Thursday, March 13, 2025

South of the Yangtze

I'm reading my final Bill Porter (Red Pine) travel book: South of the Yangtze

Bill Porter has 6 amazing travel books in China, from when he traveled there in the 1989 to 2006:


Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits 1993

Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China 2008

Yellow River Odyssey 2014

South of the Clouds: Travels in Southwest China 2015

South of the Yangtze: Travels Through the Heart of China 2016

The Silk Road 2016


There's one book called Finding Them Gone (2015), where he goes to poets gravesites, and it's so disappointing to go visit famous poet graves, and nobody knows who they were. I'm not sure if I'm going to read that one, but it's a 7th book. I realize I've miscounted. There's potentially one more to read. That happens a number of times in the 6 books I've read. He talks about going back to places he's already been before, and he's quite a traveler in China, retracing his steps at times. 


I've loved his poetry translations of Stonehouse, Cold Mountain and others. Thought I would link my past blogs on Bill Porter:


Discussing Zen Baggage: That blog post had a lot of Porter links:







Thoughts on the inspiration of hermit monks.





I loved this lady monk: Mo-shan Liao-jan, my favorite bit from Zen Baggage.











These might not be all the times I wrote about Red Pine or Bill Porter's books, but it's enough.

I'm sunsetting this blog, going for refuge. Follow me at Friendship with Shams, my new Buddhist blog.

On 3/20/25 my counter said I'd had 634,160 visitors to this blog.

4/8/25 the counter leaps up to 638,567, that's more than 4k people visit my blog, it almost makes me want to restart it, but my reasons for ending this blog are sound, follow my new one if you like.

Clicks don't mean deep engagement, it's fairly superficial. I have 2829 visits to my new blog. 638582 now for Going for Refuge.


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