Chinese culture has always interested me. For the past few weeks now, I have been reading the four volume series of The Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en, translated completely by Anthony C. Wu. This excerpt from one of the beginning paragraphs of volume one is a spoken poem by the narrator of The Journey to the West. In it, he describes the Ao-lai country, specifically, the center-point of the first part of the story, the beautiful Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, on which resides the hero of the story, the monkey king Sun Wukong.

Its majesty commands the wide ocean;

Its splendor rules the jasper sea;

Its majesty commands the wide ocean

When, like silver mountains, the tide sweeps fishes into caves;

Its splendor rules the jasper sea

When snow-like billows send forth serpents from the deep.

Plateaus are tall on the southwest side;

Soaring peaks arise from the Sea of the East.

There are crimson ridges and portentous rocks,

Precipitous cliffs and prodigious peaks.

Atop the crimson ridges

Phoenixes sing in pairs;

Before precipitous cliffs

The unicorn singly rests.

(Cheng’en, 66-67)

This passage demonstrates, in the most poetic sense, the importance of concrete detail. I personally enjoy how vivid and imaginative the description of the Mountain of Flowers and fruit. He places us at an all seeing view of the mountain, and through his description we can see the most significant of the magnificent features of this utopia. The line from the passage, “Its majesty commands the wide ocean when, like silver mountains, the tide sweeps fishes into caves”(Cheng’en 66), provides an excellent simile as he describes the enormous tides crashing into the side of the rocks, creating clear, silver mountains of water. When he describes, “Atop the crimson ridges, phoenixes sing in pairs…”(Cheng’en 67), we get a sense that this mountain is truly magical. He describes mythical creatures pairing up and singing in pairs, as if the very land on which they rest is so noble and perfect that even a creature as elegant as a phoenix must pay homage to it. He steadily implies that its splendor outweighs that of all other natural formations around it. The extreme detail that Cheng’en goes into to describe the scene is astounding, because he uses so few words. He is able to establish vivid imagery through simple descriptions, which leads the reader to appreciate his word choice and style. At least, this is how I feel when I read his poetic passages.

-Ron Cooks