Grand Canal, Great River: The Travel Diary of a Twelfth-Century Poet (review)

Most readers of this journal are probably familiar with Lu You’s 陸游 (1125–1210) travel diary Ru Shu ji 入蜀記 [Record of a Trip to Shu] in six juan 卷, which chronicles the 1,800 mile boat journey Lu made in 1170 from his ancestral home in Shanyin 山陰 (modern Shaoxing 紹興, Zhejiang) to Kuizhou 夔州 (modern Fengjie 奉節, Sichuan). The author’s detailed account of the trip, written in a prose diary format, includes entries for all but four of the 157 days it took to complete the journey. Lu You is a keen, patient, and critical observer. Hence, Ru Shu ji includes extensive description of, and commentary on, almost everything he saw and the places he visited along the Grand Canal and the Changjiang (or Yangzi River). It is no wonder, then, that numerous scholars since the Southern Song (1127–1279) have mined Lu’s diary for information on everything from social, political, and economic conditions, to climate, religious life, and even reports of “huge centipedes” in the Changjiang (p. 90). The great value of the descriptive information in Lu You’s diary is that it is based on first-hand observation. It should also be acknowledged that Ru Shu ji is China’s first extended travel diary of significant literary merit. There are many reasons to pay attention to this text.

This probably explains why Burton Watson published an abridged translation of the diary in 1973,¹ and why Chun-shu Chang (Zhang Chunshu 張 春樹) later produced a complete English version of the text, based on Joan Smythe’s unfinished Ph.D. dissertation at Harvard,² with a detailed introduction and copious footnotes, under the title South China in the Twelfth Century: A Translation of Lu Yu’s Travel Diaries, July 3—December 6, 1170.³ In my review-article of the Chang-Smythe book, published in this journal in 1986,⁴ I made the following observation: “For Sung specialists and students of late medieval Chinese history and literature this is a joyous occasion indeed” (p. 80). I also noted that the Chang-Smythe translation “is a product of a sound and consistent philological approach and exhibits a high degree of fidelity to the original text” (p. 84), that it “consistently conveys the diversity of Lu Yu’s verbal expression” (p. 84), and overall is “both faithful and elegant” (p. 87).

Philip Watson disagrees. In the introduction to his Grand Canal, Great River: The Travel Diary of a Twelfth-Century Chinese Poet, he laments what in his view are the shortcomings of the Chang-Smythe effort:

Professor Chang’s translation remains the only complete version until now, but despite the learning which underpins its scholarly apparatus it seems to me deficient in a number of respects. This has emboldened me to undertake the present translation of the Diary (that is, the Ru Shu ji). The Chang and Smythe version contains mistakes of comprehension, from which I hope I have learned; and on occasion lacks empathy with the argument or direction of narrative. Its English seldom flows, and gives a poor impression of the spontaneity and richness of the original; sometimes the sense of the English is unclear or infelicitous.

(p. 18)

The introduction to Grand Canal, Great River (pp. 7–18) is not intended to serve as a critical review of the earlier Chang-Smythe effort. But Watson must of course justify the production of a new translation of Ru Shu ji;⁵ hence his attack on the translation in South China in the Twelfth Century. Unfortunately, with just one exception,⁶ Mr. Watson fails to explain or cite specific examples of “mistakes of comprehension” “or “infelicitous” English on the part of Chang and Smythe. This seems a bit unfair, and brings to mind the old Chinese adage about unnecessary fault-finding or nitpicking: chuimao qiuci 吹毛求疵 (lit., “blowing apart the hairs [on a fur] to look for...