Bai Juyi (772 – 846 AD) lived to the age of 75.
His long career as a poet covers his flamboyant youthful ballads and sombre reflections on old age.
A famous part of his literary legacy was his celebration of his garden, where he spent much of the last 18 years of his life.
This helped created a long Chinese tradition of writing about gardens and even giving them names.
And, like his garden, he used his later years to carefully cultivate his poetic works.
Contents
Biography
Family background
Bai Juyi (白居易), courtesy name Letian, was born into a family of lower and middle-ranking scholar-officials that were originally from Taiyuan (in today’s Shanxi Province).
His father, Bai Jigeng (729 – 794), served in several official positions, including to the relative high-status (but not elite level) position of biejia (别驾) to the governor of Xiangzhou.
Bai himself was born in Xincheng (in today’s Henan Province), just nine years after the An Lushan Rebellion (763 – 755 AD).
These were still troubled times. As a child, the family fled to the Jiangnan (‘south of the river’ area covering today’s Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, etc.) region to avoid the violence of an uprising.
Studying hard
Like many of the children of the elite, Bai was educated in the Confucian classics.
He is said to have studied so hard for the jinshi exam that he developed callouses on his hands and grey hair at a young age.
The jinshi was the imperial exam that qualified candidates for an official position.
More elite families had a yin (胤) privilege for their eldest sons that guaranteed service. (Bai was not an eldest son, so would not have qualified for this anyway.)
Only 2 – 3% of candidates passed each exam. Many attempted it multiple times, well into middle age.
Bai would pass the exam in 802 at the respectable age of 30.
794: Father passes away
Bai Jigeng passed away when Bai Juyi was 24 years old. The son took the customary three-year morning period (during which time he returned home and did not seek an official position).
When Bai Snr. passed away, Bai’s family lived in Fuli (today’s Suzhou, Anhui Province; not to be confused with the more well-known Suzhou in Jiangsu Province).
Bai joined them here before moving to Fuliang County (today’s Jiangxi Province) where his brother was an official, then Luoyang (today’s Henan Province) where his mother had moved.
Finally, he moved to the Tang empire’s capital city, Chang’an (today’s Xi’an, Shaanxi Province).
802 – 14: Chang’an I
But when Bai arrived in Chang’an, it was still a large and sophisticated city. It’s cultural and intellectual life was thriving.
Today, this period is often categorised as the Middle Tang period (755 – 820 AD).
Whilst not quite as prestigious as the High Tang (713 – 755) that came just before it, it was still a high-water mark for Chinese culture in general.
Some of Bai’s contemporaries included fellow poets such:
- Han Yu (768 – 824)
- Liu Yuxi (772 – 842)
- Li Shen (772 – 846)
- Yuan Zhen (779 – 831)
- Liu Zongyuan (773 – 819).
Two of these figures, Liu Yuxi and Yuan Zhen, would become Bai’s close friends.
In 804, Two years after passing his exam, Bai received his first official appointment as editor for the Secretariat in Xiagui County (today’s Weinan, Shaanxi Province). This post was about 39 miles (/62 km) north-west of Chang’an.
Bai left his post just a couple of months into it. He was then appointed as an editor in Zhuozhen Country in Chang’an the same year. And as editor of the Jixian Academy the following year.
In 810 he married. His wife was the younger sister of the official Yu Yangqing (? – 835), who would soon become a prominent figure in Tang politics.
811: Mother passes
In 811, Bai’s mother passed away. So, he left his position in Chang’an to return to the family home (in Luoyang) and mourn her for the customary three years.
His mother apparently died after falling into a well she had been admiring flowers in.
Bai wrote two poems in particular during this time which were considered inappropriate: ‘New Well’ (新井) and ‘Admiring Flowers’ (赏花) (both of which haven’t survived).
This was used against Bai just a few years later…
814: Chang’an II
Bai returned to Chang’an in 814, now aged 41 or 42. He regained an official position and even gained the attention of the emperor.
By this point, Bai’s reputation as a poet was well-established. It should be noted that many officials saw poetic abilities as a tool to be noticed and get promoted as an official.
Even the great poets Li Bai (701 – 762) and Du Fu (712 – 770) (both of whom Bai admired) had spent most of their lives seeking official appointments.
In other words, the concept of a ‘professional’ poet – as opposed to an official who could write poetry well – was still relatively unheard of and novel.
Of course, Bai did not make money from his poetry. He lived off his official salary, which unusually for most poets, he often mentioned (in detail) in his poems.
815 – 820: Demoted and sent to Jiujiang and
In the summer of 815, the Chancellor (and poet) Wu Yuanheng (758 – 815) was ambushed by assassins outside his home.
His murder shocked the dynasty. Bai submitted a petition calling for the assassins to be executed.
The assassins were eventually caught and executed. However, Bai was considered to have gone beyond his station. This and the poems after his mother’s passing were used against him.
He was sent (as was customary for punished officials) to a post in exile in the south: Jiangzhou (today’s Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province), about 620 miles (1000 km) south-east of Chang’an.
It was here that he would write one of his most famous poems, ‘Pipa Ballad’. As the poem’s preface notes, Bai did not appear to immediately feel particularly grieved about his situation.
However, he soon realised the agony of exile – in his case, ignited by his experience meeting a musician one evening.
In 819, Bai was briefly transferred to Zhongzhou (today a district of Chongqing, in China’s south west) to serve as a censor. He was then recalled to the capital in 820.
820 – 826: Chang’an, Hangzhou, and Suzhou
Back in Chang’an, Bai served as an official in the Ministry of Rites and edict drafter. Then, in 821, he rose to an fifth-rank position (朝散大夫), which meant he now wore red robes.
(There were 9 main ranks for officials in imperial China, with 1 being the highest).
He was transferred to Hangzhou in 824. Whilst here, he oversaw the building of an embankment on the city’s famous West Lake and dredging of six ancient wells.
After a brief stint as governor of Suzhou, between 825 – 6, Bai returned to Luoyang. But not before he had organised for a skiff to be sent ahead of him to Luoyang, for use in his mansion’s garden.
827: Semi-retirement in Luoyang
At the beginning of 827, Bai served as director of the imperial Library. This was a 3a rank, which entitled him to wearing gold and purple robes.
Later that year, he sought – and gained – a position in Luoyang.
He was 56 years-old and no longer as interested in seeking career advancement as he had once been. This was in least in part because of how he identified with his role as a poet.
Just a few years earlier, he had bought a property in Luoyang. Throughout most of the dynasty’s history, this eastern capital had been a centre of commerce and culture.
Over the next (nearly) two decades, he lived in semi-retirement, only taking on nominal positions.
However, about half of his poetic output comes from this time.
He was paralysed for several months from a stroke in 839. And he lost his official position (and half of his salary) as an imperial tutor in 842.
Bai’s garden
In China, Bai is – like a number of other poets – famously associated with gardens.
(Garden culture pre-dated the Tang dynasty. The great calligrapher Wang Xizhi (301 – 362 AD) wrote his Preface to the Lanting Pavillion during a gathering of literati in a garden.)
In 823, Bai had bought land and a mansion (complete with a lake and large bamboo grove) in the southeast of Luoyang. This was one of the most scenic parts of the city.
By 829, when he was in semi-retirement, Bai began cultivating it. The historian Charles Benn described what Bai’s garden was like:
… to the east he built a large granary to store 1,700 bushels of cereals […] To the north he erected a library to house the cartload of books he had collected, and to the west of it a zither pavilion, with a large stone jug for ale, that served as a site for many parties that he threw. Bai had three mountains […] raised in the middle of the lake. He built bridges between the island and the shore, and laid out a road that encircled the lake.
– Charles Benn, China’s Golden Age: Everyday Life In The Tang Dynasty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 92
[..…] Bai passed the last eighteen years of his life at the mansion, frequently entertaining his guests in its garden. Whenever he threw a party, he and his guests went for a sail on pleasure boats […] Bai had a troupe of ten singers, dancers, and musicians.
842 – 846: Full retirement in Luoyang
Besides partying, Bai spent his final years editing his complete works. The concern with an edited, collected version of one’s poetry (or other writings) was relatively recent.
It’s clear from Bai’s own poems that he saw his works as his legacy.
During this time, he continued to be a devout Buddhist.
He also paid for the removal of rocks from a passage in Longmen (just south of Luoyang) so that boats could more easily pass through the Yi River.
He died in 846, aged 75.
Bai’s poetry
Bai is rightly considered one of the greatest Chinese history.
Part of his appeal is the range of poems he wrote. He wrote arguably the two most famous Tang ballads (‘The Pipa Ballad’ and ‘Song of Everlasting Sorrow’).
These both elegantly express regrets and longing alongside simple narratives – one personal, the other historical.
He also wrote shorter poems on a range of themes, from social commentary on the poor (see ‘Old Charcoal Seller’) and downtrodden, satire, introspective domestic scenes, and more.
As was custom throughout imperial Chinese history, some of Bai’s poetry was also written for social exchanges. And his inner circle of close friends, particularly Yuan Zhen, helped shape his style and themes.
One apocryphal legend has it that Bai would always recite his poems to an old washerwoman before finishing them. If there was anything she didn’t understand, he would edit it until she did.
Whilst not literally true, this image expresses an important truth: Bai’s poetry was highly accessible.
By contrast, the work of many of his contemporaries is written in a ‘higher’ language and denser in allusions. They often aimed to impress other literati.
Bai’s poetry made it into songs which were sang by singing girls across the empire. His work, along with a handful of other poets, makes up nearly half of the surviving popular drinking songs.
Although Bai Juyi kept the formal constraints of “poetic Chinese,” he preferred a low-register lexicon that made it accessible to a wider audience. If standard poetic Chinese preferred hua hong 花红, “the red of flowers,” Bai Juyi would write hong hua 红花, “red flowers.”
-Stephen Owen, The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827 – 860) (Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 57
Legacy
Bai established himself during his early career. He was also one of the first major poets to cement his own legacy by collating and editing his own official works.
His reputation was alive and well throughout most of his life. Today, he is considered on of China’s greatest poets and his work has been popular in Japan for centuries, too.
For example, Du Mu’s (803 – 852) most famous poem ‘Poem for Zhang Haohao’ (834) (which is also famous as a work of calligraphy) was clearly inspired by Bai’s ‘Pipa Ballad’.
But reputation split almost immediately after he passed.
The accessibility of much of his poetry is a large part of why some later poets dismissed him as su (俗), ‘vulgar’. There is also the fact that he liked openly celebrating about his material possessions and wealth.
Unlike poets like Du Fu and Tao Yuanming (365 – 427), he neither had to struggle for official positions or retire to the countryside.
Though Bai was once sent into exile, he did not put Confucian virtue above all else, as other literati heroes such as Du Fu, Yan Zhenqing (709 – 785), or Bai’s contemporary Han Yu (768 – 824), did.
In fact, he even celebrated his comfort in comparison to others’ exile:
今日怜君岭南去
– Bai Juyi, from ‘Thoughts Whilst Lying Down in Leisure: Two Poems’. (Stephen Owen points out that these lines were likely written to reference Li Zongmin’s being sent to Chouzhou in 835.)
当时笑我洛中来
Today I pity the gentleman as he goes towards the southern mountains.
Back then he laughed at me for coming to Luoyang.
He also famously referred to himself ’The Hermit-in-Between’ (or ‘Middle hermit’):
‘The Song of Everlasting Regret’
‘The Song of Everlasting Regret’ is one of Bai’s most famous poems.
It helped place the story of the Emperor Xuanzong (r. 712 – 756 AD) and his concubine Yang Guifei (719 – 756 AD) in China’s popular imagination..
The emperor loved beauty, at expense of the nation;
-Bai Juyi, ‘The Song of Everlasting Regret’
so many years of duty without finding it.
The Yang family had a young girl who had just grown up.
She was raised in boudoirs, unknown by the outside world.
Naturally beautiful and elegant – she was hard to miss.
She was selected to serve the emperor.
When she turned her head and laughed, it was charming;
women from six palaces paled in comparison.
One cold spring day she was gifted a visit to Huaqing Pool.
Hot spring water washed over her delicate skin;
attendant girls lifted out her weary, supple body.
And that’s where the emperor really fell for her.
Rosy-cheeked, fresh-faced, golden hairpin shaking,
She emerged from the curtain, warming the spring night.
From that bitter spring, the sun only briefly seen, they didn’t rise early.
They attended endless banquets,
and travelled together, spring night after spring night.
The emperor had three thousand [i.e., a lot] beauties,
but of the three thousand, he only doted on one.
In golden rooms she did her make up to spend the night with him.
In jade towers, attending banquets, getting tipsy; a peaceful spring.
Her relatives were given titles and land.
Her family name sparkled, and drew others’ envy.
Steadily, all mothers and fathers,
preferred having daughters over sons.
Li Palace stretched up to the clouds.
Magical music floated all around it.
Warm songs and slow dances led by strings and pipes.
[Meanwhile] The sound of An Lushan’s [war] drums appeared,
abruptly cutting off a performance of ‘Ni Chang’s Feather Clothes’.
All in the Jiuzhong district were stunned. Their horses and chariots
kicked up dust fleeing south-west in their thousands.
Jade ornaments on imperial banners rocked back forth, stopped and started,
for over a hundred li from the West Gate.
The [Imperial] Six Armies Refused to march on.
They killed the beauty [Yang] in front of their horses.
He ornaments and finery scatted across the ground, left by all.
Decorative gold and jade kingfisher [jewellery] adorned her [in death] head.
The emperor cried but there was nothing he could have done.
He glanced back [as they marched on] and wept tears of blood.
Bleak dust scattered by the winds;
[they passed along] wooden paths and pavilions amongst the clouds.
There were few people amongst the Emei mountains.
Banners hung listlessly on the dull light.
Amongst the jade waters of and mountains of Shu [Sichuan],
the emperor thought of her all the time.
In his temporary palace, in the Moonlight, he grieved;
listening to sounds of wind chimes in night rains.
Heaven changed and the [war] situation improved.
The [royal court] left this place to return [to the capital].
Her jade-like beauty was buried
and hidden in the soil of the Mawei Hills [which they passed by again].
Endless tears from the emperor and his ministers dampened their clothes.
Their trusted horses headed east towards the capital’s gates.
Arriving back, the pools and gardens were all there as before.
In their waters, lotus had blossomed in the willows’ shade.
These lotuses were like her face.
How could he see this and not weep?
Peach blossoms bloomed in the warm spring breeze.
Autumn rains fell with phoenix tree leaves.
All over the west and south of the palace, autumnal grass had grown.
Fallen red leaves across the steps, upswept.
The Pear Garden Troupe’s hair had all newly turned white.
Pepper House maids and eunuchs had aged.
At dusk, as fireflies flew, he quietly thought.
Alone in candlelight, he couldn’t sleep.
Bells rung and drums beat early, before long nights.
The bright Milky Way [turned to] dawn.
Pale roof tiles were covered in cold frost.
[Embroided with] Kingfisher quilt was
cold – who to share it with?
A long time passes between like and death.
Her spirit didn’t enter his dreams even once.
A Daoist priest from Linqiong visited the capital.
He could communicate with spirits
[and would do so to] to help transform the emperor’s mind.
He diligently searched [for Yang’s spirit].
Up in the ether, he galloped like lightening;
Between heaven’s blue skies
And earth’s yellow springs.
He searched everywhere but with no luck.
He suddenly heard there was a spiritual mountain in the sea
between the real and the unreal.
Its exquisite towers reached up into the clouds
And many spirits lived there including one called Taizhen,
whose snow-like body and face looked like [Yang].
At the golden tower’s west wing [the priest] knocked on a jade door,
and pleased with the servants to send a message for him:
that the emperor’s envoy was here.
In the Nine Flower Tent a spirit suddenly woke up,
Threw on her clothes, moved her pillow and paced back and forth.
She passed through the pearl curtains and silver screens.
Her hair half done, not fully awake,
Flower headpiece not adjusted, she came down the palace [steps].
The wind blew through her sleeves as she raised her arms,
just like in ‘Ni Chang’s Feather Clothes’.
Her jade-like looked alone and was covered in tears,
a pear blower damp laden with spring rain.
Looking [at the priest], filled with emotion, she expressed her thanks to the emperor.
“Since we parted, news between us had been scarce.
In Clear Sun Palace [Zhaoyin], tenderness and love have ceased.
In Penglai Palace suns and moons [days and nights] have been long.
I turn my head and look down at where people live
but I can’t see Chang’an through the mist.”
All she had to express her emotions with were old possessions.
An inlayed box and a golden hairpin [she gave to the priest].
Part of the hairpin and part of the box she kept.
These parts of the hairpin and box would be split.
But like the heart, these objects, despite heaven or man, will meet again.
When it came to them parting, she ardently asked to relay words of promise between the two knowing hearts:
“On the seventh day of the seventh month, at the Longevity Hall,
at midnight when all is silent,
Let’s promise to be like paired birds in heaven
As we were interlocked tree roots on earth.
Heaven and earth will end one day,
but our regret will continue on without end.”