The Yellow Mountains (Huangshan)

Signature:

Inscription: Artist’s inscription and signature (2 columns in seal script and 19 columns in semi-cursive script)

Painting of Mt. Huang

Layers of trees: green, dark; mountain path: white.
Draped in clouds, dappled by fog, a dancing dragon-serpent.
Splitting the sky, these gathered stones, hewn by compass and square,
This carved cliff of inlaid steps, of carefully measured lines.
One thousand, ten thousand blows of hammer and chisel—so difficult each step;
Thousands of steps climbing to Heaven’s gate.
Tourists sit around, suffering from food too rich;
In the workers’ mouths: dry biscuit crumbs,
Their calloused hands painfully drawing water from the mountain stream,
Their dark sleeves sweat-drenched, by their own salt whitened.
Sunset on the vacant mountain. Laughter, talking stop.
But hammers strike, on and on. Workmen get no rest.
On the mountain face, even now, some ancient paths remain,
But no longer seen are the tears and blood of those times.
Coming and leaving, tourists compose but a few poems,
And all they compose is this: wind-flowers-and-snow.
The sun descends Heavenly Capital Peak, evening clouds darken,
And Wish-Granting Guanyin [“Goddess of Mercy Peak”], across the void, faces the moon.[1]

On New Year’s Eve of the gengshen year [1980], Huasheng.

黃山圖

層林蒼黑山路白，穿雲插霧舞龍蛇。
劈天採石成規矩，刻壁嵌梯謹繩墨。
千錘萬鑿難一級，千級萬級上天闕。
遊人座上苦油膩，石工口中干餅裂。
繭手難掬山泉起，青衫汗溼積鹽白。
夕照空山笑語斷，錘擊聲聲人未歇。
峭壁依稀存古道，不見當年淚與血。
來往遊人少吟詠，縱吟亦是風花雪。
日落天都暮雲黯，造福觀音空對月。

庚申除夕夜，華生。

Artist’s seal

Li Huasheng 李華生

[1] Translation adapted from Jerome Silbergeld with Gong Jisui, Contradictions: Artistic Life, the Socialist State, and the Chinese Painter Li Huasheng (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1988), p. 104.

Marking:

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China," August 26, 2017–January 6, 2019.

Silbergeld, Jerome, and Gong Jisui. Contradictions: Artistic Life, the Socialist State, and the Chinese Painter Li Huasheng. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993, p. 105.