Su Dongpo: The Life and Times: Part Three
FARMER ON THE EASTERN SLOPE
In January 1080 Su left the capital with his eldest son, Mai, who was now 21. They arrived in Huangzhou on February first, with the rest of family following on May 29. Huangzhou was a poor, small town on the Changjiang, some 60 miles below Hankow. Su began to become more involved with Buddhism. He lived for a while in the Tinghueiyuan Temple, and often went to the Anguo Temple to meditate. He said at this time: “There I learned to forget all distinctions between the self and the non-self. I began to experience great happiness.”
In a letter to his friend Wang Keng, Su talked about his current state of affairs in exile: “I have been able to paint inspired pictures of winter forests and bamboos in ink. My running and cursive styles of calligraphy have especially improved. If I had known that I was going to get into this trouble, I still would have done it without any hesitation.”
But it was also a time of simplicity and poverty. His official salary was cut off, but he had some savings and the cost of living was very low. In 1081 he became a real farmer. He began to work a piece of land on the eastern slope (Dongpo), and to call himself “The Recluse of the Eastern Slope.” The ten acres were received as a grant from the district government, and was about one-third of a mile east of the city. He worked hard to make rice and wheat fields, a fish pond, a long stretch of mulberries (over 100 trees), vegetables, tea and a large orchard of fruit trees. His neighbor on the west had a large forest of huge bamboos that grew thick and wide.
His life began to resemble more and more the life of Tao Yuanming. The more he read Tao’s poems, the more he realized how they reflected his own feelings and life.
Upon hearing the local practice of infanticide, Su established an orphanage called the Save-the-Child Association, the first such institution in China.
Now poor in cash, but rich in leisure, Su produced many of his best poems, including “River Dragon Chant”. The bitterness, tension and anger in his writings were now gone.
YOGA AND ALCHEMY
During this Huangzhou period, Su continued to study Buddhist and Daoist philosophy, which influenced his thinking and writing in the years to come. He shut himself inside Daoist temples, the Tianqingguan, for 49 days beginning on the winter solstice of 1080. Here he practiced fasting, deep breathing exercises, and even some alchemy. He also practiced mental poise through centered concentration. To a friend he wrote the recipe for long life:
1. Having leisure equals having power
2. Going to bed early equals having wealth
3. A leisurely stroll is as enjoyable as a drive
4. Eating late is as good as eating meat.
YEARS OF WANDERING
Imperial edict required him move from his settled existence to Juzhou in March of 1084. Su visited his brother on the way, as well as Wang Anshi, who was in Nanjing. Looking for places to retire to, he bought a farm near Yixing in October. By March 1085, the emperor had died, and the Empress dowager acted as regent. Su was allowed to stay in Yixing. Then just ten days later he was called to go be chief magistrate in Dengzhou. He arrived in October only to be told five days later to return to the capital. He and his family arrived there in mid-December.
EMPRESS FAVORITE
The empress of Jenzong saved his life during his trial. The empress of Engzong now promoted him to power. Later in his life, the empress of Shenzong, ruling as regent, brought him back from Hainan exile.
The new emperor now was only nine years old, so his grandmother was the regent. The empress’s may have had more power than some of the emperors because they could work behind the scenes without starting a power struggle or confrontation with opposing forces. Now Su had a quick and dramatic rise to power. Within eight months of his arrival in the capital he was promoted three times. The imperial system had nine ranks from 1 to 9. He rose from the seventh rank through the sixth, jumped to the fourth and then the third rank as hanlin, in charge of drafting imperial edicts. This was a position for scholars of the highest reputation. Premier was second rank, and virtually no one got to the first level.
Su wrote about 800 of these edicts. Every other night he had to sleep in the palace as much of his work was done at night. Su was at the height of his fame. Brother Ziyou also came back to the capital in January 1086.
THE ART OF PAINTING
The most important of his amusements was the “play with ink”. Famous for his “ink bamboos”, that is paintings of bamboo in ink. He created the name of shiren hua for it (scholar painting). He and his younger friend Me Fei furthered the Southern School of painting began in the Tang Dynasty with Wang Wei and Wu Daozi. Scholars at this time were poets, calligraphers and painters all rolled into one.
Calligraphy and painting were very much the same, they provided the technique and aesthetic principles, while poetry provides the spirit, the emphasis on tone and atmosphere for traditional Chinese artistic expression. Scholars needed the two liquids, wine and ink, along with fine brushes and paper. Chinese calligraphy, like a form of abstract painting, tries to imitate the rhythms of nature in it’s brush movements. Much like dancing on the paper. This school, or style, of painting is also called xieyi (writing out a conception) where mood and impression is key. An artist tries to capture the inner spirit of things. Like the mood of autumn and the spirit of pine needles. For example, the essence of a peony is gorgeousness, and that of a plum blossom is seclusion and refinement.
Su Dongpo: “ It has been my opinion concerning painting that men and animals and buildings and structures have a constant material form. On the other hand, mountains and rocks, bamboo and trees, ripples of water, smoke and clouds do not have a constant form (xing) but do have a constant inner spirit (li). Anybody can detect inaccuracy in the constant forms, but even specialists often fail to note mistakes in painting the constant inner spirit of things. If one misses the inner spirit, the whole painting falls flat. The inner law of things can be comprehended only by the highest human spirits.”
According to Lin Yutang: “All painting is an unconscious reflection of a philosophy. The Chinese express the oneness of man with nature and the essential unity of the great mystic procession of life in which the human being occupies but a small and transitory part.”
THE ART OF GETTING OUT OF POWER
Su Dongpo was a master at the art of getting out of power. Politics in his time was a struggle of personalities, and the Peter Principle par excellence. To survive, one had to practice the art of saying nothing with a great number of words.
Many court fights centered around Su. Four impeachments arose against him in January 1087. The palace was again full of more in-fighting. In August 1086, Su was instrumental at putting an end to the farmer loans. He was almost a one man crusade against corruption and incompetence. At this time there were too many scholars and not enough positions for them. Nepotism flourished. From every exam 300-400 candidates were selected. But another 800-900 people were exempt through their political connections they were recommended by the Ministry of Education, military officers and relatives of the imperial household. This created a situation where for every vacancy there were six to seven people waiting for the opening. Su tried to limit the number of exemptions. He sent many letters to the empress to this effect. This made him very unpopular, especially among the old Wang Anshi guard. Throughout this period he had tried to resign many times.
Su had written satirical poems in the hope that the emperor might hear of the people’s sufferings and change his policy. On March 11, 1089 he was appointed military governor of western Zhejiang, including Hangzhou.
ENGINEERING AND FAMINE RELIEF
At the age of 52, in July 1089 he arrived in Hangzhou. It was at this time the famous story of Su painting twenty fans come to be. (See a following post). He started what was perhaps the first public hospital in China with government and personal money. He initiated many water projects which included working on West Lake. The Su Di (causeway), and the Three Pools Reflecting the Same Moon, were started by him. The Su Di is a 50 foot wide promenade that sections off the lake, where he planted willow trees and lotus. It also has six arched bridges and nine pavilions. A lot of weeds from the lake had to be removed, and much of the work from the times of Bai Juyi had to be redone. All of this work remains to this day.
FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE
Su Dongpo helped create a universal moratorium for the farming loans, and the many that were in debt to the impoverished government. Su was now given a position in Yingzhou for eight months, and then went to Yangzhou for seven months (Feb 1092). In the winter of 1091 he observed hordes of refugees tearing off elm tree bark to cook for food. Roving bandits were roving the countryside and multiplying. Many were moving to the north of the Changjiang.
In Yangzhou he observed that the farmers and people were trapped. Good harvests led to crushing taxes, and sometimes prison, while poor harvests lead to hunger. Both led to poverty, bankruptcy and want.
Much of the wealth of the country was in the imperial treasury and then spent on wars in the northwest. Famine reached catastrophic proportions around Hangzhou by 1092. Over half of the people had died. Su reported: “The people are being crushed under the heavy burden of the old debts…” By July 1092 his recommendations were finally enacted. Farmer debts to the government were finally forgiven.
SECOND PERSECUTION
In the autumn of 1093 two women died: his wife and the Empress. Now Su found his fortunes in decline. Su’s wife died on August 1st at the height of his fortune. Her coffin lay in a Buddhist temple near the capital until Su joined her in death eight years later.
The Empress‘ death, as emperor’s grandmother, was a watershed event that also marked Su’s fall from power and influence. Edicts for dismissals, banishment and confinements came fast and furious, Su and 30 other high officials were degraded or exiled. The old Wang Anshi gang was reinstated. Tyranny and chaos soon followed. Revenge worse than under Wang Anshi. For example, former premier Zhema Guang’s grave was dug up and smashed, properties of his family confiscated, previous honors were revoked. Most of the exiled went to the south and southwest. All persons critical of Wang Anshi’s policies were considered guilty of libel against the emperor. They rounded up and punished 830 officials in all.
HOME IN EXILE
Su Dongpo was the first to be punished. He was appointed, and then sent into the Guangdong wilderness as magistrate of Yingzhou. At the age of 57 he had to travel 1,500 miles from the north to the south. Su traveled with his family, but first went to his brother for money. In response to a petition to the emperor, he was allowed to travel by boat. He then sent most of the family to Yixing, and took only Chaoyun and his two younger sons with him. His rank was degraded three times on his journey. By September they had entered the province of Guangdong. The group wound up in the province of Guizhou. Surprised to see the semi-tropical vegetation, he resigned himself to his fate.
The magistrates in the surrounding districts made friends with him. They sent food and wine to him and his household. Su discovered that there was no government wine monopoly in this remote area, so he could brew his own, obtaining thirteen gallons from ten bushels of rice. He grew to especially love the local cinnamon wine. He found it slightly sweet, but left no hangover. In Dingzhou he experimented making types of wine with tangerines, and one in particular was a pine wine. He created the “wine of divine unity”, which consisted of white flour, glutinous rice and pure spring water.
Su at this time felt: “It has seemed to me that there is no greater human happiness than two things: freedom from sickness in the body, and freedom from worries in the mind.”
His concerns turned from national ones, the palace and the emperor, to ones of his local community, city and region.
ROMANCE WITH CHAOYUN
His time in Guizhou is often linked with his relationship to Chaoyun. They had lived together since Hangzhou. He was 57 and she was 31 at the time. She was interested in Buddhist sutras and immortality pills, the Daoist art of prolonging life. Su Dongpo called his studio the “Studio of Clean Thinking”, which expressed his overall philosophy: simple living and clear thinking. He tried to unite the truths of the Three Beliefs with a discipline of the mind.
Su built another house. It had 20 rooms with planted oranges, pomelos, lizi, strawberries, loquats and a few gardenias in the surrounding area. But before it was finished, Chaoyun died in July 1095, probably of malaria. Her final words were from a Diamond Sutra gatha:
“This earthly life may be likened to a dream
It may be likened to a bubble
It may be likened to the dew and lightning
For all sentient life must be so regarded.”
She was buried near a lake pagoda and several Buddhist temples.
In February, 1096, the house was done. Some of his family came to live with him: two sons and their wives and three grandchildren. Two months later he was reappointed to a post on the island of Hainan. After reading his poem, “Freehand Brush Strokes”, the palace elite thought he was too comfortable and happy, so they moved him to Hainan.
OUTSIDE CHINA
Although within the Chinese empire, the island of Hainan was occupied by the non-Han aboriginal people called the Loi. So in effect Su was banished to a foreign country. His eldest son lost his magistrate job. Su was now 60 years old. This appointment appeared to be a life sentence. He wrote to his nephew that the first thing to be done was to build a coffin and make a grave. He did not expect to return, nor did expect his family to travel to this out-of-the-way place to retrieve his body for family burial.
Su arrived in Dangzhou in July 1097 on the northwest corner of the island. It was damp with malaria, with no meat, no indigenous rice (imported only), no medicine, no houses, no friends. He described his new home as, ”in short we lack almost everything.”
Having been forced out of living in a government house, Su had to build and live in a very crude, hand-made dwelling for the next 2 ½ years. His son Guo was his constant companion. Su taught him how to write and paint, and to memorize histories of the Tang and Han dynasties. During this time, Su completed an interpretation of a volume of 124 poems by Tao Yuanming. He started by echoing some of the poems and soon realized that his life was almost a complete duplication of Tao’s. He finished responding to all of 124 poems while on Hainan.
THE END
In January 1100, the young emperor Zhenzong died at the age of 24. With no sons the throne went to his brother, Guizong. With 31 sons, Guizong followed the same Wang Anshi policies, and then wound up losing the throne, losing the capital, and dying at the hands of the northern barbarians. A whole generation of talented scholars were gone. And they were very hard to replace.
For the first six months of 1100 the empress ruled as regent and had all of the Yuanyu party people pardoned in April. In May he received an appointment to a post on the Mainland, and then a month later was reappointed to the province of Hunan.
Then he finally received permission to live anywhere he wanted. Entertained and greeted at every town he went through, friends and admirers gathered around him. In October he greeted the rest of his family in Guangzhou, where he was lavishly entertained.
By May 1 he arrived in Nanjing. On June 3rd he developed what was probably amoebic dysentery. Perhaps he drank some contaminated river water, as he was living on a boat then. By July 28th he died, never having recovered. He died with his entire family in the room.
The Western Heaven, known as Sukhavati in Sanskrit, or Xitian in Chinese, is the noted Pure Land of Buddha Amitabha. The closet simile could be The Land of Bliss, or Paradise. Su Dongpo’s last words: “The Western Heaven may exist, but trying to get there won’t help.” When asked to try, he replied, “It is a mistake to try.”
Notes:
Tao Yuanming: (365-427) Famous Eastern Jin Dynasty poet. See other posts on this website.
Yixing: City in southern Jiangsu Province
Hainan: Island province in the South China Sea
Hanlin: Government position serving the court and performing interpretation on the Chinese Classics
Yangzhou: Located in Jiangsu Province
Three Beliefs: Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism
Diamond Sutra: Major Buddhist sutra (scripture).
Emperor Zhenzong: (reign 1085-1100)