At a Remote Temple in China, a Kung Fu Master Keeps the Past Alive隱于山寺的古風武師

Uncle Yu—a once famous martial artist who taught thousands of students—now bides his time at a hilltop temple in Sichuan， writing poems by the kilo.

余伯，一位曾教導過數千名徒弟的著名武師，如今蟄居四川一座山寺，靜待時光流逝，作詩不輟。

Wu De Temple， Sichuan Province， China——

中國四川五德寺——

A Thousand mountains will greet my departing friend，

When the spring teas blossom again.

With such breadth and wisdom，

Serenely picking tea—

Through morning mists

Or crimson evening clouds—

His solitary journey is my envy ...

—— “The Day I Saw Lu Yu off to Pick Tea，” by Huangfu Zeng， eighth century

千峰待逋客，

香茗復叢生。

采摘知深處，

煙霞羨獨行。

……

——《送陸鴻漸山人采茶回》，皇甫曾，公元八世紀

We slogged1 up the steep hill. My friend Yang Wendou carried the broadsword.

我們艱難地爬上陡峭的山坡。我的朋友楊文斗扛著那把蓮花刀。

The hill was corduroyed2 in green hedgerows of Camilla sinesis3， the tree first domesticated to please the palates of tea drinkers some 3，000 years ago. The sword belonged to Yu Chengzhang. Uncle Yu was a martial artist and poet who wrote poems by the kilo.

山坡上綠意盎然，縱橫排布著茶樹樹籬。大約三千年前人們開始種植這種樹，以滿足飲茶者的味蕾。蓮花刀的主人叫余成章——余伯是武術家兼詩人，作詩不輟。

“I write several poems when I awake，” he said at the hilltop temple. “I do this every day.”

“睡醒了，我總要寫幾首詩，”他在山頂寺廟里說，“每天如此。”

The temple’s name was Wu De. Uncle Yu composed his stanzas there with a cheap pen on sheets of plain white paper. He stacked these papers in a dim hermit’s quarters. Altogether his poetry weighed， by his estimate， about a quarter of a ton.

寺廟名為五德。余伯用普通鋼筆在白紙上作詩，稿紙堆在一間昏暗小屋的角落。據他估算，這些詩作加一起，大概得有五百斤重。

“You appeared my dreams，” Uncle Yu told me the next morning. “You were meeting an 80-year-old woman. So I wrote a poem about it.”

“我夢到你了，”次日清晨余伯跟我說，“夢中你遇到一位八十老婦。于是我為此寫了首詩。”

He read the poem out loud. It was done in classical style， in four-line stanzas with five to seven syllables. It told of clouds blowing about in the south and women pickers bent in the tea gardens singing. I couldn’t follow it， to be honest. Then he changed into a yellow Kung Fu suit and gave a martial arts demonstration.

他朗誦起那首詩。詩是按古詩詞格律寫的，四行一節，每行五字到七字。該詩吟詠了南邊的流云和茶園里且歌且采的采茶女。說實話，我沒聽懂。隨后他換上黃色練功服，給我表演了武術。

What can I say about how Uncle Yu moved？

該如何形容余伯的身手？

He was a man in his 70s. Once， he’d been very famous. He was the best Kung Fu master in Ya’an， the nearby city in western Sichuan， where he’d taught thousands of students. By the 20th movement， he was sweating. By the 30th， I could hear him wheeze. But the clouds still moved about in him. So did some faint echo of a song， rising and falling as his slippered feet scuffed across the clay of the temple courtyard. Watching him stirred the sorts of feelings you might get holding a river-smoothed cobble. That weight of long vanished power. Of repetition distilled into stillness.

這位七十多歲的老人曾名震一方。在離此不遠的雅安市（四川西部），他曾是首屈一指的功夫大師，教過數千名弟子。練到第二十式時，他已汗流浹背；到第三十式，能聽見他喘著粗氣。但他依然氣勢如虹。隱約有歌聲回蕩，時高時低，伴隨他穿著軟底鞋的雙腳在寺廟庭院的泥地上蹬來掃去。端詳著他，讓人覺得仿佛握著一塊經河水沖刷的鵝卵石。那是一種消失許久依然堅韌的力量。那是一份反復打磨凝練而得的沉靜。

Uncle Yu’s family lived in Ya’an. There was a grown son bored with his father’s ways. They didn’t visit the hilltop temple often. Uncle Yu’s smile grew wistful talking about it.

余伯家人住在雅安。他那個成年的兒子對他的活法并不感冒。家人不常來山頂這座寺廟。提及此事，余伯的笑容中透著幾分悵然。

“My advice，” Uncle Yu said， “is never take a child to see martial arts before the age of seven. They will turn against it.”

“我的建議是，”余伯說，“千萬別在小孩七歲前帶他們去看武術，他們會反感。”

One of the tea pickers giggling at Uncle Yu’s performance was Yang Shou Yin.

采茶工們見余伯表演功夫都咯咯地笑，其中一位名叫楊守音。

Yang was born in a village over the hill. She attended school there until the second grade. Later， she herded pigs. She married at 20 and had a baby. She picked tea.

她生在山那邊的村落，在村里的小學讀到了二年級，后來放過豬，二十歲出嫁生子，再后來便當了采茶工。

“It sort of went like that，” Yang said laughing.

“人這輩子就那么回事嘛。”楊守音笑著說。

A decade ago， in her 40s， Yang left home to find a better paying job. She traveled to Beijing and worked as a laborer for the water utility. But then the earthquake of 2013 struck the Ya’an region. Yang immediately turned in her company overalls. She hastened home to rebuild the toppled Wu De Temple. The hilltop sanctuary4 was at least 400 years old， dating from the Ming Dynasty. It was remote： surrounded by billions of tea leaves and only reachable on foot.

十年前，時年四十多歲的楊守音為了多掙錢背井離鄉去了北京，在自來水公司打工。但2013年，雅安突發地震，她馬上辭掉工作，火速返鄉，重建倒塌的五德寺。這座山頂古剎至少有四百年的歷史，始建于明朝。寺廟地處偏遠：四周環繞著難以計數的茶樹，唯徒步可達。

“I had this intuition to come back here，” Yang explained. “I heard the Buddha’s voice instructing me.”

“我就是覺得該回到這里，”楊解釋道，“我聽見佛祖叫我回來。”

She sent years cajoling5 the skeptical local farmers. Some donated only one yuan. Others volunteered to carry bricks.

她耗費數年說服心存疑慮的當地農民。有人只捐一塊錢，有人自愿搬磚。

“The people believed in her！” Uncle Yu said.

“村民們都信她！”余伯道。

Every morning before dawn， I watched Yang rise from her pallet6 in the dark temple to light eight candles in the main shrine. She chanted along with the mantras7 recorded on her mobile phone. By sunup the immense hedgerows of tea were emblazoned with dew and confettied with workers. Yang was out there， red-cheeked and sturdy in the early cold， picking. She earned about $20 a day.

每天天不亮，在昏暗的寺廟里，總能看到楊從硬板床上起身，在主殿點燃八支香燭。她跟著手機里錄制的經文吟誦。待到日出，連綿的茶樹叢已披上露珠，采茶工的身影如彩紙屑點綴其間。她也加入其中，面頰凍得泛紅，在初寒中堅持勞作，采摘茶葉。她每天的工錢約合二十美元。

“My desire is to never do any bad things in my life，” Yang said flatly. “Only good things.”

“我的愿望就是一輩子不做壞事，”楊堅定地說，“只做善事。”

“It’s okay to do one bad thing，” cracked Uncle Yu.

“做一件壞事也沒關系。”余伯打趣道。

The habit of drinking tea likely began in China.

飲茶的習慣很可能起源于中國。

Here there are green teas and yellow teas. There are expensive white teas. Much of the tea grown around Wu De Temple is black. When brewed， its hue is amber.

此處有綠茶與黃茶，亦有珍貴的白茶。五德寺周邊種植的多為紅茶，沖泡后呈琥珀色。

In his manifesto8 The Classic of Tea， Lu Yu wrote in the eighth century that “tea leaves should not be plucked in the raining days; neither should they be plucked when it is cloudy. They should only be plucked during the sunny days.” Lu Yu systematically listed the six steps required to process fresh tea leaves. He itemized 24 different tools needed for the grinding and brewing. Even boiling water for tea was observed as a precise and highly aestheticized experience：

八世紀時，陸羽在其《茶經》中明示：“其日，有雨不采，晴有云不采；晴，采之。”陸羽系統性列舉了鮮葉加工的六道工序，細數了研磨與沖泡所需的二十四件器具。連泡茶前的燒水環節也被視為精妙入微且高度藝術化的體驗：

“For the first phase， there would be fish-eye like bubbles rising from the bottom of boiled water， and the boiling sound is low. For the second phase， the water looks like the emerging spring， and there would be incessant pearl-like sized bubbles rising from the edge of the container. For the third phase， the boiled water is like the surging wave， and the boiling sound is as loud as that of drums.”

“其沸，如魚目，微有聲，為一沸；緣邊如涌泉連珠，為二沸；騰波鼓浪，為三沸。”

I doubt the aging castaways9 at Wu De Temple observed any of these elegant tea rituals. They sipped their tea from paper cups. They were the rough-handed builders of our century’s foundations. They had earned some leeway10.

我很懷疑五德寺里那些閑散的老人會遵守這么高雅的茶道禮儀。他們喝茶用的是紙杯。正是這些粗糙的手掌給這個時代打下了基礎。他們有資格從心所欲。

“We are all old，” admitted Zheng Jia Shu， a beautiful grandmother who cooked the temple meals over birch11 log fires. “If you see a young face here， it’s an event， something rare. The young go to the cities.”

鄭家淑是位美麗的老奶奶，她為寺廟烹煮齋飯，用的是樺木柴火。“我們都老了。”她坦言，“要是在這里碰到年輕人，那才是稀奇事。年輕人全去城里了。”

Zheng shouldered a big rattan basket every morning. She braved the waist-high tea rows bareheaded， her grey bangs parting in a breeze. Uncle Yu picked alongside her until his back tired. They collected only the tenderest， newest， bright yellow leaves—premium tea. Birds sang. The sun tilted in the sky. All of this was medleyed12 in their loamy-tasting harvest.

鄭奶奶每天清晨都扛著一個大藤籃。她頂著大日頭，無遮無擋地在一排排齊腰高的茶樹間行走，額前灰白的頭發被風吹散。余伯跟她一起采到腰酸背痛。他們只摘最嫩最鮮的明黃茶葉——頂級茶。鳥兒鳴唱。日掛天邊。這一切，與帶著泥土氣息的茶葉混雜在一起。

My friend Yang Wendou， who had lugged Uncle Yu’s Kung Fu sword up the hill， waved farewell the next day. I watched him vanish into the green. We both were sad， of course. But it was alright. The temple at Wu De was as good a place as any to sip from life’s cup of absences. And then to lace up one’s boots， and keep going.

幫余伯扛蓮花刀上山的友人楊文斗，次日與我揮手告別。我目送他消失在綠意中。當然，我們二人都有些不舍。不過這也無妨。飲一杯人生的離別茶，五德寺是再妙不過的地方了。之后，整衣穿靴，繼續趕路。

1 slog艱難行進，跋涉。" 2 corduroy用木排鋪（路、橋）。此處指山上茶樹成排。

3茶的拉丁學名。

4 sanctuary（宗教）圣殿，圣堂。此處指寺廟（五德寺）。" 5 cajole勸誘；說服。" 6 pallet小硬板床。" 7 mantras（佛教或印度教的）禱文，經文。

8 manifesto聲明；告示。

9 castaway船難逃生到孤島荒地的人。此處指閑散人士。" 10 leeway自由空間，自由度。" 11 birch樺樹，白樺。" 12 medley（使）混合；（使）混雜。