The Banished Immortal

by Ha Jin

  烽火然不息 征戰無已時

  野戰格鬥死 敗馬號鳴向天悲

  烏鳶啄人腸 銜飛上掛枯樹枝

  士卒塗草莽 將軍空爾爲

  乃知兵者是兇器 聖人不得已而用之

  《戰城南》

  Last year we fought at the source of the Sanggan,

  This year we are fighting along the Chong River.

  We’ve washed our weapons on the waves of Lake Balkhash

  And grazed our horses at Tianshan Mountain covered in snow.

  Fighting thousands of miles west of home,

  All the troops have grown feeble and old.

  The Huns take killing as their livelihood

  And since ancient times there have been only

  Yellow deserts growing white bones.

  The Qin people built the Great Wall against the barbarians,

  On which the Han men lit beacons of war.

  The fire hasn’t stopped burning

  As war has continued ever since.

  Soldiers fell on battlegrounds

  Where riderless horses neighed piteously to the sky.

  Crows pulled out human guts

  And hung them up on leafless branches.

  Soldiers’ blood spilt on wild grass,

  Yet generals could gain nothing at all.

  Please understand that war is a lethal thing,

  Which the wise will not use unless they must.

  “ZHAN CHENGNAN”

  The last two lines are quoted from the Tao Te Ching. Although they sound somewhat intrusive, a bit dissonant from the verse’s collective voice, they carry a message that was of primary importance to Li Bai. The geographic names are all places northwest of the frontier and give the impression of endless battlefields.

  Li Bai couldn’t contain his anger at China’s military actions and spoke plainly for the soldiers. This was something new in his poetry, which by now had shed all the lightness and decadent touches of his early work. His voice had grown deeper, more resonant, and more emotional as his art became starker and more truthful.

  Wang Twelve also told Bai of the fate of his poet friend Wang Changling, who, though exiled to the southern hinterland, had managed to return to the capital a few years before. The reason for his new banishment was vague—it was said only that he had been “careless about his demeanor,” implying that he had offended someone powerful at court. Hearing that his friend had left for a small remote county in Longbiao (modern Hongjiang, Hunan), Bai wrote a short poem for his friend: “When poplars drop their catkins and cuckoos begin to sing, / I’ve heard you pass five streams to reach Longbiao. / I’m sending you my sorrowful heart through the bright moon, / Which flows with the wind to west of Yelang” (“On Hearing Wang Changling Demoted to Longbiao”). Li Bai couldn’t know that years later, he himself would go the same way, banished to Yelang. There was no way for him to foresee that his own misfortune would be greater than his friend’s; what he does in the poem is assure Changling that their friendship, pure like the bright moon, will outlast the hard times.

  Stunned by the news of his friends’ deaths and exiles, Bai tried to remain detached. He felt helpless, as he confessed to Wang Twelve: “I compose poems and essays at the north window, / But ten thousand words are not worth one cup of water” (“In Reply to Wang Twelve in a Cold Night While Drinking Alone”). So he boated on rivers and lakes, wearing his Daoist gown inside out so that people might not recognize him. He joined young men in hunting rabbits with hawks. He spent more time drinking and playing games with new friends in taverns and restaurants. But in the end, he couldn’t keep his grief and anger at bay. He wrote satirical poems mocking corrupt officials and condemning them in various voices. He never signed his name to any verse that criticized the central government or the emperor. Nevertheless, people knew that the poems were Li Bai’s.

  NEW MARRIAGE

  During his stay in Nanjing, Li Bai missed his children in Shandong. He often talked about them, and whenever a friend was traveling north, he would ask him to make an excursion to Yanzhou to see how his family was managing. A small number of his poems about his children have survived. One of the best-known is in the epistolary form and titled “To My Two Young Children in East Lu” (reproduced in part on pages 138–139 of this book). As we have seen, this poem is one of our primary sources of information on his daughter, Pingyang, and his son, Boqin. In it Bai tells us he has been away from his family for three years. This time—the duration of his absence from home—is mentioned in several other poems from this period. In “Seeing Xiao Thirty-First Off for Central Lu, Also About My Young Son Boqin,” Li Bai asks his northbound friend to go to his home and see how his son is faring. Toward the end of the poem, he writes, “My home is nestled against Sandy Hill, / And it breaks my heart not having seen it for three years. / When you arrive you can recognize my son Boqin, / Who is old enough to drive a little carriage pulled by a white sheep.” He loved Boqin, Little Bright Moon, who must have been quite young at that time, seven or eight. Bai had high hopes for him; the son loved his father too. Many years later, Li Hua, an uncle of Bai’s who composed the poet’s epitaph, praised Boqin: “[He is] steadfast in character and eloquent in debate. As his virtues continue to grow, he will surely achieve great fame.” In fact, Boqin ended up taking a path completely different from his father’s, leading a quiet life as a clerk in a salt station, though he did marry and have children.

  We should keep in mind that during Bai’s absence, the woman of Lu stayed with his children, caring for them and managing his estate. Her devotion to the family allowed Li Bai to sojourn in the south for years. The woman also had her own child with Li Bai, a much younger son called Poli, of whom we know very little. “Poli” was an exotic name, associated with Bai’s native land in the western region beyond the border, and is a phonetic transcription of the Chinese word boli, meaning “glass.” A treasure mostly from Persia, glass was highly valued in China at the time. The ancient historian Shen Yue (441–513), in his Biography of Prince Liangsi, records that during the reign of Emperor Songwen (407–453), a merchant brought back from Central Asia a large cube of glass one and a half feet long and wide, weighing more than forty pounds. When Emperor Songwen asked the price, the merchant’s reply was a million strings of cash. Songwen consulted his courtiers, who believed that they couldn’t pay such a price even if they emptied the royal treasury. Shen Yue states, “The whole country could not tell how valuable it was, and naturally no one would consider making an offer.”1 In fact, China had made glass at least a millennium before Li Bai’s time, though on a very small scale, mainly in the form of marbles, necklace beads, and chess pieces, but it remained rare and precious until the eighteenth century when the technology of glass production from the West finally made inroads into China. Artisans began to make small glass containers like snuff bottles and vases. Such products were considered artwork, and glass was still a sought-after material similar to jade.

  By giving his son such a name, Li Bai must have intended him to have a bright and transparent character, as the boy’s nickname Tianran (Natural) indicated as well. There is also a second meaning to “Poli”: the Poli Mountain in the western land that produced legendary horses, “divine steeds” said to be able to run three hundred miles a day. In either sense, precious glass or a great horse, “Poli” was associated with the land of Bai’s birth.2

  The poems about his children from this period do not mention Poli, however, because the boy was born out of wedlock. The culture of the time maintained a strict distinction between children born in a marriage and those born outside it. Their fathers usually would not mix them, just as Li Bai omits Poli when speaking of Pingyang and Boqin in his verses. This does not mean he ignored Poli; in fact, we might argue that Bai loved him no less than his older son. Seven years later, during the A
n Lushan rebellion, Li Bai expresses deep concern for Poli in a poem: “I am grieved over my son in northern Shandong, / And am separated from my old wife trapped south of Nanchang. / The whole family is scattered in wild grass / Unable to help each other in the calamity” (“Angry Words Submitted to Official Wei”). The poem was written in 757 when Bai was in prison and when Boqin was already in central Anhui, rescued from Shandong by Bai’s disciple Wu E. The “son in northern Shandong” refers to Poli, who must have been with his mother, the woman of Lu.3 Bai doesn’t mention her in the poem; apparently she had left him and their partnership after more than a decade, perhaps because she could see no future for herself with him (Bai had by then remarried and so would never marry her). At most she could become his concubine, and Li Bai might not even give her such a role if it would upset his bride. Indeed, in the poem he worries about his new wife instead, who was somewhere south of Nanchang, unable to join him because of the war. But though the boy’s mother might no longer be Bai’s concern, he does think of Poli. Since Poli was too young to leave his mother, both mother and son vanished from Bai’s life. That must have broken his heart.

  Bai would not marry the woman of Lu mainly because of her humble and uneducated origins. His new wife, Miss Zong, was from an aristocratic family. Li Bai married her around 750 when he went to Kaifeng and revisited Liang Park. We don’t know her personal name, so we can refer to her only by her family name. The Zongs had once been wealthy and powerful. Miss Zong’s grandfather Zong Chu-ke had served as a chancellor at the Tang court three times (demoted and reinstated twice), though his work had been unremarkable and he had often become entangled in political intrigues. When the current Emperor Xuanzong had been only a prince and rebelled against the faction headed by Queen Wei, he’d had Chancellor Zong executed, together with the queen and her other collaborators. The family’s reputation was tarnished by Zong Chu-ke’s misconduct: taking bribes, using public funds to construct his own residence, ruthlessly wiping out his political rivals by having them killed or dismissed. In general, men of good repute would avoid marrying into such a family, but this didn’t deter Li Bai. He loved his bride and even bragged about her aristocratic background. In a poem written for her, he says in her voice, “My family had a chancellor three times, / But we lost power and retreated to western Qin. / In our household there is still an old band, / Though the tunes they play sadden our new neighbors” (“For My Wife”). Throughout his life, Bai seemed strongly drawn to aristocracy and wealth, considering that his first wife was also from a fallen chancellor’s family. As with his previous marriage, when he married Miss Zong he married into her family, unbothered by the stigma of the arrangement. He acted on his own terms.

  However, it would be simplistic to say that Li Bai was a snob. There was genuine attraction and love between him and Miss Zong, who was a bright woman with an independent spirit. Above all, they shared the same religious faith. She was in fact more cultivated than Bai in Daoism and practiced it with great devotion, completely detached from fame, power, and other worldly pursuits. Her detachment made her more attractive to Bai. Legend holds that before they met, Miss Zong loved Li Bai’s poem “Song in the Liangfu Tune,” which he had inscribed on a wall in a restaurant, and so she bought the wall to prevent the poem from being erased. When Li Bai heard of this young woman who showed such attachment to his work, his interest was piqued. Although the story is most likely apocryphal, it might explain how Miss Zong became a loving wife to Bai and why he trusted her and was attached to her. While his first wife’s family, the Xus, had hoped that Bai would achieve a high rank and resurrect the declining family, the Zongs did not expect anything from him. Miss Zong, at least twenty years Bai’s junior, valued his talent and poetry, as did her brother Zong Jing.

  Li Bai’s love for his wife was also manifested in his respect for Miss Zong’s Daoist master, Li Tengkong. Tengkong was the daughter of Bai’s enemy Li Linfu, but unlike her father, she rejected the political machinations of Chang’an and practiced Daoism in Mount Lu for decades, eventually becoming a master respected by her fellow Daoists and beloved by the locals. She often treated the sick and helped the needy; many people depended on her services. The two women were very close, likely in part because they both came from the families of chancellors and were disillusioned with the world of power and wealth. Bai admired Tengkong and harbored no trace of resentment toward her, even encouraging his wife to study under her guidance. He once accompanied Miss Zong on a visit to Li Tengkong deep in the mountain. On the way, he composed two poems, one of them celebrating Tengkong:

  君尋騰空子 應到碧山家

  水舂雲母碓 風掃石楠花

  若愛幽居好 相邀弄紫霞。。。

  《送內尋廬山女道士李騰空》

  If you look for Master Tengkong

  You should go to her cottage in the green mountain.

  She is ladling water for making the elixir of life

  While a breeze sways heather flowers nearby.

  If you like her remote quiet dwelling,

  You should stay here, caressing purple clouds with her.

  “ACCOMPANYING MY WIFE TO LOOK FOR MASTER LI TENGKONG IN MOUNT LU”

  Li Bai’s attitude toward Tengkong indicates that he valued another kind of existence in the religious order, one that could transcend social strife and hatred and violence. In fact, his love for his wife grew partly from her devoted pursuit of such an existence. Throughout his life, Bai had struggled to achieve religious transcendence, rarely able to enter and stay in the heavenly space. Miss Zong was more successful in this pursuit.

  Because of her unusual spiritual strength, his wife might have gotten along well with Pingyang, though we are not certain if they ever met. Li Bai wrote to his friend Yuan Danqiu that both his daughter and his wife loved religious life: “My humble wife is fond of riding a phoenix / While my delicate daughter loves flying cranes” (“Inscribed at Hermit Yuan Danqiu’s Residence in Mount Song”). Although in 750 Bai had remarried and founded a new household, his children still remained far away in Shandong. Why didn’t they join him in his new home in Henan? The unusual circumstances of his marriage prevented such a reunion—he lacked his own home and income, though he had two houses and farmland in Shandong. Clearly Bai was at a disadvantage. Miss Zong’s younger brother Zong Jing, who was a dear friend of Bai’s, must have played a significant role in bringing Bai and his sister together, but Bai was still married into the household, so he didn’t command the authority normally accorded a husband. In fact, his wife’s younger sister stayed with the newlyweds, indicating that the family remained unchanged by the marriage and that Bai had to adapt to the Zongs. By custom, an unmarried daughter stayed with her parents, not her sister, but apparently Miss Zong’s home remained the same and she could still let her younger sister stay with her and Bai. This explains why Bai didn’t bring his children to Henan, although he missed them terribly.4

  Despite his new marriage, which was based on mutual love, he still found it difficult to adapt to his wife’s household, accustomed as he was to life on the road. In a way, we can say that his home was the road and the essence of his being existed in his endless wanderings. He would set out time and again in spite of his wife’s objections, as though he was doomed to remain a guest in this world.

  ON THE NORTHEASTERN FRONTIER

  In the fall of 751, Li Bai received a letter from his old friend Yuan Danqiu. Danqiu had recently built a hermitage at Rock-Gate Mountain near Nanyang, a town in southwestern Henan. In the letter, he described the tranquility and beauty of his new surroundings and invited Li Bai to come and enjoy his new home with him. Bai decided to go, having stayed with the Zongs long enough that he was beginning to feel restless again. His friend’s invitation rekindled his wanderlust.

  Danqiu’s cottage sat in the middle of a clearing on a gentle slope, beyond which birdcalls and monkeys’ cries ech
oed deep in the mountain. It was even more secluded than his former dwelling at Mount Song. Li Bai loved this new place. He and Danqiu climbed nearby hills every morning. On their climbs they were often surrounded by patches of mist as if they were moving through clouds, their clothes damp from the moisture of the air. At night they would sit in front of the cottage to enjoy a cool breeze and the bright moon. Bai was so fond of this place that he began to tell Danqiu that he hoped to move here and live an eremitic life like his. Danqiu would tease him, replying that Bai had always talked about such a wish but could never act on it. He knew that Bai was a drifter by nature and couldn’t settle down in one place for long. Bai laughed and admitted that nobody knew him better than Danqiu.

  Now that Bai was again a married man, Danqiu pointed out, even if he wanted to settle in a mountain he would have to persuade his wife to come with him. But Bai was certain that she would love such a life. She was devoted to her Daoist practice; her family had seen great vicissitudes of power and fortune in recent decades and was unwilling to be involved in politics again. In a way, her faith was why she had been willing to marry Bai, an idle drifter but a Daoist fellow. By now her family’s estates were nearly gone—only a few dilapidated eateries and wine houses were left in the area of Liang Park—so she often thought of moving. If her brother Zong Jing hadn’t urged her to stay on, she might have left long before.

  Seeing the earnestness of Bai’s plan, Danqiu began to join him in looking for a site where Bai and his wife might build a house. They decided on a spot within a stone’s throw of Danqiu’s cottage, and Bai cleared the grass and bushes to make it look like a lot. They made sure that no one owned the land, which could be used. At the moment, Bai didn’t have the money for building materials, but once his wife agreed to come, she could sell her family’s properties back in Liang Park.

  However, within a month Bai’s mind began to wander again. He couldn’t stop mulling over a letter he had received from his friend He Chang-hao. Chang-hao had been a poor scholar who had failed the civil-service examination, and Bai had given him money several times to keep him from cold and starvation. Later the young man went to the northeast and joined the staff of the military commander of Youzhou. He served as a junior counselor in the headquarters there. His letter to Li Bai was full of exuberance and showed he was doing well on the frontier. He wrote to Bai, “In arms and letters, you are ten times more capable than I am. If you come to this region, surely you will find a suitable post! Even though you might be reluctant to serve in the military, it will do no harm if you just come this way for fun.”1