by Li He
It must have been with high hopes, then, that He secured Yu’s sponsorship for the Henan Provincial Examinations of 809, which he must have passed effortlessly. Candidates successful in this examination were eligible to sit for the Doctoral (ju) examination held in the capital under the auspices of the Ministry of Rites. There were several types of Doctoral examination in Tang times varying from law, calligraphy, and mathematics to knowledge of the classics (the ming-jing degree). However, the most difficult and the most highly regarded was the Literary examination, which rigorously tested both a candidate’s literary abilities and his grounding in the classics. To succeed in this, He would have to answer questions on current affairs, write exegetical essays on passages from classical texts, and—most important of all—compose long poems of a type called fu (“rhyme-prose”) as well as shi (“lyric verse”). Once he had gained his doctorate, he was entitled to sit for the Selection (xuan) examination, which determined whether or not he could be appointed to office. The Selection examination was very like the country-house interviews which were once so much a feature of British Civil Service examinations. The candidate was judged by his bearing, ability to express himself, calligraphy, and wisdom in making judgements. Only when he had satisfied the examiners in all these qualities was he judged to be both a scholar and a gentleman (jun-zi) and therefore fit to govern.
It is hardly surprising to learn that the road to office was long and early, with many falling by the wayside. Han Yu once pointed out that of every 3,000 distinguished candidates who emerged from the great crowd of aspirants, fewer than 200 finally attained the Selection examination. This means that fourteen out of every fifteen candidates failed even to reach the last hurdle. Add to this the fact that only a modest percentage of the final 200 could be allotted a post, and the heart-breaking nature of the Tang examination system becomes only too apparent. As Han Yu remarked, since a candidate might well spend twenty years or more in reaching the Selection examination, half of those who succeeded were already grey-haired old men.
With the stakes so high and the course so difficult it is not too surprising to find that every sort of unscrupulous practice was adopted to advance oneself and eliminate one’s rivals. This was a free-for-all, with no holds barred, as He himself was soon to discover to his cost. To a casual observer, however, his success must have seemed a foregone conclusion. Dazzlingly talented, scion of a branch of the royal house, and supported by a prominent literary man, he must have already been marked down as the most outstanding candidate of his year. Yet it was almost certainly this very fame which was to prove his undoing, making him too conspicuous a target to avoid the shafts levelled at him. Shortly after arriving in the capital, Chang-an, he was stunned to hear that he was not even to be allowed to sit for the jin-shi examination at which he should have carried all before him. The excuse put forward was that since his deceased father’s name had been Jin-su, the word jin in the term jin-shi violated a family taboo.
To understand what occurred, some explanation is necessary. The Chinese have always been scrupulously careful to avoid using the personal names of certain people—one’s father or the emperor, for example—either in speech or in writing. When such a word was met it had to be avoided, either by pronouncing it mou (so-and-so) or by substituting another character in its place. Now the Chinese spoken during Tang times, though differing markedly from the Mandarin (putonghua) of today, similarly abounded in homophones. Hence official regulations concerning these taboos had shown common sense in asserting that only the word itself had to be avoided, while its homophones could be pronounced or written with impunity. Since the Jin of He’s father’s name is quite a different word from the jin (“to advance”) of the term jin-shi, though closely related to it etymologically, it might have been supposed that no taboo was therefore violated. Unfortunately, official regulations have never owned the force in China that they have enjoyed in Europe. What mattered was customary law, not bureaucratic rulings: and customary law insisted that homophones be considered taboo.
Tradition has it that it was Bo Ju-yi’s friend, the poet Yuan Zhen (779–831), who brought this matter to the notice of the authorities because He had once insulted him. If this is true, the situation would have been ironic, since Bo himself had once been attacked on the ground that he had infringed a taboo by writing poems about a well and plum blossom, though it was known his mother had died by falling into a well while admiring some blossom. However, Han Yu’s account of the affair is less specific, designating the informer as simply “one who was contending with He for fame”—a description which leads one to suspect one of He’s fellow-candidates and rivals. Since Yuan passed his Selection examination in 803, when He was only thirteen or so, the traditional story is perhaps inaccurate.
However, one writer has suggested that the informer was in fact Yuan, who at that time held the post of Censor and had made a good many enemies, among them Fang Shi, governor of Luo-yang, the man responsible for authorizing He’s candidature. So Yuan is held to have acted in this way not so much to obtain revenge on Li He as to discomfort Fang Shi, since the authorizer of an unworthy candidate was himself liable for severe penalties.
Political struggle for control of the middle and upper echelons of the bureaucracy was rife during this period. If entry into the Tang bureaucracy was difficult, then promotion within its ranks was no less so. To make the jump from the career grade of the sixth rank to the senior positions of the fifth rank and above was arduous enough. But to cross the gap from the fourth rank to the third rank, where most effective power resided, was given only to a gifted and ruthless few. The financial and social privileges that went with positions of the fifth rank and above, including the right to have one son enter officialdom without passing the usual examinations, were considerable. Little wonder then that the struggle for power was so ferocious. In this internecine strife the examination candidates were just so many pawns on the political chessboard. In 821, a mere four years after Li He’s death, a major scandal blew up when it was discovered that the examiners had been guilty of flagrant partiality and favouritism towards the close relatives of powerful courtiers. The fact is that the examination system during Tang was still in its infancy and as such open to abuse in a way that would have been impossible under later dynasties, when the most stringent precautions were taken to hide the identity of the candidates from the examiners. We may conclude, therefore, that Li He was probably sacrificed either because he had incurred the animosity of an examiner or, more likely, because some powerful bureaucrat wished to strike a blow at a rival who happened to be He’s patron.
It seems probable that some faction (dang) hostile to Han Yu was involved in this questionable maneuver, since Yu, as He’s guarantor, stood to lose a great deal by his protégé’s disgrace. This would explain why Yu rushed in to intercede for He with his famous essay on taboo-names, as Yu himself points out:
He’s candidature for the Doctorate degree has become a cause célèbre. Somebody who was contending with He for fame slandered him, saying: “He’s father’s name was Jin-su. It would be bad form for He to sit for the Literary examination. Those who sponsored him are in the wrong!”…Hence Huang-fu Shi said to me: “If you do not explain matters, both you and He will find yourselves in trouble.”
Yu then goes on to ridicule the accusations made against He by pointing out that to apply the homophone taboo in this way would result in ridiculous excesses. If, for example, the father bore the personal name Ren (love) then the son would be unable to call himself a man (ren)! Yu’s essay was successful insofar as it ensured that neither he nor He was involved in any further trouble. But even Yu’s persuasive prose could not prevail upon the authorities to let He sit for the examination. The imbecilic misuse of the taboo regulation had barred him from this forever.
From then on until his untimely death seven years later, a death which was very likely hastened by the dashing of all his hopes for a brilliant official career, He was a man ravaged by sickness and d
isappointment. He seems to have suffered a severe illness—perhaps a nervous breakdown—consequent upon his failure to gain his degree.
I came back home, all skin and bones,
A fleshless face,
A murrain lighted on my head,
My hair fell out.
Mournfully chanting, I study the sighs of Chu,
My sick bones ache in lonely poverty.
Autumnal in aspect with hair turning white,
A tree whose leaves lament in wind and rain.
From this time on, the melancholy and despair which is the hallmark of so much Tang poetry stamped itself ever more deeply on his verse.
In Chang-an city lives a lad of twenty
Whose heart’s already so much rotten wood…
He knows by now the way is blocked to him,
No need to wait until his hair turns white.
Sparse cassia blossom under snow,
A crying crow, struck by a bolt came home…
The woman he loved asked him no questions—
Her face in the mirror bore two streams of tears.
Your elder brother is now turned twenty.
The mirror tells him how his beard is growing.
Three years ago he left our home—to come to this!
Begging rice at princes’ gates,
An utter failure.
Who can he be, this sad and lonely man,
Who’s come to suffer autumn in Chang-an?
Young as I am, brooding on stifled sorrows,
Weeping in dreams until my hair turns white.
Though I have reached my twentieth year
I’ve missed my goal,
My whole heart sad and withered
As a dying orchid.
The king of Qin is nowhere to be seen,
So dawn and dusk fever burns in me…
Because I cannot roam round with the moon,
My hair’s grown white before I end my song.
The melancholy of the Southern Mountains,
Ghostly rain drizzling on desolate grass!
In one respect, however, He was more fortunate than the countless other young men of his time who were unsuccessful in the examinations. As the son of an official of the fifth degree he was entitled to avail himself of the so-called yin privilege. This meant he was allowed to sit for the Selection examination without having first to pass the Doctoral examination. Of course, his lack of a Doctorate meant that he could never hope for promotion or even for a job worthy of his talents. But beggars cannot be choosers. He was, after all, a man with a widowed mother and a younger brother to support, as he reminds us in his verse:
My whole family welcomes me with joy,
Counting on me to fill their empty bellies.
Born into this world, I have to feed myself,
So out of my gate I go, with burdened back.
In the tenth month of 810, he set out from Luo-yang to take the Selection examination in the capital:
I’m going to play around with words
For the Office of Heaven,
For who would pity a royal scion
Left unemployed?
For a man of his abilities and background such an examination could have presented few problems. In the following year he was back in Chang-an again, this time as Supervisor of Ceremonies in the Court of Imperial Sacrifices. In spite of its high-sounding title, this was a low-ranking post whose duties were of the dullest. The two Supervisors were officials of the ninth degree, third class, a rank well down in the official hierarchy. Li He was in fact little more than a glorified usher, who had to see that the ceremonial vessels were set out correctly in the imperial ancestral temple, attend to seating arrangements at court audiences, and give the requisite signals which indicated when to bow, kneel, kowtow, or rise during ceremonies. Such a post called for neither literary talent nor administrative ability. To place a man of his genius in this position was like using a racehorse to draw a plough, as he never wearied of reminding his friends.
This steed is no ordinary horse
But the very spirit of the Fang star.
Stand in front, rap on its slender bones,
They’ll ring out like bronze.
The Office of Rites has forced me from my true nature,
I look haggard and worn, like a straw dog cast aside.
In wind and snow I serve at the Altar of Fasting,
My black belt threaded through a brazen seal.
The work I do is fit only for slaves and bondmaids
Who want no more than to wield dustpan and brush.
The warm sun leaves me lonely and depressed,
Blossoms only sadden this Bei-guo Sao.
The reference in the last line to Bei-guo Sao, who, though a man of genius, supported his widowed mother by weaving nets and making sandals, sums up succinctly enough what He thought of his own position. We do not know for certain whether he ever succeeded in rising from this post. Both the Tang histories state that he was given the rank of Harmonizer of Pitch-pipes, a post of the eighth rank and thus one step above his position as Supervisor of Ceremonies. In view of his high reputation as a writer of songs, I am inclined to believe that he was in fact eventually promoted to this position, though precisely when must remain uncertain. What is certain is that he was highly dissatisfied with whatever post he held in the Court of Imperial Sacrifices and expressed his longing to be away from it all, time and time again in his verse, as for example in After Days of Rain in the Chong-yi District.
Who can he be, this sad and lonely man,
Who’s come to suffer autumn in Chang-an?
Young as I am, brooding on stifled sorrows
Weeping in dreams until my hair turns white.
I feed my skinny nag on mouldy hay,
As gusts of rain splash in the chilly gutters.
The Southern Palace is darkened by ancient blinds,
Its sundials blank beneath a watery sun.
My mountain home’s a thousand leagues away,
East of here, at the very foot of the clouds.
Sleeping in sorrow, my sword-case as my pillow,
In bed at an inn I dream of a marquisate.
The Chong-yi district referred to in the title was a busy quarter of Chang-an, close to the Ministry of Civil Office. The cost of living in the capital was very high and He’s salary regrettably low. Furthermore, though his elder sister was married and hence off his hands, he still had to support his mother and young brother back in Chang-gu, which must have made considerable inroads on his income. Nevertheless, pleading poverty is a convention of Chinese verse and I find it difficult to believe that he was so destitute he could not afford a servant (“Back from the office, I must shut the gates myself”), still less find himself unable even to buy wine, as he alleges on at least one occasion. What probably did gall him, as it has vexed many another young bachelor in his position, was to live among all the delights provided by a great city without being able to afford to enjoy them. For Chang-an was a metropolis, populous even by modern standards, with close to a million inhabitants. It was, in fact, the largest city in the world at that time, rivalled in size and splendour only by Haroun Al-Rashid’s Baghdad, which was then approaching its apogee. In this sophisticated and highly cosmopolitan city a young official on a meagre salary might very well feel that life was passing him by for sheer lack of money, especially if he had a taste for wine and women, as He undoubtedly did.
We have already mentioned that a Qing critic alleged that Li He died of sexual exhaustion, basing his statement partly on the numerous allusions to courtesans which abound throughout his verse. One might perhaps conceivably be persuaded to agree to the assertion that He was married: but not even the most casual reader of his poems could reasonably claim that he was monogamous. One of his longest poems, “She Steals My Heart,” is an account of his unhappy affair with a singing-girl who was clearly a good deal too expensive for him to maintain a permanent liaison with her. For the courtesans of Chang-an, many of
them exotic blond, blue-eyed foreigners, made heavy demands on both the purse and the constitution, as we know from the short stories (quan-qi) of the period—demands which He was ill-equipped to withstand, both financially and physically. Furthermore, his reputation as the most brilliant songwriter in the empire put him in great demand, exposing him to temptations he might otherwise have avoided. In the preface to his Outing Among Blossoms, he states that he went off on a picnic with various princes and singing-girls, for whom he wrote a song.
This morning, drunk outside the city walls,
Rubbing our mirrors we brush on our rich brows.
In drizzling mist we fret in clumsy carriages.
Red oil-cloth covers up our painted clothes.
These dancing-skirts, though perfumed, are not warm,
Our faces flush but slowly from the wine.
Such outings, where his genius admitted him briefly to the company of rich young playboys and their lovely companions, must have tantalized him with a taste of pleasures just beyond his reach. For He, like Keats whom he so much resembles, was a great sensualist delighting in tastes, sounds, and colours. Fine food and wine, music, rich silks and brocades, jewels, and beautiful women figure prominently in his verse, so much so that at times we feel we are closer to the languid, erotic world of the later ci poets than to the lyric verse of mid-Tang. The pity of it was that—again like Keats—he could not afford the delights he savoured most. So he swings abruptly from contemplation of these joys to sharp condemnation of them; from eulogies of the flesh to graveyard poetry; from vers de société to social satire; from the ballad to something close to the ci. This dichotomy is vividly illustrated by his imagery which alternates between vivid colour—with special prominence given to gold, red, blue, green, and yellow—and stark black and white. All this, I believe, reflects the tensions engendered in him by living in Chang-an, that fascinating, decadent city whose evanescent pleasures and fugitive splendours mocked him like life itself.
