The Banished Immortal

by Ha Jin

  On the canal he traveled south down to Wuxi, Suzhou, then Hangzhou. The West Lake in Hangzhou, the waterscape of breathtaking beauty that the city has boasted for more than a millennium, hadn’t been fully constructed yet, but he liked the coastal climate and visited Tianzhu Temple, accompanied by the prefect Li Liang, whom Li Bai thought might be a distant relative of his. He wrote about this visit in a poem, addressing Li Liang as his nephew. It is believed that this gesture, far from ingratiating himself to Liang, only irritated and alienated the prefect. In his eyes, Bai was just another office-seeker vying for his favor, and he couldn’t wait to get rid of him. Bai likely composed numerous other poems on this leg of the journey around the coastal area, but most of them have not survived. From Hangzhou he took a boat up the Fuchun River to Wenzhou, which he had planned as the destination of this trip on the seacoast. Then he turned back inland, passing Lu and Wu prefectures along the way (present-day Tong-lu and Jinhua). In Jinhua, he stopped at Yiwu Town to pay homage to Luo Binwang (619–687), one of the four great early Tang poets (the others were Wang Bo, Yang Jiong, and Lu Zhaolin).

  Luo was one of Li Bai’s heroes. At age seven, Luo had composed the most popular nursery rhyme in Chinese—it is the first poem that tens of millions of people hear in their childhood: “Goose, goose, goose / Stretches its neck and sings to the sky, / Its white feathers floating on green water / And its red webs paddling blue waves.” Li Bai commented about Luo’s work, “Luo Binwang’s poetry is high in style and lofty in spirit. His poems read like something made in heaven, where deities gather, riding clouds like cranes and floating about with ease.”1 Yet despite Luo’s fame as a prodigy and his career as a leading voice in Chinese poetry in his time, his official career was fraught with frustrations and setbacks. Time and again he was demoted, banished to the borderland in penal servitude, and once even imprisoned, because he wouldn’t stop criticizing the extravagance and corruption of the court and speaking on behalf of common people at the bottom of society. His parents had been poor, and so he empathized with their plight.

  At age fifty-six, when Luo was a county magistrate, he wrote a “Proclamation Against Empress Wu” and then joined the rebels, led by the banished duke Li Jingye (636–684), in fighting the imperial army and attempting to topple the court. In belligerent language Luo called Empress Wu, the only empress in Chinese history, “a fake ruler” and claimed that “her promiscuity had ruined her court.” But when Her Majesty listened to the condemnation, she couldn’t stop smiling; in spite of the criticism, she couldn’t help but appreciate the beauty and vigor of Luo’s writing. Toward the end of the reading, at the sentence “The earth of the late emperor’s grave is still wet while the royal heir has no idea whom he can trust,” she turned to a chancellor and asked sternly, “Why have we neglected such a gifted man?”

  When the rebels were finally suppressed, Luo vanished. There was some talk that he had been killed by imperial troops, but other rumors claimed that he had become a monk in a secluded temple and still roved the wilderness.

  Undoubtedly Li Bai was a greater poet than Luo, but his official career, if there was one, had been even more difficult. Still, he viewed Luo as a kindred spirit. He made a special trip to Luo’s adobe house in Loujia Village, paid his respects at the cenotaph built for him, and fed the waterbirds in the pond next to his house. From Yiwu Town, Bai headed back to Anlu. Along the way he visited numerous legendary mountains and resorts, especially those associated with ancient figures. He traveled homeward unhurriedly and often stayed in a city or town for ten days or more at a stretch.

  * * *

  —

  In late fall Li Bai arrived at Xiangyang, about 140 miles south of Anlu. Bai hoped to see his old friend Meng Haoran, but when he arrived at his friend’s farm in Deer-Gate Mountain, Bai was stunned to find that Haoran had just died. He had succumbed to running sores on his back after indulging in a binge of drinking with his visiting friend, the poet Wang Changling (698–756). Haoran had suffered from this ailment for a long time, but before his friend’s arrival, the sores were in remission and his doctor had urged him to avoid seafood lest they break out. But on the dining table was a braised bream from the Han River, and the fish was so fat and tempting that Haoran couldn’t help applying his chopsticks to it. He and Changling regaled themselves with both savory dishes and alcohol. As a consequence, the sores burst on his back and he died two days later. Li Bai was devastated to hear of his friend’s passing—he threw away the wine he had brought for Meng and couldn’t help but lament how precarious life was.

  After having wept and grieved at Haoran’s funeral, Bai left two days later, heading south to the Dongting Lake region. In Baling Town, he encountered Wang Changling and told him the news of Meng Haoran’s death. Changling was only two years older than Bai but had been an official for more than a decade. He was known as a master of short poems, especially the type called jueju, which is a quatrain, strictly rhymed and with elaborate metric patterns. He was a leading capital poet, and many of his poems had become popular songs. Bai had heard Wang Changling’s poems performed in taverns and teahouses and greatly admired them.

  Like Bai, Changling wrote many poems about women, which was uncommon among poets then, though their approaches were different. Changling was a master of mood, his language evocative, full of drama. His “Boudoir Grief” was sung everywhere and was particularly loved by married women. It goes, “The young bride doesn’t know sorrow yet. / She makes up and climbs a high tower. / Catching sight of greening poplars and willows along the road, / She regrets letting her groom seek to be a duke far away.” What differentiates this poem from Li Bai’s works about women is the absence of persona, or characterized voice, which Changling rarely used. Changling was also known for his borderland poetry. His best-known frontier poem is “Charging out of the Border,” which praised the man Bai believed to be his own ancestor, General Li Guang:

  秦時明月漢時關 萬裡長征人未還

  但使龍城飛將在 不教胡馬渡陰山

  出塞》

  The bright moon of the Qin dynasty

  Has seen the mountain pass of Han times.

  Thousands of miles away from home,

  The soldiers haven’t yet returned.

  So long as the Swift General stays at Dragon Fort

  No barbarians’ horses dare to pass Mount Yin.

  Because of Bai’s personal attachment to this poem, he had become fond of its author before they had even met. By this time, Li Bai’s reputation as a poet was almost equal to Wang Changling’s, but to date they had admired each other only from a distance. Now their meeting delighted both of them. They chatted about people they both knew and about the news in the capital. Changling felt awful about Meng Haoran’s death—he had known Haoran was absentminded but hadn’t thought he would be so careless about his health. If only he, Changling, had stopped him from eating the fish and drinking so much that night!

  Upon hearing that Bai was on the last leg of his long trip and that he was still bent on finding a position, Changling sighed and told him about the other side of an official’s life. After passing the civil-service examination, he had started his career as a county magistrate in Henan at the lowest rank, the ninth. He quickly became tired of the official decorum and drudgery; he applied for a position at the Secretariat in the palace, which seemed impossible but which miraculously he was granted. The new post sounded prestigious, but he soon discovered that the Secretariat was somewhat like an old-age home: it was filled with many senile scholars who simply did clerical work, copying and transcribing and proofreading documents. It badly needed young hands. Worst of all, Changling said, an honest man in the palace could not survive the political maneuvers and intrigues against him. He had witnessed high-ranking officials beaten half dead, flogged with sticks in front of the emperor and dozens of courtiers for having done nothing more than to speak a few candid words. Changli
ng always feared that he might end up in such a plight. Just now he had lost his job at the central government and had to take a post elsewhere, all because he had gotten drunk one night in downtown Chang’an and overslept and missed his shift at the office. It was only minor negligence, he argued, but the men above him had seized the opportunity to drive him out of the capital. That was why he had been demoted and sent down to a small county. In brief, it was dangerous and unpredictable to serve at court.

  Seeing Bai look unconvinced, Changling pressed on. Look at their late friend Meng Haoran, who had remained a farmer recluse all his life but was still known and revered everywhere. Because he had depended on nothing but his own talent and effort, his poetry had breathed new life into the world of letters. His might be a better way to follow.

  Although dismayed at the story of his friend’s demotion and grateful for his honest words, Bai couldn’t give up his endeavor so easily and found Changling too pessimistic. But hearing of scholars who had gotten into trouble for presenting petitions to the emperor curbed Bai’s desire to write to His Majesty directly—he would go on to abandon his half-finished letter addressed to the court. In appearance the emperor always welcomed petitions, but it was hard to predict what contents might offend him. Li Bai had dreamed that his writing might impress His Majesty and earn him a favor directly from the emperor. Now it was clear that even if he had dispatched a letter to the court, it might never have reached the Son of Heaven. Changling also mentioned that the central government was shifting its focus to promoting warriors rather than scholars. This planted a new idea in Bai’s mind, as he also thought of himself as a soldier. If the country needed more military talents, he was skilled with the sword and knew the art of war well—he was good officer material. But he told Changling that he would think about his advice.

  It was getting cold, and Bai realized he must not linger on the road any longer and must get home before winter began. So he headed back to Anlu without further delay.

  * * *

  —

  By Zhan Ying’s chronology, early in 739, Li Bai’s wife gave birth to their first child, a daughter. We don’t know how Bai felt about the arrival of his first child, who wasn’t born until the twelfth year of his marriage, but we are certain that when she was growing up she was very attached to her father. Bai named her Pingyang. The name, which had associations with historical royalty, indicated that he had high hopes for her. It was the namesake of Emperor Han Wu’s sister, a woman who lived a troubled but extraordinary life (having survived three husbands), and it was also the name of the first Tang emperor’s third daughter. This daughter had been a commander of troops, fighting for her father in order to found the dynasty. Prior to her time, few women had ever played such a role. When she fell on the battlefield, her body was retrieved and she was memorialized as a valiant officer, her funeral accompanied with a military salute. Li Bai must have hoped that his child would grow up to be noble, beautiful, and courageous like those extraordinary women.

  We know little else about Bai’s daughter. His biographers have inclined to touch on her very briefly, partly because of the paucity of information we have on her and partly because traditionally, scholars tended not to focus on an ancient literary figure’s domestic life. But it is necessary to know as much as we can about Bai’s family life and his relationships with his children if we want to understand him intimately.

  There are three crucial pieces of information that can help us approximate a rough sketch of Pingyang’s life. One is from Wei Hao, Bai’s devoted disciple in the poet’s later years. In his introduction to Li Bai’s collected writings, Wei Hao states that Pingyang “died soon after she married.” The other two pieces of information are from Li Bai’s poetry. He wrote a handful of poems about his children (he might have composed many more, but only a few are known to us), and one, the famous “To My Two Young Children in East Lu,” contains these deeply felt lines:

  南風吹歸心 飛墮酒樓前

  樓東一株桃 枝葉拂青煙

  此樹我所種 別來向三年

  桃今與樓齊 我行尚未旋

  嬌女字平陽 折花倚桃邊

  折花不見我 淚下如流泉

  小兒名伯禽 與姊亦齊肩

  雙行桃樹下 撫背復誰憐。。。

  《寄東魯二稚子》

  The south wind blows my heart back home

  And it lands before my lovely wine drinking house.

  In front of it stands a peach tree,

  Whose branches and leaves are haloed.

  I myself planted that tree before I left—

  It’s been almost three years now.

  Now the tree must be as tall as the house,

  But I’m still on the road, unable to return.

  My daughter, named Pingyang,

  Picks flowers next to the peach tree.

  As she goes, she cannot find her dad

  And her tears flow like a spring.

  My young son, named Boqin, is already

  Tall enough to reach his sister’s shoulder.

  They are both under the peach tree,

  But who would pat their shoulders

  And take pity on them now?…

  The poem is universally believed to have been written in 749 when Li Bai was staying in Nanjing, separated from his family in Shandong. We know he had again left home for the south in late 746, and as he writes in the poem, he hasn’t seen his children in three years. At the time, Pingyang must have been around ten years old, as suggested by the “young children” in the title and her tearful response to her father’s absence, more characteristic of a small girl than a teenager.

  In the preface to another poem written in 755, six years later, Li Bai says, “My disciple Wu E is a righteous man with a steady disposition. He admires the knight-errant Yao Li, hunting and fishing on rivers and lakes without caring about worldly affairs. But upon hearing of the outbreak of rebellion in the central land, he hurried west to see me. My beloved son is still in Lu, and I implored Wu E to go and fetch him before the arrival of the barbarous forces. Tipsy and grateful, I am writing this poem for him” (“For Wu Seventeen E”).2 The rebels, led by An Lushan, the emperor’s adopted son, had just occupied Luoyang and were going to Chang’an to overthrow the dynasty, so Li Bai was asking his disciple to go to Shandong and rescue his family. But what is notable is that Wu E was supposed to bring back only Li Bai’s son. The absence of Pingyang here gives us our third piece of information, signifying that she must have died by then (“soon after she married,” as Wei Hao wrote). If she were alive, she would have been sixteen.

  In the Tang dynasty, girls could legally marry at age thirteen; the most common age was fifteen, but a great many brides were still in their early teens. So we can be fairly certain that by the time Wu E went to Shandong (Lu) to rescue Li Bai’s family in 755, his daughter was already dead. This is consistent with the preceding poem that portrays her as a young child in 749, and further points to 739 as the year of her birth.3 Most Li Bai scholars have placed Pingyang’s birth many years earlier, as far back as 728, probably because his children were not that important in the conventional Li Bai scholarship and because information on his daughter’s birth was insufficient. This has created a good deal of confusion and inconsistency in the resulting biographies of Li Bai. We must clarify this issue because Pingyang’s birth seems to be a pivotal moment in Bai’s life. Once he became a father, he seemed more attached to his home and viewed himself as a family man. Although he would not spend much time with his children throughout their lives, it is evident that he loved them and would always have them taken care of.

  MOVING TO THE LU REGION

  After giving birth to their daughter, Li Bai’s wife grew feeble. She became pale and listless and often took to her bed. She had little appetite and was malnourished
and could hardly breast-feed their child. Bai sent for doctors and bought fish and wild game meat for his wife. In spite of the costly herbal medicine and the rich food, her condition did not improve. In late fall a doctor revealed to Bai the prognosis, which was dire. Her pulse was weak and irregular, thin like a thread, and she might not have many days left. Bai was devastated and stayed home with her during the winter.

  But miraculously, when spring arrived, some of the color returned to her face and her health improved a little. She could move about and even embroider with their maid. As his wife’s condition stabilized, Bai’s old restless self began to return. He had been here in North Shou Mountain too long, and no longer felt any attachment to the region. And so, despite his wife’s health, he decided to relocate the family from Anlu permanently. He wanted to move to the Lu region about two hundred miles away in the northeast, and again his wife yielded to him. They sold their cottage at the mountain and their farmland, and together with the servants—Dansha and his wife—the young family set off on the road.

  They headed north for Lu Prefecture, roughly where the southern part of today’s Shandong Province lies. Lu was a large prefecture, comprised of eleven counties, and was rich in farmland. Confucius had once roamed there to disseminate his teachings, and his influence in the region remained strong: people respected education and followed traditional rites and values. They worshiped heaven and their ancestors, attended to filial duties for their parents, adhered to social order, conscientiously performed their domestic roles, and embraced loyalty, kindness, honesty, charity, and other virtues upheld by Confucianism. Lu had produced a number of great thinkers, such as Mencius and Mozi. Bai had relatives in Lu, and hoped he might get help from them—a distant uncle was the magistrate of Ren County, and a few cousins were minor officials in some of the other counties.