Hanshan is said to have lived in a cave named 'Hanyan' (??, Cold Cliff), a day's travel from the founding home of the Tiantai Buddhist sect, Guoqing Temple; itself located within the Taishan Mountain range on China's southeast coast. He would have been 700 miles from the twin capitals of Luoyang and Chang'an. He is usually associated with two close friends ("The Tientai Trio"), Fenggan and Shide, who both lived in Guoqing Temple.
See Poem 44:
- I usually live in seclusion
- but sometimes I go to Kuoching
- to call on the Venerable Feng-kan
- or to visit Master Shih-Te.
- But I go back to Cold Cliff alone,
- obeying an unspoken agreement.
- I follow a stream that has no spring
- the spring is dry but not the stream.
The precise dates for Hanshan are much disputed due to textual inconsistencies and anachronisms (possibly due to attempts to give him greater stature, a not uncommon practice). But what is certain is that he can definitely be dated to either the 8th or 9th century CE. After Hanshan's disappearance, a Taoist named Xu Lingfu (???), a native of Hangzhou, apparently collected his poems from the various mountains, rocks, trees, and walls they were written on. This collection, however, is not mentioned in any of his written works, and as Xu ceased to write after 825 CE, that puts a lower bound on the date of Hanshan's death, and an upper bound as Xu must have collected Hanshan's corpus before Xu's own death in 841. Legend has it that Hanshan disappeared 12 years before dying, which would bracket his death between 837 and 851 CE. No information exists on his date of birth, so speculation is futile. There are some possible autobiographical details, from which one might infer that his home town was Handan, and that he was born to a wealthy or noble family.
Poem 28
- This maid is from Hantan,
- her singing has the lilt.
- Make use of her refuge;
- her songs go on forever
- you're drunk don't talk of going
- stay until the morning comes
- where you sleep tonight
- her embroidered quilt fills a silver bed.
Poem 47
- Mistress Tsou of Tiyen
- and Mistress Tu of Hantan,
- the two of them equally old
- and sharing the same love of face,
- yesterday went to a tea.
- But poorly dressed they were shown to the back.
- Because their skirts were frayed,
- they had to eat leftover cake.
It is worth noting that Handan is the only city besides the twin capitals mentioned in all the poems, and that there is a hill outside Handan called, very similarly to himself (but with a different 'han'), 'Cold Mountain'. Basis for thinking Hanshan well-born comes from Poem 101:
- I recall the days of my youth
- off hunting near Pingling.
- An envoy's job wasn't my wish.
- I didn't think much of immortals;
- I rode a white horse like the wind!
- Chased hares and loosed falcons-
- suddenly now with no home,
- who'll show an old man pity?
Note that riding white horses and hunting with falcons near Pingling were all reserved to nobility. One might also infer that he did not advance very far in the bureaucracy, because the higher levels of the official examinations required not only a sound mind and a very sound grasp of the classics, but also an unblemished body. He tells us of a foot injury in several poems:
Poem 71:
- Someone lives in a mountain gorge
- cloud robe and sunset tassels
- holding sweet plants that he would share.
- But the road is long and hard
- burdened with regrets and doubts,
- old and unaccomplished,
- called by others crippled,
- he stands alone steadfast.
Poem 113:
- My writing and judgment aren't that bad;
- but an unfit body receives no post-
- Examiners expose me with a jerk.
- They wash away the dirt and search for my sores,
- of course it depends on Heaven's will.
- But this year I'll try once more,
- a blind man who shoots for a sparrow's eye
- just might score a hit.
Poem 259:
- I love the joys of the mountains,
- wandering completely free,
- feeding a crippled body another day,
- thinking thoughts that go nowhere.
- Sometimes I open an old sutra,
- more often I climb a stone tower
- and peer down a thousand-foot cliff
- or up where clouds curl around
- where the windblown winter moon
- looks like a lone-flying crane.
(Cranes are common symbol of Taoist transcendence.)
Taking all this, along with two other poems (below) together, Hanshan's premier English translator, Red Pine, favors a biography that places him in the 8th and 9th centuries CE, as a son of a noble family who, due to a foot deformity, perhaps caused by a riding accident, never advanced very far in the bureaucracy, only up to a clerk or such. Implicated in the An Shi Rebellion, he fled, changing his name and seeking anonymity, eventually settling down far from the capitals, out in the hinterlands of the Taishan mountains, where he would spend his time as a hermit, writing the poems for which he is remembered. This theory is highly speculative and not accepted by all scholars. The latter part of Red Pine's theory stems from these poems:
Poem 26:
- Since I came to Cold Mountain
- how many thousand years have passed?
- Accepting my fate I fled to the woods,
- to dwell and gaze in freedom.
- No one visits the cliffs
- forever hidden by clouds.
- Soft grass serves as a mattress,
- my quilt is the dark blue sky.
- A boulder makes a fine pillow;
- Heaven and Earth can crumble and change.
Poem 81:
- I labored in vain reciting the Three Histories,
- I wasted my time reading the Five Classics,
- I've grown old checking yellow scrolls
- recording usual everyday names.
- "Continued Hardship" was my fortune
- "Emptiness" and "Danger" govern my life.
- I can't match riverside trees,
- every year with a season of green.
(Yellow scrolls could refer to population records, and the astrological quarters 'Emptiness' and 'Danger', which pertain to the Palace and tragedy, respectively, aptly describe the An Lushan's rebellion.)