21 May, 2010

Nine-Horse Mountain

Li Jiang


Nine-Horse Mountain
smells
of water buffalo

3 comments:

sasi said...

reminds me of John Woo's Red Cliff.

Hobbes said...

Dear Sasi,

I had not heard of "Red Cliff" until you mentioned it, and have recently acquired it for Lei and I to watch - thank you very much for the notice! It appears to be based on the Three-Kingdoms period, which is the kind of thing that we rather enjoy.

there's a red cliff, over yonder
that's where my baby stays...


Nine-Horse Mountain itself is a landmark on Guilin's Li River, so called because of its rock strata that look like leaping horses. As the haiku suggests, however, the nearby organic life are much more bovine in nature...

We got lucky - there was absolutely no-one on the Li River but us, when we went in January. It was brisk, but not too cold. During summer, it is clogged with visitors, and we felt rather fortunate to be able to experience the river alone with our boatman. Every now and again, a water buffalo would swim alongside us...

In fact, unbeknown to Lei and me, there were three of our family on the river at the time - our baby was already on his way, but we didn't know it! So, he has already been to his mother's homeland, and cruised down the Li River...


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

sasi said...

Dear Hobbes,

Congratulations !

Only heroes get to visit their Mother's homeland even before they are born.

The next one I am waiting to watch is "Tau ming chau".

best regards
sasi