“Turbulence runs right across and the lone isle stands elegant in the river. The cloud and the sun reflect each other while the sky and the river share their freshness.” This is the sigh made by Xie Lingyun (385-433) over the reflection of the sky in the river at Jiangxin Isle. As the main tourist route of ancient southern Zhejiang landscape, the poetic cultural background contained by the Oujiang River Landscape Poetry Road has its own unique beauty and poetic endowment.

The Oujiang River is not only the origin of China’s landscape poetry; it is more a golden lifeline that connects Wenzhou and Lishui. Historically, the two regions, geographically linked, shared an identical cultural origin. The translucent celadon started out from here across the seas to become a shiny cultural emissary on the Silk Road. According to rough estimates, along the Oujiang River, there are over 6,300 poems dating before the Qing dynasty (1616-1911), more specifically, 25 ancient poems from before Tang (618-907), 46 from Tang, 439 from Song (960-1279), 13 “qu” (air or aria) from Yuan (1271-1368), and over 5,800 poems from the Yuan, Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasties. Hundreds of poets climbed mountains and crossed streams to seek the immortal soul of poetry.

Tang poetry road is usually believed to have originated from literati’s escape to southern China during the Eastern Jin dynasty (317-420), and the Oujiang River Landscape Poetry Road started at roughly the same time. The two roads were both culturally connected with Xie Lingyun.

Xie Lingyun, a native of Yangxia, Chenjun (present-day Taikang county, Henan province), was born in Shi’ning, Kuaiji (present-day Shangyu district in Shaoxing city, Zhejiang province). He was the pioneer of the landscape poetry school in China's literary history, whose most famous poem is perhaps “Poem of the Mountain Residence”. He was also the first great tourist cited in history.

In 422, Xie Lingyun was appointed prefect of Yongjia, Wenzhou. When he first came to Wenzhou, Xie came up with such well-known lines as “Spring grass grows over the pond and birds chirp in the willows.” (“Ascending the Tower over the Pond”)

Jiangxin Isle is located in the midstream Oujiang River. It is one of the four major lone isles in China and enjoys the reputation of “the isle of Chinese poems and ancient beacon of the world.” On the isle two pagodas rise in the air from east to west to highlight the Jiangxin Temple. There are also sites of interest such as former site of the British Consulate, Ancestral Hall of Lord Wenxin of the Song Dynasty, Haoran Building, Pavilion of Lord Xie and Chengxian Pavilion.

The “Tower over the Pond” was built in memory of poet Xie Lingyun, made famous by his poem bearing the same name. In the garden there are rockeries, grotesque rocks and winding corridors, and buildings such as “Grass Pavilion”, “Pavilion in Memory of Xie”, “Study of 12 Plum Blossoms” and “Flying Cloud Mountain House”.

After that, Xie’s footprints covered, apart from the prefectural town, localities including Ouhai, Rui'an, Pingyang, Yongjia, Yueqing. Xie was especially fond of the Nanxi River in Yongjia, long known for its beautiful water, grotesque rocks, multiple waterfalls, elegant woods and ancient villages. Within the region there are such scenic spots as Hibiscus Village, Cangpo Village, Lishui Street and Longpu Fairy Cave. The 150km-long Nanxi River is reputed as “a forever landscape poem and the most beautiful peach blossom spring.” During Xie's tenure as prefect of Yongjia, he toured around the place, leaving behind a great number of poems describing the landscape of the Nanxi River.

“If I could serve as long as Xie Lingyun did in Yongjia, I could make my place as beautiful as Yongjia.” This was a sigh made by Su Dongpo. Starting from Xie Lingyun, the “founding father” of China’s landscape poetry, men of letters of all ages showed their fondness for Wenzhou, and Du Fu (712-770), Meng Haoran (689-740), Han Yu (768-824), Shen Kuo (1031-1095), Xu Xiake (1587-1641) and so on left behind their poetry and calligraphy about the local landscape.

If Xie Lingyun’s poems of Oujiang made the Oujiang River a poetry road of landscape, then poems of Oujiang written by Meng Haoran and so on proved it as a road of Tang poetry.

Meng Haoran was a native of today’s Xiangyang city, Hubei province, famous for his “This spring morning in bed I'm lying, not to awake till the birds are crying”. He was called “Hermit of Lumen” in his early years as he used to retreat into the local Lumen Mountain together with his fellow countryman and friend Zhang Zirong (?-?).   

In the heyday of the Tang dynasty, Meng Haoran went to the capital city of Luoyang for the imperial exam but failed. Low in spirits, he went to the scenic Wuyue region (mainly present-day Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces) to tour like Xie Lingyue venting his frustration by way of writing landscape poems. He described his losing state of mind: “In as long as thirty years, I made achievements neither military nor literary. Seeking landscape in Wuyue, I am tired of the world in Luoyang.”

At the time, Cui Guofu (?-?), a close friend of Meng Haoran and also a poet, was the county commandant of Shanyin in Kuaiji prefecture (present-day Shaoxing city). Meng cherished their friendship so much that he started out from Luoyang to see him and wrote an emotional “To Chief Cui Guofu in Shanyin from the River”. Zhang Zirong, another old friend of his, though serving in the government after excelling in the imperial exam, was demoted to be the county commandant of Yuecheng (present-day Yueqing county, Wenzhou city) at that moment. The distressed Zhang Zirong sadly described in his poem that he was caught between a “poor sea” and an “evil creek”, “hearing tigers roar sometimes and apes whistle every night”. To Zhang, it was all barren hills and unruly rivers overrun with beasts, and “years plagued by malaria”, which made him homesick.

In that winter, Meng Haoran, who had not seen Zhang Zirong for over a decade, made a special visit to his good friend in Wenzhou. When he was about to reach Wenzhou, he wrote a poem “Staying on Yongjia River, to County Commandant Cui Guofu of Shanyin” as a letter to report his trip to Cui Guofu who had already gone to the capital: “I am travelling in a poor area, while you are on a mission to the capital. We are thousands of miles apart and a lone sail is wondering afar. When I sleep I hear the sea tide and when I rise I see the moon over the river. I'd ask my fellow travelers, when will I arrive in Yongjia?”

Meng Haoran did experience personally the pretty landscape of Wenzhou, but famous poets Li Bai and Du Fu, though never personally in Wenzhou, both “saw” the landscape of Wenzhou through Xie Lingyun’s poems and were full of admiration. For example, Li Bai wrote “the high official goes to Xie’s Pavilion and tours the Stone Gate at Yongjia. At the river pavilion there is a lone isle, whose ruins stay after a thousand years”.

Because of its combination of landscape poetry and Tang poetry, the Oujiang River Landscape Poetry Road is regarded also to be the southern extension of the Tang Poetry Road in East Zhejiang and its expansion to southwest Zhejiang with the Oujiang River basin as the trunk. Such a formation has its special regional and spatial causes.

Ancient people travelled both on water and land from various counties of Yuezhou past Tiantai and Yandang Mountains, Daruoyan to Jiangxin Isle as its southern terminal. The prefecture town was represented by Feixia Cave. One started from Jiangxin Isle up the Oujiang River with the Stone Gate Cave as the main point all the way to Nanming Mountain near Liandu district in Lishui city. Starting from Lishui and travel downstream the Oujiang River they reached Jiangxin Isle as terminus.

With regard to regional space, Jiangxin Isle is located at the estuary of the Oujiang River connecting southwest Zhejiang and the East China Sea. It is also located in the hub position where the southern and northern navigation routes of Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Zhejiang meet. Wenzhou Port beside Jiangxin Isle has long been the largest cargo depot in southern Zhejiang and northeastern Fujian, bearing the transit mission of domestic and foreign trade cargo and passenger transportation in those areas. Therefore, in both the Oujiang River Landscape Poetry Road and Tang Poetry Road in East Zhejiang, Jiangxin Isle cannot be ignored.

The Oujiang River is also the main waterway of cargo transportation in southwestern Zhejiang. During the Song dynasties the waterway transportation of the Oujiang River started to prosper in that “good materials go from Wenzhou to the sea”. Wood and tung oil produced in the upper reaches and products such as lacquerware, wine, oranges and tea all went downstream to be sold elsewhere. The bulk cargo was mainly porcelain. In the Yuan dynasty, celadon of Longquan kiln was exported in large quantity to occupy the major porcelain markets of the world, leading to the prosperous sight of “kilns standing everywhere along the Oujiang River with fires burning here and there, and ships carrying porcelain were shuttling”.

The picturesque scene along the Oujiang River attracted celebrities of all generations. They took official positions, travelled, or lived there, leaving behind a large amount of good poems and cliff inscriptions.

Beautiful mountains and clear water yield rich produce. The cultural deposits of the Landscape Poetry Road silently influence the modern land of Dongou (Wenzhou and part of Taizhou). After Xie Lingyun, poets of later generations came to Wenzhou in succession. They strolled around the estuary of the Oujiang River, or deep into the hinterland of the Nanxi River and Yandang Mountain reciting poems. Among them are pharmacologist and litterateur Tao Hongjing (456-536) of the Southern and Northern dynasties, poet and painter Wang Wei (701-761) of the Tang dynasty, poet, litterateur and thinker Luo Yin (833-910) of the late Tang dynasty, woman poet Li Qingzhao (1084-1155) of the Song dynasty, litterateur and historian Lu You (1125-1210) of the Southern Song dynasty, statesman and litterateur Wen Tianxiang (1236-1283) of the late Sothern Song dynasty, and the contemporary poet and prose-writer Yu Guangzhong (1928-2017), etc.

The Wenzhou spirit of daring to be the first is a product of the combination between the marine culture and mountain culture. The Yongjia School established on the cultural deposits of Oujiang River Landscape Poetry Road is also widely influencing today’s Wenzhou. Wenzhou is one of the first 14 coastal cities of China open to the outside world and the economic, cultural and communication center of southern Zhejiang. Since reform and opening up, the Wenzhou Model focusing on managing the world with pragmatism has gained remarkable progress. The revenue of the tourist industry of Wenzhou accounts for a large share in the city’s GDP.

For Wenzhou, the Oujiang River Landscape Poetry Road is like a flower bud that is soon to bloom, destined to bring charm and fragrance to both banks of the Oujiang River.