix's left wing. The Ming followed this, and the offices of the provincial administration and surveillance commissions were all ranged on the left, making it a great centre of the southeast. Is this not because the royal air shifts, and its release has its own season? So the Altar of Hills and Rivers, the Eight Trigrams Field, the Imperial Drill Ground, the Ten Thousand Pines Academy and the Tianzhen Academy are all to the left and right of Phoenix Hill.

Su Shi, "Inscribed on the Wall of the Huiming Cloister at Ten Thousand Pines Ridge":

I have been away from here seventeen years, and have come again with Zhang Shengtu of Pengcheng and Chen Fuzhi of Danyang. The cloister monk Fanying has repaired the halls, which are stricter and cleaner than before. The tea he served was fragrant and strong, and I asked, "Is this new tea?" Ying said, "It is the nature of tea that when new and old are mixed, the fragrance and flavour come back." I have heard those who know the zither say that unless a zither is a hundred years old, the living force of the paulownia is not spent, so that slow and quick, clear and muddy, always answer to rain and sun, cold and heat. This principle is close to that of tea, and so I record them together.

Xu Wei, "The Terrace of the Eight Immortals":

At the finest spot of the southern hills is an immortals' terrace, and the scene beside the terrace is utterly free of dust. Let the maid of Ying only come in with the wind; let peach blossom not go off to draw people here. It can make the great elixir set fowl and dogs flying; one would like to clear the weeds beside its centre. Old companions should not be found again; nowhere on the lake is there so deep a nook as this.

Yuan Hongdao, "The Tianzhen Academy":

A hundred feet of ruined wall still stands; three thousand old affairs are heard of. Wild flowers stick their powder on the wall; hill birds fan the stove's warmth. The river too learns the character for "it"; the fields still keep the patterns of the trigrams. Sons and grandsons fill the eye in vain — who will offer the wild celery?

The Great Palace of the Song

The Record of Gleanings from Song and Yuan says: Gaozong loved hills and waters, and within the great palace built another separate garden called Little West Lake. After abdicating he retired to live there, with strange flowers and rare plants, gold and green splendour, and women, eunuchs and palace maids filling it; he lived to be eighty-one. Now King Wusu of Qian also lived to eighty-one, and Gaozong had the same span, so some say Gaozong was King Wusu come again. The History of the Southern Crossing says besides that while Huizong was at Bian he dreamed that the King of Qian demanded his land back, and that very day Gaozong was born; afterwards the southern crossing did indeed take place, and all the land the King of Qian had held came into the map. The dream of long before did not go astray. When the Yuan arose, Yang Lianzhenjia destroyed the great palace to build five monasteries: Baoguo, Xingyuan, Boruo, Xianlin and Zunsheng, all built in Yuan times. According to the gazetteer, Baoguo Monastery is the Chuigong Hall, Xingyuan the Hibiscus Hall, Boruo the Hening Gate, Xianlin the Yanhe Hall, and Zunsheng the Funing Hall. Some of the carved beams and painted rafters still survive. The White Pagoda was reckoned two hundred zhang high, holding within it several hundred thousand scrolls of scripture and several thousand Buddha images, all neatly ordered and sumptuous. They took the bones of the imperial clansmen of the Song after the southern crossing, mixed them with the bones of oxen and horses, and pressed them beneath the pagoda, calling it "Subduing the South." Before long it was struck by lightning, and Zhang Shicheng soon destroyed it.

Xie Gaoyu, "Mourning the Song Palace":

On the covered ways the weeping willows tangle with the grass; in Wulin no tree is of the former dynasty. Wild gibbons bring their young to lodge there and have quite broken up the kingfishers' nests among the flowers. Across the river wind and rain stir the imperial tombs; the ownerless garden's grass turns spring of itself. They say that Guangyao all shed tears, and the women officials are still the old palace people. The towers of the purple palace pressed close on the drifting rose clouds; today, in desolation, it is a house of the Buddha's sons. The cold light goes down the hill and the flower mist scatters; on the ten-thousand-year branches a monk's robe is hung. Grain and millet — who keeps the gate for them? Fallen flowers, terraces and halls darkly melt the soul. The swallows that come back below the Chaoyuan Pavilion do not hear the parrot's words of those days.

Huang Jinqing, "Mourning the Song Palace":

Blue sea and mulberry field, the matter is dim and far; walking, I meet an old man who sighs at the desolation. He speaks of the old state where elk and deer now roam, and idly points at the empty hill still called Phoenix. Spring ends and the green sedge hides the carriage road; rain is much and the dark green climbs the palace wall. I know from afar that by the Bian waters flowing east there is more level waste and setting sun.

Zhao Meng, "The Song Palace":

The metropolis of the southeast, a sovereign's land; in the third month, orioles and flowers are not the old outing. The golden men of the fallen state grieved to leave the Han; in that year the jade horses went to pay court to the Zhou. The lake and hills, soft and lingering, are still here today; the river's water, vast and wide, only flows on by itself. A thousand ages of rise and fall are all like this; the spring wind over the sprouting wheat makes a man grieve.

Liu Ji, "The Great Palace of the Song":

A flourishing place in a land of waters, where the former dynasty made its capital here. Green hills fill all the hundred Yue; white waters enter the three Wu. The Gen Marchmount melted away the royal air; the spirit of Earth began the imperial plan. Two palaces, a thousand li of regret; nine sons, and one man alone. They relied on heaven's moat for their defence and stole ease in a corner by the sea. Travelling halls rose among the clouds and rosy light; the sleeping park grew rank with thorns. With silk and money they made the peace firm and with bow and sword held down the fighting men. One heard only the memorials before the throne, never the call to stand in court. Goblins were honoured with resplendent robes; the loyal and good were given the sword. Why trouble to ask after the altars of state? Let us make our own merriment. Fine rice came from Wu and Kuaiji; turtles and tortoises came out of the great lake. The most honoured towered at the northern gate; the many officers made merry at West Lake. Heron-prowed boats sped their patterned barges; dragon scales danced on embroidered jackets. Warm waves shook the pleated hems; the cool moon soaked the woollen rugs. Purple cassia grew old in the autumn wind; red lotus was wet with the dawn dew. Great crab claws held up their swords; fragrant rice was strained with wild rice grain. On a snail's horn heaven and earth are large; at the turtle's head the airs are of another kind. In the Qin court they were confused about pointing at a deer; in the house of Zhou they sighed at looking for the crow. The jade horses left the imperial carriage; the bronze camels were flung on the road. Containing all, heaven and earth are broad; in nourishing them, feather and fur alike. Oranges and pomelos sped as wrapped tribute; miry soil was taxed as richest land. Rhinoceros-cleaving blades were buried in Yue's thorns; carriage-lighting pearls of Sui rolled away. Mourning antiquity, the rivers and hills remain; cherishing the present, the years and months pass. Whales and sea-monsters empty the Bohai; song and chant already speak of Tang and Yu. Grief for the leather sack, where does it end? In a sheepskin coat the angler was not devious. The travelling geese go south at dusk; turning my head, I remember water-shield and perch.

Fantian Monastery

Fantian Monastery is behind the Altar of Hills and Rivers, built by King Qian of Wuyue in the fourth year of Qiande of the Song and called the South Pagoda. In the tenth year of Zhiping it was changed to Fantian Monastery. It was destroyed in the Yuantong years of the Yuan and rebuilt in the fifteenth year of Yongle of the Ming. It has two stone pagodas, the Magic Eel Well and the Golden Well. Before this, the Ayuwang Monastery at Siming had a Magic Eel Well. King Wusu welcomed the relics of Ayuwang back to Fantian Monastery to enshrine them, and dug a well in the southern gallery, where a magic eel suddenly appeared; the monk Zan wrote a record of it. When Dongpo was vice-prefect of Hangzhou, the monk Shouquan lived here. Dongpo called on him and saw on his wall a poem: "At sunset the cold cicadas cry; alone I come back to the monastery below the wood. The wicker gate is not yet shut at night, and a sliver of moon follows my walking shoes. I hear only the sound of dogs barking, and again a man goes off into the green creepers." Dongpo took up the brush and matched it: "I hear only the bell beyond the mist and do not see the monastery within it. The hidden man's walking does not stop; the grass dew wets his straw sandals. There should only be the moon at the hilltop, shining night after night on the coming and going." Pure, distant, secluded and deep, their flavours suit each other of themselves.

Su Shi, "Inscription of Names at Fantian Monastery":

Fifteen years ago, with staff of goosefoot and straw sandals, I came and went among the southern and northern hills. Here the fish and birds all knew me — how much more the Daoists! Coming again I am at a loss; they are all of a later birth, and facing one another there is only sorrow and regret. Written by Zizhan.

On the seventeenth day of the tenth month of the fourth year of Yuanyou, I came with Cao Huizhi, Chao Zizhuang, Xu Dezhi, Wang Yuanzhi and Qin Shaozhang. The abbots had all gone, the courts and doors were silent, and I lingered there a long while. Written by Dongpo.

Shengguo Monastery

Shengguo Monastery was built by Chan Master Wuzhuo in the Qianning years of the Tang. Its ground has winding pine paths and a gurgling gully stream. The Luocha Stone stands before it and Phoenix Hill is ranged behind it, and no view of the river surpasses this. Going out past the South Pagoda and up, one comes to it. In the Xining years of the Song the monk Qingshun of the monastery lived here. Shun was austere and had few friends, and without great cause did not enter the city or market. When gentlemen sent him rice and grain he would take no more than a few dou, store it in a jar on his table, and take two or three ge a day to eat; of vegetables and bamboo shoots his supply was always short. One day Dongpo came to Shengguo and saw a little poem on the wall: "The bamboo is dark and lets no sun through; the spring's sound falls like rain. The spring wind has its own season; peach and plum crowd the deep hollow." He asked who had written it, and someone answered, Qingshun. Dongpo talked with him at once, and his reputation suddenly rose.

The monk Yuanjing, "Shengguo Monastery":

The deep wood holds a bird-track; the ancient cave hides spring creepers. The sky is far, and the tide is heard early; the river is empty, and much moon is caught. Frost and ice crowd the grass and trees; boat and oar play with the wind and waves. In this secluded dwelling beneath the crag, at times the White Stone song is heard.

The monk Chumo, "Shengguo Monastery":

The road goes up from the middle peak, winding out among the creepers. Reaching the river, the land of Wu ends; across the bank the hills of Yue are many. Old trees cluster in a green haze; the far sky is steeped in white waves. Below, the walled city is near, and bells and chimes mingle with pipes and song.

Five Cloud Hill

Five Cloud Hill is twenty li south of the city, its ridges deep and fine, its wooded peaks luxuriant, a thousand zhang high and fifteen li round. Following the river one takes the road in from Xu village, and winds round the hill for six li in all, with seventy-two bends and a thousand stone steps. On the hill is the Crouching Tiger Pavilion, with stone steps as a stair for coming and going. Halfway to the top the ridge is called Moon Wheel Hill, on which is a heavenly well that does not dry in great drought. To the east is Great Bend, to the north Horse Saddle, to the west Cloud Hollow, to the south Gaoli, and further east Pai Hill. The five peaks stand ranged, overtopping cloud and rosy light, and looking down on the southern and northern peaks, they are like awls standing together. The long river winds like a girdle and West Lake opens like a mirror; the sails on the river are small as gulls and ducks appearing and vanishing in the misty waves — truly a marvellous sight. In the Song, every year before the La festival the monks would present snow in tribute, entering the city at dawn while the sleet had not yet gathered there, for the place is high and cold and sees snow earliest. On the summit is the Zhenji Monastery, where the Five Blessing gods are worshipped; traders must go before the gods to borrow capital, taking away the paper money hung there, and if they make a profit they repay it double. The borrowers are very many and the paper money is always short — so that even when a revered god lends money he cannot avoid the cares of poverty. At this I stroke my beard and laugh.

Yuan Hongdao, "A Short Record of the Imperial Drill Ground":

I first admired the beauty of Five Cloud Hill and set a date to climb it, meaning to climb the South Peak next. But once I had seen the Imperial Drill Ground, my heart for roaming was all gone. Shikui used to laugh at me for not climbing the Baochu Pagoda. I say that in the scenery of West Lake, the lower the better: high up, the trees are thin and the hills lean, the grass shorn and the rocks bald, and a thousand qing of lake light shrink to a cup. The North Peak and the Imperial Drill Ground are the pattern of it. Though the field of view is somewhat wider, this body of mine is no more than six chi long, and at the limit of sight I cannot see ten li — what use have I for so vast a place? Shikui had no answer.

Yunqi

At Yunqi, in the Xining years of the Song, there lived a monk Zhifeng who could subdue tigers, and the world called him the Tiger-Subduing Chan Master. In the Tianxi years the tablet Zhenji Cloister was bestowed. In the Hongzhi years of the Ming it was thrown down by a flood. In the fifth year of Longqing came the Great Master of Lianchi, named Zhuhong and styled Fohui, a son of the Shen family of Renhe. As a licentiate he always ranked high in the examinations. By nature he loved purity and stillness and went in and out of the two teachings. His son died young and his wife died. One day, reading the Collection of the Lamp of Wisdom, his hand slipped and he broke a tea bowl, and he had an awakening; then he regarded wife and child as a foul-smelling shirt and struck out the whole of worldly appearances with one stroke of the brush. He wrote a song to lodge his meaning, abandoned all and gave himself wholly to the Buddha; and though the education commissioner Master Tu tried hard to hold him back, he did not turn. He took the tonsure and the full precepts under a master of Shu, and travelling about came to Funiu, where in sitting and refining he talked in his sleep and old habits suddenly appeared, and what he had "struck out with one stroke" showed faintly again. Passing the house of the layman Xie at Dongchang prefecture, he became easy at last and made a gatha: "The affairs of twenty years ago may be doubted; three thousand li away, what a strange meeting. Burning incense and holding the halberd are all like a dream; demon and Buddha contend in vain over right and wrong." At that time it seemed his delusions were broken and his mind empty, yet he never took himself to be awakened. Returning, he found the old site of the ancient Yunqi Monastery, made a thatched hut and sat silent, hanging a pot to boil gruel and eating but once a day. On his breast he hung an iron tablet inscribed: "When the iron blooms, then I shall write what men say." After a long time patrons vied to build him rooms, and it gradually became a great monastery, with disciples coming daily. His teaching held to the Nanshan Vinaya and the Pure Land of Donglin; he first issued the Revealing the Hidden Meanings of the Vinaya Commentary and afterwards the Commentary and Subcommentary on the Amitabha Sutra. For a time all the Confucians of the Jiangzuo came to him for correction. Vice Minister Wang Zongmu asked: "Last night the mice squeaked and squeaked — did they preach the whole Huayan Sutra?" The master said, "And when the cat pounces out, what then?" He answered for him: "The Dharma master runs off and the lecture desk is left behind." He also wrote a verse: "The mice squeak and squeak, the Huayan clear and clear. How strange, Vice Minister Wang, to be confused by an animal. The cat pounces out before the painted hall, and at the bedside the preaching gives no sign. The Great Expansive Buddha Huayan Sutra: the Wondrous Adornments of the World's Lords, chapter one." His arguments were strict and upright and his interpretations fine and subtle. Circuit intendants and prefects would get down from their carriages to speak with him, and he spoke firmly without the least submissiveness. Famous worthies within the seas looked on him and were won over. The Filial and Settled Empress Dowager had his likeness painted and worshipped it in the palace, and bestowed a python-patterned kasaya on him; he dared not wear it, but kept to a patched robe and a worn curtain, unchanged to the end of his life. His fare was only gourds and vegetables. To those who came to the monastery, high officials with their retinues and all alike, he gave equal treatment, with scarcely an extra dish. Magistrate Fan of Renhe asked, "My mind is confused and disordered; when shall I get stillness?" The master said, "Put it in one place, and there is nothing that cannot be done." A scholar in the company said, "To investigate one thing exclusively is to put it in one place; what business does that get done?" The master said, "Speaking of the investigation of things, one should only go by Zhu Xi's sudden penetration — what business would not be done?" Someone asked, "Why do you not value foreknowledge?" The master said, "Suppose two men watch the Story of the Lute: one has never seen it, and one has seen it and tells beforehand what comes; in the end they watch to the end together — can he add or take away a single act?" Tu Long of Yongdong welcomed the master at Jingci Monastery to see his own play The Udumbara Flower, and Yu Chunxi tried to stop it, since the master's ascetic conduct was strict. The master went all the same with the gentry and saw it through to the end, and took no offence. In his monastery the precepts were always set out and the sound of hairpins and bracelets excluded, yet he would at times play the zither or the flute to please his spleen-spirit. Late in life he wrote Spurs through the Chan Barrier. What he set down, stern as a high peak and cold as ice, comes near to such a thing. He delighted in Letian's ease and made a selection of his poems for circulation. In everyday life he joked and jested, free and easy and accommodating, with something of the pure and unconstrained air of the Venerable Yong. He was never one unvarying withered tree and dead ash, and was truly not the plank-carrying fellow Song Xu spoke of — an unimaginable man. He was fifty years in the monastic life, and all such things belong to what was said about him. On the last day of the sixth month of the yimao year of Wanli he wrote letters of farewell to his friends, went back to the hill and set out a vegetarian feast, distributing tokens and gifts as one about to go far. On the third day of the seventh month he collapsed speechless, and revived the next day. When his disciples asked about his affairs after death, he answered with what he had said before. At noon on the fourth he ordered himself turned to face west, stroked his head and opened his eyes as when he had no illness, chanted the Buddha's name and passed away sitting cross-legged. At Wu, the spirit Li Tan descended at Pi Hill and said the master was an ancient Buddha. Yang Jing'an Wanchun once saw the master manifest a Buddha-body and bestow food in Wu. A believer peeping into an empty room saw four ghosts come with lamps, and suddenly three lotus seats appeared, the master sitting on one, and they were Buddha images. A spirit of the planchette said that Zhang Guo heard the master expound the Rhapsody on the Mind at Yongming. The wife of Li of the Ministry of Works had never believed in the Buddha, but took the master's precepts alone, and a year later died with three fingers bent, saying her body was the Indian monk Anajita. Monks and laymen about to pass away sitting often asked him to expound the precepts and the Dharma. Yet the master called himself an ordinary man, and fearing rebuke in all things, dared not let it be known. The day before his passing he let slip that he had seen a great lotus canopy, and the marvel of his rebirth could no longer be kept secret.

Yuan Hongdao, "A Short Record of Yunqi":

Yunqi is below Five Cloud Hill; the bamboo sedan goes among bamboo and trees for seven or eight li before arriving, exceedingly deep and out of the way — the dwelling place of the monk Lianchi. Lianchi's observance of the precepts is strict and fine, and though in the Way he has not greatly penetrated, he is not one without insight. As for his single holding up of the one gate of reciting the Buddha's name, it is especially direct and simple: within those six characters, heaven turns and earth revolves — why labour to press one's eyes and go off into wild interpretations? So one may even say that Lianchi has awakened to nothing at all. Awakened to nothing at all — that is the true Amitabha; please look sharp.

Li Liufang, "Colophon on the Painting Spring Snow at Yunqi":

I have often been at West Lake in spring, summer and autumn, but never saw the cold hills before going home. In the jiachen year I went with the two Wangs to pay respects at Yunqi. It was already the second month, but heavy snow lay a chi deep. Coming out at Red Hill Ford, the whole way was jade branches and jasper boughs, spreading and shining. Looking at the hills of Jiangnan, white against the clouds, was especially lovely. In the autumn of the gengxu year I looked at snow on the two embankments with Baimin. When I had gone home Baimin stayed on, waiting for snow till the end of the La month; that year there was no snow at all, and he came back disappointed. Everything in the world has its own conditions and cannot be had by wishing. Inscribed in the tenth month of guichou.

Again, "Inscription on a Painting of Snowy Hills":

On the ninth day of the twelfth month of the jiazi year there was heavy snow; I moored my boat at Chang Gate and made this picture. I remember in past years meeting snow at West Lake: after the snow, clouds came out over the two hills, and above and below all was one white, and one could not tell which was cloud and which snow. When I painted, there was snow in my eye but cloud in my mind, and those who see it call it a picture of cloudy hills, not knowing that it is snowy hills I painted. I lay down my brush and laugh.

Zhang Dai, "Pillar Couplet Presented to the Great Master Lianchi":

On the preaching terrace, Master Sheng says one word and the stone says another; in the tiny room where he lodges his true nature, the old monk has half of it and the clouds the other half.

Six Harmonies Pagoda

Moon Wheel Peak is south of Dragon Hill; "Moon Wheel" describes its shape. When Zhang Junfang of the Song was magistrate of Qiantang he stayed at Moon Wheel Hill and at night saw cassia seeds come down over the pagoda, whirling in the mist and scattering like grain, falling like morning-glory seeds. Beside the peak is the Six Harmonies Pagoda, built by Chan Master Zhijue in the third year of Kaibao of the Song to hold down the river tide. The pagoda has nine storeys and is more than fifty zhang high, propping up the sky and towering aloft, spanning the land and straddling the stream. Sea-going ships just setting out take the pagoda's lamp for their guide. In the Xuanhe years it was destroyed in Fang La's rebellion. In the twenty-third year of Shaoxing the monk Zhitan rebuilt it with seven storeys. In the twelfth year of Jiajing of the Ming it was destroyed. Within it are the Sutra in Forty-Two Sections written out together by Tang Situi and others, and a stone engraving of the Bodhisattva Guanyin by Li Boshi. Below the pagoda is Ferry Fish Hill, and across the bank the hills of Shan can be counted one by one.

Li Liufang, "Inscription on the Painting Riding at Dawn by the Six Harmonies Pagoda":

Up on the terrace at Swallow Rock, on the road at the Longtan post station, in the old days we rode side by side, and even in dreams our pleasures were shared. Later at Five Cloud Hill, facing Xixing Ford far off, a sheer cliff stands looking down on the river, and I felt as if I had met that scene again. How much of a man's life is there? Happily the rivers and hills are as they were. Coming again we take each other's hands, and this joy cannot be told. Setting myself inside a painting, how should I speak of going home? I shall go and seek Yunqi — but where in the distance is Yunqi?

This was a poem I inscribed on a painting in the boat when I went with Wang Shushi Pingzhong to pay respects at Yunqi in the jiachen year. Today, unrolling my painting Riding at Dawn by the Six Harmonies Pagoda, that scene comes back in a flash, and I inscribe this again. On the sixth day of the tenth month of renzi, in a boat at Dingxiang Bridge. Wu Ju, lyric "At the Six Harmonies Pagoda, Written to Imperial Command":

A jade rainbow hangs far off; looking at the green hills, dim and faint as a single stroke. Suddenly one feels the sky wind blow the sea upright, like spring thunder first breaking. White horses ride the void, jasper turtles drive the water, day and night paying court to the palace gates. Dragons flying and phoenixes dancing, lush and green, ring Wuyue about.

Such a scene should be nowhere else on earth: the finest ground of the southeast, a grand sight truly marvellous. It is like the lads of Wu flying their coloured banners, kicking up a river of autumn snow. The yellow canopy, heaven looking down, water-rhinoceros troops thronging like clouds, watch the striking of the oar in midstream. Late, the waves are still, and over the sea gate flies up the bright moon.

(To the tune "Libation to the River Moon")

Yang Weizhen, "Watching the Tide":

On the eighteenth of the eighth month the sleeping dragon died; the sea turtle by night ate the Luocha waters. In a moment the sea opened the gate of Kan and Zhe; the ground rolled up a silver dragon thinner than paper. Gen Hill was moved here to be the Son of Heaven's palace; before the palace one arrow-shot follows the west wind. The ashes of the kalpa would wash out the dens of snakes and ghosts; Poliu breaking iron still contended for mastery. At the Sea-Gazing Tower's head they boasted the scene was fine; the severed turtle has already run off to the isles of gold and silver. The Heaven-Wu god in one night moved the sea water; horses trample the sandy fields and eat the sandy grass. The towered ships of Yashan — will they come back or not? A seven-year-old wails and cries on the Zhidao road.

Xu Wei, "Watching the Tide from the River-Reflecting Tower":

Fish-scale golden armour camped at the ivory tent; turning about, they point to the head of the tide. The autumn wind blows snow down the river gate; ten thousand li of jasper flowers roll up in layered waves. They say that when the king of Wu crossed over to Yue, three thousand strong crossbows shot the tide low. Today at the feast we watch the order passed: for a moment let Xu's breakers loose and pull back the water-rhinoceros.

Zhenhai Tower

The Zhenhai Tower was formerly called the Chaotian Gate, built by the Qian family, kings of Wuyue. They shaped stone for the gate and set a lofty tower above it. The tower's base is piled stone four zhang four chi high, fifty-six paces east and west and half that north and south. Stone steps left and right lead up to the tower, and the tower with its base is eleven zhang high. In the Zhizheng years of the Yuan it was renamed Gongbei Tower. In the eighth year of Hongwu of the Ming it was renamed Laiyuan Tower, and later, the characters being reckoned unlucky, it was renamed Zhenhai. It burned in the tenth year of Chenghua and was rebuilt in the thirty-fifth year of Jiajing; in the ninth month of that year it burned again, and the Supreme Commander Hu Zongxian rebuilt it. When the tower was finished, he brought forward his staff scholar Xu Wei and said, "This should have a record; write me a draft." The draft was presented and the duke rewarded him, saying, "I hear you have long been a sojourner." He hurried to summon the accountant and grant him two hundred and twenty taels of silver from the treasury for the scholar's cottage. Wei declined it as too lavish and dared not take it. The duke said, "I am ashamed beside Duke Jin; you, by this piece of writing, are able to shame Huangfu Shi — if I used the few words of the Fuxian Monastery affair to reproach you for my payment, I should be shabby indeed. Why call it lavish?" Wei was moved by his words and bowed and took the gift home. He spent all he had earned by selling his writings, together with the duke's sum, to buy ten mu of land southeast of the city, with twenty-two rooms, two small ponds for fish and lotus; of trees there were three kinds, fruit and timber, several dozen in all; a long hedge ran the length of a mu, protected with boxthorn, and outside were several dozen bamboos whose shoots burst up into the clouds. When guests came he netted fish and roasted shoots, with fallen fruit for relish, and grew drunk and sang. The house was at first shabby and in no order, and he gradually set it in order and made it new, and so inscribed his hall "Payment for Words."

Xu Wei, "Record of the Zhenhai Tower":

The Zhenhai Tower is handed down as having been built by the Qian family of Wuyue, to gaze toward the court at Bianjing and show their intent of submission. Its foundations, tower and terrace, gates and railings are exceedingly high, broad and splendid, all set out in another record. In the Qian family's time the tower was called the Chaotian Gate. In the Zhizheng years of the Yuan it was renamed Gongbei Tower. In the eighth year of Hongwu of our august Ming it was renamed Laiyuan. At the time a diviner found fault with the strokes and shape of the name as unlucky, and afterwards it proved true, so it was given its present name. It burned in the tenth year of Chenghua and was rebuilt in the thirty-fifth year of Jiajing, and in the ninth month it burned again. I received the command to oversee the military affairs of Zhili, Zhejiang and Fujian and opened my office at Hangzhou; but I moved my troops to deal with the bandits and was stationed at Jiaxing, and only when I came back did I plan its restoration with such and such officers. Some thought it an ill to trouble over what was not urgent. I said: "The Zhenhai Tower is built in the middle of the prefectural city, straddling the thoroughfare and cutting across the foot of Wu Hill. On its four sides are famous hills and the great sea, the beauties of river, lake and tide, and at one glance a vast expanse of several hundred li. The people's houses number a million, and among them the scenes of village and market, official and private, cannot be reckoned by tens of thousands; and what can be taken in at a glance is only this tower as an outstanding sight. As for the islands stretching out to the far distance, they too lie as if in my palm. Soaring high and leaping far, it has the air of pressing down upon a hundred southern tribes. And the eastern foreigners who pass this way with tribute also often gaze and bow and linger before going on. So all who come from the four quarters hurry to look up at it as the goal of their sightseeing. So it has been for several hundred years, and to abolish it in a day, making the people feel they had lost their bearings, is not the way to make manifest the great peace or to please those near and far. Nor is that all: the bells, drums and water clocks kept in it, and the notices of the seasons of the four times, let the people know dusk and dawn, keep their times of work and rest, and open and close with cold and heat, plant mulberry and hemp, fish and hunt, and so on — it is the compass of those who dwell here. To abolish it in a day and leave the people dazed and at a loss is not the way to show the order of the seasons or to keep their uses whole. Moreover it is handed down that the Qian family built it because they submitted to the Song, and this matter has long been plain. Down to the time of Fang Guozhen, when he sought a stay of death from our Exalted Emperor, he still knew enough to borrow Liu's affair in his plea. If the crowd of villains now on the seas could also learn of the Qian family's affair, and their petitions were like Zhen's first words, the benefit to the way of a subject would be no small thing — can we then let its traces be buried and unproclaimed? My office is to clear the sea frontier, and among today's tasks none is more urgent than this. Do you but see to the building; do not tax the people deeply, but take care to begin with ourselves." Thereupon I and such and such officers contributed from the public funds so many taels of silver in all, and so much was raised from the people. Then workmen and materials were gathered and the work began on such a day of such a month of such a year. Of what was built: stone was laid for the gate and a tower raised above it; the tower's base is piled stone so many zhang and chi high, so many paces east and west and half that north and south. Steps left and right wind up to the tower, and the tower's own height is so many zhang. It has seven bays and a hundred plinths. There is one great bell and nine drums large and small, and notices of the seasons each of its own kind, stored within, all as in the Chenghua design. It was finished after so many years and months. When the tower was not yet finished, fierce bandits filled the seas and I moved my troops to attack them and had no leisure to come daily. Now for five years the fiercest of the bandits have been taken, the newcomers have fled, and those who stayed are too cowed to come; the sea is at last at peace, and the tower is finished just now, and so it keeps its old name, Zhenhai.

Zhang Dai, "Zhenhai Tower":

The Qian styled themselves subjects through several generations; the lofty tower rises abruptly, signed Chaotian. The hills of Yue and the land of Wu end at its corners; the great sea and the long river are joined at a glance. Envoys reaching it from the hundred tribes all bow in reverence; the tide comes in nine bends and winds of itself. From Chenghua to Jiajing it passed through three fires, each in a year when the royal army pacified the sea. Yuhu in that year built the ruined tower; Wenchang wrote its record and roamed within it. He met with a beached crocodile come to cast away its linchpin; he came just as the hungry hawk left the wrist of itself. Yan Wu inscribed poems and gave them to Du Fu; Cao Man split characters and grew jealous of Yang Xiu. Now, though one had the brush of Qingteng, where would one find another man to pay for a few words?

Shrine of Lord Wu

When the king of Wu had granted Zixu death, he took his corpse, wrapped it in a leather wine-sack and set it afloat in the river. Zixu therefore rode the waves along the current, coming and going with the tide, dashing against the banks with a force not to be withstood. Some have seen him standing at the head of the tide in silver armour on a snowy lion, with a plain carriage and white horses, and so a temple was set up for him. Every year in mid-autumn, after the fifteenth, when the tide is at its greatest, the people of Hangzhou go out with flags and drums to meet it; and the sport of riding the tide began from this. In the Dazhong Xiangfu years of the Song the tablet "Loyal and Tranquil" was bestowed on him and he was enfeoffed King Yinglie. In the Jia and Xi years the sea tide overflowed greatly, and the metropolitan governor Zhao Yuquan prayed to the god, whereupon the flood at once subsided; he then memorialised for the building of the Yingwei Pavilion within the temple. It was destroyed at the end of the Yuan and rebuilt at the beginning of the Ming. There are Lu Yuanfu's "Preface to the Inscription on Xu Hill" of the Tang and Wang Anshi's "Stele Inscription for the Temple" of the Song.

Gao Qi, "Shrine of Lord Wu":

The land is vast and heaven desolate; the hegemon's work is empty; in the blue histories I have sighed over his surviving merit. To whip the corpse in the Chu tomb was filial piety in life; to have his eyes torn out at the Wu gate was loyalty after death. His soul presses on the angry breakers and rolls up white waves; his sword buried, his wronged blood raises a rank wind. I come here with boundless grief in my heart, and all of it lies in the mist and rain of Wu Hill.

Xu Wei, "Temple of Lord Wu":

East of Wu Hill is the shrine of Lord Wu, and the unofficial histories judge him with no settled word. What crime had his whole clan, to be mown down like grass? Yet later men take pains to argue about the whipping of the corpse. Withdrawing to farm, he first felt he had come to Wu too early; avenging his wrong, he thought at last he had entered Ying too late. That things came to this for this lord was truly ill fortune: the sword Zhulou, as before, met with Fuchai.

Zhang Dai, "Shrine of Chief Minister Wu":

Wu Hill towers up, lost in cloud and mist; the tide comes and the tide goes west of the great river. The two hills swallow and breathe out and make a marriage of it; ten thousand horses gallop, answering drum and war-drum. Clear and muddy mingle, heaven covering earth; black and yellow tangle, blood joining mud. Banners, pennons and canopies carry his awe afar; the summons reaches the E River and the escort is mustered. From of old the tides have had a god's power; the ghostly air is dark and grim and the white day faint. Across the bank the hills of Yue keep their lingering regret; reaching the river, the land of Wu is no longer the old capital. At Qiantang one arm's whip runs like thunder; at Kan and Zhe the two cheeks spout flying snow. Lamps and fires fill the river and the wind and rain are quick; with plain carriage and white horses the minister comes home.

City God Temple

The City God Temple on Wu Hill was, before the Song, on Huang Hill and was formerly called Yonggu; in the ninth year of Shaoxing it was moved and built here. At the beginning of the Song its god was enfeoffed, surnamed Sun and named Ben. In the Yongle years its god was enfeoffed as Zhou Xin. Xin was a man of Nanhai, first named Rixin; Emperor Wen used to call him "Xin," and so that became his name. As a provincial graduate he became an evaluator in the Court of Judicial Review, and in doubtful cases would settle and clear them with a word. At the beginning of Yongle he was appointed Investigating Censor, and impeached boldly, so that people called him "Cold Face, Chill Iron"; in Chang'an they used his name to stop children crying. He was transferred to be Surveillance Commissioner of Yunnan and then moved to Zhejiang. Reaching the border he saw a swarm of gnats flying at his horse's head; following them into the thicket he found an exposed corpse, with nothing on the body but one key and one small iron token. Xin said, "A cloth merchant," and took them. When he arrived he sent men into the market to buy cloth, examined each piece at the end, and kept all that matched the token. He interrogated and caught the robber, summoned the dead man's family and gave them the cloth, and put the robber to the law; the family was astonished. Xin was sitting in his hall when a whirlwind blew a leaf to him, and he thought it strange. His attendants said, "This is not found in the city; only one monastery, rather far from the city, has it." Xin said, "Has a monk of that monastery killed someone? Then there is a wrong here." He went to the tree and dug, and found the corpse of a woman. Another day a merchant coming home at night from far away, about to reach his house, secretly put his gold in a crack in the stone of a wayside shrine, and in the morning it was gone. The merchant told Xin. Xin said, "Was there anyone travelling with you?" He said, "No one." "Did you tell anyone?" He said, "No; I only told my wife." Xin at once ordered the wife put in irons, examined her, and got the robber, who was her lover: the husband had come home suddenly, and the lover was the one hiding and listening. In all his governing Xin was often like this. Xin went on circuit and inspected the subordinate counties in plain clothes; a county officer offended him and put him in prison, and so he learned everything of that county's hardships. The next day, when the county people heard the Surveillance Commissioner was coming, they all went to meet him and could not find him. Xin came out of the prison and said, "I am he." The county officer was aghast. At that time the name of Zhou the Incorruptible Commissioner was known through the empire. Ji Gang, Commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, was then most powerful, and sent a chiliarch to investigate affairs in Zhejiang, and the chiliarch played the tyrant and took bribes. It happened that Xin was going to the capital and met him at Zhuo, and at once arrested the chiliarch and put him in the Zhuo prison. The chiliarch escaped and complained to Gang, and Gang in turn falsely impeached Xin. The emperor was angry and had him arrested; when he came, he spoke firmly before the steps: "The Surveillance Commissioner's seizing and punishing the wicked is the same as the Censorate's within; it is Your Majesty's own commission. Your servant obeys the edict and dies; in dying I have no regret." The emperor grew angrier and ordered him executed. Going to his death he cried aloud, "In life a straight minister, in death a straight ghost!" That evening the Grand Astrologer reported that the Literary Star had fallen; the emperor was displeased and asked his attendants where Zhou Xin was from. They answered, "Nanhai." The emperor said, "Beyond the ridges there is such a man." One day the emperor saw a figure standing in scarlet and shouted at it, asking who it was. It answered, "Your servant Xin. The Lord on High, calling me firm and upright, has made me City God of Zhejiang, to govern the corrupt officials for Your Majesty." Having spoken, it vanished. So Xin was enfeoffed Metropolitan City God of Zhejiang and a temple was set up on Wu Hill.

Zhang Dai, "The City God Temple on Wu Hill":

In the Xuan Chamber he earnestly questioned Master Jia; the manner of ghosts and spirits cannot be named. Showing his form in broad day, the imperial countenance was moved; bathed in blood from the Yellow Springs, the throne was startled. Wrapped in a leather sack, there was breath in him still; his body martyred to wolves and tigers — could it lack a spirit? I only fear that below the earth Long Feng will laugh, laugh that your strange wrong met an enlightened sage. From the imperial workshop it came out especially from the maple palace, and turned instead to the western suburb to behead a straight minister. He meant by a ghost's words to turn the sage ruler back, and still by his corpse's remonstrance to drive out the flatterers. His blood's sincerity needed no cinnabar for colour; cold iron should have had his body cast in gold. Sitting facing the river tide with his many cold faces, to this day his wronged spirit has never been righted.

Again, "Pillar Inscription for the City God Temple":

The fierce ghost Zhang Xun dared to stain the white day with his bloodied body; King Yama, old Bao, matched his iron face from the first with the Yellow River.

Temple of the Fire Power

The Shrine of the Fire Power is to the right of the City God Temple, and inside it is the Daoists' fine lodge. Gazing north to Xiling, the whole prospect of the lake becomes a basin-pool miniature. The southern and northern peaks are like an ink-stone hill on the desk; the two lakes of Mingsheng are like a water cup on the table. Every window lattice and doorway from which the lake is seen makes a picture: small, they are square albums; long, single hanging scrolls; wide, horizontal panels; upright, hand scrolls — and at each step the image changes. Meeting a man of taste, one should of course loosen one's robe and sprawl. What painters call ink monochrome and blue-green, light sketching and heavy laying-on, are all there. What the ancients said — "a world is hidden in a grain of millet; hills and rivers are cooked in a half-sheng pot" — means just this. If the hearth-dwelling Daoist could be the scholar of Yangxian, then the Six Bridges and the Three Tianzhu would all be things in his goose cage.

Zhang Dai, "Shrine of the Fire Power":

Zhonglang judged the viewing of the lake: climbing high is not as good as going low. A thousand qing of one lake's light shrink to the size of a cup. I love a wide field of view, the great earth gathered into a chink. Jar-mouth window and lattice — all that meets the eye is a picture. Going further in, it grows finer still: Changkang eating sugarcane. A few strokes of Ni Yunlin are plainly better than Jing and Xia. Fine carving is not that it lacks skill, but blandness and distance carry a lasting price. I love the Daoist's cottage, and had rather take Zhonglang's scolding.

Hibiscus Stone

The Hibiscus Stone is now the study of the Wu family of Xin'an. The hill has many strange rocks and steep ridges, set off with pines and cypresses all a full embrace round. Before the steps is a stone shaped like a hibiscus, brought down by wind and rain and half sunk in the mud and sand. Compared with the Rushing Cloud of Yulin, it is sturdier still. My only regret is that the owner loves this stone so deeply that he keeps it in his bosom and will not leave it half a pace, so that towers and lodges press upon it and it is much hemmed in. Could the plinths and pillars give way and stand off a zhang or so, so that the sense of pine and stone might be taken in blandness and distance, it would be wonderful beyond words. The Wu have lived for generations on the upper hill. When the master was eighteen he had not an inch of cloth on him, and people made light of him and called him Wu the Straight Officer. Rising early one day, he picked up a silver hairpin weighing two zhu, and at once bought ox blood, boiled it and fed it to the down-and-out. From then on he managed for more than fifty years, and from Hui to Yan the Wu family had eighty-three pawnshops. Dongpo said, "The capital of a single hairpin can make one rich." Looking at the Wu, one may indeed believe it. This place was the flower garden of a certain family; my late father broke up its fine rooms for three hundred taels and moved them to build Jiyuan, and the Wu bought the abandoned ground at a high price, which at the time was thought a good bargain. But now, coming to the Wu garden and seeing these strange rocks and marvellous peaks, ancient pines and luxuriant cypresses, it is like a jade in one's bosom got and lost again: at each meeting, one regret after another.

Zhang Dai, "The Hibiscus Stone":

Wu Hill is a cave of stone, and its stone must be delicate. But this stone is plain and simple and raises no strange peak. Its petals fold in several layers; a hibiscus fallen to the ground. Foolishly it lies among the grass, covered above by tall pines. Washed and polished as if wrought of iron, its dark green sealed with moss. The owner cherishes it too much and walls it round for protection. I regret it has no room to stretch, a propped crane shut in a cage. It can only be kept by desk and mat, and serve for a strange stone's offering.

Yunju Hermitage

Yunju Hermitage is on Wu Hill and stands humbly. It was built by Chan Master Foyin in the Yuanyou years of the Song. The Shengshui Monastery was built by Chan Master Zhongfeng in the Yuanzhen years of the Yuan. Zhongfeng was also styled Huanzhu; when he took the tonsure, a former palace woman of the Song, Yang Miaoxi, kept his hair in an incense box, and relics grew thick in it, so a pagoda was built in the monastery. It was destroyed at the end of the Yuan. In the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu of the Ming, Shengshui was merged into Yunju and the tablet Yunju Shengshui Chan Monastery was bestowed. With the years the hall fell in, and in the Chenghua years the monk Wenshen restored it. In the monastery is a small self-portrait of Zhongfeng, above which is an encomium: "The illusory man has no such form; this form is no illusory man. If you call it Zhongfeng, you add dust to the mirror's face." It used to be said that at the Six Bridges there were a thousand peach and willow trees, whose red and green marked the shallow and deep of spring, and that at Yunju there were a thousand maples and tallow trees, whose red and yellow marked the shallow and deep of autumn; but now they are firewood and kindling, and there is no asking after them. I once saw an inscription of Li Changheng's on a painting: "Of the fine monasteries within the city of Wulin, Yunju must be the first. Before and behind its mountain gate are tall pines reaching the sky and hiding the sun, handed down as planted by Zhongfeng's own hand; with the years they have been gradually cut down by the monks, and not one in ten remains — seeing it always brings the grief of the old and accomplished withering away. In the fifth month of last year I went from my little retreat to Qingbo to visit a friend in the monastery; at sunset I sat in the long gallery, bought wine and drank a little, then lingered on the city wall, looked at Phoenix, Nanping and the other hills, and came home treading my shadow along with the moon. The next day I painted this for Mengyang — it can well be mused upon."

Li Liufang, "A Record of Red Leaves at Yunju Hill":

Three times I have looked at the Mid-Autumn moon on the lake, and each time came home without waiting for the red leaves. The other day, passing Tangqi by boat, I saw several trees of lovely crimson and yellow and thought with a leap of the appointment at Lingyin and Lotus Peak, and only today have I kept it. But on reaching the lake the frost had not spread everywhere, and at the head of Yunju Hill the thousand maples and tallow trees were not yet in their full flush — can it be that my affinity with the red leaves is still scanty? I recall that in past years the Venerable Ren had a poem inviting me on behalf of the red leaves, and I too answered offhand; I record it here: "Twenty days at West Lake, and I have not taken it all in. One morning I part from you and go home, and this outing is a hurried thing. When I wished to take leave, autumn was already old on a thousand hills. Given a few days more to stay, the frost would flush and change the treetops. You often said to me that the maple leaves at Lingyin are fine: a thousand reds and ten thousand purples stuck at random against the clear sky. Blazing, they are spread like brocade; dense, they are set up like banners. In a whole life I have not seen it — how does that differ from being fed on talk of food?"

Gao Qi, "Lodging at the Qixia Terrace of Huanzhu":

The window whitens, the birds' voices dawn; the last of the bell crosses the stream's water. This life's secluded dream returns, alone in the empty hills. On the pine crag the Buddha lamp is left; on the leafy ground the monks' shoes sound. My heart is just then deep and still; lying idle, white clouds arise.

Xia Yuanji, "Yunju Hermitage":

Who opened this Yunju realm, towering and looking down on the ancient city? The two lakes in clear weather send up their blue; the Three Tianzhu at dawn divide the green. The scriptures lock away the marvels of a thousand cases; the bell sounds and ten thousand households start. In this there is true joy — why must one go seeking Penglai and Yingzhou?

Xu Wei, "Gazing South of the City from Beneath the Pines at Yunju Hermitage":

The evening glow has not yet faded; over the city wall the moon is just full. The rosy light turns and a bird drops; the river's colour comes up cold into the pines. The market's traders and butchers all gather; from the high sky, drunk, I look again and again. What harm if, like Gao Jianli, one took up the zhu and plucked it? (Below the city there is a blind man skilled at ballad-singing.)

Temple of Lord Shi

The Temple of Lord Shi is in Stone Tortoise Lane; its god is Shi Quan, a junior officer of the Palace Guard in the Song. On the first day of the second month of the twentieth year of Shaoxing, as Qin Hui was going to court and passing Wangxian Bridge in his sedan chair, Quan blocked the road with a long blade and stabbed at him; it went through the leather but did not strike him, and Hui had him beheaded in the market. The onlookers stood like a wall, and one among them said aloud, "This bungler! Why not behead him?" The words are very satisfying. Qin Hui was treacherous and wicked, and all men of the empire for ten thousand generations wish to kill him; that Shi Quan stabbed at him makes him one such man of all the empire for ten thousand generations. His heart and his deed were never undertaken for the sake of Prince E of Yue; yet plays now make Quan a subordinate officer of the Prince, and at Yue's tomb Quan has been put into the Yizhong Shrine — and so this act of Shi Quan's becomes, on the contrary, not public and not great. That later men sacrifice to the lord here and do not have him share the offerings at Yue's tomb catches Lord Shi's heart exactly.

Zhang Dai, "Temple of Lord Shi":

Shi of the Palace Guard, the bungler: he stabbed the tiger without wounding it and did not cut the snake through. He took its bite in return, its teeth a sharp sword; it killed men to flatter men and reported to the khan. The fierce ghost appeared in the street in broad day, and at this the old traitor covered his face. Hailed and thronged about, he screened his carriage curtains; the abandoned corpse drifted on the Qiantang shore. In anger Xu's breakers rolled up and thunder and lightning ran; the snow shifted and came, and heaven and earth were changed.

The Three Mao Temple

The Three Mao Temple is southwest of Wu Hill. The Three Mao were three brothers: the eldest Ying, the second Gu, the youngest Zhong, men of Xianyang at the beginning of the Qin. They attained the Way and became immortals, and from the Han onward have been honoured with sacrifice. The three images in the temple are one standing, one sitting and one lying, and no one knows the explanation. Guessing at it, perhaps walking, standing, sitting and lying are all the work of cultivation, and it teaches men not to let them slip by. In the twentieth year of Shaoxing of the Song, after the old name in the Eastern Capital, the tablet Ningshou Temple was bestowed. It was destroyed in the Zhiyuan years of the Yuan and rebuilt at the beginning of Hongwu of the Ming. In the tenth year of Chenghua the Haotian Pavilion was built. In the thirty-fifth year of Jiajing the Supreme Commander Hu Zongxian, for his merit in pacifying the island barbarians, memorialised for the building of the Zhenwu Hall. In the twenty-first year of Wanli Sun Long of the Directorate of Ceremonial restored it and built besides the Zhongcui Pavilion and the Sanyi Pavilion. It is handed down that the temple has an ink-written Yinfu Jing in Chu Suiliang's small standard script. In the gengshen year of Jingding, Lizong of the Song, because Jia Sidao had merit at the Jiang and Han, bestowed on him gold and silk by tens of thousands, which he would not take, and by decree the Yinfu Jing was taken from this very temple to reward his merit. This matter is most elegant, save that it should not have fallen to Jia Sidao. I have often said that Cao Cao and Jia Sidao were arch-villains of all time, yet that there is a Cao Mengde among poetry and prose, and a Jia Qiuhe among calligraphy and painting, makes their heaven-high load of sin seem halved. Only then did I understand that poetry, prose, calligraphy and painting can absolve wicked men so far. If a man has even one aperture open in him, can he fail to attend to poetry and prose and set his heart on calligraphy and painting?

Xu Wei, "Watching the Tide from the Three Mao Temple":

Yellow pennons with embroidered characters and heavy golden bells; the immortals talk at night, riding green phoenixes. Jewelled trees cluster and cluster, shaking the green waves; at the sea gate a few dots, the tide's head stirs. The sea god stops dancing, her waist grown narrow; heaven and earth have bodies that cannot endure. Who will take a silk girdle and bind up the autumn sky? Who will take an ancient measure and gauge the spring snow? The black turtle has borne the earth these tens of thousands of years, and day and night its whole body's divine blood runs dry. Rise and fall are not kept for the space of a blink; the white waves of the human world are now like this. The white sun is high and high yet dismal and lightless; a cold rainbow follows the body and winds about the city moat. How should those in the city know what is outside it? They wonder instead from where the cold colour comes. In the Deer Park the grass grows long and Manjusri is dead; the lion follows men and roars in the Jeta Grove. On the stones of Wu Hill I sit in the autumn wind, my tall cap brushing the cloud and mist.

Again, "Viewing Snow from the Three Mao Temple":

A grand gathering assembles the yellow caps; in the jade palace we sit late into the night. For plum to grow fragrant into buds is easy; for snow to fall away into flowers is hard. The moon at the eaves sinks into the warm cup; the river's peaks come cold into the seats. Evening crows are startled by the torches and fly off, breaking the misty haze.

Ziyang Hermitage

The Ziyang Hermitage is on Ruishi Hill, whose fine stones are delicate and whose crags and hollows are deep and secret. In the Jiading years of the Song the townsman Hu Jie lived here. In the Zhiyuan years of the Yuan the Daoist Xu Dongyang got it and made it the Ziyang Hermitage. His disciple Ding Yehe cultivated himself here. One day he called his wife Wang Shousu into the hills and handed her a gatha: "Sixty years of idleness and ease; its wondrous use no one has known. Compliance and opposition are both forgotten; the void is long and forever still." Then he clasped his knees and passed away. Shousu took his body and lacquered it, and it sits upright as if alive. She too bound up her hair as a Daoist woman and did not come down from the hill for twenty years. Yehe's true body is now to the right of the hall pavilion. In the pavilion the inscriptions left by famous worthies are very many. The hermitage was long in ruins, and in the jiazi year of Zhengtong of the Ming the Daoist Fan Yingxu rebuilt it, and Nie Danian wrote a record. In the thirty-first year of Wanli the provincial administration commissioners Shi Jichen and Fan Lai built the Kongcui Pavilion, composed a "Record of the Traces of the Ziyang Immortal," and had its scenes depicted together with the poems of noted gentlemen and all carved on stone in the pavilion.

Li Liufang, "Inscription on a Painting of the Ziyang Hermitage":

The southern hills run in a winding line from the South Peak to Wu Hill within the city, and their stones are all strange and fine and of one colour: at Dragon Well, Misty Rosy Cloud, Nanping, Ten Thousand Pines, Ciyun, Shengguo and Ziyang, every crag and wall can be lingered over for days. And Ziyang is exquisite, its ups and downs and placings all exactly as one would have them — the most remarkable of all. In the jihai year I toured it with Shushi, and afterwards came several times to the lake; but dreading to enter the city, I mostly rambled among the two hills and was apart from Ziyang alone. In the xinhai year I went with Fanghui to visit a friend at Yunju and so came once more — not having seen it for more than ten years, what had been going to and fro in my breast was lost after all. At the finest places of hills and waters one is always in a daze and not one's own master; try hard to seize it, and let it go and it slips away at once. This flavour cannot be told to those who know nothing of the itch and the ache. When I painted Ziyang, I lost Ziyang again. And is it only Ziyang? No hills and waters can be painted, and yet they cannot but be painted — one keeps their haziness, that is all. I write this to raise a laugh from Mengyang.

Yuan Hongdao, "A Short Record of the Ziyang Palace":

I most dread entering the city. Wu Hill is within the city, and for this reason I could not see it all, but only passed the Ziyang Palace hurriedly. The stones of the Ziyang Palace are delicate and deep, their changing forms coming out sideways; the lake stones are not to be compared with them — a living ink painting by the Plum Blossom Daoist. Why must it be disgraced within the walls of the prefecture, so that the lazy and out-of-the-way people of the hills and woods cannot come near it? A thing to sigh over.

Wang Zhideng, "The Shrine of the Perfected Ding at the Ziyang Hermitage":

The cinnabar gully cuts off men's passage; jasper flowers grow within the cave. The jumbled cliffs break with the ground; the flock of shapes follows the peaks into being. Each stone has its own cloud-breath; there is no pine and no sound of water. Where Master Ding turned into a crane, the sloughed bones are more than feeling can bear.

Dong Qichang, "Inscribed at the Ziyang Hermitage":

At first it neighbours the dusty market, dotting the magic peak; the path turns deep and secluded, and the dark red halls lie layered. The ancient cave, though spring has come, still shuts in its snow; the sheer cliff, a hundred chi high, has its leaning pine. A clear gibbon calls quietly to the moon over the empty altar; a returning crane hears with grief the bell of the old kingdom. The stone marrow these years has spread and dispersed; climbing here, one must feel shame before the traces of the feathered men.