The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland / Cumbria Reading Detectives

The team

Other teams

The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland Find!

In 1936 Chiang Yee visited the Lake District, staying for 2 weeks in B&Bs around Wasdale and Keswick, and this book, published in 1937 is the journal of his stay.

It is one of the most beautiful and amazing pieces of travel writing you could ever read. It records not only where Chiang Yee stayed, the sights he saw, the places he visited and the people he met, but it also offers a real insight into his philosophies, his spirituality, his art and also how much he missed his native land.

The journal itself is extremely poetic, but it also contains drawings and poems which he was inspired to create by his natural surroundings.

If any book encapsulates what Reading Detectives is all about, this book is surely the one. In his preface to the book Herbert Read wrote:

What Mr Chiang shows, no less clearly than Wordsworth, is the universality of all true modes of feeling and thinking. The relationship of man to his environment is the relationship of two constants - earth the same and man the same, eternally.

Essentially the journal reveals how much the environment in which the person finds themselves can directly inspire artistic creativity. As Chiang Yee writes in his introductoin to his journal:

So happy was the stretch of time that, even now, I often drive back my imagination to the weeks I spent there and the loveliness of the spots I visited; then I re-write some of the verses I roughly composed there and make sketches from scenes stored up in my mind.

The Lakes seem to have struck a particular chord with him because he was born at the foot of Lu Mountain and "grew up in the companionship of rocks, hills, mountain-peaks, streams, waterfalls, pines and every kind of tree." The sounds of the streams running, and the rain falling on leaves and the sight of the mists clearing and the clouds rising "brought a great tranquillity of spirit".

In fact Chiang Yee had his own unique way of sight seeing so that he could really connect with the environment he found himself in. Also in the introduction to his journal he recounts that prior to his trip to Cumbria he had visited Wales and had been "adopted" by his fellow tourists who, trying to be friendly and inclusive had talked to him endlessly when they were out sight seeing, giving him detail and background about the places they were visiting. He appreciated their kindness greatly but it had also caused him great frustration because:

Whenever I walk or travel I am generally silent; I like to observe the scenery closely, and sometimes I lose all consciousness of myself in it. At such times there is no room in my mind for the external trimmings of history or romance.

This characteristic certainly seemed to work for him however, as it enabled him to produce a journal of great beauty, poetry and observation.

During his fortnight in the Lake District he visited Wastwater, Keswick - where he fell in love with Derwentwater, Buttermere and Crummockwater, Windermere, Rydal Water and Grasmere.

Along with his impressions of the places he visited and the people he met, we see how troubled he is by the situation in Spain and how The Lakes remind him of and make him miss the moutains and scenery of his homeland, (which makes it at times a very poignant read), and of course the journal is interspersed with the most beautiful poems and delightful drawings of the lakes and moutains.

Chiang Yee approached the Lake District drawings in the Chinese style - the drawings tend not to be done in situ, but rather afterwards, from memory and reflection, and whilst they might not have a "photographic" accuracy or exactness they capture the essence and spirit of a place or view and are hauntingly beautiful.

The poems are equally haunting and beautiful. For example he was keen to visit Grasmere, the home of Wordsworth, who was hugely popular and widely read in China. Standing beside the lake and listening to the rain on the leaves as he pondered Wordsworth inspired Chiang Yee to write:

The lake and the poet living together always,

The poems and the lake water equally refreshing.

At my coming, in every part the sad soughing of rain,

This is the very sound to break the heart of Autumn.

Something as simple as a blue cloudless sky viewed whilst resting by a lake shore also inspired him:

Blue mountain as pillow and sand for a blanket,

It is pleasant to drowse upon the lake shore.

My heart has already passed beyond Nature,

Heedless of you, white seagulls, busily flying here and there.

It is more than obvious from his journal entries that Derwentwater was the lake that he loved the most. The time he spent here inspired several drawings and poems.

The loveliness of Nature,

And Derwentwater that I love,

Folded in and cloaked with green,

Sitting for a while to enjoy tranquillity,

My questing mind goes forth and wanders far

Beyond the lake and past the distant hills.

I absolutely loved this book and think it is a real gem. I found myself thinking about it long after I had finished it. I was particularly struck, not only by its beauty, but also by the impression that to me, whilst it celebrated the beauty of the Lake District, there was also a definite feel of longing and sadness pervading it.

I was also very intrigued as to how he came to be visiting the Lake Disrict in 1936, and his obvious command of the English language (it is not a translated journal). So I decided I needed to find out more about Chiang Yee.

The first thing I discovered was that the Lake District book was not his only publication, and in fact "The Silent Traveller in..." was a series including places such as London, Edinburgh, Oxford, New York, Dublin, Paris...so he was certainly well travelled!

I then went on to learn more about his life story, and what I read certainly explained that sense of longing and sadness I had found within his Lake District journal.

Chiang Yee was born in Jiujang, China, in 1903. He married Tseng Yun in 1924, with whom he had four children, and in 1925 graduated from Nanjing University. He served for over a year in the Chinese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, then taught chemistry in middle schools, lectured at National Chengchi University, and worked as assistant editor of a Hangzhou newspaper. He subsequently served as magistrate of three counties.

Unhappy with the situation in China, in 1933 he left for England in 1933, leaving wife and family behind.

From 1933 to 1935 he taught Chinese at the University of London, and 1938 to 1940 worked at the Wellcome University of Anatomy and Pathology. It is during this period that he wrote The Silent Traveller series of books.

He moved to the USA in1955, where he became a lecturer (and ultimately Emeritus Professor of Chinese) at Columbia University from 1955 to 1977, with an interlude in 1958 and 1959 during which he was Emerson Fellow in Poetry at Harvard University. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1966.

In 1975, after spending forty tears away from his homeland, he finally returned to China where he died in 1977.and he was buried in a tomb on the slopes of Lu-Shan above his home town.

31 October 2009 from Helen

1 Comment

Ian Whitmey | March 25, 2010 2:11 PM | Reply

Hello,
I am trying to find the whereabouts of the painting by Chiang Yee of Cows in Derwentwater. Would you by any chance know where i could see it
Regards Ian

Name

Email Address

URL

Remember personal info?

Comments

All blog posts | RSS feed

Finds

Help the team

Have you got something to contribute? You can contact us to report your clues and you can comment on our blog posts. It doesn't matter where in the world you are!

The team

Other teams

The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland Find!

1 Comment

Leave a comment

Finds

Recent posts

Help the team

See posts tagged with