While captivated by the fact that Cold Mountain is both a mountain and poet (or rather, conglamorated into a poet; in fact, a number of poets living on a mountain), I'd say that only about half of the Han Shan poems really do it for me. But they are quite something nonetheless - humour, wisdom, hardship, beauty... The Shih Te poems, on the other hand, I could pretty much take or leave. The tone is more detached, more arrogant; they have a sense of morality that bores me. But the unexpected diamond-jewel of this book is the Wang Fan-chih collection. The translator subtitles it 'Cold City Streets', and these dark, funny, tragic short poems read like mid-twentieth century blues songs: 
 I've been hungry so long, 
 My stomach's a hole I fell in. 
 Lost child, suffering, 
 'Mama, how could you have born me?'