Chinese civilization first developed 5,000 years ago in North China
along the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. And the
Yellow River remained the center of Chinese civilization for the
next 4,000 years. Then a thousand years ago, this changed. A
thousand years ago, the center of Chinese civilization moved to the
Yangtze. And the Yangtze, not the Yellow River, has remained the
center of its civilization. A thousand years ago, the Chinese came
up with a name for this new center of its civilization. They called
it Chiangnan, meaning "South of the River," the river in question,
of course, being the Yangtze. The Chinese still call this region
Chiangnan. Nowadays it includes the northern parts of Chekiang and
Kiangsi provinces and the southern parts of Anhui and Kiangsu. And
some would even add the northern part of Hunan. But it's not just a
region on the map. It's a region in the Chinese spirit. It's hard
to put it into words. Ask a dozen Chinese what  Chiangnan" means,
and they'll give you a dozen different answers. For some the word
conjures forests of pine and bamboo. For others, they envision
hillsides of tea, or terraces of rice, or lakes of lotuses and
fish. Or they might imagine Zen monasteries, or Taoist temples, or
artfully-constructed gardens, or mist-shrouded peaks. Oddly enough,
no one ever mentions the region's cities, which include some of the
largest in the world. Somehow, whatever else it might mean to
people, Chiangnan means a landscape, a landscape and a culture
defined by mist, a landscape and a culture that lacks the harder
edges of the arid North.In the Fall of 1991, Bill Porter decided to
travel through this vaporous land, following the old post roads
that still connected its administrative centers and scenic wonders,
its most famous hometowns and graves, its factories and breweries,
its dreamlike memories and its mist, and he was joined on this
journey by his poet and photographer friends, Finn Wilcox and Steve
Johnson. South of the Yangtze is a record in words and black and
white images of their trip.
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