No More Learning

From his time at Chi? ang-an come the e? Three Poems on Winei? in which feelings of isolation, sadness, and yearning are expressed. It is the mood of silence, moonlight, fallen flowers, the mystery and depth of the unknowable universe, the strangeness of life, and its incommunicable essence. Transience, Nature, the Void, the pain of consciousness and the joy of escaping consciousness in natural harmony, being drunk on nature, and in nature, are his subjects. This is the Li of lightness, loneliness, sadness, soft quizzicality, even ironic self-mockery. The same mood is caught in e? Waking from Drunken Sleep on a Spring Dayi? , and e? Drinking in the Mountainsi? . With gentle, slender touches he
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? ? ? ? ? ? ? creates reflective depth where a subtle and remote troubling disturbs the mirrori? s surface. Like Mozart he creates harmony and then disturbs it with dissonance. Death and transience are present below the surface of the pastoral. ? 9? ? 3? ? 7. ,/? ,? 0? 4? ? ?
He wrote poems at Ch'ang-an that express desire for escape. Perhaps a pose, perhaps frustration at his talents not being properly applied, perhaps an inability to settle into the rigid framework of the Court, and amongst those he considered inferior to himself. He wanted to follow the clouds, vanish into the mountains, see the blossom overhanging the waters, fly with the wild geese. Within a couple of years he was gone, departing around the time in 744 when Yang Kuei-fei was establishing her position at Court prior to her becoming consort. Li fell foul of Chang Chi son of an ex Chief Minister, perhaps through indiscretion and a fondness for drink that did not directly affect his work but made him a risk in terms of official position,
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? leading others to believe he might be unreliable or outspoken. Chang Chi is reputed to have cancelled a promised appointment for Li as a member of the Civil Service. Li's Taoism was also a source of friction with the Buddhist and Confucian trained inner circles. But deeper than that is the temperamental restlessness that he struggles to contain. He achieves peace with himself only with great difficulty. His poems display a yearning for states of illumination and tranquility that he himself has not attained. He looks with longing at the state of grace that others have reached and knows that a component of his own personality will always prevent the spiritual journey being an easy one. There is sadness and self-irony in his attempts to escape the earthbound reality through drink, or suppress the self in stupor. Poems like 'Lu Mountain', 'Reaching the Hermitage', and 'Hard Journey' are expressions of an internally rather than an externally imposed inability to rest. 'I set off by myself into the deep mountains. ' said Bash? ,
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? ? ? ? 'White cloud layers lay across the peaks and the valleys were full of the smoking mist and rain. ' Li Po understood what Bash? felt at being 'tempted by the wind that blows the clouds, filling me with the desire to wander. ' 'He knew again' says the Tale of Genji, 'how hostile the world could become. '
Leaving Ch'ang-an, his hopes dashed, angry at the humiliation of his perceived waste of his time and talent, portraying himself in an Asiatic manner as a caged tiger or a tethered hawk, he knew that time was slipping by and the chances of an official career were becoming remote. He wandered for a while before heading north- eastwards. He reached Peking where he saw An Lu-shan's massed troops, a sign of the gathering power available to a frontier General who was also to become a Court favourite. Soon travelling south again he headed for Honan and there first met Tu Fu, still a young unknown poet, eleven years Li's junior. Tu Fu had attempted the Civil Service examination but failed, and would later
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? try again. He admired the famous Li, and despite the difference in their personalities, the sober and committed Tu Fu no doubt recognised Li's spiritual yearning and the sensitivity that gave Li pain.
At Ch'ang-an perhaps Li had made a second marriage that soon broke up. He now married for a third time to a lady from Lu (Shantung), and they had several children who Li writes about with affection. It is not clear whether the two children from his first marriage survived. He made a home, in Shantung perhaps where his new wife's family lived. Here he went through the Taoist religious ceremony of purification at the Lao Tzu temple at Chi-nan Fu, and received a Taoist diploma, a piece of exquisite calligraphy, as a token of his stage of knowledge, and as a talisman. Tu Fu had a brother in Shantung and met Li again before leaving for Ch'ang-an to attempt the examination. Tu Fu wrote poems about or to Li
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? over the next few years of which 'To Li Po' is a simple example.
The years of Li's late forties and early fifties were years of further wandering and poetic production. He never seemed able to settle with a family, or in any one place for long, perhaps because he was always seeking a position or being financed by relatives, perhaps because he was constitutionally unable to find satisfaction in home life. He travelled now around eastern China, living for a time near Kaifeng in Honan, with occasional visits to Shantung, and also at Hs ? an-chou (Suancheng in Anhwei), Yangchow and Nanking. He finally paused at Ch'ih-chou on the Yangtze south west of Nanking in about 754. During this period he studied Taoist alchemy based on the ancient text the Ts'an Tung Ch'i. Once again there is the yearning for the Taoist paradise, to touch the sun and moon and fuse with the elemental Tao. Perhaps he hoped to become an adept, one of the Fang Shih, or Masters of the Formulae of the Kun Lun sect
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? ? who drew heavily on the Tantric magic of Buddhism, imported from Tibet. One poem, that draws together alchemy the wild scenery of the mountains and the sensation of a spirit journey, describes a vision of the Faerie Goddess in her mountain Paradise. The poem is a ? Q0? ? 1:, a reworking of an old ballad or folksong form, allowing irregular line lengths, and freer metres. In it Li once more dreams of a place outside the demands of formal life, where he can display his 'true face'. 'At night I flew over Mirror lake', he writes, 'the moon on the water chased my shadow'. Reaching the high mountains, lost amongst the wild flowers, he leans on a rock as darkness falls. Then in a sudden storm lightning splits the peaks, and reveals a fathomless space. 'Over the blue Void's groundless deep, moon and sun fuse silver and gold, Cloud Princesses slant down the air, with Rainbow skirt and misted cloak. White-tigress lutes strike crystal sounds. Drawn by Phoenix birds' flying traces, Heaven's Queen spans the magic spaces, the faerie fields
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? all full of folk. ' But his vision once more forces a return to the normal world. 'My mind was stunned, my senses shaken, dazzled by light I cried out loud, and wake to find the empty pillows. All things vanish in mist and cloud. '
Li Po is forever the Chuang Chou of his 'Old Poem' who is caught between dream and dream, the Taoist dream and the dream of life. His Taoist poems are not merely playing with a graceful mythology of exciting imagery, but like Keats's 'Belle Dame sans Merci' and his vanishing nightingale, they are an expression of a deep unrest, an unrequited yearning that is beyond the physical and could never be satisfied within the physical. In that sense, in the restricted sense of his affinity with Keats, Li Po is a 'Romantic'. There is a sweetness there of sensibility. Where Coleridge's 'Kubla Khan' is a vision of an (opiate) Paradise lost, and Shelley's visionary poetry is an attempted, often repeated, assault on the unknowable, Keats and Li Po yearn for something glimpsed but never
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? ? ? achieved, a veil that can never be touched or lifted. Reality is a transience that cannot be frozen, captured, held, possessed, or ever fully comprehended. It is a 'bright star'.
Li at this time was described as having 'the flashing eyes of a hungry tiger'. He sometimes wore the green silk hood of the Taoist initiate. His true friends are 'mountains and rivers, moonlight and clouds'. By 756 he was no longer with his third wife. Presumably she and his children remained in Shantung, perhaps at her family home near Sha-ch'iu, nor far from the Tortoise Mountain. He married again, into the Tsung family. At Ch'ih-Chou he saw himself not as the 'Great Roc' of his youth, or the caged falcon, or the quiescent tiger, but as an ageing human being who in his own eyes had failed to realise his dreams.
He stares into Time's glass. 'My white hairs have grown so long. Thirty thousand feet of grieving. In my bright mirror, I cannot understand. Where does it come from all this
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? autumn frost? ' In 755 he sent a letter on behalf of the Governer of Hsuan-chou to the Chief Minister Yang Kuo-chung, which thanked him for previous favours and hinted that the Governor, Chao Y ? eh would like a position at Court. Perhaps Li also hoped that if Chao succeeded he might still have a chance himself of a post. But this was the eve of the An Lu-shan rebellion, and the Empire was about to be thrown into confusion.
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In theory Confucian ideals guided the Emperor and his government. While Taoism and Buddhism inspired personal and cultural goals, the influence of Confucius was core to public life. Confucius (K'ung Fu Tzu) was born in 551BC in Shantung during the Spring and Autumn period of the Chou Dynasty. A complex and subtle man, his character and sayings, captured in The Analects, exemplify the life of virtue. He showed sincerity and modesty, courage and conscientiousness, based on restraint and respect. 'In your personal life be courteous, in business be serious, with everyone be sincere. '
Above all he exemplified practical morality, avoiding extremes and rigidity, with humour and wit. Confucian virtue is the fitting of the individual into the social order while benefiting society and the self. At the heart of his practical
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? ? wisdom was the education of society from the powerful to the powerless without class distinctions. Character was the essential starting point for a well-run state or country. 'The moral character of those who control events is the breeze' he said, 'the character of others is the grass. When the grass feels the breeze it bends. ' The state depends critically on the qualities of its leaders.
Taoism takes a route towards the personal life in a world where external forces are neutral. Confucius stressed a life inside the social order in a fundamentally benevolent universe. Taoists poked fun at Confucians blown here and there by the social disasters of warring states and unstable Empire. Nevertheless a life lived according to Confucian ideals could still be informed by Taoist cultural influences and sensitivities. Tu Fu illustrates the Confucian whose poetry is sensitive to a Taoist view of nature and natural harmony.
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? Confucius successfully ran a transforming government in Lu State, but left when Duke Ting was corrupted. He turned to Wei where he was obstructed by Nan-tzu the wanton, beautiful wife of the Duke whom he had to accompany in her carriage. 'Lust in front, virtue behind' was the people's comment. He journeyed from State to State, 'looking like a dog of an impoverished family', 'a man who knows he can't succeed but who goes on trying'. To the Taoists it showed the worthlessness of public life. To Confucius it revealed the magnitude of the task. Confucius returned to Lu at the age of sixty-eight. But 'Lu failed to employ him, and he no longer wished for office'. He lived quietly, arranging the Classic texts, studying the I Ching. He died at his family home in Shantung. 'He is the sun and the moon that cannot be surpassed' said Tzu Kung.
Confucius stressed the idea of ? 03? ? benevolence or human empathy, a mutual relationship of sincerity and respect, a total
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? integrity that demands simplicity and reticence, courage and loyalty. 'Do not do to others' he said 'what you would not wish them to do to you'. Integrity was a precursor to proper behaviour or ? ? ? ? By integrity and proper behaviour a state could be governed. The duty of a decent human being was to preserve a right relationship to others. Life needed energy and a positive approach but also balance, moderation, and the avoidance of extremes. It is a middle way based on benevolence and justice, wisdom and propriety.
To a true Confucian an Empire at whose heart was an Emperor and his concubines seeking immortality through esoteric practices was an anathema. While the Taoists considered that the Confucians had placed convention and moral rules ahead of harmony, spontaneity and self-cultivation, Confucians considered that both esoteric and non-esoteric Taoism potentially undermined the social structure. The moral Confucian and the instinctively moral Taoist are
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? not at odds. But Confucianism served China as an ethic of engagement, while Taoism and Buddhism provided a private and personal way of life. Taoism was a refuge, and a path for self- enlightenment though in its esoteric forms a potentially dangerous side-track.
It was the image of the Confucian gentleman, benevolent, honest, courteous, and reticent that inspired Chinese public service. 'Observe what he does' said Confucius 'enquire into his motives, find out what gives him peace. Can a man hide himself? Can a man hide? ' and he was alert to the difficulties. 'The wise person knows about what is right, the inferior person knows only about what will pay. '
It was a tough ethic to adhere to, a standard of behaviour that asked for seriousness and deference, for generosity and justice, faithfulness to friends and assistance to the young. A virtuous person is reluctant to speak without careful thought. 'When it is difficult to do, how can we be anything other than reluctant to talk
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? about it. ' Confucius was realistic about the problems. 'I have still not found anyone who loves virtue as much as beauty'. 'Without rapid speech or good looks it is hard to get anywhere in this generation. '
His instincts were for the solid and straightforward. 'Those with strong spirits and resolute characters, honest in manner, and slow to speak out, they are closest to integrity. ' The vision was of a warm and generous society, educated and self-educated, mutually supportive, non-competitive, founded on calm, peace-loving behaviour, and inner virtue.
That community of wise people was what Confucius dreamed of. 'It is surely a pleasure to learn and to keep learning constantly? It is surely delightful to have like- minded friends come from distant places? The true philosophers have no resentment even when they live the unrecognised life. '
Confucianism did become obsessed with ritual, even with worship in temples erected to Confucius himself. Rejected by some schools of
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? Confucianism, and mocked by many of the Taoists for its excessive subservience, ridiculous correctness, slavish adherence to etiquette, and wasteful procedures, the concept of ? ? ? ? proper and ritualistic behaviour, has formed a central feature of Chinese life. Confucianism had varying degrees of success as an influence on society. It was used as a basis for the examination system in the Western Han dynasty, and in the early T'ang, though its fortunes waned with the increasing influence of Buddhism and Taoism. It was the Sung and later dynasties whose neo-Confucianism made it such a dominant feature of Chinese society. Nevertheless the educated man was expected to have knowledge of the Confucian Classics even though the Taoist Canon became part of the examination system in 741. Taoism became fashionable in the later part of Hs ? an-tsung's reign and the Taoist texts such as the Chuang Tzu were given Classic status alongside the Confucian canonical texts. Candidates of Taoist
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? upbringing could be examined in Taoist rather than Confucian texts. Tu Fu was an example of an educated man who, no doubt, as a young man spent long hours learning the texts and understanding the content. Men like Tu were potentially material for a government carried out with honesty and integrity. Yet he was to add one more to the long list of talented individuals in Imperial China who are regarded as moral examples but who failed to make a major impact on the government of their times.
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Tu Fu was born in 712 at Shao-ling near Ch'ang-an. Like Wang Wei and Li Po his early talents were recognised but he nevertheless failed the Civil Service examinations in 735. He was to take them for a second time later in life but was failed along with all the other candidates for reasons outside his control. His first failure has been put down to a lack of aptitude for the more practical economic and political questions, or the possibility that his style and content was too 'advanced' for the examiners. It may simply have been errors in preparation, nervousness, over-confidence, or any of the other ways in which good students fail examinations they are expected to pass. Or that, despite what lovers of his poetry feel, he was simply not able enough.
His true talents were for poetry and language rather than administration. The result was that he spent many years in poverty, and was never
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? ? ? more than a minor civil servant. He was distantly related to many of the great families of the Empire but his own family was not wealthy or influential and he does not seem to have attempted to exploit connections in the way that Li Po frequently did. He was not a celebrated poet in the way Li was, nor established like Wang Wei. His meetings with Li Po clearly impressed him deeply and provide an interesting contrast of temperaments. Li Po's yearning for a depth beyond the visible world, his regret at not being able to reach the mystery he dreams about or achieve a compensating tranquility in his thoughts, pervade his poetry. Tu Fu's life was the Confucian life of practical realities, a life of survival, of family and domestic affairs, of quiet friendship and acceptance of reality.
Tu sees things clearly and coolly. His greatness is the greatness of the humane eye, that compassionate recognition of existence, that resignation to how things are, that makes him a poet of fate, of the workings of the real world,
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? and a clear mirror for the turbulence and painfulness, the bitterness and poignancy of his times. Again it is interesting to contrast Tu with Wang Wei. Wang is the poet of a tranquil and meditative world, where nature provides a correlative of inner harmony and peace. Wang is self-contained, working to transmute and transcend his feelings even when they run most deeply. His aim is to be 'a thousand miles of quiet evening cloud'. The deaths of those close to him affected him greatly, his wife, his mother, his friend Yin Yao. His sadness and melancholy at death, loss and transience are mirrored in nature by the inner silence and neutrality of the physical world, its lack of an inward life, of mind. He turns to the inner Void in order to reconcile himself to the outer. He knows that strange loneliness and hollowness that we can feel looking at a vast distant landscape or at an evening view, suddenly so remote from and alien to the human, uncaring of us and our reality. It is mind as a process lost among things, the body as
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? an object lost amongst processes. It is a cool but beautiful world where the very neutrality offers a solace. This is Nature not inimical to humanity, nor benevolent, merely apart from us.
That stasis, the solace, is not valid for Li Po, who is always in movement, always presenting a dynamic relationship between self and nature, self and others, or between others. Li is the poet of relationship. His solitudes are in tension with the 'world of humankind', they are solitudes because no one else is there, or someone else is not there. The invisible presence makes, by contrast, the present solitude. Li's stillnesses are a contemplation of emotional relationship: his sadnesses are at the failure of relationship due to his own restless temperament, or the nature of reality. His yearnings are like Shelley's, though less desparately, for a magical paradise where his instability might be a stability. There his restlessness might be a mode of being in that place, his senses might be both stimulated and lulled, his mind might be excited and yet his
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? heart calm. He is always pursuing Shelley's 'Spirit of Delight' or regretting its non- appearance, or drowning its absence in wine.
Where Li is the poet of self as a set of emotional relationships, and Wang Wei is the poet of self as the location of the perception of the inner loneliness of nature, Tu Fu is self as it stands within the world. His honesty and compassion have often been noted. But sanity is his keynote, a balanced attitude that is wholly realistic but wholly human. It is the Confucian clarity and bedrock integrity.
The honesty and straightforwardness, the balance and level-headed realism is there in his poem 'For Wei Pa' or in 'A Visitor'. The compassion is there in his 'Ballad of the War Wagons' and 'The Homecoming' where his instinct for, and loyalty to, family appears as it does in 'Moon at Night in Ch'ang-an'. He is the poet of mind (? ? ) and deliberate creativity (9:? 98,4). It made him a master of strict, dense and complex form. In a tradition where the
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? ? ? ? ? ? ? Confucian values were admired Tu Fu is the quintessential Chinese gentleman, nobility of spirit combining with pragmatic morality and imaginative feeling to emphasise his solidity. He is the ancient tree of one of his poems 'with branches of green bronze and granite roots' exposed to the elements, but tough and straight, not able to be easily made use of because of its nature, but admired for its qualities. If, in moments when we are temporarily out of sympathy with them, Wang Wei can seem too self-centred and quietist, and Li Po too irresponsible and sensation-seeking, then Tu Fu can seem cold with the chill of moral rectitude. But the converse is also true, that Tu Fu has a stability Li lacks and a full engagement with his age that Wang sometimes evades.
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? %? 0? ? 3? ? :? 8? ,3? #0-0? ? ? 43
An Lu-shan, frustrated by the state of the Empire, seeing an opportunity for himself, wanting to protect his own position, or from a mixture of these motives, moved his army south from Peking on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 755. His claimed objective was the removal of the unpopular Chief Minister Yang Kuo-chung, who was building troop concentrations loyal to himself. It was not the overthrow of the Emperor, though this was no doubt part of the cloud of propaganda against him issued at the time. He had considerable forces, amassed on his own initiative and through the Imperial policy of autonomous border troop concentrations. He relied on military power, the element of surprise, and the disorganisation of the Imperial Court. It was a bold throw of the dice.
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? ? In a month he had crossed the Yellow River north of Kaifeng and taken the eastern capital Loyang. There was then a pause in hostilities. Early in 756 An Lu-shan proclaimed a new Dynasty and there was sporadic conflict through the spring and early summer. An Lu-shan does not appear to have had a coherent strategy to secure lines of communication or control the major routes.
On the first of July the Emperori? s general Li Kuang-pi inflicted a major defeat on the rebel army near Chenting in the north. There was a possibility that An Lu-shan would be forced to withdraw somehow to his base in Peking and regroup. However an Imperial blunder opened the way to Chi? ang-an. The Ti? ung Kuan (Tungkwan), the eastern pass protecting the capital, had been held successfully by the Imperial general Ko-shu Han. It is said that Yang Kuo-chung nervous that Ko-shu Han would switch sides, move against him, or even foment a separate rebellion, persuaded the
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? Emperor to order the general to take the offensive against An Lu-shan. Repeated commands forced Ko-shu Han to leave the pass and engage the rebels. His army was destroyed. Out of a quarter of a million men, mainly highlanders of Chi? in, only a few thousand survived the battle. Tu Fu refers to this in his poem e? The Homecomingi? . Ko-shu Han took a high rank in the rebel rE`gime, so he may have had rebel sympathies, or perhaps was merely being opportunist. He was eventually imprisoned and executed.
Ten days after the defeat at the pass the rebels entered Chi? ang-an. At dawn on the fourteenth of July the Emperor had secretly abandoned the capital. Yang Kuei-fei and her sisters and Yang Kuo-chung left with him, with members of the Imperial family, the group protected by the army. What followed is the subject of Po Ch ? - Yii? s poem e? The Everlasting Sorrowi? , a story dwelt on endlessly in later Chinese and Japanese culture. Leaving behind a city in panic and
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? ? ? confusion the Emperori? s army headed for the south-western route to Chi? I? ng-tu in Szechwan. On the fifteenth they reached Ma-wei, a post station beside the river, forty miles or so to the west of Chi? ang-an. In a confused scene Yang Kuo-chung was attacked and killed by loyal soldiers of the Imperial army, suspicious of his intentions, and no doubt blaming him, and the Yang familyi? s power over the Empire, for the disaster. Yang Kuei-fei, despite the Emperori? s pleas, was then, according to one version of the story, taken from the post-station to a pear orchard near a Buddhist monastery where she was strangled. Her body was shown to the army, who proclaimed their loyalty, and the Emperor, grieving, fled towards Szechwan.
Here Yang Kuei-feii? s fate turns into legend. Hers was the delicate white jade face, pale as pear blossom, tinged, as Sei Sh? nagon says in the Pillow Book, with pink so faint as to create doubt whether it was there or not. The Emperori? s infatuation with her and her unhappy
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? influence on him is paralleled and described in the opening chapter of the Tale of Genji. To the grieving Emperor, filled with hopeless longing, the memory of his lost love, her face and manner, is like e? Reality in the depths of night. . . insubstantial as a light-filled dream. i? He wanders in nightmare, as if cursed from a previous existence. Blasted by such an intensity of passion that he is left alone and desolate he finds nothing in the world outside that can conjure up her image.
Po Ch ? -Yii? s poem tells how a Taoist adept goes on a shamanistic flight to the magical islands of the Immortals in the eastern seas to find her. She gives him tokens to return with, breaking a decorated box and a hairpin in two, giving him half of each. When he asks for a secret known only to herself and the Emperor as a proof that he has seen her, she tells him about a vow they both had made. They were in the summer palace on that night in the year when the stars Altair and Vega, the Herdboy and Weaver-
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? girl, were allowed to meet in the sky (the seventh night of the seventh month). At midnight the Emperor dismissed his attendants, and much moved they looked up together at the night sky and, in tears, swore to be husband and wife through all future lives. In Genji, it is said that the Emperor and his lady used to repeat Po Ch ? - Yii? s lines e? to fly together in the sky, two birds on the same wing, to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree. i? When the Taoist wizard returns and describes all this, the Chinese Emperor is stunned with grief.
In Chang-an the city, of a million people, experienced the arrival of An Lu-shani? s Tartar army accompanied by massacre and looting. Wang Wei, unable to follow the fleeing Court, was captured by the rebels, and is supposed to have pretended to be a deaf-mute and to have attempted suicide. Under pressure he was coerced into accepting office under the rebel Government. Later he wrote a poem claiming that he wept when he saw the new Court
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? enjoying outings with artists and musicians on the Imperial lake. Li Po was at Chi? ih-chou on the Yangtze during this time and so outside the scenes of immediate turmoil, while Tu Fu was temporarily absent at the moment when the city fell. But in the autumn Tu Fu was once more in the capital. His poem e? By the Waters of Weii? is set amongst the great houses along the banks of the pleasure lake, emptied, shuttered and abandoned. He draws an analogy between Yang Kuei-fei and her sisters and the Han consort, Flying Swallow, enjoying the flower-filled gardens and sending men to execution with a glance and a cruel smile. Her fate is also the fate of Chi? ang-an, trampled into the dust. The remaining representative of the Tang Empire is Su-tsung the son of the Emperor, Hs ? an-tsung having abdicated, who is at Feng-hsiang about 100 miles to the west. He is now e? The Emperor in the Northi?
Tu Fu was still in the capital in early 757, separated from his family who he had left at Fu-
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