Han-Shan (寒山，translated into English as 'Cold Mountain') was a Chinese T'ang era poet in the Taoist/Zen tradition, honored as a Bodhisattva. Little is known of his work, since his poems were written all around, and on, the mountains he called home, and little is sure about his life, apparently because he was a fugitive. Of the 600 poems he is known to have written at some point before his death, less than around 307 were collected and have survived. Our authority for this is a poem he wrote:

               My five-word poems number five hundred,
               My seven-word poems seventy-nine,
               My three-word poems twenty-one.
               Altogether, six hundred rhymes.

(the words refer to how many words in each line of the verse. All poems are Red Pine's (a. k. a. Bill Porter) translation, except where noted.)

Biography

Han-Shan lived in a cave named 'Han-yen' (Cold Cliff), a day's travel from the founding home of the Tientai Buddhist sect, Kuoching Temple ; itself located within the Taishan Mountain range on China's southeast coast. At the time, he would have been ~700 miles from the then-twin capitals of Loyang and Ch'ang-an. He is usually associated with two close friends ("The Tientai Trio"), Feng-Kan (Big Stick) and Shih-Te (Pick-up), who both lived in Kuoching Temple.

See Poem 44:

               I usually live in seclusion
               but sometimes I got to Kuoching
               to call on the Venerable Feng-kan
               or to visit Master Shih-Te.
               But I go back to Cold Cliff along,
               obeying an unspoken agreement.
               I follow a stream that has no spring
               the spring is dry but not the stream.

The precise dates for Han-Shan are much disputed due to certain 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 C. E. . Apparently, a Taoist named Ling-Fu, after Han-Shan's disappearance, collected his poems off the various mountains, rocks, trees, and walls the poems were written on. This collection however is not mentioned in any of his written works, and as Ling-Fu ceased to write after 825 C. E. that apparently puts a lower bound on the date of Han-Shan's death, and an upper bound as Ling-Fu must have collected Han-Shan's corpus before Ling-Fu's own death in 841. A legend has it that Han-Shan disappeared 12 years before dying, which would bracket his death between 837 & 851 C. E. 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 Hantan , or 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 Hantan is the only city besides the twin capitals mentioned in all the poems, and that there is a hill outside Hantan called, very similarly to himself (but with a different 'han'), 'Cold Mountain'.

Basis for thinking Han-Shan 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 white horses, 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 just 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 accomplished,
                       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, Han-Shan's premier English translator, Red Pine, favors a biography that places Han-Shan in the 8th and 9th centuries C. E., as a son of a noble family who due to a foot deformity, perhaps caused by a riding accident, who never advanced very far in the bureaucracy, only up to a clerk or so. Implicated in the An lu-shan Rebellion , he fled, changing his name and seeking anonymity, and eventually settling down far from the capitals, out in the hinterlands of the Tai-shan 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 pertains to the Palace and tragedy, respectively, aptly describe the An lu-shan Rebellion.)

Poetry

Han-Shan's poetry consists of Chinese verse, in 3, 5, or 7 character lines; and never shorter than 2 lines, and never longer than 34 lines. They are notable for their straightforwardness, which contrasts sharply with the cleverness and intricateness that marked typical T'ang dynasty poetry.

Poem 283:

                       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!

(All these terms refer to ways a poem could be defective according to the rigid poetic structures then prevalent)

Thematically, Han-Shan draws heavily on Buddhist and Taoist themes, often remarking on how short and temporary life is, and the necessity of escaping through transcending of some sort. He varies and expands on this theme, sometimes speaking of Mahayana Buddhism's 'Greater Vehicle', and other times of Taoist ways and symbols like cranes.

Poem 253:

                       Children, I implore you
                       get out of the burning house now.
                       Three carts await outside
                       to save you from a homeless life.
                       Relax in the village square
                       before the sky, everything's empty.
                       No direction is better or worse,
                       East just as good as West.
                       Those who know the meaning of this
                       are free to go where they want.

This influence is probably due to the high preponderance of Taoists in the area; the eminent Taoist Ko Hung acclaimed Tientai as 'the perfect place for practicing the arts of immortality.'

Poem 13:

                       'Brothers share five districts;
                       father and sons three states.' 
                       To learn where the wild ducks fly
                       follow the white-hare banner!
                       Find a magic melon in your dream!
                       Steal a sacred orange from the palace!
                       Far away from your native land
                       swim with fish in a stream!

Many poems display a deep concern for humanity, which in his view stubbornly refuses to look ahead, and short-sightedly indulge in all manner of vice, like animal flesh, piling up sins 'high as Mt. Sumeru '. But he holds out hope that people may yet be saved; 'Just the other day/ a demon became a Bodhisattva.'

Poem 18:

                       I spur my horse past ruins;
                       ruins move a traveler's heart.
                       The old parapets high and low
                       the ancient graves great and small,
                       the shuddering shadow of a tumbleweed,
                       the steady sound of giant trees.
                       But what I lament are the common bones
                       unnamed in the records of immortals.

While Han-Shan eschewed fancy techniques and obscure erudition, his poems are still highly evocative at times:

Poem 106:

                       The layered bloom of hills and streams
                       Kingfisher shades beneath rose-colored clouds
                       mountain mists soak my cotton bandanna,
                       dew penetrates my palm-bark coat.
                       On my feet are traveling shoes,
                       my hand holds an old vine staff.
                       Again I gaze beyond the dusty world-
                       what more could I want in that land of dreams?

He is hard to pin down religiously- he was not a Ch'an monk, thought Ch'an concepts and terminology sometimes appear. He criticized the Buddhists at Tientai, yet used many Buddhist ideas and formulations. He was not a Taoist either, as he directed criticism at them as well, and had no problem bringing Taoist scriptural quotations, and Taoist language when describing his mountains, into his poems. He seems to have simply been himself, avoiding easy answers that he did not obtain himself.

Poem 117:

                       I deplore this vulgar place
                       where demons dwell with worthies.
                       They say they're the same,
                       but is the Tao impartial?
                       A fox might ape a lion's mien
                       and claim the disguise is real,
                       but once ore enters the furnace,
                       we soon see if it's gold or base.

Poem 246:

                       I recently hiked to a temple in the clouds
                       and met some Taoist priests.
                       Their star caps and moon caps askew
                       they explained they lived in the wild.
                       I asked them the art of transcendence;
                       they said it was beyond compare,
                       and called it the peerless power.
                       The elixir meanwhile was the secret of the gods
                       and that they were waiting for a crane at death,
                       or some said they'd ride off on a fish.
                       Afterwards I thought this through
                       and concluded they were all fools.
                       Look at an arrow shot into the sky-
                       how quickly it falls back to earth.
                       Even if they could become immortals,
                       they would be like cemetery ghosts.
                       Meanwhile the moon of our mind shines bright.
                       How can phenomena compare?
                       As for the key to immortality,
                       within ourselves is the chief of spirits.
                       Don't follow Lords of the Yellow Turban
                       persisting in idiocy, holding onto doubts.   

A final note- Poem 307:

                      Whoever has Cold Mountain's poems
                      is better off than those with sutras.
                      Write them up on your screen
                      and read them from time to time.

Resources

The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain, Red Pine, ISBN 1-55659-140-3