Some of you will know that I am a bit of a Sinophile, especially concerning Chinese history and culture. These are such vast subjects that mastery is probably impossible and most folks prefer to specialise in one era or another, or an aspect of this or that. I love going deep but am also a sucker for the survey, where the grand vistas emerge from lofty peaks. Sure, I forget a lot and often enough everything, but I thrive on context nonetheless.

I was very fortunate recently to source and download the collected poems of Hanshan (Cold Mountain), a legendary figure who is commonly associated with verse in the Taoist or Chan (Zen) Buddhist tradition. He is thought to have written during the Tang Dynasty but biographical detail is sketchy and frankly unreliable, as Hanshan may not have existed at all. Chances are that he is representative of a type of hermitic poet writing at the time. He is often depicted alongside Shide and Fenggan, two other monks with legendary attributes. Another source argues that Hanshan is real enough but was a gentleman farmer who, mired in poverty, headed for Tiantai Mountain and became a monk. Who knows?

Hanshan's verse had a directness and colloquial quality that contrasted with the more sophisticated urban poetry of many Tang poets.

'Mister Wang the Graduate
laughs at my poor prosody.
I don't know a wasp's waist
much less a crane's knee.
I can't keep my flat tones straight,
all my words come helter-skelter.
I laugh at the poems he writes-
a blind man's songs about the sun!'

So there, he writes. I can't write according to your rigid structures but my eyes are wide open to the world around me.

'I reached Cold Mountain and all cares stopped
no idle thoughts remained in my head
nothing to do I write poems on rocks
and trust the current like an unmoored boat'