The Poetry of He Zhu (1052-1125)

Sinica Leidensia
Edited by

Barend J. ter Haar

In co-operation with

P.K. Bol, W.L. Idema, D.R. Knechtges, E.S.Rawski,

E. Zrcher, H.T. Zurndorfer

VOLUME LXXIV

The Poetry of He Zhu

(1052-1125)
Genres, Contexts, and Creativity

By

Stuart H. Sargent

LEIDEN BOSTON
2007

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Detailed Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication data
Detailed Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available on the Internet at
http://catalog.loc.gov

ISSN: 0169-9563
ISBN: 978 90 04 15711 8
Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Brief Chronology of the Life of He Zhu
INTRODUCTION
The Approach: Genre, Contexts, and Individual Voice
Conventions and Texts Used in this Study
The Name of the Poet
Other Transcriptions
Meter
Poem Numbers and Texts
Chapter One THE ANCIENT-STYLE VERSE OF HE ZHU, 107898
107880: Fuyang
1078: The Contingency of Historical Judgment
1079: Reportage
1080: Time
1080: Animals and the Question of Allegory
1080: Variations on the Poetic Heritage
1081: A Transitional Year
108285: Xuzhou
1082: Tang Echoes, Su Shi
1083: More Celebration of Su Shi
1084: ~Zai, Tang Predecessors
1085: The Ironic Traveler
1086: In the Capital
Word Games
Imitations
1088: Fanghuis Version of the Zhang Liang Saga
1088-89: The South
Gardens and Temples
Ten Historical Sites in Liyang
109193: Jinshan and the Capital
Teasing Mi Fu at Jinshan
1091: Wit in the Su Shi Mode
1093: The Past Recovered
1094: No-Mind in Hailing
1096: Hanyang
The Inscription For Zhou Dunyis Thatched Hall
The Reinterpretation of Tao Yuanming
Obfuscation
109698: Jiangxia

ix
xi
xii
xiii
1
2
6
7
7
8
10
12
13
13
15
21
27
33
36
38
38
45
47
50
54
54
56
64
74
74
84
86
86
89
90
96
100
100
105
110
115

vi

CONTENTS

1096: The Connoisseur

1096 and 1097: History
1098: Watchful Eyes
Further Thoughts on Imitation, Inscriptions, and Rhyme
Chapter Two THE SONGS OF HE ZHU, 108098
108085: Handan and Xuzhou
1080: An Ancient Site in Handan
108485: Sites and Poetry Sessions in Xuzhou
108892: Sending Songs from Liyang and Jinling
1088: A Suite Experiment
Liyang Experiments in 1089 and 1090
109092: Innovative Songs from Jinling
A Gift Enhanced by Rhyme (I)
1094: Hailing
Laments
First Farewell Songs
109698: Jiangxia
Tao Yuanming Outdone
Leftover Elder of Mirror Lake
Tao Yuanming Out of Reach
History
A Gift Enhanced by Rhyme (II)
East Slope
Innovations in Songs: A Brief Review
Chapter Three THE PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE OF HE ZHU, 107698
Poems Written before Xuzhou
Xuzhou
1084: Imitation of an Extended Regulated Verse
1084: Twin Views from the Delightful! Pavilion
Rhymed Opening Couplets
1087: In the Capital
108890: The Liyang and Jinling Area
The Capital
1091: Civil Classification
1092: Stretching Form
109394: Leaving the Capital
Mi Fu
109698: On to Jiangxia
Going Upriver: Diction from the Past
Hanyang: Responses to Assaults on History
109697: This is not Li Shangyin
1098: Farewell to a Buddhist Magistrate
Pleasures and Precedents in Regulated Verse
Chapter Four THE HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE OF HE ZHU, 107598
Issues of Form
Situations in Which the Heptametrical Regulated Verse was Used
Heptametrical Regulated Verse in the North, before Xuzhou

115
117
120
121
125
126
126
130
141
141
146
153
157
160
160
164
168
168
171
173
178
179
182
186
188
188
194
194
202
207
223
225
238
239
243
248
251
256
256
258
262
265
267
269
269
272
273

CONTENTS

1075: First-line Rhyme

1077, 1079: Order in Landscape, Order in Couplets
108286: Xuzhou
Celebration of Place and Complexity
Precedents to be Overturned or Celebrated
Anomalous Form
1086: Yongcheng
Playing with the Rhythm of the Line
The Capital
Zhao Lingzhi, Zhao Lingshuai
108891: Through Jinling to Liyang and Back
Wang Anshi
First Poems
ABAB Sequences
109091: Absence in Jinling
1091: Two Clever Social Poems in the Capital
109394: Hailing Ambiguities
109596: From the Capital to Jiangxia
Another Exile
1096: Up the Yangzi
109698: Hanyang and Jiangxia
An Extended Regulated Verse
Equanimity in Jiangxia
Qin Guan, L Dafang, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian
A Summary
Chapter Five THE PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS OF HE ZHU, 108598
1085: Xuzhou
The Capital
1086: Relationships with Past Poetry
1087: Ten Songs on Autumn Days
108890: Liyang and Quatrains for Monks
109192: Outspoken in the Capital
1095: Quirky in the Capital
109798: Mining the Past in Jiangxia
Addendum: Hexametrical Quatrains in the Capital, 1086 and 1092
New Life for the Pentametrical Quatrain
Chapter Six THE HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS OF HE ZHU, 107795
Early Start in the North
1077: Quiet Scenes in Zhaozhou
1080: Restraint in Fuyang
1081: Making It Fresh
1081: Disingenuous Quatrains in the Daming Area
1081 and 1082: In and Out of the Capital
1083 and 1085: Xuzhou
108687 The Capital
Liyang
108889: Southern Scenes

vii
273
276
280
280
285
289
296
296
300
300
304
304
306
311
319
327
331
341
341
344
351
352
355
358
366
368
371
375
375
380
386
391
395
397
400
404
406
409
409
413
418
420
423
425
428
435
435

viii

CONTENTS

108991: The Society of Others

The Capital and Hailing
1091 and 1092: Spring Wind in the Capital
1094: Farewells in Hailing
1096: Up the River to Jiangxia
109698: Hanyang and Jiangxia
Closing thoughts on This Genre and the Lyric
CONCLUSION
Chronology of Poems Translated or Mentioned
Bibliography
Four-Corner Index of Poems Translated
Index of Poems by Poem Number
Index

437
441
441
444
446
448
452
453
457
465
479
483
487

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It was at one of our regular Friday afternoon departmental wine parties at Stanford University approximately thirty years ago that James J.Y. Liu suggested the
lyrics of He Zhu as a possible dissertation topic. I am grateful for the suggestion
and for his guidance through the ensuing work which, though very different in
character from the present book, formed the starting point for my exploration
of a fascinating poet. Since then, numerous individuals and institutions have
sustained me and supported not only my research on He Zhu but also other
projects whose results are reflected in the present book. The contributions of a
few individuals are acknowledged at appropriate places in the body of the text; I
should also note that some of the most valuable publications cited would not
have been available or known to me had not their authors generously given me a
copy.
McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland, the Library of Congress, and
the Diet Library in Tokyo were significant resources for my post-dissertation
research on He Zhu. In recent years, Norlin Library at the University of Colorado and the libraries at Stanford University were critically important. Special
mention must be made of Colorado State University and its Morgan Library, not
only for the recognized excellence of the librarys interlibrary loan services, but
also for the ways in which they kept this project from being derailed completely
when storm runoff destroyed my office, my computer, and most of my personal
library in 1997. The University provided funds to replace my ruined books and
services to photocopy those papers that could be recovered from waterlogged
file cabinets; the Library freeze-dried and restored important books in my collection that could not be replaced and appropriated funds to start its own Chinese-language collection.
The time to use libraries for something besides class preparation is generally
bought with grants. My chronological reading of He Zhu and three of his contemporaries was supported in 198283 by a Mellon Fellowship for Chinese
Studies awarded through the American Council of Learned Societies. What you
see before you now contains bits and pieces of the lengthy manuscript that resulted from that project but the present book is more directly the product of a
sabbatical leave granted by Colorado State University in 2003-2004. For two
quarters during that academic year, I had the privilege of teaching in the Department of Asian Languages back at Stanford, where I was provided with space

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

to work, computer support, and of course access to a fine library. This was a
fulfilling period, indeed, and I am grateful to all parties.
There are more personal debts to be acknowledged. My interest in China was
sparked by a woman named Elsie Anderson: youngest of my mothers aunts,
she embarked for China in 1918 to work for girls education; some years after
her death it was her copy of Lin Yutangs Wisdom of China and India that set me,
as a young teenager, on the trajectory that would eventually lead to this book.
Mention must also be made of the uncle who passed her books on to me,
Wilbur J. Granberg, a well-traveled writer and journalist who found his material
in everything from the life of Joseph Pulitzer to the seagoing canoes of the
Quileute Nation on the Olympic Peninsula. Alongside these formative influences one must acknowledge my father and my two mothers, deceased and living, for their love and support.
Those individuals and other friends, relatives, and teachers too numerous to
mention here have been abiding sources of inspiration and guidance. None,
however, deserves more direct credit for the completion of this work than Dominique Groslier Sargent (known in the U.S. primarily as Dominique Bachmann
Sargent), my wife. A scholar of modern French poetry who traveled the long
road to her doctorate while raising a dynamic, high-achieving daughter, Dominique understands the goals, pressures, and sacrifices entailed in our profession.
The fact that the period during which the present study was successfully consolidated and completed coincides with our marriage to date bespeaks her impact on my life and my work. Her counsel on what worked and what didnt
work in the manuscript was crucial in shaping the final product. It is to her that
this book is dedicated with loving gratitude.

LIST OF TABLES
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Form of Songs of Three Birds

Words in Poem 166 Typical of Wen Tingyun
Anomalous Regulated Verses
Pentametrical Quatrains in the Works of Selected Poets
He Zhus Pentametrical Quatrains by Year
Su Shis Pentametrical Quatrains by Year
Heptametrical Quatrains in the Works of Selected Poets
He Zhus Heptametrical Quatrains by Year

14344
198
27071
368
370
37071
4067
407

ABBREVIATIONS
Changbian
CSJC
HJAS
JAOS
QSC
QSS
QTS
SBBY
SBCK
SSSJ
SSWJ

Xu Zizhitongjian changbian
Congshu jicheng
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
Journal of the American Oriental Society
Quan Song ci
Quan Song shi
Quan Tang shi
Sibu beiyao
Sibu congkan

Su Shi shiji
Su Shi wenji

BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF HE ZHU

Huangyou 4 (1052)

Born; 1 sui.

Xining 1 or 2 (1068/69) to 8
(1075)

Capital

Leaves Weizhou for capital (Kaifeng) at 17 or 18

sui; marries.

Xining 810 (107577)

Lincheng, in
Zhaozhou

First appointment outside capital. Collects wine

taxes; acting magistrate at some point.

Yuanfeng 13 (107880)

Fuyang, in
Cizhou

Arms factory.

Yuanfeng 4 (1081)

Fuyang to
Capital

Leaves Fuyang post 2nd month, travels in vicinity

of Daming, returns to capital 10th month. 30 sui.

Yuanfeng 58 (108285)

Xuzhou

Third appointment outside capital. Baofeng

mint. Active in local poetry society.

Yuanyou 1 (1086)

Capital

Returns to capital via Yongcheng early in year.

Yuanyou 2 (1087)

Capital

Fourth appointment outside capital. Starts for

He-zhou late in year, delayed at Chenliu.

Yuanyou 35 (108890)

Hezhou

Visits Jinling in 3rd month, reaches post at Liyang

in Hezhou. Supervises militia. Leaves for
capital, 12th month of Yuanyou 5.

Yuanyou 6 (1091)

Capital

Reaches capital by 4th month. On

recommendation of Su Shi and others, given civil
status after twenty years in military
classifications. 40 sui.

Yuanyou 8Shaosheng 1
(109394)

Hailing

Stays with relatives.

Shaosheng 2 (1095)

Capital

Returns to capital by 6th month, leaves for

Baoquan mint in Jiangxia after 9th month.

Shaosheng 3 (1096)

Hanyang,
Jiangxia

Goes up Yangzi, reaching Hanyang in 5th month;

crosses to Jiangxia in 8th month. Edits poetry
collection to date.

Yuanfu 1 (1098)Jianzhong
jingguo 1 (1101)

Suzhou

Leaves Jiangxia after 6th month of 1098 to

mourn mother, travels in lower Yangzi region.
Leaves for capital in autumn 1101.

Chongning 13 (11014)

Sizhou

Vice prefect; acting prefect at some point.

Chongning 45 (11056)

Taiping zhou

Prefect.

Daguan 2Xuanhe 7 (1101

25)

Suzhou

Retired and moving about in region with various

short-term or titular posts; dies at 74 sui in
second month of 1125 in Changzhou.

INTRODUCTION
One day, well into the writing of this book, I suddenly realized that He Zhu
(10521125) had inserted a missing poem into his collection. There was a
headnote describing what the poem was supposed to be about, but there was no
poem. When I read the headnote more carefully a second time, I understood
there never had been a poem. In all editions of He Zhus poems known to me a
space is left where a poem should have been. Yet the missing poem never existed. Surely a few readers in the last nine centuries had gotten the joke before
me, but it was a delicious moment of discovery nevertheless. A poet Id known
for two and a half decades could still surprise and delight me with his humor!
Missing words, missing lines, missing poems, missing titlesthese things are
common enough in old texts. In fact, He Zhus entire poetry collection disappeared when the Jurchen armies swept south across the Yangzi River shortly
after his death in 1125. Later, a copy of the first half of the collection (covering
the years 1075 through 1098) was discovered in a trunk, but most of what He
Zhu had written from around 1099 to his death was never recovered. 1 Those
poems are truly missing.
 The surviving first half of the collection, with five hundred seventy-two poems (counting the poem that was never written), does not constitute anywhere
near all the poems He Zhu wrote in his first forty-six years of life. A preface to
these poems that the poet wrote in 1096 informs us that down to 1088 he had
written over five or six thousand poems, not counting the ones hed burned in
the stove periodically because they were reckless works. In 1088, he had
started to think his poetry was not necessarily going to get better as he got older,
so hed better take better care of what he had; it was the rejection of old drafts
that had been reckless, not the works themselves. 2 He set about organizing

1 Thirty-one of the later poems have been recovered from various sources. They form juan 11
in the Quan Song shi. (Five of these are attributed also to another writer.) I have not used those few
poems in the present study because they lack the headnotes and dates that are so valuable in contextualizing the rest of the collection. For a convenient account of the textual history of the collection, see Zhu Shangshu, Song ren bieji xulu, 1:57985. The poems were first printed in 1193 by a
man who had been waiting in vain for the second half of the collection to reappear but was finally
forced to publish what he had hurriedly before moving to another official post.
2 Zhong Zhenzhen, who has done the most extensive and important scholarship on He Zhu in
China, reproduces and punctuates a version of the preface in his Dongshan ci, 51921. A slightly
different text is given in Zhu Shangshu, Song ren bieji xulu, 1:57980. To get down to the present
number of poems, it would seem He Zhu had once again thrown out well over ninety percent of
his drafts. I surmise, however, that some of these drafts were alternative versions of the same
poems.

INTRODUCTION

and revising his poems, wrote the preface, and added a few poems in the next
two years. The resulting body of work is the object of the present study.

THE APPROACH: GENRE, CONTEXTS, AND INDIVIDUAL VOICE

A critical issue facing all Song poets was how they were to handle the shi genres that were available to them. 3 Each came with centuries of precedents, some
relevant to eleventh-century practice, some not. The effect of a given genre on
the tone of a specific poem is seldom mentioned in most scholarship on Chinese poets, though certain poets are declared to excel in one genre or another.
My hope is that, by experiencing significant numbers of He Zhus poems in the
groupings that he establishes, the reader will begin to develop a feel for the
rhythms and ranges of thematic options that are associated with the various
formal properties of the genres. This should help us develop an appreciation for
He Zhus creative responses to the givens of the forms and make us better readers of Chinese poetry in general. 4
The astute reader may notice that we have slipped quietly past the vexing
question of just what constitutes a genre. The genres we have listed are normally defined in formal terms: the number of syllables per line, permissible
and/or dominant rhyme schemes, dominant metrical patterns, and so forth. The
issue of genre seems simple when limited to such definite parameters. He Zhu
himself, however, hints at something more complex when he tells us (in the
preface referred to above) how he classified his poems, especially the nonregulated ones. Songs he defines as those that have
mixed line-length [or] that change rhymes, regardless of whether [the meters of
individual lines are] ancient or regulated. The second part of that statement
shows his recognition that metrically regulated lines abound outside of Regulated Verse. (See below for a description of the four types of metrically regulated
lines.) Even more interesting is his definition of Ancient-Style Verses:
those whose sound and sense are close to the ancient and
whose lines are composed of five characters. Sound we can interpret as meter; here, He Zhu indicates that he will avoid the smooth-flowing rhythms of
regulated lines in favor of the ancient. Sense might be themes and feelings
that are somehow more suited to the unregulated meters; it could also designate

3 The term shi broadly covers all forms of poetry, especially those not sung to specific tunes, as
lyrics were. He Zhu was a major lyricist, but this study is confined to shi, specifically the genres we
are about to list.
4 Like most of his contemporaries, He Zhu organized his collection by genre. It starts with
Songs, but our study examines Ancient Style Verses first. Spanning a slightly larger number of
years, the Ancient Style Verses offer a better framework for introducing the poets life.

INTRODUCTION

a progression from line to line and couplet to couplet that rejects the semantic
balance characteristic of Regulated Verse. Either way, more is at stake than
counting syllables and identifying awkward strings of tones.
 Some theorists propose treating genres as speech acts. 5 Insofar as Chinese
poems routinely are situated in specified situations of composition, this approach has much to recommend it. There are examples of poetry collections
organized by situational or elocutionary properties rather than chronology or
formal genre. A notable example of such an attempt is the topically arranged
collection of Su Shis poetry attributed to Wang Shipeng (111271). 6
The classifications in this collection have long been criticized as arbitrary, and
perhaps that is inevitable: one problem with constructing a neat system of topical classification is that poems commonly perform more than one function.
 Despite those difficulties, it is often fruitful to identify typical situational contexts and functions for He Zhus poems. In the following chapters, we shall take
special notice of forms that seem favored for imitations of Tang predecessors,
for initiating literary exchanges, for inscriptions, for correspondence, and so
forth. We shall find that, within a given genre, trends in the defined functions of
the poems will shift with the passage of time, and of course that more than one
genre may be used for a given purpose. Nevertheless, there are tendencies in the
uses of poems that will help us appreciate the formal properties that make them
variously suitable for those uses.
 Each chapter of this study, then, is devoted to one genre, and genre is one of
the contexts in which a poet must write. That is, topics, situations, and the
formally defined genres (as well as any predecessors we can identify in the use of
these) are broadly defined materials or givens against which and through
which the artist works. Other contexts include contemporary literary and intellectual practice, as well as extra-literary events. Often we relate the appearance
of a bit of diction or a literary or cultural concept in He Zhu to its use in another writer at about the same time, especially when we can show the possibility
of direct or indirect contact between He Zhu and the other writer. Because the
works and the lives of Su Shi (10371101) and Huang Tingjian
(10451105) are relatively well-documented and these two men were of unquestioned importance in He Zhus life, they figure prominently in this aspect of my
research. Many other important figures in Northern Song politics and art will
appear in these pages as well, giving the interested reader a more complete picture of how they were regarded in the context of the times.

5 For an illuminating analysis of this and other analogies in genre theory, see David Fishelov,
Metaphors of Genre.
6 For an excellent short account in English of this text and its vicissitudes, see Kathleen Tomlonovic, The Poetry of Su Shi, 114.

INTRODUCTION

 The extra-literary contexts that illuminate He Zhus poetry include agricultural conditions, national politics, water management, and local flora and fauna.
Let us illustrate with two examples from the following chapters. Only when we
place certain heptametrical Quatrains from 1081 in the context of both the
floods taking place along the Yellow River and the persecution of Su Shi for
writing poems critical of the New Policies do we understand that the Quatrains
are ironic. Similarly, when we are aware of campaigns to destroy seditious
writings and to censor official historiographers in the 1090s, we can fully appreciate He Zhus interest at the time in preserving texts, in the scholarship his
friends are doing on ancient works of history, and in the writing of unofficial
records of current events.
 This kind of research is facilitated to an unusual degree in the case of He Zhu
because he dated his poems and provided headnotes to tell us where and under
what circumstances he wrote them. (Most of his contemporaries provide this
kind of information only occasionally; extensive scholarship is required to date
the rest of their poems, and even for those poets on whom such effort has been
expended, not all poems in the end can be dated, securely or otherwise.)
 Therefore, the contents of each chapter are organized chronologically. 7 The
reader will be led through the poets life six times, discovering new details as
they are relevant to the poems at hand. Extensive cross-references and a
chronological table of poems translated or mentioned will help the reader follow
synchronic or diachronic relationships. Chronology enables us to be attentive to
the fact that He Zhus output in each genre varied markedly across time, with
peaks and valleys that are not at all synchronized. Moreover, the themes explored in a given genre and the uses to which the poems in that genre were put
will change with the years. (A caveat must be declared here and repeated periodically: our view is always dependent on what the poet didnt lose and on what
he decided to keep when he edited his collection.)
 Finally, we come to the individual poets voice. Perhaps it is best to speak of
the voice of the poet and the voice of the man who was the poet. The voice of
the poet is the intellect we feel reshaping and reveling in his mediumthe genres, the topics, the situations that demanded poetry. We are fortunate to be able
to use the electronic tools of modern literary study to sharpen our perception of

7 My interest in chronology was stimulated by a chance meeting with Professor Tseng Yu

of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan in the late 1970s. At the time, he was working on a
series of charts that would align datable artifacts with datable texts on aesthetics or on perception
of the object. This prompted me to organize the study of four Northern Song poets I was then
beginning into a strict chronological framework. The present study and many of my publications
over the past twenty years have been derived from that project, which eventually became too large
for practical publication as a monograph. Professor Tsengs charts might have been published as a
Chronological Table of Chinese Culture around 1982, but in the National Central Library online
catalog I can find only a (Chronological Table of Chinese Art) that was published
under his name in 1998.

INTRODUCTION

these givens. 8 When we can get a good picture of the choices available to the
poet, we are able to show how he innovates, how he uses the tools of diction,
allusion, or rhythm to make the old new and name the heretofore unnamed.
(Some of his favorite ideas and phrases become personal clichs after a while,
and we shall duly note this.)
 Feeling the power of this creativity and mulling over the situations represented in the poems, one forms at least a tentative image of the real-life He Zhu.
The man who was the poet we read must have been intellectually aggressive and
self-assured. These excerpts from a biography written by a younger admirer, Ye
Mengde (10771148), confirm that image:
[He Zhu] was seven feet [over two meters] in height, his eyebrows bristled, and he
had a face the color of iron. He enjoyed conversing unreservedly about the affairs
of the age; when it came to what was right and wrong, he made no allowances.
Even if it were an important person whose power could overturn the times, if
something was slightly off, [He Zhu] would scold him fiercely, not mincing his
words. Because of this, people considered him almost a knight-errant. Yet he was
broadly learned, strong in memory, masterful in language. His words were deep,
subtle, and dense, as if [he were] making a piece of embroidery. Important people often extended invitations to him: there were some he accepted, some he did
not. Those he did not want to see did not hold it against him in the end. Early on,
when he was inspector of works in Taiyuan, there was an influential mans son
who happened to be a colleague. He was proud and did not humble himself. [He
Zhu] secretly checked and discovered he had stolen a considerable amount of
construction materials. One day, he dismissed the attendants and locked the man
in a secret room. He upbraided him with a rod, saying Come here! At such-andsuch a time, you stole such-and-such materials for such-and-such use; at such-andsuch a time, you stole such-and-such a thing and put it in your house. This is true?
The influential mans son was flustered and admitted that it had happened. [He
Zhu] said, If you can accept the treatment I will give you, we can avoid an exposure. Then he made him rise and bare his skin and gave him ten strokes with the
rod. The influential mans son kowtowed and begged for pity. Then [He Zhu]
gave a big laugh and released him. After that, all those who had been arrogant, relying on their power, averted their eyes and dared not raise their eyes to look at
him.
 In those times Mi Fu (10511107)was known for his imposing stature
and for being extraordinary and unpredictable. [He Zhu] happened to be about
the same in boldness and derring-do. Every time the two met, they glared at each
other and pounded their fists. Their arguments swarmed [like hornets]. Neither
was able to submit, even after an entire day!

8 The following resources have been particularly important for this study.
1) The database of Tang and Song poetry, including ci, at Yuanzhi University in Taiwan,
http://cls.admin.yzu.edu.tw/QTS/HOME.HTM. Note that a few of He Zhus poems are missing
(the nine poems on pp. 2.1251213 and Poem 307, whose date is erroneously transferred to Poem
308) or garbled, and that the Song poetry database as a whole is not complete.
2) The Academia Sinica databases at http://www.sinica.edu.tw/~tdbproj/handy1/.
3) My own concordance to the poetry of Su Shi, available from cmcdaniel@envisic.com.

INTRODUCTION

He had over ten thousand juan 9 of books in his house. He collated them himself; not a single word was dropped or mistaken. His family was very poor. His
income was the interest on money he lent out, but if someone defaulted, he tore
off the [promissory] coupon and gave it to him. He did not in the least pester others for money. 10

Quantitatively speaking, He Zhu is far more likely in his poetry to voice his
longings and frustrations than to discourse directly on what is right and
wrong. Yet he can also be boldly satiric and, with Mi Fu and other friends,
mocking. Of course, his broad learning, strong memory, and mastery of language is evident almost everywhere in the poems we shall study. Some of the
poems require all the resources at our command before they will divulge their
meaning, and even then some points must remain tentative. Besides his library,
He Zhu also drew on documents kept in prefectural or county offices. These
may have included both printed local gazetteers (which begin to appear in the
Song) and the maps, biographies, and other records that local offices would collect in manuscript form, often to accompany reports to the central government. 11
 He Zhu was deeply engaged intellectually, emotionally, and artistically with
the people and places around him, as well as with the history of his culture and
his literature. We shall turn in a moment to his deep, subtle, and dense words,
the poetry in which his voice still lives.

CONVENTIONS AND TEXTS USED IN THIS STUDY

Before getting into the poems themselves, I would like to forestall potential
confusion over what names I use for the poet, how I transcribe modern Chinese
and the Chinese of (roughly) He Zhus day, and how meter will be represented.
For the specialist, brief remarks on texts cited and exceptions in citation format
are also appended.

9 Juan originally referred to scrolls, but by this time designated sections of books written or
printed on pages bound at the spine. He Zhus library may have included books in both forms, so
we cannot say how many physical volumes/scrolls five thousand juan represented, only that it is
a large number. Unlike the English chapter, the juan does not imply a division of content. Divisions in content may be coincidentally coterminous with juan, but juan tend to be of roughly equal
length while divisions in content vary according to the material itself. Thus, there is no regular
correspondence. It seems best to leave the term untranslated.
10 Quoted in Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 52324.
11 Interestingly, in later gazetteers He Zhus poems are often the only documentation cited as
evidence for the existence of certain landmarks.

INTRODUCTION

THE NAME OF THE POET

The name of our poet has been transcribed above in pinyin: He Zhu. The chief
problem attendant on that spelling in an English language context is that the
surname He is a homograph of a capitalized English pronoun. A slight bit of
mental energy is required on every encounter with the name to choose: is He a
god? At the beginning of a sentence, is He a pronoun or a name? Many scholars,
myself included, still use the older Wade-Giles romanization, in which the name
would be written Ho Chu. That doesnt make the name any easier to pronounce.
For those who dont know Chinese, let us note that He/Ho is pronounced to
rhyme with duh in a falling intonation; Zhu/Chu, whose initial is similar to the
j in judge and whose final rhymes with the coup of coup detat, also has a
falling intonation.
 In any case, for various reasons, this book uses pinyin Romanization, and we
are stuck with He Zhu. 12 To minimize the effort required to disambiguate the
sign <He>, we shall use He Zhu only in possessive, accusative, and dative
contexts. When our poets name is the subject of a sentence, he will be called by
his cognomen, Fanghui (rhymes with strong whey). (Cognomen is one
translation of zi , the by-name used to avoid the personal name, which would
generally appear only in bureaucratic contexts.) 13

OTHER TRANSCRIPTIONS
When talking about an individual word or phrase from a poem, we shall often
simply transcribe it in Italics, in pinyin. The reading is thus modern Mandarin, a
language Fanghui would have understood only with the greatest difficulty, if at
all. When the sound patterns Fanghui would have recognized are important, we
shall use the transcriptions derived from medieval Chinese by David Prager
Branner. 14 These will be in Roman letters rather than Italics. Ordinarily, we

12 My decision to use pinyin stems from the fact the post office spellings that were customarily used alongside Wade-Giles are now out of date. Thus, it becomes awkward to write Chin-ling
(the modern Nanking) when no one uses Nanking anymore, although it is just as good an
English word as Munich or Greece. Using Wade-Giles consistently would not solve the problem: Chin-ling (the modern Nan-ching) is peculiar-looking because almost no one used Nanching in the past. Much simpler is the consistent Jinling (the modern Nanjing).
13 When the cognomen comes up in Poem 462, we shall offer educated guesses about the rationale behind the name. Incidentally, let us note that there is also a homograph problem in Chinese! Fanghui in Chinese is indistinguishable from the name Fang Hui, which belongs to a
well-known literary critic, dates 12271306. Fortunately, Fang Huis name will not come up again
in this study.
14 Professor Branner kindly shared his 2002 draft edition of Cyn: a handbook of Chinese character
readings with me. His transcriptions recommend themselves for our purposes because they use our

INTRODUCTION

shall omit details of the transcription that are not directly relevant to our concerns. Let us take our poets name, GheH1 TsyuoH3c in Branners transcription,
to illustrate. If we ever had need to give his name in medieval Chinese, the subscript numbers and letters could be omitted if we were not interested in the classification of the rhymes: GheH TsyuoH. The final capital letters, which indicate
the tone, would be dropped if we were not interested in the tone: Ghe Tsyuo.
(The capitalization of G and T here has no significance in the transcription
system and occurs only because our example is a proper name. I offer no explanation for the fact that He Zhus name sounds like a sneeze in the language of
his day, as well as in Japanese: Ga Ch.)

METER
Studies produced in China on the forms of Chinese poetry are often extremely
useful, and we shall make extensive reference to them in this book. However,
explications of individual poems in China, Japan, and the West seldom mention
meter and almost never explicitly diagram the meter for the reader. This book
seeks to remedy that, at least in part. The meter of Regulated Verses and Quatrains, where tonal patterns are generally required to stay within certain parameters, will routinely be included with the original text. Occasionally, meter will
also be shown in the discussion of poems in other genres when it is obvious that
the poet is manipulating the sound to create a special effect.
Meter in Chinese poetry is defined by the tones of the syllables. The four
tones we are concerned with when we talk about classical Chinese poetry are the
level tone and the three tones classified as deflected: shang (indicated by Q
at the end of the rhyme in Branners system), qu (indicated by H), and ru (ending
in ~p, ~t, or ~k).
 Some characters have more than one reading, usually related to differences in
meaning. It is common in Chinese poetry for the differences in meaning to be
ignored if a certain tone is required to meet metrical requirements; therefore, we
generally choose, without comment, the tone that fits the canonical pattern
when we transcribe the meter.
 We do not need to go into the development of Regulated Verse here;
Fanghui was working within a system that had been worked out three or more
centuries earlier, in the Tang Dynastyif fact, in his preface he speaks of regulated lines or poems as those that follow Tang rules (). Let us note

standard alphabet. It must be stressed that the system is not a reconstruction but an attempt to
transcribe the main categories of medieval phonology in a way that is mnemonically clear, pronounceable, and neutral with respect to historical realism. See also his A neutral transcription
system for teaching medieval Chinese.

INTRODUCTION

simply that regulated lines avoid awkward sequences of tones or too many syllables strung together with the same tone; regulated poems follow rules by which
lines are pleasingly balanced against each other by relationships of contrast
within couplets; couplets adhere to each other by relationships of identity between the adjoining lines. A sense of change or progression through the poem is
created by the fact that regulated poems typically require a fixed sequence of
four basic line types.
 The following chart shows all the possible configurations of regulated lines.
We shall use the symbols and to represent even and deflected tones, respectively. designates syllables that can change without making the line unregulated. The lighter brackets enclose pentasyllabic line types; the heavier
brackets mark heptasyllabic line types.
A
B
C
D
The tonal opposition between corresponding positions in the A and B lines and
the C and D lines is obvious. Usually termed tonal parallelism, this creates the
balance within the couplet. It will also be observed that the tones of the evennumbered syllables in lines B and C are the same. This is the critical principle in
establishing adhesion between the couplets.
 Looking at the changeable () positions in the chart above, we can see that
each pentasyllabic line has two permissible forms, except the B type, which has
only one, and each heptasyllabic line has four types, except the B type, which
has only two. Ordinarily, it is very cumbersome to label these permutations
without losing track of the basic structure of the poem. This is one reason for
the relative neglect of metrical considerations in scholarship on Chinese poetry.
Luckily, a system of notation worked out by Qi Gong ( b. 1912) solves the
problem. In Qis system, each line type is designated either A, B, C, or D, depending on the tone of the second and last syllables. The chart above follows
this system. Numbers are added to designate the variants. The regulated variants
are designated A1, A2, etc. If non-changeable syllables are in the wrong tone, the
line ceases to be regulated. Qi Gong designates unregulated lines as A 1, A
2, etc. We shall mark such lines as (A1), (A2), etc. One may generally ignore
the numbers and note only whether a line is A, B, C, or D and whether or not it
is regulated.
 Our symbols will show where violations occur by changing from round to
square. Thus, in the heptasyllabic line , the penultimate syllable should be deflected , but it is level . In the pentasyllabic line
, the penultimate syllable should be level , but it is deflected . There is no

10

INTRODUCTION

need to show changeable syllables with the symbol , as we did above; the syllable is simply shown as it is. is a regulated C1 line; is
a regulated C2 line; the fact that the first syllable in either line could have been
in the opposite tone without violating the meter is of no significance for our
analysis.
 It is important to emphasize that unregulated lines are common in Regulated
Verse; moreover, there are various means of compensating for violations.
Sometimes violations have a purely formal, structural effect (especially in support of poetic closure); the more interesting cases are those in which violations
emphasize certain words or create emotional overtones. Meter thus opens paths
of interpretation that might not otherwise be obvious. These points will be discussed in detail in the relevant chapters.
 With Qi Gongs system of notation, one can see at a glance whether the progression from couplet to couplet is within the rules. The prescribed sequence of
line types A, B, C, and D is the same as the ABCD sequence of our alphabet.
The sequence does not have to start with A. Thus, ABCDABCD is a canonical
sequence, and so is CDABCDAB. As we shall see, heptametrical Regulated
Verse introduces a slight complication because it normally starts with two rhyming lines, BD or DB. (In Regulated Verse, only level-tone rhymes are permitted,
so all rhyming lines will be B or D.) As long as the third line takes up the sequence from the second line, however, the poem remains regulated: BDABCDAB or DBCDABCD. After a D line the sequence begins with A again; a B
line must be followed by a C line.
 Lines can be individually unregulated to the point where tonal opposition
within the couplet is in shambles, but as long as the second syllables follow the patterns of identity and opposition dictated by the ABCD order (and the rhymes
fall only in even-numbered lines, with the optional first-line rhyme), the poem
remains regulated. Again, Qi Gongs notation makes it clear that a sequence of,
say, (A23) (B4) C (D14) is still an ABCD sequence.

POEM NUMBERS AND TEXTS

Each of He Zhus poems has been assigned a number (even the missing
poem, Poem 418). These numbers appear next to the upper left hand corner of
poems that are quoted set off from the text; they are also incorporated into references to lines: line 273-3 refers to line 3 of Poem 273. There is an index by
poem number, but these numbers do not correspond to any index or text outside of this book and are useful only for cross-references within this book. Nevertheless, the reader may find that they foster a sense of progression through the
poems as well as a sense of cohesion in the discussion. Whether reading sequen-

INTRODUCTION

11

tially or dipping into the text from the index or cross-references, it is helpful to
be able to see at a glance that Poem 403 is still under discussion, that one has
moved on to Poem 404, or that a reference to Poem 307 has been inserted.
 Source citations for Fanghuis poems are to two texts. The first citation is
always to the 1995 Quan Song shi (Complete Song Poems; hereafter QSS), volume nineteen. He Zhus poems are on pp. 12497613 of volume nineteen; in
the continuous juan series that runs from volume one through volume seventytwo, his poems are in juan 1102 through most of juan 1112. However, our citations are to the subordinated numbering of the eleven juan of He Zhus poems.
Thus, the citation for Poem 1 (in juan 1 of his poems) will be to 1.12497, not
1102.12497.
 The second text cited is an edition of Fanghuis poetry collection that was
edited by a Li Zhiding and published in 1916 as part of a series compiled by Li as the Songren ji (Song Poets Collected Works), second series
. The name of this and all unabridged editions of Fanghuis poems is
Qinghu yilao shiji (Poetry Collection of the Leftover Elder of
Lake Qing). The juan divisions correspond to those of the QSS edition, except
that the supplementary juan in the Qinghu yilao shiji have names instead of numbers; the one we shall cite most often is recovered works (shiyi ) in Li
Zhidings edition, which is juan 10 in the QSS. Thus, Poem 559 is cited as
10.12606; Shiyi.18b.
 Source citations to all other texts follow standard practice. Please note the
following, however. Citations to the Shishuo xinyu are to juan and item number,
not to juan and page. In this way, a single reference such as 16.2 can be used
for both Richard Mathers translation and the standard Chinese editions. (I cite
Mathers translation explicitly when the translation itself or some supplementary
information supplied is significant.) Citations to the Wen Xuan are simply by juan.
There is no way of anticipating what edition the readers of this book will have at
hand. The edition of this sixth-century anthology that I own and use is one of
many descendants of the 1809 edition, but different versions of that same edition have different paginations. 15

15 The 1997 Zhonghua shuju photoreprint of the original 1809 edition shows ten columns per
page; my version has sixteen. My edition was printed by the Wenruilou and Hongzhang shuju in
Shanghai. It is undated, but might have been printed in 1900 or 1928, when these two publishing
houses worked together on other books. (Source: Harvard Universitys Hollis Catalog.)

CHAPTER ONE

THE ANCIENT-STYLE VERSE OF HE ZHU, 107898

Fanghui wrote one hundred twenty-one Ancient-Style Verse (gu ti shi ,
hereafter simply Ancient Verse); this form comprises over 20% of his extant shi
poetry. As noted in the Introduction, Fanghui defined his Ancient Verse as poems
whose sound and sense are close to the ancient and whose lines are composed of
five characters. Ancient Verse, whether the pentametrical form covered in this
chapter, or the heptametrical Songs we shall study in the next chapter, is ancient in contrast to the Recent-Style Verse, or Regulated Verse, that matured in
the Tang Dynasty. Ancient Verse is not restricted in length; rhymes do not have to
be in the even tones; rhymes may change within a poem; and tonal sequences
within lines and between lines are not determined by any rigid rules of balance or
aesthetic patterning, although some patterns sound awkward to the ear and are
generally avoided. Often, Ancient Verse is characterized by the noticeable rejection of rules rather than indifference to rules. Once Regulated Verse had established prosodic proscriptions and the patterns of subtle correlations we call
parallelism, poets could make their poems ancient by employing diction,
syntax, and metrical patterns that were prose-like and clumsy. Less conspicuously, one could employ to some degree the semantic parallelism that had become
habitual with Regulated Verse but still be unconcerned about following the tonal
rules.
For example, one mark of clumsiness is a line whose last three syllables are
three level tones or three deflected tones. Fanghuis Ancient Verses almost always
contain such lines, which is a typical characteristic of the genre. (In Regulated
Verse, only two of the last three syllables should be the same tone; moreover,
these two syllables should be contiguous: a leveldeflectedlevel or deflectedleveldeflected sequence, which sounds jerky even in the abstract, is a
violation of the metrical pattern and brings the poem closer to Ancient Verse.)
The freedom to change rhymes in the course of an Ancient Verse can be exploited by poets to signal shifts in topic within a long composition. However, this
freedom is actually only theoretical in pentametrical verse; rhyme changes are
much more common in heptametrical Ancient Verse, or Songs. Fanghui respects this difference. In his preface he mentions rhyme change as one criterion
for classifying a poem as a Song but makes no mention of rhyme in connection
with Ancient Verse. In only three out of one hundred twenty-one Ancient Verses
does he change rhyme within the poem. As one might expect, each of these three

ANCIENT VERSE

13

cases is a relatively long composition, but he writes many other long poems that
do not change rhymes. 1
In fourteen poems He Zhu does something more unusual: he rhymes the first
line, which is seldom done in pentametrical poetry, whether Ancient or Regulated.
The fact that twelve of these poems were written in 108086 suggests that his
experimentation in the form was especially vigorous in the earlier part of the
period for which his works are available to us. Indeed, a high proportion of He
Zhus surviving early poetry was Ancient Verse. From 1078 to 1080, his Ancient
Verses far outnumber his Regulated Verses and heptametrical Quatrains. It is only
from 1092 on that there is a marked decline in the quantity of his Ancient
Versethough a set of ten poems under one title and seven other Ancient Verses
create a noticeable spike in the record in 1096.
When there are no strict metrical rules, we cannot look for unusual metrical
patterns to guide our readings of the poemsto signal the presence of sub-texts,
linguistic bravado, or agitationas we shall with Regulated Verse. Our emphasis
in this chapter will therefore be on themes, ideas, and precedents. Once we have
become familiar with the poems themselves we shall try to suggest why Ancient
Verse was chosen for certain purposes.

10781080: FUYANG
1078: THE CONTINGENCY OF HISTORICAL JUDGEMENT
The Ancient Verses begin with a poem titled The Former City of Ye . 2 This was
composed on horseback one evening in the ninth month of Yuanfeng 1 (1078)
near Fuyang , the seat of Ci Prefecture, or Cizhou , in Hebei West
Circuit. (Fuyang is modern Cixian, just inside Hebei Province on the rail line
north from Anyang to Shijiazhuang and Beijing). Fanghui was assigned in Fuyang
to a Chief Manufactory (), where arms were made. 3 Ye (less than a days
ride south of Fuyang) had been an important city from the third century until the
last quarter of the sixth century, when warfare sent it into decline. There were
many such sites in this part of the North China Plain, and Fanghuis long sojourns

1 The changes take place in Poems 052 (1080, in Fuyang), 082 (1085, in Xuzhou), and 136 (1093,
in Xuyi).
2 2.12510; 2.1a.
3 Hucker, Dictionary, places the Chief Manufactory under the Directory for Armaments (Junqi
jian ), and that Directory does seem to have exercised supervised arms production both
inside and outside the capital in a concrete way after 1073, but Gong Yanmings Song dai guanzhi cidian
makes the Manufactory subordinate to the Circuit Judicial Supervisorate (Lu tidian xing si
). See Gong, 364 and 559. In view of the fact that Fanghui later became a Coins Officer in
Xuzhou, it may be relevant to note that a mint for iron coins was established in Cizhou in the middle
of 1077. Li Tao, Xu Zizhitongjian changbian 9:283.6ab (3007a).

14

CHAPTER ONE

here may account in part for his interest in this kind of historical poem. Contemporaries such as Huang Tingjian, Su Shi, and Chen Shidao
(10531102) seldom treated such topics in their poetry.
Because of its length, we shall not translate the entire poem, but there are a
couple of points worth mentioning. The Former City of Ye asserts that history, as
recorded on stone relics, is indecipherable. The steles alongside the roads that led
into tombs have fallen; if not simply smashed, they have been recycled for practical new uses:
Viatical steles lie this way and that,

their inscriptions long damaged and missing.

Fulling blocks for cloth, plinths for columns,

dragons and their heads are separated, split.

I point at this, which I can cup in one hand:

32
Wise and foolishwhat difference between the two?

The bits of stone that one can hold in ones palm contain only a few characters.
Either because no useful text can be reconstructed from these fragments or because even the characters themselves cannot be made out clearly, one can no
longer distinguish the worthy (xian) from the foolish (yu). That means that the
whole purpose of historyto judge the past as guidance for the presenthas
been lost.
Su Shi raises the dichotomy of worthy and foolish nine times in his poems. An
interesting example that contrasts with the destruction of inscriptions in
Fanghuis The Former City of Ye is these lines from 1060, in which Su assumes that
the character of people in the present, though their lives pass so quickly, will be
available to the historical judgment of people in the future:
How remarkable, the travelers before the
mountain; / gone in an instant: stars passing over a fish-trap! / No time to divide
the worthy and the foolish; / future generations will make the distinction. 4 In the
ruins of Ye, however, time erases history, and with it these distinctions are lost. If
039
28

4 , Su Shi shiji, 1:2.75, final four lines. See the important textual note by the editors regarding
the word we translate fish trap: they reject the received version of the line, which used the
character , and substitute . Su Shis expression is based on a line in Ode 233 of the Classic of
Poetry that is itself opaque: The three stars are in the fish trap. One traditional interpretation of this
line is that stars (leaders) reflected in a fish trap (that holds no thrashing fish and therefore represents the hunger of the people) will not be seen for long. Karlgren assumes that , fish trap, is a
borrowing for , central roof hole, and translates accordingly. (See his Book of Odes and Grammata
Serica Recensa, 286.) This also gives us an appropriate image for brevity: stars passing across a relatively small opening, a process that takes a surprisingly short time. Regardless of the merits of
Karlgrens assumption as it applies to the Odes, however, the editors of Su Shi shiji reject this as a
possibility for Su Shis poem because it is in the wrong rhyme category for Sus poem. They also
point to the fact that a Song edition of the Classic of Poetry uses , fish trap. It is possible that Su
Shi thought this was a borrowing for the other character and ignored or was unaware of the difference in tone, but we shall never know, and I follow their emendation here.

ANCIENT VERSE

15

the future is dependent on inscriptions on stone, Su Shis faith in 1060 that those
who look back on us from the future will be able to judge who was wise and who
was foolish is misplaced.
Fanghuis next four lines indicate that the past is not entirely effaced, for the
water in the nearby river and the moon over the terrace built by Cao Cao
(155220) remain to complement the heroic spirit of the place. Nevertheless, the
poem concludes with a fruitless quest for a philosophy of history, an explication
that the poet thinks he might find in the peasants.
039

40

In field and paddy I visit the remaining elders;

it is said they have a theory of the rise and fall.
All I hear is the Shuli piece,
and they curse the oxen, plowing without pause.

Note:
039-39/ Shu li is the name of Ode 65 in the Classic of Poetry. It is traditionally taken to be the expression of the sorrow and frustration an officer of the Zhou Dynasty feels upon seeing the ruins of
some Zhou ancestral temples.

Although Fanghui imagines he hears the farmers singing an ancient song to lament the ruin of Ye, he gets no discourse on the rise and fall of ancient cities from
them. The oral tradition is as indecipherable as the texts on fragments of steles.
Fanghuis predicament is not without precedent; see, for example, this Tang
couplet: Fragrant plants already sprout on
the site of palaces and halls; / what herdboy would discern the walls of thearchs
and princes? 5 Even if Fanghuis ruminations in the former city of Ye are informed by such precursors, however, his feelings about history will evolve during
the period covered by this study to the point where he has an almost desperate
hope in Su Shis future generations making the distinction.

1079: REPORTAGE
He Zhus three Yuanfeng 2 (107980) Ancient Verses are engaged with life in the
present. The first, written in the fourth month, is called Joy over Rain. In his
title note, Fanghui tells us that in the spring of this year there was hot weather and
drought; it wasnt until the fourth month that rain began to soak the ground. By
that time, the wheat and barley had already dried up and died. Fanghui ends his
note with this statement: I gathered the words of an old farmer and composed
this poem. 6 This leads us to expect a poem in the style of certain works by Du Fu

5 Liu Cang (ninth century), , QTS, 18:586.6788. Not only is the sentiment
reminiscent of Fanghuis early poems, the location is, too: the old city of Ye.
6 2.12510; 2.2a. The drought afflicted most of north China. See Changbian, v. 9, juan 296, 297, et

16

CHAPTER ONE

or Mei Yaochen (100260), in which the poet reports what common folk
suffering from corve labor or military draft have to say about their plight.
Fanghuis poem, however, is more dedicated to imagistic and linguistic invention,
at least overtly.
040

12

16

20

24

All spring, endless drought and adustion;

cross into summer: suddenly humid and sweltry.
Dust and grime befouled the clothes and lappet;
moisture of plums steamed from column and plinth.
Yellow sandstorms shut out the Red Phosphor;
reckon the time, and youd confound early morn and noon.
Sand-martins pursue wind-kites,
flip and fly upstream the oncoming rain.
In a flurry, white-feathered arrows
are fired at once from enormous bows
and fall on roof-tiles, and ring on steps
in a floating foam that seems to boil.
By full morning the deluge is everywhere
and the parched are given clean succor.
Farmers happily visit and mingle,
welcoming at their gates with pleasant talk.
Silkworm mulberries are scant but enough;
theres pig and brew, pipes and drums:
Picking a lucky day, they give thanks at the bosquet shrine:
shaman Mother gives up her frenzied dance.
Morning meals fill the able-bodied young;
shaded by straw hats, they plow the hardscrabble ground.
Let up a little on the deadline to pay wheat taxes;
we should be able to make it up with the autumn crop.
If its taken away and goes into the Great Granaries,
all the richness will go to brown rats.

Notes:
040-4/ This line reflects a belief that south of the Yangzi in the fourth and fifth months, when
plums are about to turn yellow and fall, the bases of columns produce a sweat that evaporates and
becomes rain. 7

passim.
7 This is reported in a nearly contemporary source, Lu Dians Piya, CSJC, 1172:13.323. The rain
that falls at this time is called plum rain, according to Lu. (Surely this supports the theory that the
term for the spring rainy season in Japan, baiu, means plum rain rather than mold rain.) Oddly,
though, Lu states that no such relationship between plums and rain was seen in the area where

ANCIENT VERSE

17

040-20/ The shamanka had been dancing to bring rain.

The first half of the poem is truly impressive for its fresh imagery and precise
evocation of both drought and deluge. Cross into summer is an unusual phrase
in poetry, though it is found in Wang Wei (d. 761) and Yuan Zhen
(779831). Even rarer is Red Phosphor (the Sun), a term derived from the old
belief that a Red Crow lives in the sun (which with the moon constitutes the Two
Phosphors). 8 The phrase translated enormous bows is literally bows [that
would take] ten thousand oxen [to pull]; the epithet ten thousand oxen is not
unusual for great trees and by extension it can be applied to the mighty brush of
an esteemed writer; but Fanghui may be unique in describing bows this way.
The second half of the poem captures the energy of village life released, as it
were, by the rain. We might wonder, however: were there really enough resources
after the drought in Fuyang to make offerings at the shrine (line 040-18); was
there enough food for hearty breakfasts (040-21)? When the peasants argue that
any grain they pay into the storehouses now will be eaten by ratsa reasonable
argument, to be surearent they really worrying that they wont have enough to
live on between now and autumn without that grain?
We dont know enough about the local situation to know how desperate the
Fuyang peasants would have been. The drought was widespread enough to come
up for discussion at court more than once. Hebei West Circuit, where Fuyang is
located, had the highest percentage of irrigated land in north China, but such a
widespread drought could mean there was no water for the canals to deliver.
Although there was a navigable river east of Fuyang that might have had a reliable
flow for irrigation, only 11.16% of the land in Hebei West Circuit was irrigated,
according to figures for 107076, and we cannot assume that irrigation was
available to or had ameliorated the effects of the drought on the peasants observed by He Zhu. 9
In any case, when Fanghuis headnote tells us that the wheat and barley crops
have failed and that he is collecting reports from old peasants, it gives us both
the background knowledge and the generic expectations that lead us to look for
an indictment of indifferent officials in the tradition of Du Fu, Mei Yaochen, Su
Shi, and many other poets. Instead, we get happy, well-fed peasants. I think
Fanghui has found a fresh approach to social criticism: telling good news while
hinting at disaster. (A camouflaged message was also safer, in view of the case
building against Su Shi, whose reportage in poems that were widely circulated in
print would lead to his arrest three months later.)
The second of Fanghuis 1079 Ancient Verses, written four months later, is

Fanghui wrote the poem.

8 See Edward Shafer, Pacing the Void, 16367.
9 Liang Fangzhong, Zhongguo lidai huko, tiandi, tianfu tongji, 142, 289, and 291.

18

CHAPTER ONE

titled Old Scholartree. 10 This time, there is no sympathy for the peasants or
their culture. The subject is a large dead tree in Handan Commandery that has
become the object of assiduous worship because humming and sighing were once
heard to come from it at night. Fanghui is sure that what the locals supposed to be
spirits is really owls and foxes living in the tree. In his poem, he reviews this
situation as described in the preface, then refutes the superstition: the real reason
the tree reached a ripe old age is because it was unsuitable for timber, not because
any god of the soil protected it.
041

12

16

An old tree, long withered and bare,

leans over the dust of the unsullied road.
Theres never been shade to lay a mat on the ground
where shelter from heatstroke might extend to the People.
Owl nests and burrows for foxes
malevolent fiends attach themselves here.
Their howling attends the dim blackness;
with frenzied tremble, they close in from the side.
Round about, a stepped altar is built,
a shrine set up for prayer in autumn and spring.
Since the tree enjoys the longevity of the useless,
it is outrageously supposed to house a local god.
Do not be confused by the words of the shaman-woman;
please brandish the ax of the woodcutter.
If you hesitate, in the end it will be pilfered
and be firewood for those who come next.

Notes:
041-2/ Dust of the unsullied road seems contradictory, but unsullied here appears to be an
old-fashioned epithet. The phrase dust of the unsullied road appears in sixteen times in Tang
poetry, usually without reference to its original metaphorical use in a poem by Cao Zhi
(192232). 11 Most likely, Fanghui is reaching for the flavor of antiquity as he sets the scene.
041-11/ If a tree is useless for timber, it is not harvested. This is an old notion from the Zhuangzi. 12

Fanghui clearly does not value little tradition religious practices. His true motivation for writing the poem probably extends beyond a desire to impose some
sort of orthodoxy on the superstitious masses, however. He wants to impress us
with his wit. Note that the last two couplets undercut the Daoist lesson of the
utility of uselessness that he evoked in line 041-11 to explain the real reason for

10

2.12511, 2.2b.
Exception: Han Yus poem (890). Han Yu quanji jiaozhu,
2:83335.
12 A. C. Graham, 7273; Watson, 6365. The tree in that story shades a village shrine to the local
god.
11

ANCIENT VERSE

19

the preservation of the tree. That hoary clich fails to recognize that what cannot
be used for timber still can be burnt for fuel! As Fanghui gleefully points out,
there is no point in leaving the tree around for somebody else to exploit in the
future.
The third of these old-style poems written in 1079 also gives unexpected twists
to old lore. It is titled Calling on Administrator Chao Duanzhi , 13 and it is
basically a complaint about being a poor official.
042

12

16

The West Wind blows an evening rain;

starving magpies make a racket in the chilly thicket.
Wenju faces the chatting guests;
so chagrined that the goblets and tripods are empty!
Alas for us wanderers-in-office:
poverty and illness more or less the same.
A peck of salary: by bending waist obtained;
cash to get tipsy on: usually not issued.
Look you, sir, at the lads of the North Ward:
lofty halls with songs from Yan, and bells.
Although they boast the cost of their brew is to be ignored,
filled with your bountieswhence comes such richness?
Could I ever be one who begs by the tombs?!
I dont put on a pleasing face for my wife and concubine.
Always I cherish the integrity of ice and cork,
unabashed before heroes among the butchers and brewers.

Notes:
042-3/ Wenju is the cognomen of Kong Rong (153208), a learned man who attracted many
admirers. He is said to have sighed, The seats are always filled with guests; the goblets are never
empty of brewI have no worries! 14
042-7/ Tao Yuanming (365427) refused to crimp his waist for a salary of five pecks of
rice. 15
042-9/ North Ward: Another name for Pingkang Ward of the Tang capital, Changan; but
see also discussion below. By extension refers to the entertainment district in any capital metropolis
where courtesans were to be found.
042-10/ The ancient state of Yan, in the area of modern Beijing, was known for its fine singers.
042-12/ Filled with your bounties: a phrase taken from a feasting song in the Classic of Poetry. 16

13 2.12511, 2.3a. There are two branches of the Chao family that produced men in the eleventh
century whose given name started with the syllable Duan; Chao Duanzhi may be a brother or cousin
of one of these more famous scions. His formal title would have been , unofficially
called fa cao or fa yuan , according to Gong Yanming; Fanghui calls him facaoyuan in his title
note. His office probably handled punishments or sentencing.
14 Hou Han shu, 8:70.2277.
15 A. R.. Davis, Tao Yan-ming, 2:165.
16 The song is , Ode 247. Legge (She King, 475) translates de as kindness. My translation

20

CHAPTER ONE

042-13/ Begs by the tombs: Mencius tells of a man who tried to impress his wife and concubine by
coming home having partaken heartily of brew and flesh, supposedly in the company of the rich
and famous. In fact, he had been begging for the leftover sacrifices among the tombs. 17
042-15/ Ice and cork: drinking ice and eating the bitter bark of the amur cork tree (Phellodendron
amurense, now an invasive plant in the northeastern U.S.) symbolize a life of hardship. An official
who is drinking ice and eating bark is probably not accepting bribes. In 824 Bo Juyi wrote a six-line
pentametrical poem that begins, For three years Ive been a prefect, /
drinking ice and also eating cork. 18
042-16/ Butchers and brewers: a common term for the common lot of men, though it frequently
designates the pool from which someone rises to greatness.

The arrayed allusions following the vivid images of the first couplet obscure the
dynamic structure of the poem at first. In the second and fourth couplets, the
allusions are not used straight; rather, figures of the past are invoked only to
show how far Fanghui and Chao Duanzhi are from living up to them. The
comparison of Chao to Kong Rong shows that he is much esteemed of course,
but more importantly highlights the fact that, in contrast to Kong, he cannot
afford to keep his guests cups full (042-34). The poet alludes to Tao Yuanmings
famous refusal to crimp his waist to people for a salary of five pecks of rice only
to stress that he needs his salaryone fifth of Taos!and will bow and scrape to
secure it (042-7). Chao probably shares this sad condition. 19
The train of sighs and regrets is brought to a halt in line 042-9 with the apostrophe Look you, sir, which recalls earlier ballad traditions. Though the lines
that follow are even more allusive, now the allusions are used more conventionally. The reference to North Ward in line 042-9 constitutes a bit of conscious
archaizing. Reaching back to pre-Tang times, we find North Ward already as a
general term for the districts in which young nobles entertain themselves. The
third in a series of eight Recitations on History (Wen xuan 21) by Zuo Si
(ca. 250-ca. 305) contains this couplet: In the Southern Neighborhood they
strike bells and lithophones; in the North Ward they blow on mouth organs.
Fanghui is phrasing his resentment in the terms of a bygone age, an age of aristocratic dandies.
Fanghui and Chao (provisionally assuming he is talking about both himself and

reflects Karlgrens (Book of Odes) rendition; an emphasis on the material side of the hosts generosity
fits better in the context of Fanghuis use of feng, which often implies rich year. The only other use
of this phrase in poetry that I know of is in a 1073 heptametric Ancient Verse by Su Shi,
, SSSJ, 2:11.527
17 Legge, Mencius, 34041. This specific phrase does not occur in Tang poetry and is rare before
the Southern Song. To my knowledge, it is used only by Su Shi and He Zhu, once each, in the
Northern Song.
18 , second of two poems. QTS, 13:431.4763. Bo was prefect in Hangzhou at the
time.
19 One would like to identify a corresponding allusion in 042-8, but so far as I can determine,
cash to get tipsy on is a phrase coined by He Zhu. It is vaguely reminiscent of Tao Yuanmings use
of land attached to his post to grow rice for brew.

ANCIENT VERSE

21

his host) are poor and do not pretend to be otherwise. In fact, far from begging
by the tombs, they take pride in the integrity of hardship. Fanghuis reference to
heroes among the butchers and brewers (or to the heroism of these common men,
to use another plausible translation) has resonances with his assertions, seen in
other poems as well as his lyrics, that his youth was spent as a righteous
knight-errant. 20 We have moved beyond the sighs and chagrin of the first half of
the poem.
As he drops his witty twisting of allusions and defines his integrity in the last
eight lines through more direct refutations of past examples, Fanghuis language
becomes more direct and forceful. We are told to look at the lads of the North
Ward; and the conjunction although governing lines 042-1112 adds prosy
clarity. There is a rhetorical question in line 042-13 (Could I ever be one who
begs ?) and a denial in line 14 (I dont put on a pleasing face). In line
042-15, Fanghui eternally (yong, always in our translation) holds integrity in his
bosom and, in line 16, he has never been (wei) abashed before the heroes. The two
halves of the poem complement each other: the witty indirection and self-pity of
the first eight lines provide a ground against which the assertions of heroic integrity and pride in the last half stand out, expressed in the modalities of the
absolute.

1080: TIME
We have just examined a poem that, by implication at least, deals with the gap
between youthful ideals and adult careers and responsibilities; we have also noted
the problem of an unbridgeable chasm between the present and the past embodied in the remains of a great city of the past. In Yuanfeng 3 (108081),
Fanghui repeatedly returns in his Ancient Verse to the issue of time. On the last
day of the third month, in Facing Brew , 21 Fanghui begins by evoking the old
adages that life passes as quickly as a galloping white colt glimpsed through a crack
and an inch of time is more precious than a jade disk a whole foot in diameter.
044

The white colt cannot be halted;

the foot-wide jade disk is not to be prized.
Alone I ladle out a cup of brew,
with melancholy song send off the departing springtime.
My song fades and the brew runs out
with a turn of the head the traces are already old.

20 See especially his lyric to the tune Liuzhou getou , which Zhong Zhenzhen ascribes to
1088. See Dongshan ci, 4.420, 42738.
21 2.12511; 2.3b.

22

12

CHAPTER ONE

I laugh at myself: ten years of service

and still I cant find the fording places in the world.
Of course there is water to wash ones hatstrings,
but what to do about the long roads dust?
It is fate: what more is there to say?
the people of today are like those of yore.

There are three significant motifs in this poem. First, we note that spring is departing, moving away from the self (line 044-4). This notion of time as something that abandons the poet will be repeated.
Second, though many readers will recognize that not being able to find the
ford is a common expression denoting an inability to find ones way in life, line
044-8 should remind us also of Fanghuis inability to obtain any guidance from
the peasants two years earlier, in The Former City of Ye (039). There is a passage in
the Analects in which Confucius is rebuffed by a pair of recluses when he stops and
sends a disciple to ask them where the fording place is. One of them says the
world (tian xia, all under heaven, the same phrase used by He Zhu in line 044-8) is
surging and swelling and that it would be best to follow those who withdraw from
the world. He goes on covering his seeds without pausethe phrase and the
situation are the same as in 1078, where the peasants curse the oxen, plowing
without pause (see line 039-40 above, p. 15). 22 Line 044-8, then, implies He
Zhus predicament of not finding anyone who can tell him the meaning of the
present moment of history or direct him to the right path of conduct.
Third, line 044-9 evokes the ancient Canglang Song: When Canglang
Stream limpid sings, / It serves to wash my hats strings; / When Canglang Stream
turbid flows, / It serves to wash mud off my soles. The Song is quoted in the
Mencius (Legge, 299), where Confucius draws a lesson from the stream being
treated differently by people according to whether it is clear or turbid. It is also the
song a fisherman sings to Qu Yuan (ca. fourth cent. BCE) after advising the
earnest but unheeded minister to the state of Chu that he should be content to
withdraw when the times are unfavorable and serve only when the times permit
him to be effective. 23 In most allusions to the song, the washing of the capstrings
is taken to symbolize a resolution to live a pure life apart from the world; that
appears to be its meaning here, though we shall see that the significance of the
story varies in the context of other poems. Note that in the story behind He Zhus
allusion, we find again the situation of an uncommunicative wise man ignoring the
plight of the confused person who cannot bring himself give up his commitment

22 For the Analects passage, see Legge, 33334. In one version of He Zhus poem, world is
replaced by the names of the recluses.
23 For the Mencius passage, see Legge, 299. For the encounter between Qu Yuan and the fisherman, see David Hawkes, The Songs of the South, 2067.

ANCIENT VERSE

23

to society: the fisherman sings the Canglang Song as he punts his skiff away from
Qu Yuan, leaving him standing forlornly by the shorejust as the peasants in the
field at Ye turned their backs on He Zhu. This time, our poet does have an answer
of sorts. In line 044-10, he realistically observes that a long, dusty roadhis careerlies between him and clean water of reclusion, or (to propose a different
reading of the line) he questions whether the water will be enough to wash off the
defilement of his career!
The precise meaning of the last couplet of Facing Brew is unclear to me. As
translated, it would apply that judgment to humans in general. It could also mean
This person I am today is still the person I was in the past. 24 In the context of
line 044-11, It is fate: what more is there to say, either reading may be taken
pessimistically: there is no progress.
The notion that nothing really changes is repeated in the conclusion of
Inscribed on a Painting of Shamanka Mountain, composed in the following month. 25
047

Shamanka Mountainthat lovely goddess:

uncommon beauty beaming from morning clouds.
Her dazzling charm cannot be drawn close to you;
lightly gliding in the air, she leaves without a trace.
A Chu dreamand after that one night,
a grey-green mountain where autumns turn to springs.
The view breaks off, and my insides are broken, too
they go and they come, the people of now and then.

Note:
047-5/ Most versions of the legend about this goddess have her appearing from the clouds to have
sexual intercourse with a king of the ancient southern state of Chu. 26

Like spring (line 044-4 of Facing Brew), the goddess of Shamanka Mountain leaves,
goes away from the observing self. After the dream is finished, the cycle of the
seasons and human history only perpetuate this eternal losing.
In an inscription Fanghui wrote on a sixth-century stele in the Fuyang area in
the ninth month of 1080, Inscribed on the Back of the Stele of the Prince
of Lanling, 27 this familiar cycle of change is not seasonal but geological:

24 Wang Anshi (102186) has a poem that may shed light on this, Praise on my
Own Portrait: I and
the painting are both illusory selves; / as we circulate in the world we shall turn to dust. / I only
know that this object is no other object; / dont ask if the present person is like the person of yore.
Linchun xiansheng wenji, 29.326.
25 2.12512; 2.4a. Written the fourth month of 1080 on a painting owned by a man in Fuyang.
Fanghuis headnote surmises that it was done by a Tang artist.
26 See David Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 3:32539. See also, especially for the importance of the
goddess in Hes lyrics, my Experiential Patterns in the Lyrics of Ho Chu, 7595.
27 2.12514; 2.7a. Written on the tenth day of the ninth month. The Prince of Lanling, a military
hero, is known to history as Gao Changgong , but Fanghui, presumably on the basis of the

24
056
12

CHAPTER ONE

Ten dynastiessix hundred years;

in the human world, ridges and valleys change places.

The Chinese speak of geological reversals of mountains and valleyseven dry

land and oceanover eons of time, but in the human world such alternations
would be a metaphor for social and political change.
In another poem from the ninth month, we return to the adjective departing
that described spring in the third month (line 044-4 of Facing Brew). Now it is
lightthe word used connotes timethat departs. 28
057
8

The notes of the late season drive on the departing light;

with a travelers yearnings, I ponder the burdens on my life.
I left my homeland long ago indeed:
a ji year now has reverted to a geng.

Notes:
057-7/ I translate late notes/pitches as notes of the late season in view of the belief that each of
the twelve pitches corresponds to a month; the phrase could also refer simply to notes heard late in
the day from a flute or garrison horn. The phrase is unique to He Zhu, as far as I can ascertain.
057-10/ The binary enumerators for Yuanfeng 2 (1079) were jiwei; those for the present year
(Yuanfeng 3) are gengshen. However, this poem was written in the ninth month, so the change of year
is very old news. I think that in the context of the previous lines reference to leaving home, we have
to go back to the previous ji year, jiyou (Xining 2, 106970), which, it turns out, is probably
when Fanghui and his mother moved to the capital. 29 To paraphrase and expand: Since the ji year
when I left home (which was followed by a geng year, gengxu , Xining 3) we have gone through
a ten-year cycle to another ji year, after which we have reverted to another geng year, gengshen.

Finally, let us first record another juxtaposition of the personal experience of

time leaving me and historical time, also from the ninth month of 1080. 30
058

A lofty wind swashes the Starry River;

white dew blankets the chilly chrysanthemums.
Below them, the katydid
lonely, bitter, hurried in its style.
The flowery years of youth wait not;
they go from me so swiftly flowing.

stele inscription by Lu Sidao (53586), tells us in the preface to the poem that his name is
actually Su : At that time he went under his cognomen and the historians overlooked the detail.
28 Evening Prospect from the Tower of Handan Commandery, 2.12515; 2.8a.
29 Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 46. Zhong appears to be estimating the time of
the move (he gives 1068 and 1069 as likely dates); he does not cite any evidence. We must keep in
mind that Fanghui does not have to tell the correct date if a slight adjustment will produce a better
line. Readers unfamiliar with binary enumerators in the sexagenary cycle are encouraged to see
Cohen, Introduction, 42224, or similar guides.
30 Replying to Du Zhongguans Climbing the Clustered Estrade, Which He
Sent to Me, 2.12515; 2.8b.

ANCIENT VERSE

14

25

Handan, the ancient metropolis:

a trace of the past, Wuling built it.

Note:
058-14/ King Wuling of the state of Zhao ruled in the fourth century B.C.E. The trace of the past
is probably the Clustered Estrade on which He Zhus correspondent had written his poem. Its
remains are in Handan, the capital of Zhao.

We note that (in the original) the verb go in line 058-6 is the one that described
the Goddess of Shamanka Mountain leaving without a trace (line 047-4). Trace
of the past in line 058-14, though it concerns historical time, is a transform of
the traces are already old, which indicates a sort of alienation from ones own
past, in Facing Brew (line 044-6). This cluster of Ancient Verses from 1080, then,
presents a consistent concern with estrangement from both the personal and the
historical past. Youth and spring, like the ancient goddess, leave the poet behind.
An experience becomes a trace, a track that marks the absence of the experience because it is chen, old, left-over. Fishermen, peasants, and recluses
turn their backs on the man who seeks to find some meaning in the human world,
the world of politics and careers.
The past is not completely mute to He Zhu, of course, for he is steeped in the
sea of texts it has left, if not on stones, then in books. Thus, in some ways he has
access to the ancients, and he can be like the people of the past. In the tenth
month of the same year, his On Night Duty in Winter 31 begins with an
archetypal situation in Chinese poetry: the sleepless traveler who gets up and goes

31 2.12515; 2.9a. The version I quote here is from the Cao Anthology, as reflected in the
variants cited by Li Zhiding. As given in Li Zhiding's edition and the Quan Song shi, the first line
rhymes, using window instead of room. First-line rhyme is rare in pentametrical Ancient Verse
(but see the discussion at the end of this chapter). Line 12 refers to rushing about in audience
regalia, which might seem odd for a military official who served outside the court, but we shall see
Fanghui wearing a formal hat and carrying a tabula when he visits a shrine privately while traveling in
late 1087 (Poem 099) so this is not a problematic variant. Our line 14 is replaced by three lines, each
of which rhymes: Muscle and skeleton cannot force themselves; / Robust hair now shows an inch
of frost; / Heroic gall worn down by an inch of steel. It is my theory that these were three candidates for line 14; a reworked version of the second candidate, referring to frost in the hair, finally
won out. A version that tames a poem and makes it follow the rules is not by those virtues the
correct version, and may well be the work of a later editor. Nevertheless, I have chosen to present
the better text, especially since the apparent draft text is readily available in the Quan Song shi. The
Cao Anthology cited by Li Zhiding is the selection of He Zhus poetry that is part of the Song shi
xuan (Anthology of Song poetry) by Cao Xuequan (15741647); I inspected this
anthology in 1978 in the Sonky bunko in Tokyo, and it does indeed include this poem.
(Caos preface to the Ancient Verse section in the anthology is dated 1631.) Another Cao, Cao
Tingdong (16991784), is responsible for an anthology called Song baijia shicun
(Surviving poems by a hundred Song poets, published 174041). One might think Li was citing this
work (which, having been reprinted in the Siku quanshu, is more accessible to us today, though not to
him in 1916), but Cao Tingdong's anthology does not include this poem.

26

CHAPTER ONE

outside to look at the sky. Well- known precedents would include the first poem
in Ruan Jis (210263) eighty-two poem collection, Singing My Feelings. 32 To
be sure, Fanghui is not here directly imitating or quoting Ruan, as he will in 1086
(see p. 58) and as Mei Yaochen had done. 33 This poem is rather more specific
about the cares that weigh on the speakers mind.
059

12

16

A dropping moon half invades the room;

Crickets voices, chilly, reach the bed.
A traveler cannot endure this;
after his dream the night is still so long.
Tying my clothes, I go out the courtyard door:
the Sky River just now is so distant and chill.
Floating darkness obscures the land on all sides;
approaching geese do not know their ranks.
Leftover nature mourns the closing season;
fearful of the road, I think on my old homeland.
Ten years as humble as mud and muck,
I gallop about, sick of the roadsides.
Have I no will to accomplish something?
the hair at my temples upgathers morning frost.
Purity and loftiness, what are they, after all?
walking and singing, I follow after the Madman of Chu.

Notes:
059-9/ Chen wu means to lay out things on display, things left out, or even leftover food. The
expression is rare if not otherwise unknown in poetry. In the first of Three Autumn Musings at Jiangxia,
Fanghui uses chen wu again, apparently referring to the things of the season that are arrayed before
him. (Poem 534; we translate the second and third poems in our chapter on heptametrical Regulated
Verse.)
059-12/ The roadside may be where the poet has to sleep, where farewells are said, or where bandits
and other hazards lurk; cf. line 080-11, p. 51.

One way to overcome alienation from the past is by following after an ancient
personage. This is what Fanghui does in the last line of Night Duty. The Madman
of Chu is originally the recluse who confronted Confucius with a little song that
warned him against the perils of remaining involved in politics. In the Wen xuan,
each of three times the phrase walking and singing is used, it is in connection
with the Madman of Chu. It is true that by He Zhus time both the Madman and
waking and singing were associated also with drinking. In a youthful poem, Han
Yu (768824) had written Who is

32
33

Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics, p. 229.

Chaves, Mei Yao-chen and the Development of Early Sung Poetry, 1024.

ANCIENT VERSE

27

that singing, fallen over drunk, in front of the flowers? / a young disciple [of?] the
Madman of Chu, Han Tuizhi. Su Shi most often uses the phrase walking and
singing to refer to just thatwalking and singing; however, in late 1082 and again
in 1085 he specifically links this phrase with being drunk. 34 Nevertheless, this
association with drink is not so strong as to limit He Zhus meaning, and we can
take this conclusion as a declaration of intention to follow in the recluse tradition.

1080: ANIMALS AND THE QUESTION OF ALLEGORY

While in Fuyang, Fanghui takes up a theme that had been pioneered in the Tang
by several poets and revived in the Song period by Mei Yaochen and Ouyang Xiu
(100272): creatures that are unpoetic and often odious.
Some poets, such as Han Yu and Bo Juyi (772846), gave these
creatures an explicit symbolic value. For example, Han Yu, in the first of four
Miscellaneous Poems , speaks of how flies and mosquitoes are everywhere and
impossible to get rid of, but eventually the autumn wind will blow them away.
From this we are clearly to understand and take comfort in the fact that petty and
vexatious people in society will eventually come to a natural end. 35 Bo Juyi writes
of a mosquito-like diurnal insect whose bite leaves a long-lasting welt: the key to
combating it, he says, is to get it when it sprouts. Bo explicitly states that the
point of writing a poem on the insect is to tell us something about human nature. 36 Mei Yaochens Swarming Mosquitoes (1034) resembles Han Yus poem
insofar as it seems to present an allegory with a full cast: the ineffective spider,
mantis, and bat, the scorpion who presents his own kind of threat, and the cicada,
who seems to be an indifferent bystander. 37
Ouyang Xiu harmonized with this poem, but his emphasis is on describing
Meis misery, cataloging six other insects and the environments that spawn them,

34 For the Madman of Chu, see Legge, Analects, p. 33233. For the Wen Xuan references to
walking and singing, see Yoshikawa Kjir, To Ho, 1:13, notes to line eighteen of Du Fus
. In Han Yus poem, the poet calls himself by his cognomen, Tuizhi. The
authenticity of this poem () has long been in question; those who think it may be by Han see
in it marks of youthful weakness. See Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 5:3027. Su Shis 1082 poem is from his
Huangzhou exile period: , SSSJ, 8:48.2643. For the date, see Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu,
2:21.555. The 1085 poem is , SSSJ, 5:26.1409. In this case, it is Du Fu,
not Su himself, who is portrayed as drunk with brew, walking and singing.
35 The poem set (QTS, 10:342.3834) is variously ascribed to 805 or 816, though not on any
concrete evidence. See Kan Taishi shi sh 2:7.132-33, and Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 1:184-85. Von Zach,
VII.16.
36 , QTS, 13:434, 4805. Similarly explicit is Bos , QTS, 14:460.5245, a series of
pentametric quatrains prefaced by remarks linking the series to Zhuangzis parables and with explanatory notes at the end of most.
37 Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:4.61; translation in Chaves, Mei Yao-chen, 188. Chaves discusses Meis moralizing poems on living creatures on pp. 178-99.

28

CHAPTER ONE

and reminding Mei that he is about to leave for the south, where his poetic feelings will be stirred by the autumn landscape. As Ronald Egan has pointed out,
Ouyang Xiu seems to simply enjoy writing poems on the mundane and unwanted
creatures to show his genius for description, narrative, and dramatization. 38
Another poem by Ouyang has fun with the topic. His 1046 Hating Mosquitoes
both contemplates the larger issues entailed with the existence of these and
other hateful little creatures (in a world the sages had supposedly made safe for
human habitation) and describes his own efforts to deal with them in Chuzhou
, where he was in exile from the court. By sustaining a single staccato entering-tone rhyme (~k) throughout the poem (thirty-seven rhymes) and juxtaposing
early mythologies with details of daily coping, the poet makes his poem an entertaining tour de force.
Some poets, such as Meng Jiao (751814) and Pi Rixiu
(834?883?), used their poems about insect pests to lament the fact that poor
people have no way to shield themselves from these animals. 39 Mei Yaochens
Swarming Mosquitoes mentions this point. However, Fanghuis Cursing Mosquitoes, written in the fifth month of 1080, distinguishes itself from Meis poem of
a quarter-century before by focusing narrowly on the discomfort of himself and
his family when attacked by mosquitoes in their government-provided residence.
That is, rather than bemoaning the plight of all poor people who lack gauzy
mosquito nets, he speaks only of his own inability to afford this protection. Mei
Yaochen had gone so far as to wish the insects would assault the high and mighty
and leave the poor alone. Though Fanghui does note that these hungry-hearted
beasts depend on factions or coalitions and sheer number to win, that is as
close as he comes to implying a parallel with human society.
Against this background, we present Fanghuis poem. 40
048

Our quarters crouch in a shady ditch,

and lo, the mosquitoes have found their place!
In the pre-dawn, they cover their tracks;
in the twilight, they make ready to rendezvous.
They prevail by coalition and sheer number,
surely not by virtue of each bodys strength!
Insatiable, surpassing wolves in avarice,
with poison beaks more terrible than bee or scorpion.
By bluff and betrayal they skillfully hit their mark;

38 The Literary Works of Ou-yang Hsiu (10071072), 112. Ouyangs 1034 poem to Mei is in Ouyang
Xiu quanji, Jushi waiji, 2.35455, and its title is .
39 Pis is in QTS, 9.18:608.7022. For Mengs poem, see references given in connection with
our discussion below.
40 2.12512; 2.4a

ANCIENT VERSE

12

16

20

24

28

29

The bravest and fierce can do nothing about it.

Poor, weve no bed curtain of fine silk or kudzu.
so as a clumsy measure I burn southernwort and mugwort.
We merely smoke and steam ourselves:
the household is all sneezes and coughs.
The haze melts away; Im still beating the air with a fan,
and as night deepens resistance flags.
I lie with belly exposed, letting them attack,
tormented by itching, like scratching scabies.
Spirit worn, Im then jumpy in my dreams;
freshful comfort is utterly denied.
How is it that the Craftsman Who Created the World
has sown this bane of the people?
Where can we find a long-blowing wind
to cast them beyond the surrounding wilderness?
I condemn them to execution by frost severe:
theyll give up their lives, no pardons allowed!
Should even one of this odious tribe be spared,
the evil that escapes will come back again.

Fanghuis Candle Moth, also written in the fifth month of Yuanfeng 3

(1080), 41 is different from his poem on mosquitoes insofar as it finds an obvious
moral: Preserving life depends on having no desires. The poem
ends with the cicada as a counter-example to the moth incinerated by the flame
that attracts it so strongly: Imbibing the breeze, it just takes care
of itself. The cicadas significance here is much easier to grasp than it is in Mei
Yaochens 1034 Swarming Mosquitoes, and one wonders whether Fanghui meant to
improve on Mei. More suggestive is the fact that Meng Jiaos poem on mosquitoes is also followed in his collection by one on candle moths. Since the individual who put together the first edition of Mengs poetry, Song Minqiu
(101979), died the year before Fanghui wrote his poems, we can assume that this
edition was circulating in 1080; and since Songs arrangement was preserved in
subsequent and modern editions, we know that the sequence we see today is the
same as what Fanghui would have seen. The fact that he wrote on the same topics in
the same month and in the same order suggests that he was reading Mengs poems on
objects at the time. 42 Fanghui must have felt inspired or challenged to do his

41

Poem 049. 2.12512; 2.4b

That Song Minqius edition is the ancestor of all later editions of Meng Jiaos poems is asserted by Han Quanxin in the preface to Meng Jiao ji jiaozhu, 23. The mosquito and moth poems are
on p. 367 in that edition and 12:380.4260 in QTS.
42

30

CHAPTER ONE

own works in that subgenre.

When we read in He Zhus poem that the moth takes upon itself getting burned and recall that in Cursing Mosquitoes, it is Fanghui and his family who
take on ourselves the fumes of herbs burned to repel the insects, we might be
curious whether the poet intended or spied the irony in the identical choice of
words. Perhaps the idea that one is often ones own worst enemy was simply in
the air at the time. (Su Shi had arrived in Huangzhou two months earlier to begin
an exile caused in part by his inability to keep silent about the unintended consequences of the New Policies.) The following poem, which I find somewhat
peculiar, could be voicing the same theme. It is titled Lament for Boiled
Chickens. 43
In the Seventh Month of Gengshen (1080), a traveler passed by Fuyang. As his way
drew close, there were people watching a cook kill three chickens. One male had
been tied, but he crowed without stop. And so [the traveler] sighed and said, The
bird is about to die, [yet] it recognizes the time and cries out; how can I go about
silent and seek acceptance in this world? And so he ranted and raved but suddenly
ran into a trapfall and was nearly unable to escape. I was moved and wrote this
poem:
054

12

16

The cook binds up three chickens;

two hens go first to boil.
One cock placed upon the table
has not given up crowing to tell the hour.
A traveler saw this and lamented:
human feelings are like the feelings of things.
Boldly he announced hed rather die;
why shut the mouth to undeservedly live?
Humbly I listened to this travelers words,
retired to think, and venture to critique:
A chicken is really material for the pot;
taking its life is not a crime.
The man forgets the warning of the snare;
drumming the tongue is the sprouting of disaster.
It were well to think of his own precious body
weighed against the chicken, which is important?

If this is an allegory, arguing against some foolhardy exercise of the freedom of

prattle, or ridiculing someone who gets himself into trouble while trying to stand

43

2.12514; 2.6b.

ANCIENT VERSE

31

up for someone else, it is so topical, so specific in its reference, that we despair of

deciphering it. We might wonder if Fanghui was thinking of someone who endangered himself by protesting Su Shis 1079 arrest and threatened execution. 44
Yet Fanghui himself openly expresses his admiration for Su when it is dangerous
to do so, as we shall see. Surely there were other things going on around He Zhu
at either the local or the national level that would lead him to retire to think,
even venture to critique.
It may be that the events happened as described and do not represent other
events allegorically. Indeed, the poem seems to be anti-allegory: it ridicules a man
who sees moral lessons where none exists. He subscribes to the belief that
human feelings are like the feelings of things (line 054-6) and does not understand the difference between men and animals. The poem thus calls into question
the possibility of allegory (despite the poets own readiness to draw a moral lesson
from the moth and the candle two months earlier). I would like to suggest tentatively that Fanghui was not alone in being skeptical of easy parallels between
human feelings and the feelings of things. One could point to a number of
poems by Su Shi that present themselves as allegories but defy neat allegorical
interpretations. Michael Fuller discusses one of these quite thoroughly in his Road
to East Slope. Occasioned by Sus discovery in Huangzhou of a lovely crab apple
tree, the poem suggests a comparison between the exile and the tree but also
maintains the distinction between them. As Fuller points out, The tree is, in the
end, a plant. The crab apple and the gentleman have correlative fates according to
their own kind, but they are fundamentally distinct. 45
An enigmatic long heptametrical poem by Huang Tingjian entitled Elaborations
on the [Er]ya , possibly written about this time, also defies easy allegorical
interpretation. 46 The Er-ya is the most ancient Chinese dictionary and

44 Su Shi himself expressed regret at the suffering others had incurred because of him in letters
to Wang Gong , who was himself on his way into exile, in 1080. He urged Wang to look after
himself and conserve his energy. See Su Shi wenji, 4:52.151216.
45 Fuller, 259. His translation is on pp. 256-57. The poem, probably written in the spring of 1080,
is , SSSJ, 4:20.1036.
46 CSJC, 2243:nei.1.1013; Huang Tingjian quanji, 1:5.103; Kurata Junnosuke, K Zankoku, 4247;
Arai Ken, K Teiken, 5260. The poem is generally dated to 1083 without convincing evidence, but I
find this a reasonable date if we see the poem as a satire on Lu Dians Pi ya (Supplement
to the Erya), in which some of the same animal lore appears. A preface to Lus book says only that it
was prepared in the Yuanfeng period, or 107885, but the Pi ya quotes Wang Anshis Zi shuo ,
presented to the throne in 1080 or 1082 (see below), and shares its methodology of analyzing the
graphic components of characters to discover the etymologies of the words the characters represent
and the moral meanings derivable from them. As far back as 1075, Huang scorned students who
looked for the easy way to get through their studies and blindly applied Wangs approach:
They copy books to explain the graphic components, / smashing meaning to
take apart terms and images. (, line 7-8, CSJC, 2247:wai.2.40; Huang Tiangjian quanji,
2:883.) Thus, while we may tie Huangs poem to Lu Dians Pi ya and the latter to Wangs Zi shuo in
order to date the poem to the early 1080s, the methodology and the controversy it excited had been
around for quite a few years before Fanghuis Chicken poem.

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CHAPTER ONE

contains sections on insects, fish, and birds. Huangs depictions of animals in

Elaborations are usually based on lore scattered throughout Chinese literature with
readily recognizable morals in their original contexts, but there is no consistent
theme running through the poem. There are serious problems of text and interpretation in the last line, too, making the ending anticlimactic. Little wonder that
readers of this poem have come to radically different understandings of its
meaning. David Palumbo-Liu, for example, thinks Huang is telling us that
Things are not simply themselves but allegorical indexes of human behavior. 47
Arai Ken, on the other hand, feels that Huang is identifying with the two score
creatures and that this identification can be associated with an idea advocated by
the philosopher Shao Yong (101177), that one should look at the outside
world free of any interference from the ego, objectively, from the viewpoint of the
objects themselves. If Huang makes apparent allusions to traditional sources, it is
simply because they provide the most succinct characterizations and embody the
coherence or the universal within all things that it was the aim of Shaos method
to uncover. 48 In 1982, no Shsaku proposed a different rationale for a similarly
non-allegorical reading, seeing Elaborations as a parallel to the absorption in objects that a painter tries to achieve so that he can depict their essence. 49
In Fanghuis poem on the chicken, in Su Shis poem on the crab apple, and in
Huangs poem on the forty birds and insects plus a gull the thing-ness of the
objects threatens to complicate their ability to function allegorically, as a sign of
something else. The allegory seems like a natural form in literature all around
the world, and yet poets around 1080 in China appear to implicitly question its
ability to produce meaning. It may be fruitful to relate this questioning, at least
provisionally, to the uneasiness many Song thinkers felt as observations of natural
phenomena became increasingly exact and they became more and more aware of
the natural worlds multiplicity. Zhang Zai (102077) had written that in

Several documents concerning the presentation of Zi shuo are dated to 1080 in Cai Shangxiangs
1804 chronology of Wangs works, Wang Jinggong nianpu kaolue, 21.29899. Because one of these
documents is called Preface to the Xining Explanation of Characters, there must have been at least
one version of the book produced during the Xining reign period, which ended in January 1078 (in
the Western calendar; see James Hargett, Chronology, 33). Mark Chung Kuais Chronological Table,
citing a late thirteenth source, has the Explanation presented in 1082 (128).
47 The Poetics of Appropriation, 254. See also my review of this book, HJAS 55:2 (December 1995),
esp. 57980.
48 It is for this reason that we must read the last line, white gull, more at leisure than myself,
adopting a reading of the word si that is attested in lyrics. (Caveat: this meaning of si appears
always in the context of temporal change, which is not the case in Elaborations). If instead we see
the white gull at leisure like me and thus as an image of the poet, the other creatures would be
allegorized as the opposite, as petty men caught in the web of life; the self-less identification with
them a la Shao Yong would be lost. See Arai Ken, K Zankoku no Enga no shi, published in 1969.
Arais 1963 volume of Huangs poetry offers a different text and interpretation.
49 K Teiken ni okeru mono ni yoru shik shi, 30. no also uses the more at leisure than
me reading of the last line.

ANCIENT VERSE

33

that which the Creation Process accomplishes, there is nothing that resembles
anything else . More as a pious hope than a logical conclusion, Zhang asserts that this very multiplicity proves that everything can be
reduced to yin and yang (or to qi): Thus we know that, although the myriad objects
are indeed numerous, in fact not a single object lacks yin and yang. Thus we know
that the changes in Heaven and Earth entail nothing beyond these two poles
. 50 Much of
Zhangs philosophy is driven by the need to answer in Confucian terms the
questions that Buddhism had raised for Chinese intellectuals, but I would submit
that his insistence on the existence of yin and yang as forces immanent in all
phenomena also provides a way to transcend the bewildering complexity that
exact and frequent measurements of the natural world had revealed in the tenth
and eleventh centuries. Perhaps the most meticulous observer of the world
around him in his time, Shen Gua (103195) wrote, Men only know those
facts that are within the human realm. Outside the human realm, what limit is
there to facts! Should one wish to exhaustively plumb their principles, using petty
worldly intelligence and sentient cognition, would it not be impossible?!
. 51
He Zhus traveler, who tries to use his sentient cognition to draw a parallel
between the behavior of a chicken and human morality, is doing something Shen
Gua would have found impossible, at least at some level. (It is hard to imagine
him giving up analogical reasoning entirely.) Surely He Zhus critique of the
traveler should not be reduced to a mere illustration of the vanity of human desires to impose pattern on natures multiplicity, but perhaps his poem is more
intelligible when we remind ourselves that this multiplicity was a contemporary
issue.

1080: VARIATIONS ON THE POETIC HERITAGE

There is a famous line by Du Fu that describes the swift charge of a soldier:
His body light: a single bird passing. What made the line famous was a
story told by Ouyang Xiu in his Poetry Talks. In the early Sung, before Du Fu
had attracted much attention, an edition of his poetry with many errors and lacunae had come into the possession of a Chen Congyi . The final word in
this line, guo, to pass by, was missing, so Chen and his friends tried to guess what
it should be: swift, drops, descends, and so forth. Naturally, none of them
could come up with the right word, and when they finally checked it in a better

19. Quoted in Oshima Akira, Ch kyo no Taikyo sunawachi ki ron ni tsuite.
Mengxi bitan 20. Quoted in Teraji Jun, Shin Katsu no shizen kenky to sono
haikei.
50
51

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CHAPTER ONE

edition, Chen was deeply moved by the fact that, even in the choice of a single
word, no one could touch Du Fu. 52
In a 1078 heptametrical Ancient Verse, Su Shi alluded to the restoration of Du
Fus poem as a comparison for how hard it had been to restore an old painting to
its original condition. 53 Very early in 1079, Du Fus line came up again: the words
in Du Fus couplet were used to set ten rhymes for the composition of new poems
by Su Shi and his companions. 54 In lines 2526 of his poem, Su adopts the passing
bird comparison to characterize the speed of time:
The springtime of youth is but one dream; / the remaining years, truly a passing
bird. The dream and one passing bird are further conflated in a regulated couplet
written by Su Shi in the fourth month of 1079:
Truly, the affairs of the past have become one passing dream; / for me,
your lofty talk washes away five years of bustle. 55
In the ninth month of 1080, Fanghui offers his own transformation of the Du
Fu expression in line 057-6 of Evening Prospect from the Tower of Handan Commandery.
(Lines 7 and 8 were quoted on p. 24.)
057

The many insects, with evening, hum and stir;

one bird, thoughts-of-return light.
The notes of the late season drive on the departing light;
with a travelers yearnings, I ponder the burdens on my life.

Since Su Shis allusions to Du Fus line come in the two years prior to He Zhus, I
think we are justified in suspecting that the younger poet was aware of what Su
was doing. What is even more interesting is the creativity Fanghui shows in his
own experiment with the quotation. A normal comparison would liken
homeward-bound thought to a light, swift bird, giving us a concrete image for the
intangible. However, Fanghui reverses the tenor and vehicle: he likens the swiftness of
the bird to his flying thoughts.
So far, we have focused on poems from 1080 that respond to prior poetry. Let
us now go back to the fourth month of the year to take note a pair of poems
featuring motifs that are particularly common in Fanghuis lyrics,
Languorous Feelings: Two Poems. 56 No one would mistake these for lyrics, but it is
interesting to see Fanghui extend the range of the Ancient Verse form to approach the mood, motifs, and situations typical of what was by this time a dis-

52 Du's poem is (Du shi xiangzhu, 1:3.238). Ouyang

is quoted on p. 240.
53 , SSSJ, 3:16.829.
54 On the Day of Man [seventh
day of the Year], Ten of Us Who Were Hunting South of the City Used Body light, one bird passing; / halberd swift,
10,000 men shout' to Make Our Rhymes. I Got the word Bird, SSSJ, 3:18.917.
55 , SSSJ, 3:18.942.
56 2.12512; 2.3b.

ANCIENT VERSE

35

tinctly different genre. These poems were written with Adjutant Tian Zhiming
(1059?) who seems to have shared our poets fondness for such motifs. 57
The first poem ends with a reference to Yang Terrace, site of the same Shamanka Mountain legend seen in Hes inscription written in the same month (see p.
23) on a painting of the goddess of that peak.
045

A green window dims in the sunset glow;

On jade well-casing purple mosses turn to springtime.
That splendid one Ive long not seen;
the kingfisher coverlet has lost its sandalwood scent.
With long cloth I wipe the Green Marquisette;
on it lie three years dust.
Ill just pluck Farewell to the Swallows
and send it to tell the clouds over Yang Terrace.

Note
045-5/ Green Marquisette: Literary name for a qin (floor-zither); Sima Xiangru (179117
B.C.E.) owned a zither by this name. See the commentary on the use of the same name in In Imitation
of Four Sorrows, by Zhang Zai (late third cent.), Wen Xuan 30.

The second poem includes a motif seen often in He Zhus lyrics: the writing of
strong emotions on paper, combined with the notion that this does not necessarily result in communication.
046

An autumn wind stirs the red blinds;

flowing dust stains the lovebird marquisette.
I think on the one with whom I once united in joy;
two hearts now ten thousand miles apart.
Ice and frost change even pines and bamboo;
how much more so one like peach or plum!
I would convey a writing of my longing
there is not that much of the Generals paper.

Note
046-8/ The Generals paper is literally the paper of the General of the Right; Wang Xizhi
(30361), who held this title, used an enormous amount of paper for his calligraphy.

57 See, for further evidence, Harmonizing with Office Manager Tians New Swallows,
Poem 239, 6.12559; 6.2b. This poem is dated the third month of 1080; it and the previous poem,
dated the eleventh month of 1079, are two examples of first poems to an individual being heptametrical Regulated Verses, a phenomenon we shall discuss in Chapter Four. Although Tians
office appears to be different from the one given in the headnote to Languorous Feelings, this is the
same person. The previous poem gives Tians cognomen and a headnote to a 1091 poem gives both
the Fuyang period name and cognomen and the new name and cognomen Tian had adopted in the
interim. The 1091 poem (020) is Left in Parting from Tian Zhou, 1.12503; 1.9b. Tian, now in
his early twenties, went on to become a well-regarded administrator. See Chang Bide, Songren zhuanji
ziliao suoyin, 1:457 for further references.

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CHAPTER ONE

The gender of the speakers of these two poems is not clear, as is often the case in
lyrics. The speaker in the first one appears to be a man, since he sends his song to
where a goddess dwells. The speaker in the second poem may be a woman, if the
[one who is] like peach and plum is the speaker. In a recent study of the issue of
poetic voice in the lyric, Maija Bell Samei argues persuasively that gender ambiguityor better, layers of different gender identitiesis intrinsic to the early lyric,
partly because lyrics were performed by women, regardless of the gender of the
poetic voice. 58 To the degree that the poetic voice is ambiguous or multiple in the
two poems under discussion here, Fanghui has gone beyond reviving the romantic style of palace poetry and abandoned-woman complaints and has invested
shi with important characteristics of the ci. We should also note that the reference
to autumn in the second poem reminds us that, since these poems were written in
the fourth month, they are not occasional poems with specific reference to events
in the life of the poet; they are set pieces, just as most lyrics would be.
It is significant that the experiments with the lyric mode we have just examined
should be conducted in pentametrical poetry. As we shall note in Chapter Six,
heptametrical Quatrains were often sung on occasions when lyrics could also
serve, and it may have been this fact that encouraged He Zhu to keep a clear
boundary between the two. Pentametrical Ancient Verse, perhaps, was less susceptible to genre confusion, giving the poet the freedom to cross the boundary.

1081: A TRANSITIONAL YEAR

Fanghui left Fuyang early in Yuanfeng 4 (108182), moved about from place to
place in areas being flooded by the Yellow River, and eventually reached the
capital in the tenth month. He leaves only four Ancient Verses from the year. We
shall look briefly at the last one.
Last Night of the Year Lament (written on a date corresponding to 31
January 1082) was to be shown to one of Fanghuis brothers-in-law, Zhou Hang
, who lived on the outskirts of Kaifeng. 59 It is remarkable for being one of

58 Gendered Voice and Poetic Voice. I should like to point out that certain jazz songs and pop
standards are often performed by singers who assume the voice of the opposite gender. Carmen
McRaes rendition of Veronica My Butterfly is an example of a female vocalist speaking a males
words. Fever, with music and words by John Davenport and Eddie Cooley (men), includes
quotations from Romeo (a man) and Pocahontas (a woman), and then states, Now youve
listened to my story, / Here's the point that I have made: / Chicks were born to give you fever, / Be
it Fahrenheit or Centigrade. That could be a male lament or a female challenge. Although Peggy
Lees performance of the song is probably the best known, men (as well as other women) have also
covered it with enough commercial success to be listed on the charts. See http://www.webfitz.
com/lyrics/Lyrics/1958/891958.html, accessed 14 July 2006.
59 2:12517; 2.10b. Zhou Hang was the husband of one of He Zhus sisters and lived in or near
the capital. (See Poem 062, 2.12516; 2.10a.) There is an individual by the same name who was active

ANCIENT VERSE

37

the few poems in the history of Chinese literature that exposes a serious disagreement with the person to whom the poem is addressed. We do not know
what post, if any, Fanghui held at this time, but he begins the poem with complaints about being in the dust of the capital again, ill and poor. He lives, he goes
on to say, in an obscure corner of the capital where no one important enough to
ride a horse or carriage comes to visit:
063
8

12

16

20

24

28

32

In a quiet ward I rent an old room;

carts and horsesno trace of their coming here.
My daily stipend is but a hundred cash;
salted vegetables are not even provided.
Our nighttime couch is covered with dragon gear,
morning cooking perfumed with what goes through horses.
Going out, I would borrow or beg,
but sweating in shame, I cannot put on the face.
Where can I get a small boat
to float my family, riding east on an impulse?
Rivers and mountainsnow Ill hide deeply away
for the rest of my old age as an aged peasant.
Spring seedlings: two acres of sprouts;
autumn harvest: hope for a hundred piculs.
My young sons will be tasked to fetch firewood and water;
my stalwart wife will handle weaving and husking.
Ill walk and sing the Canglang is clear,
recline and delight in the Chaisang breeze.
For the numinous and bright Ill nourish inward contemplation;
no cares and worries can assail my flank.
There was a guest who heard these words
and chided me for being insincere.
This journey to be sure is a bold decision,
but who can hold back the extramundane goose?
How could he know that within the rolls of emolument
ones comings and goings are as in a cage.
In my modest aims I truly have faith;
what I regret is that you do not share them.

as an official already by the time Fanghui was born and who merited a biography in the Song shi, but
because of the difference in generation and the fact that the cognomen Fanghui gives for his
brother-in-law (Wenqing ) is not known to have been used by the more prominent Zhou Hang,
we must conclude that they are not the same individual.

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CHAPTER ONE

Note:
063-1112/ Dragon-gear is a rain blanket for oxen. What passes through horses comes out as
manure (here, dried for fuel).
063-1314/ This is another allusion to the man who pretended to be dining with high society when
he was actually begging by the tombs. See the note to line 042-13, p. 20.
063-1920/ Two qing of land are a conventional size for the retiring officials farm, especially in
Song Dynasty poetry. 60 Zhong, the term translated picul, was an archaic measure long out of use,
but we may understand that Fanghui hopes for a modest but good harvest. Ten thousand zhong is
a conventional term for a very rich stipend.
063-24/ Chaisang (brushwood and mulberry) is the name of Tao Yuanmings native district. This
line thus alludes to him while referring to a literal breeze in the trees.
063-27/ Guest is sometimes a polite term of address. Here, it must refer to Zhou Hang.

Most of the poem is fairly transparent and entertaining, with no difficult allusions.
It is a good outline of the ideal life to which Fanghui professed to aspire. If Zhou
Hang has the temerity to question our poets most cherished dream, it is because
he does not understand how restricted an official feels in his cage.
The terms for the ox blanket and horse manure (lines 063-1112) are one
reason this poem is memorable. Looking these terms up in any suitable dictionary,
one discovers that they are both first used in biographies in the Later Han Documents. We are reminded that it was considered optimal for allusions or unusual
diction brought together in a couplet to be derived from the same textSu Shi
does it oftenand clearly Fanghui has the skill to do this. 61

108285: XUZHOU
1082: TANG ECHOES; SU SHI
In the eighth month of 1082, Fanghui arrived in Xuzhou to take up his
duties as a cash official; he would remain there until early Yuanyou 1 (1086). The
Baofeng Industrial Prefecture was to be established just east of Xuzhou a
few months later, on 21 March 1083. The minting of copper coins would be its
function. 62 Perhaps Fanghui was making preparations for the opening of this
mint in late 1082. However, there was also an Inferior Industrial Prefecture ()
by the same name in Xuzhou, whose establishment we can date only imprecisely

60 In Shi ji, 7:69.226162, Su Qin (d. 317 BCE) is at the height of his powers as chief
minister to six states whom he has brought into alliance against the Qin state. However, he says the
six seals are worthless to him since he wants to simply have his two acres of land against the wall of
Loyang.
61 Ye Mengde ascribed this tenet to Wang Anshi, speaking not so much of allusions as the
borrowing of diction or phrases. See Ye xiansheng shihua, B9ab.
62 See Aoyama Sadao et al., Sdaishi nempy, 148; Changbian 10:334.1a (3440a); Song shi, 7:85.2110;
Hino Kaisabur, Hoku S jidai ni okeru d tetsu sen, 46; and Liu Sen, Bei Song tongqian jian shulue,
10.

ANCIENT VERSE

39

to sometime in the Yuanfeng period, i.e., in 1078 or later. In addition, we know

that Fanghui visited a long-established mint at Liguo Industrial Prefecture
seventy li to the northeast in the twelfth month of Yuanfeng 7 (108485);
perhaps his responsibilities entailed the supervision of more than one mint or the
transportation of the cash they produced. 63
The first Ancient Style Verse preserved from 1082 isnt about Xuzhou. In the
preface to Sent to Du Zhongguan, 64 Fanghui recalls climbing the Clustered Estrade in Handan with Du Yan (?1094?), a friend from at least 1080,
after leaving Fuyang in the second month of the previous year. In that season it
was too chilly to remain on top for long, but when they descended through a
Buddhist shrine, they discovered a broken stele inscribed with a rhapsody by Yan
Jun (673742). Fanghui notes the calligraphers name, Cai Youlin ,
and says that he had Du erect the stele within a wall. Clearly, our poet was enough
of a connoisseur to recognize a rare find. 65
Recapitulating all this in the poem, Fanghui offers another of his reflections on
time: Yan Jun had written a meditation on ancient times at this place, and yet, to
those who now come after him to this place, Yan is himself part of an ancient age,
and they feel mournful (lines 064-1314). Let us note, however, that this time the
stele speaks; it is not mute. Moreover, the locals can now be coaxed into communicating and they provide a bridge to the past. Fanghui and Du Yan had gone
from the shrine to the garden of a Mr. Wang where, according to the preface, they
encountered some entertainers who were about to perform a religious sacrifice (si
shen ). They hired them to perform, and one of the pieces the girls sang was
the Tang Dynasty song Golden Thread (lines 064-2526):
064

Water tune: singing Golden Thread;

Cloud jug: floating jade brew.

63 Liu Sen, in a table of information (p. 6) that Hino had not made use of, indicates that Liguo
Industrial Prefecture was created by the elevation of Diqiu Foundry to the status of
industrial prefecture in 979. From Fanghuis poem Commanding
troops and going to Diqiu, I miss my [Poetry] Society friends in Pengcheng and send them this on the road (Poem 076,
2.12521; 2.17b), we know he took soldiers to the location of that mint in the twelfth month of
Yuanfeng 7, although he makes no mention of the facility itself. (The poem is striking for its Du
Fu-like depiction of the families of the militia bewailing their deployment.) As for the Inferior
Baofeng Industrial Prefecture, its establishment is noted by Liu in a chart on p. 9; his source is Song
shi 13:180.4383, where it is specified that this mints output was iron coins for transport to the
troops in the northwest. Whatever Fanghuis post, we are told in a preface to a 1086 poem set that
he was actually standing in for a Li Yixing , who had another appointment at the same time.
(Poems 086089), 3.12525; 3.4a.
64 Poem 064; 2.12517; 2.11a-12a. It was written in the eighth month for Du Yan. The headnote
tell us that Du was now a ship officer in Nankang , in southern Jiangnan West Circuit.
65 Ouyang Xiu collected many rubbings of inscribed calligraphy by Cai Youlin but emphasized
that they were extremely hard to come by. See his notes on three inscriptions (none is the one
Fanghui saw) in Ouyang Xiu quanji. v. 2, Jigu lu bawei 6.1169.

40

CHAPTER ONE

Golden Thread is a heptametrical song made famous by a Tang woman named Du

Qiu: 66
I beseech you not to cherish your robe of gold threads;
I beseech you to cherish the time when [we] are young.
When the flower opens and can be picked, pick it straightaway;
dont wait until there is no flower and you pick a [bare] branch in vain.

Apparently this song or something like it was still popular in the Northern Song.
Mei Yaochen and Su Shi refer to it three times each; Qin Guan refers to it once.
Moreover, the Water tune, here probably referring to the mode or key, was also
likely to have been extant. Originally, this was a song composed by Emperor Yang
of the Sui when he had caused the Bian Canal to be dug, and it remained popular
for the next four or five centuries. Liu Chang (101968) had heard it in
Yangzhou, a city made prosperous by the Grand Canal with which the Bian
connected, and he saw it as a survival of Sui culture. 67
Thus, even though he is looking back on the same areas in north China where
history had seemed unrecoverable to him just a few years earlier, Fanghui now
acknowledges several ways in which present artifacts and present performance do
keep the culture of the past alive. There is another link to the past in the conclusion of Fanghuis poem, where he anticipates leading the life of a humble hermit
(lines 064-4142).
064

On another day if by chance you should visit me,

at my rude gate Ill be cutting away the wild grasses.

The conditional structure of the penultimate line and the diction of the last line
strongly recall the conclusion of a pentametrical Ancient Verse by Cen Shen
(716770): . If [you] visit Zhang Zhongwei / [his]
rustic gate will be filled with wild grass. If Fanghui has this precedent in mind, he
may be comparing himself (as did Cen) to the Western Han hermit Zhang
Zhongwei, whose dwelling was engulfed in wild grass; but he makes an antithetical revision to show that he is cutting the grass to make it possible for his
friend to visit him! Another connection between the two poems is Fanghuis line
064-30, Where is our former excursion! which recalls Cens
Where is the King of Qin! . Taken together, these coincidences in
structure and phrasing suggest at least that Fanghui had been reading Cen Shen.
The final couplet does not constitute an allusion to Cens allusion to Zhang
Zhongwei in the sense that the allusion to Cen has to be recognized for the line to
be intelligible or understood correctly; nevertheless, one feels the Song poet re-

66 The text of the poem is given in a note to Du Mus poem , Fanchuan shiji zhu,
1.3546; specifically p. 38, the eighth line of the poem itself.
67 For an excellent collocation of the evidence on the Water tune and its permutations and
evolution, see Wang Zhaopeng et al., Shuidiao getou, Introduction, 14.

ANCIENT VERSE

41

vising the Tang precedent, if only half consciously. 68 We shall see many poems in
the Xuzhou period that explicitly refer to Tang models.
Perhaps the most noteworthy new theme in He Zhus poetry during his time in
Xuzhou is Su Shi. During his tenure in Xuzhou in 107779, Su had left behind
poems, paintings, commemorative inscriptions, and the Yellow Tower he had
erected in 1078 to commemorate the successful efforts he and the people of
Xuzhou had made to ward off flood waters in the previous year. In the eighth
month of 1082, Fanghui visited the tower and wrote
Climbing the Yellow Tower and Having Thoughts of Su [of] Meishan. 69 (Meishan is Su Shis
home district in Sichuan; Fanghui consistently refers to Su by this name.) Though
it is only eight lines long, the work is ballad-like in its use of repeated words from
line to line, an effect reinforced by the musical exploitation of similar sound
patterns. Ghwang1-lou1 (Yellow Tower) and Ghwang1tsyou3b (Huangzhou) dont
rhyme, but they have similar endings and repeat the Ghwang1; lou1
(towermore precisely, a storied building) appears again at the beginning of
line 4; and lou3b (flow), the rhyme word in line 4, is repeated as an internal rhyme
in line 5. Line 5 probably should not rhyme, and we can remove the rhyme of
lou3b (stay) at the end of that line by reading the word with a falling tone: louH3b.
Nevertheless, the similarity of the sound remains. The only lines that do not end
with some kind of ~ou sound are lines 3 and 7. Given the fact that the topic is
a lou, the rhyme is not unexpected, but I think Fanghui has consciously made the
sound pattern even more intense than could be expected from rhyme alone.
066

Climb Yellow Tower,

Gaze to Huangzhou;
To Huangzhou you gaze but cannot see.
below the Tower water eastward flows.
Water flows, how can it be stayed?
Floating clouds, even more far reaching.
Wounded at heart, a traveler by the marshes,
haggard in a Chu eupatorium autumn.

Note:
066-8/ Xuzhou was the capital of a Han Dynasty fiefdom called Chu. Therefore, the traveler by the
marshes is probably Fanghui himself in Xuzhou. In the eupatorium and the marshes, however,
there are also faint echoes of the ancient poet and martyr of the ancient state of Chu that stretched
along the Middle Yangzi, Qu Yuan. Su Shi is in exile in that region and could plausibly be compared

68 For Cens poem, see Cen Shen ji bian nian jianzhu, 99. I follow the summary chronology of Cens
life and works on p. 3 in assigning his birth to 716 and I also follow the editor, Liu Kaiyang, in
interpreting Zhang Zhongwei as standing for the poet himself. Marie Chan, Cen Shen, translates, If
I visit Zhang Zhongwei / His rustic gate must be filled with wild grass (30), which reflects the
text as given in the mid-eighth century anthology that included this poem, as she notes (29).
69 2.12518; 2.13a-b.

42

CHAPTER ONE

to Qu Yuan. 70 Lan, sometimes meaning orchid, is most likely to be here Eupatorium fortunei (Fujibakama in Japanese), a plant with medicinal uses and anciently used in its dried form to purify a site.
Eupatorium is sometimes translated thoroughwort, and in fact I have used that term for years;
however, eupatorium is somewhat more euphonious. 71

The form of this poem is extremely unusual: if an Ancient Verse begins with two
three-syllable lines, it is almost always a heptametrical poem or at least includes
lines of seven syllables. The 3|3 rhythm of the opening seems to demand a
flowing heptasyllabic 2|2|3 line after it to release the tension. This poem is
pentametrical, however. The 3|3 / 2|3 / 2|3 / 2|3 rhythm we see here seems
wound up, and perhaps the only way Fanghui gets away with it is through the
repetition of sounds we mentioned above. The only precedent I can find for this
form is a short poem by Han Yuso short that Zeng Guofan (181172) considered it the remnant of a longer, lost composition. Its title is the first line, as in
the Classic of Poetry, many ballads, and Fanghuis poem (if we take everything after
Climbing Yellow Tower as a subtitle): Mount Tiao is Grey. Hans poem in its entirety is,
Mount Tiao is grey; / The River
is yellow. / The waves churn and sweep away from here; / pines and cypress
remain on hill and mount. 72
We shall see evidence from time to time that Fanghui is rereading Han Yu in
Xuzhou. Nevertheless, whether he knew about that short poem by the Tang
master or was somehow inspired by it to try his own experiment is unanswerable.
We can say something about the effect of the experiment, however. The rationale
for the anomalous format might be that its refusal to release the energy of the
opening into heptasyllabic lines reflects the haggard and wounded at heart
mood of the poem. Perhaps it even reflects the tension that must have come with
openly celebrating Su Shi at a time when many were suffering for their association
with him.
Another poem relating to Su Shi was occasioned by a visit to Zhang Tianji
on the last day of the eighth month (24 September 1082):
Going on an Excursion to the Hill Dwelling of Mr. Zhang at Yunlong [Hill]. 73 Zhang Tianji
owned land on Yunlong (Cloud Dragon) Hill just south of Xuzhou. Su had visited

70 A similar phrase, intoning by the marshes , will be used by He Zhu in a pentametrical Regulated Verse in 1085 (still in Xuzhou; see Poem 175). The phrase is derived from a stock
description of Qu Yuan in the Chu ci (The Fisherman and Encountering Troubles in the Nine Laments);
David Hawkes, Songs of the South, 90.2 and 152.10. Clearly, it signifies the sad song of the loyal but
unheeded servant of the state, but, similarly to the present case, in the 1085 poem it is difficult to
know whether the phrase refers to the addressee of the poem, or to the poetor to both.
71 There are many related plants that may be familiar to readers, such as Joe Pye weed, hemp
agrimony, and so forth. Eupatorium fortunei is threatened by the loss of the wetlands in which it grows.
See Okayama University of Science, http://had0.big.ous.ac.jp /~hada/plantsdic/angiospermae/
dicotyledoneae/sympetalae/compositae/fujibakama/fujibakama.htm (accessed 4 February 2006).
72 See Kan Taishi shi sh, 1:38283. Chen Keming argues for accepting 786 as the date of composition, making it a youthful work. See his Han Yu nianpu ji shiwen xinian, 18.
73 Poem 065, 2.12518; 2.12a-13b.

ANCIENT VERSE

43

him several times and had named Zhangs pavilion there the Pavilion for Releasing Cranes. Every morning, Zhang freed two pet cranes to do as they liked
for the day; they always returned in the evening. A Commemorative Essay (ji) for
the Pavilion, dated 1078, is found in Sus works. 74 Fanghui mentions this essay in
the preface to his poem, and also informs us that in a little house called the Su
Studio below the Pavilion Su had left behind two poems and a painting of a large
dead tree (also in His Honors drunken brushwork). Another notice by Su,
thirty-some characters in length and commemorating a visit in the winter of
Yuanfeng 1 (107879), had been engraved on a stone elsewhere in the precincts,
he notes.
065

12

16

20

24

Long ago I heard Hermit Zhang

had divined to build on Cloudy Dragon Hill.
I gazed eastward with far-reaching longing,
then was delighted to get a post in Peng City.
At first conversation we became bosom friends
with a joy that seemed had always been.
Invitations to visit depended on leave to wash;
and now I repair here among the fig leaves and rabbit floss.
Female servants attend the gates and lanes
with blue jackets and paired halcyon curls.
At Sus Studio, the windows brighten;
his cooking fire roasts pepper and Eupatorium.
His precious ink is protected by spirits;
his fine poem like ice, like nephrite, in its chill.
In stately manner eaves troughs enclose it;
scaffolding stones, emerald bamboo stand in ranks.
Eastward we hasten to the Pavilion for Releasing Cranes,
brushing back the grasses as we climb the stairs.
We peer around at a hundred villages,
smoke from cooking fires among the jungle-bush .
Radiant tresses of the sun splash the level land;
two hills suggest a broken bracelet.
A chilly wind shakes the evening leaves
and I regret that my cloak is unlined.
We crane our necks toward the infinite purple empyrean,
floating lightly as if we could touch it.

74

SSWJ, 2:11.36061; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 36568.

44

28

32

36

40

44

CHAPTER ONE

My thoughts stretch back to the Master of Meishan

coming on five horses to wander about.
With merry inspiration he raced his wild brush;
the green cliff was engraved right away.
In the wu year, midwinter month,
snowy outland country: clouds spread all around.
He brushed off a stone, sat, and gave a long whistle;
spring water from Mt. Hui boiled for Phoenix Tablet.
The times were amazed at this superlative assemblage:
across a thousand ages it humbled Kui and An.
In a glent, the tracks they left are stale;
This Man has long been coiled in the mud.
I came a thousand days late;
how can I ascend to these remaining traces?
Encountering these surpassing scenes, I cannot compose,
but look down to trace the dusty road back.
The spirit of the mountain has not engraved a proclamation;
from time to time Ill knock upon your white-cloud gate.

Notes:
065-4/ Peng City: Xuzhou.
065-7/ Leave to wash [ones hair] is a periodic day off from official duties.
065-8/ Fig leaves and rabbit floss commonly represent the environment or even the clothing of
the recluse. 75
065-12/ The cooking fire is literally the fire for bing, bing referring at different times to different
things made with dough. Pepper and Eupatorium are fragrant plants often representing the virtue of
a recluse.
065-16/ My translation assumes a bamboo retaining wall on the rocky slope, but the line could refer
to bamboo supporting the stone on which Su Shis poem is engraved. Langgan designates various
precious stones, mythological trees, and even icicles. My interpretation follows a 1088 poem by Su
Shi that refers to encircling bamboo as green langgan. 76
065-21/ I convert legs of the sun into tresses of the sun to naturalize the metaphor in English.
065-22/ In his Commemorative Essay for the Pavilion for Releasing Cranes, Su Shi had mentioned that the ring of hills around Xuzhou is twenty percent incomplete. When Zhang releases
the cranes in the morning, it is towards the break in the hills to the west.
065-28/ Five horses conventionally represent a prefect, the office of Su Shi (native of Meishan).
065-31/ The wu year is Yuanfeng 1 (1078), cyclical designation wuxu.
065-34/ Mt. Hui, near Wuxi and Lake Tai, was famous for its spring water. Tea expert Lu Yu
(?804) rated it the second best in the world for tea. Dragon Tablet and Phoenix Tablet tea

75 I take my translation from David Hawkes version of Mountain Spirit. The divinity of the
mountain creature described there is seldom carried over into the usage of the phrase in later poetry.
See Songs of the South, 115.
76 , SSSJ, 5:30.1604, line 30. See the translation of Ikkan Chik
(143089) in Shikajikkai, 10:1082.

ANCIENT VERSE

45

were the most expensive teas. (Tea in this period was often compressed into bricks or tablets rather
than kept loose.) 77
065-36/ When Dai Kui (?396) made one of his rare visits to the capital, Xie An (320385) called on
him and discovered in the course of conversation that Dai was much more cultured than he had
thought. Perhaps Zhang, the recluse, is being compared here to Dai and Su Shi to Xie An. 78
065-3738/ In a glent, literally look up, look down: a very short time. This Man is, of course, Su
Shi.
065-43/ This line alludes to a late fifth century satire against men who pretend to be recluses while
awaiting an opportunity at court. That satire begins, The Spirit of Bell Mountain hasten[s] to
engrave this proclamation on the hillside . 79 Fanghui probably means that his desire to withdraw
from the world is genuine.

When Fanghui says that Su Shi is coiled in the mud (line 065-38), he might
mean he languishes in exile, but in fact the phrase is often applied to a dragon, a
great man living in humble obscurity before he bursts upon the world. Perhaps
Fanghui is anticipating Sus comeback.
Granting that a statement within a long poem that the author of the poem
cannot write a poem (line 065-41) is clearly more rhetorical than logical, we might
ask exactly why these surpassing scenes have such an effect on He Zhu. It
reminds us that some Song poets declared that Du Fu had written all the poetry it
was possible to write, that there was no room for further development. In this
case, however, the emphasis is not on Su Shi as a universal poet who has exhausted all possibilities; rather, it is on the disjuncture between the present time
and the recent past. Four years previously, Su Shi was the cultural leader in
Xuzhou; now, a thousand days too late, the things he left behind serve merely
to remind He Zhu of his absence. Dust, which symbolizes cities and politics, or
arduous journeys, is something Fanghui usually tries to escape; it is a measure of
his dejection that in this poem he actually turns his face downward and shuffles
back to the city along a road of the hated stuff.

1083: MORE CELEBRATION OF SU SHI

An important site in Xuzhou for the memory of Su Shi is the Delightful! Pavilion.
The name of the pavilion comes from the Rhymeprose on the Wind , attributed
to Song Yu of the third century B.C.E. Song Yu has the King of Chu exclaim, as a gust of wind comes into the Magnolia Terrace where he is standing,

77 On Mt. Huis water as a standard for excellence, see Su Shis 1080

, SSSJ 4:20.104445. On the fine Phoenix Tablet tea from Fujian, see Ouyang
Xiu quanji 2:Guitian lu, 2.102526. Su Shi mentioned this tea in his 1073 ,
2:11.529., line 27.
78 Shishuo xinyu, 6.34.
79 , Wen xuan 43; I use (with added italics) the translation of James Robert Hightower
as Proclamation on North Mountain from John L. Bishop, ed., Studies in Chinese Literature, 10839.

46

CHAPTER ONE

How delightful, this wind! . 80 According to He Zhu, the pavilion in

Xuzhou was built by an imperial emissary named Li at the end of the Xining
period and given its name by Su Shi. This Li must have been Li Qingchen
, who had come to Xuzhou in 1077 (the last year of the Xining period) as
judicial intendant. 81 An interesting coincidence is that in the sixth month of
Yuanfeng 6 (1083), the very month Fanghui wrote this poem, a pavilion to which
Su Shi would give the same name was being built in Huangzhou. Su wrote a lyric
about it and Su Zhe (10391112) was to write a commemorative essay for it
five months later. 82
Fanghuis Delightful! Pavilion 83 begins by placing Li Qingchen and Su
Shi at the pavilion back in 1077, facing each other as heroic civil (or literary)
figures.
070

12

16

A flying pavilion caps the citywall corner:

empty and vast extend the views in four directions.
Long ago two heroes in wen.
on folding chairs faced each other here.
Mountains, rivers: the weather was lovely;
poetry, brew; the spirit was flourishing.
They suppressed the Marquis of Xuchang;
Yangchun was chagrined at the vulgar singing.
Flag chariots suddenly split south and north;
glory and shame were born of praise and slander.
One treads upon the cloudy thoroughfares;
one fell to rivers and lakes.
I come and can witness the old traces,
lean on the sill, saddened to no effect.
Fearful is this dusty pannier
return! Nourish the unkempt and wild.

80 Wen Xuan, juan 13. For one among several translations, see David Knechtges, Wen Xuan, vol.
3, 713. I follow Knechtges in translating Lan tai as Magnolia Terrace, although, as he notes with
regard to another structure by the same name (vol 1, 190, line 148n), there is no way to know
whether lan refers to the tree or the grass, eupatorium.
81 Su Shi nianpu, 1:16.360, 365. That Kong Fanli does not list Baofeng jian among the administrative units of Xuzhou on p. 360 is not an issue, since this is an entry for 1077 and in that year only
Liguo jian existed in Xuzhou, seventy li to the northeast. It was founded (or reorganized) in 979. (See
Liu Sen, 6.) When citing Fanghuis preface on p. 365, Kong Fanli appears to say that Fanghui would
be prefect of Xuzhou (Zhu zhi Xu) in 1082, but this must refer to Fanghuis holding a chief
administrative post in Xuzhou.
82 The lyric is to Shuidiao getou (); see Xue Ruisheng, Dongpo ci biannian jianzheng, 2.399
402. Su Zhes record is in Luancheng ji (SBCK), 24.251a252a.; Su Zhe ji, 2:24.40910.
83 2.12519; 2.14b15a. is given as in line 4 in the Quan Song shi edition; since neither of our
texts mentions variants for that line, I assume this is simply a misprint.

ANCIENT VERSE

47

Notes:
070-3/ Wen means culture, literature, and civil (as opposed to military), among other things.
070-4/ Folding chairs (literally northern barbarian chairs) are associated with sitting high on a city
wall and having a cultivated conversation. The story from which this association comes will be told
in more detail when we discuss the 1084 poems Taking in the Morning and Evening Views at the Delightful!
Pavilion in Chapter 3. (See Poem 168, line5.)
070-7/ Tang poet Xue Neng (?880) had the title Marquis of Xuchang.
070-8/ Xue Neng had a pavilion called Yangchun a short distance away from the Delightful! Pavilion. Yangchun was also the name of one of a pair of songs in ancient Chu that only a very few
people could sing, because it was so sublimely beautiful. 84
070-15/ Dusty pannier is Fanghuis term for the bureaucracy. 85

An interesting point comes with line 070-9, when Fanghui alludes to the fact that
Li Qingchen rose higher in the bureaucracy while Su found himself in exile. (Li
was to become assistant director of the right in the Department of State Affairs in
the eighth month of 1083). 86 The line must be a military metaphor for factional
splits; flag chariots were used by generals to direct their troops. Since both Li
and Su were to recommend that Fanghui be promoted to the civil bureaucracy
later, it would be hard to argue that our poet intends criticism of Li here, but in
later years relations between Li and Su would be strained. 87
1084: ~ZAI, TANG PREDECESSORS
Fanghui makes more outings to the Delightful! Pavilion in Yuanfeng 7 (108485).
Written One Day After the First Si Upon Climbing Delightful!
Pavilion 88 is an early poem written on such an occasion. This time, there is no
mention of Su Shi or Li Qingchen. The poem begins by saying what a fine festival
the First Si Day is, when the old custom of floating winecups on little channels of

84 Song Yu, Reply to the King of Chu's Question, Wen Xuan 45. Xue Neng wrote a poem on an outing
to Yangchun Pavilion: QTS, 559.6486.
85 Fanghui uses the expression in his lyric to Liuzhou getou (1088). See Sargent,
Experiential Patterns, 161, and Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 421. As Zhong points out (425,
note 18), the expression refers to the dusty world in general and officialdom in particular.
86 Aoyama Sadao et al., Sdaishi nempy, 148.
87 In 1996, two versions of my preliminary research on this topic were published in China (one
with several printing errors, most notably the regular substitution of the date Yuanfeng 1 [1078] for
Yuanfeng 6 [1083]). In that paper, I pointed out that Li Qingchen was fined because of his association with Su Shi and that Li distanced himself from the more rabid enemies of Su; on the other
hand, it is a fact that he also held a series of prestigious and important appointments while Su was in
exile. Moreover, Su Zhe made dogged attacks on Li Qingchen over matters of ritual later in the
century, which must have made relations between Su Shi and Li more difficult. See Su Shi
mingming de liangge Kuaizai Ting and Su Shi mingming de liangge Kuaizai Ting ji qizhongde
yige weimiao wenti. Now, Li Qingchen and Su united to recommend He Zhu for promotion to
civil status, as we shall see. Furthermore, Fanghui produced a lyric to Ye jinmen on the basis of one Li
wrote (in a dream) in 1101; see Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 45659. Thus, I hesitate to say the
present poem expresses a negative view of Li; if it does, perhaps Fanghui made sure the poem stayed
under wraps.
88 2.12520; 2.15b.

48

CHAPTER ONE

water is maintained. (This festival is celebrated on the third day of the third
month.) Unfortunately, Fanghui had business in the office that day and could not
join the fun. The next day is clear, nature looks newly washed, and Fanghui climbs
the high pavilion to console himself in his obscurity and solitude. The last couplet
contains what will prove to be a favorite device of Fanghuis this year, the ~zai
exclamation. Zai is the exclamatory particle that comes out as a ! in my translation of the name of the pavilion, Kuai-zai ting.
072

16

The splendor has been swept from sight;

butterflies dance over level green.
I stand rooted, leaning, exhausting the sunset glow
far reaching! the images in my mind.

Notes:
072-13/ The phrase translated splendor could refer literally to a profusion of flowers, but it is also
used metaphorically. Here it could denote the gathering Fanghui missed or the blossoms of the
season.

You-zai, which is rendered here far reaching!, appears earliest in the first poem
of the Classic of Poetry, where it is the exclamation of a man thinking of a woman as
he tosses and turns at night. You is variously glossed there as longing or long
(i.e., long-lasting or far-reaching). In the context of Fanghuis line, the expression
implies both some nameless discontentment and the vastness the poet encounters
in the sunset view from the Pavilion.
The appearance of You-zai at the head of the last line of the poem recalls the use
of Gui-zai (return!) in exactly the same position of Fanghuis 1083 poem on the
pavilion. Perhaps his inspiration comes from the name of the pavilion itself, but it
seems that Fanghui, with his strong musical sense, was treating ~zai as a motif
that he was inspired to use over and over again in various compositions. Of
course, its exclamatory function is a good device to signal closure.
In the summer, Fanghui moves his ~zai element from the final to the penultimate line, in Reading Li Yis Poems : 89
073
24

28

This Man has not perished from the present,

owing to a few sheets of paper.
Alas, my age has passed its prime;
daily I approach the time of no reputation.
To exert myself! making songs and poems my task;
allow me to begin with Dwelling in the Fields.

Notes:
073-23/ This Man is Li Yi (748-827?).

89

2.12520; 2.16a.

ANCIENT VERSE

49

073-26/ In the Analects, Confucius avers that If [a man] reach the age of forty or fifty and has not
made himself heard of, then indeed he will not be worth being regarded with respect. 90 This line
means that Fanghui is aware of getting closer to forty every day.
073-28/ I suspect that Dwelling in the Fields is also a reference to age, through allusion to Tao
Yuanmings Returning to Dwell in the Fields. The first of four poems under that title contains a line that
one Southern Sung scholar seems to have understood as meaning Once I got out of the dusty net
of public service I was thirty years old. 91 If Fanghui, who was just over thirty, read Tao Yuanmings
famous poem the same way, this line could mean, Let me start from now.

The exclamatory exert! in line 073-27 is used by Huang Tingjian about the same
time this year in two poems, once in the penultimate line (as in Fanghuis poem)
and once in the final line. 92 Huang passed through the general area on his way
north to a post at Dezhou in the summer of 1084 but is not known to have
visited Xuzhou. If there were any contact between He Zhu and Huang, it might
have been through the Chen brothers, since Chen Shidao had met Huang on his
way north and his older brother Chen Shizhong was in their native
Xuzhou. It is striking that these are the only poems in which Huang is known to
have used exert! Unfortunately, there is no way to know whether Fanghuis
poem was known to Huang and inspired him to play with the phrase in his own
works.
The phrase does occur twice in poems by Han Yu, always in the penultimate
line. 93 Again, this is suggestive though not conclusive evidence that Fanghui was
reading Han Yu. (Mei Yaochen and Ouyang Xiu also use exert! and like the
handful of other poets who do so, always in pentasyllabic lines.) In the ninth
month, however, Fanghui gives us good evidence that he is reading Han Yu, with
a touch of the characteristic Song contrariness toward great poets of the past.
Han Yus This Day is worth Cherishing begins, This day is worth cherishing; / this
wine is not worth tasting. / I put the wine from me and go talk with you, / sharing
together the light of this one day. Fanghui, at a party held by his friend Kou
Changzhao (?1099), wrote his own poem called This Day is
Worth Cherishing. 94 It begins with a playful reversal of Han Yus lament:
075

This day is worth cherishing;

This goblethow can I refuse it!

90

Legge, 223.
Davis, Tao Yan-ming, 2:38. This reading is based on the text as Fanghui probably knew it;
Davis accepts a later emendation that yields a reading more in line with his chronology of Tao's life.
92 and , Shangu shi zhu 2250:wai.14.32930 and
332. On the date, see Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 15657.
93 (809) and (813), Han Yu quanji jaiozhu, 1:527 and 2:614,
respectively.
94 Poem 75, 2.12521; 2.17a. In 1100, Chen Shidao would be going on outings in Xuzhou with
Kou Guobao , Kou Changzhaos nephew. See Chen Shidao, Houshan shi zhu bu jian, 2:10.363.
As we shall see, He Zhus circle of friends included the older brother of Chen Shidao, Chen
Shizhong. Xuzhou was their native place.
91

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CHAPTER ONE

The poets to whom we find Fanghui alluding in one way or another often have
some connection with where he is located at the time. Han Yus This Day is worth
Cherishing was written as he was on his way to join his family in Xuzhou. We
should expect that poems having to do with a certain place were especially likely
to be encountered by educated visitors to that place, perhaps because of efforts to
preserve and celebrate an illustrious local heritage. Also, texts previously learned
would be more likely to be recalled when one visited a place with which they were
associated.
Han Yu must have been among the predecessor poets discussed and imitated
by the Xuzhou poetry society, too. In the preface to Reading Li Yis Poems, Fanghui
tells us that the members of this poetry society (shishe ) divided up the various
Tang poets and read them, then wrote poems about the poet they had chosen,
using the poets surname to set the rhyme. This is one of the earliest mentions of
poetry societies in Chinain fact it is the earliest known to have called itself a
shishe. (Earlier Song groups of this nature were known as hui associations, usually
of elders, and the names by which they are known do not use the word poetry, though poetry seems to have been an important activity of their gatherings.)
Reading Li Yis Poems is the earliest of fourteen poems associated with the society
that Fanghui preserved. 95

1085: THE IRONIC TRAVELER

Shenzong died in Yuanfeng 8, on the fifth day of the third month (1 April 1085),
and was succeeded by his son Zhao Xu (Zhezong). Because the new emperor was
only ten years old, it was his grandmother, the Xuanren Empress, who actually
took over the reigns of government. She had taken a dim view of the reforms
initiated during her sons nineteen years on the throne and the accession of her
grandson gave her an opportunity to reverse the political trend; during Zhao Xus
minority, she will recall many of the Old Policies partisans to court.
In the fifth, ninth, or perhaps the tenth month, the minting of coins at the
Baofeng mint was terminated, possibly because of a dearth of coal, possibly because the new government considered it too expensive to transport the coins
produced there to the northwest frontier where they were to be used. 96 Fanghui is

95 See Ouyang Guang, Song Yuan shishe yanjiu conggao. The Nan Tang shu (1105) by Ma Ling
mentions a shishe formed by Sun Fang and others in the tenth century (CSJC, 3852:13.93). It is
impossible to tell whether the term was used by Sun or is being applied anachronistically by the
twelfth-century historian.
96 Changbian 10:356.15b (3624a), 359.18b (3651b), and 360.1b2a (3653b54a). The notes to the
text indicate that the tenth month entry in the Veritable Records must be wrong, so it is changed to
read that since the mint has already been abolished, the proper offices are to draw up a list of other unneeded industrial prefectures. The ninth month closing specifies the Inferior Baofeng Industrial

ANCIENT VERSE

51

apparently ill around the middle of the year, and then is sent north and west to
various places in southwestern modern Shandong on an assignment whose exact
nature is unclear to us, though I suspect it had to do with the collection of tax
revenues. Not until 1086 does Fanghui proceed from Xuzhou to Kaifeng, the
capital. The number of poems Fanghui saved from 1085 increases to 31 titles, six
of them Ancient-Style verse.
The following travel poem of the eighth month of 1085 may be compared with
Huang Tiangjians poems of 1082. 97 Both poets are on the road in pursuit of
government business, but where Huang highlights his conflict with powerful local
economic interests, Fanghui is silent on the nature of his mission and very much
wrapped up in his own moods. This poem is titled On
Encountering Rain While Traveling by Night on the Roads of Zou Xian. 98 He appears to be
crossing the mountains eastward, as he points to the eastern part of the ancient
state of Lu as his destination.
080

12

Yesterday autumn reached the equinox:

in every village they ingather paddy and millet.
At midnight, people staying over in the fields
curse together the rain on the deep tank.
Pressing on, this traveler on horseback
is weary of the wet: where will I put up?
At dusk I left the Minor Wall of Zou,
by morning set to dine in Eastern Lu.
Clutching the saddle, I long for rest and sleep,
toppling over, ashamed to be unmartial.
Peering down, I dread the stones by the road
that lie fallen like crouching tigers.
In the distance, I am startled by buckwheat flowers:
white waters flooding the sandbars and holms.
How can I curse my nag?

Prefecture, however, so if the tenth month entry refers to the Baofeng mint itself, the original text
might be correct.
97 See especially Huangs ,
2249:waiji.11.241; Huang Baohua, Huang Tingjian xuanji, 13540. This poem is a powerful statement
of Huang's predicament as a representative of the government. He is the fulcrum of the confrontation between harsh fiscal policies and the recalcitrant locals, rich and poor. The allusiveness of the
poem represents, I think, more than a mere indexing of the vast sea of texts that provided the
vocabulary of discourse for the Sung literatus, and more than a mere expression of the poet's
learnedness. The poem symbolizes Huang's desire to bring all this culture to bear on the current
issues in which he is embroiled as a force that would provide the energy and the values to shape the
functioning of society.
98 3.12523; 3.2a.

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16

20

24

CHAPTER ONE

my parents conclave is in Western Chu.

I think on how I once lay at Mt. Sumen,
arising early in time for midday.
Whod have said that for an official post
Id be on the road, in such a hurry!
Let me return! Ill cherish the evening of my life;
my deepest feelingsto whom can they be told?
I rely on you insects among the grass roots
to help me sing long of my bitter sorrow.

Notes
080-15/ The phrase curse my nag comes from an episode in the biography of Wang Zun (fl.
first century B.C.E.): When Wang came to a dangerous passage on his way to his post in the
southwestern part of the Sichuan Basin, he recalled that a Wang Yang had turned back at this
spot rather than imperil the body he had received from his parents. Cursing his nag forward, he declared,
Wang Yang was a filial son; I, Wang Zun, am a loyal official, and went on to his post. Coincidentally, Wang Zun had once been a Regional Inspector of Xuzhou, during which time he had
essentially stared down a flood as it rose to within a few feet of the top of the dike on which he had
built a shelter in which to stay as a gesture to calm the fears of the populace. 99 The parallel with Su
Shi a thousand years later is noteworthy.
080-17/ Mt. Sumen: in Gongcheng , Weizhou , Hebei East Circuit, where Fanghui grew
up. 100
080-18/ This line uses sarcasm in a way that is common in English but rare in Chinese: rising early
normally connotes devotion to worthy pursuits; for the young Fanghui, getting up by midday is
rising early! In fact, he congratulates himself on being still in time (you ji) for midday. Confucius
said that he was still in time to see historians who would leave a blank in the text rather than
substitute suppositions for facts. (Analects XV.xxv). Su Shi used the phrase four times (twice in
poems before He Zhus poem), 101 always to say he was still in time to meet great men. Two Tang
poets, Zhang Ji (766?830?) and Liu Yuxi (772842), used the phrase to indicate being
still in time for a certain season. 102 Once we understand that the phrase always refers to being
there for a moment that will soon slip away, we can see the full irony of He Zhus line.
080-20/ Such a hurry repeats Zuo Cis taunt to Cao Caos agents. Zuo Ci was an early 3rd
century magician who escaped from his pursuers by fading into a flock of sheep and assuming the
form of a sheep. When Cao Cao saw no one could find Zuo among the sheep, he announced that he
had not really intended to kill him, but had only wanted to test his art. An old ram then stood up like
a man and replied, Why so frantic? But before Caos men could seize him, all the sheep turned
into rams, stood up, and said Why so frantic? 103 When Su Shi uses this same phrase in a poem

99 For the Sichuan episode, see Han shu, 10:76.3229. For the Xuzhou episode, see Han shu,
10:76.3236-37.
100 The mountain is more than a local landmark; it would have been well known to Hes readers
as the place where Ruan Ji (21063) thought he could impress Sun Deng with his whistle. See
Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics, 14952.
101 , SSSJ, 1:6.255; , SSSJ, 2:8.397. Written in 1070 and 1072, respectively.
102 For Zhang Ji it was spring: , QTS, 12:384.4326; for Liu Yuxi it was the end of
spring: , QTS, 11:365.4123.
103 Hou Han shu, 10:82B.2747-48.

ANCIENT VERSE

53

written in 1078 at Xuzhou, it is in the context of the speed with which he has shown signs of age; the
allusion in the phrase adds the connotation of a frantic and futile life. 104 I think Fanghui similarly
means to mock the hectic pace of his life as an official. Another possibility: since his job in Hezhou
is pursuing outlaws among the populace, he is comparing himself to the hapless Cao Cao trying to
seize Zuo Ci among the sheep.

With an urgency parallel to that of the harvesters who stay in the fields overnight
(the grain must be gathered quickly lest it be spoiled by the rain), the lone and
silent traveler must persevere. Appropriately, the poem moves at a rapid pace.
Four enjambed couplets have the subject in the first line and its verb in the second:
lines 080-34; 56; 1112; and 2324. Similarly, in lines 17 and 19 think on and
whod have said govern both their own lines and their respective following lines.
The dusk-to-dawn leap in lines 080-78 creates forward momentum in its own
way.
The penultimate couplet then slows our pace. The two lines are quite independent of each other and each is broken into two parts: Let me return [sentence-final particle]Ill cherish the evening of my life; / my deepest feelings [this
is a preposed object]to whom can they be told? Then, the continuous syntax
of the final couplet restores the dominant pattern of the poem for closure;
moreover, the song of the crickets in the grass returns us to the theme of a
nocturnal journey and even suggests a cathartic transfer of feeling from the poet
to the creatures he hears by the roadside. Although we characterized Fanghui as
wrapped up in his own moods in contrast to Huang Tingjian, the result proves
to be an exquisitely structured experience.
The middle of the poem, lines 080-920, is full of wry humor: the exhausted
poets unmartial failure to stay on his horse is ironic, and the lines in which
rocks become tigers and gleaming white buckwheat flowers turn out to be flood
waters mock the travelers confusion and fear (while impressing us with He Zhus
power to evoke the nocturnal scene.) It may seem odd that the conflict between
serving ones parents and cursing my nag in service to the state (lines 080-1516)
should intervene between these mildly comic lines and the obvious humor in
rising early at midday. We may gather from line 080-16 that He Zhus mother
(he uses the kenning parental inner chamber) had moved to Xuzhou (Western
Chu) so he could support her. 105 Still, it is unusual to refer to ones parents in a
poem. There are other poets before He Zhu who use the allusion to Wang Zun,

104 See , SSSJ, 3:17.867. Fanghui himself uses a truncated version of the
phrase, ju xu, in 1091 in talking about how fast the jujube in the courtyard goes through its seasonal
cycle: see Moved by the Jujube in the Courtyard, Poem 132. A still later use of the phrase by Su (or
Qin Guana version of the poem is found in his works) in connection with the yellow Mandarin
orange may refer to the speed with which that fruit ripens or the urgency with which one tries to eat
as many as one can. See , SSSJ, 8:49.2707.
105 Fanghuis father died when he was a child. See Rare It is to Live to Seventy, Poem
083 (1086), 3.12524; 3.3b.

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CHAPTER ONE

but I am aware of none who does so with the full implication of a conflict between filial piety and dedication to official duty. Perhaps, then, Fanghui simply
meant for us to take his inability to be a loyal official and expose the body he
had received from his parents to risk as another example of his utter lack of
martial ardor. He wants to return alive to his mother.

1086: IN THE CAPITAL

WORD GAMES
The meaning of a word is in its use. Chinese poets were particularly conscious of
the fact that a single character might represent different morphemes or shades of
meaning in different environments, and indeed when a Chinese poet used another
poets rhyme words (which Fanghui did, though he was atypical in that he almost
never kept the poems that resulted) he knew it was preferable to use the same
characters in new contexts and constructions that gave them different meaning.
Thus it is not surprising that Huang Tingjian (and others) sometimes made the
exploitation of polysemanticity the whole point behind a poem. One example is
Huangs With Ancient Intent, A Song of the Eight Sounds
Presented to Zheng Yanneng, which is grouped with his 1086 poems, although it
certainly was written earlier. 106 The eight musical sounds are those produced by
instruments of metal, stone, silk, bamboo, gourd, earth (clay), leather, and wood.
Huang writes eight couplets, each beginning with the word for these materials and
making allusions to earlier texts. However, none of the allusions has to do with
music: this is a formal, linguistic framework based on one set of meanings (eight
materials that can make music) that provides a site from which one may foray into
the lore that radiates from other meanings of the characters that represent the
words in the set. That lore and those meanings do not form a parallel set of
meanings that stands in any allegorical relationship to the original set.
The same principle underlies a pair of poems by He Zhu dated the fourth

106 CSJC, 2250:wai15.353; Huang Tingjian quanji 2:993 (with a different title). The former edition
quotes a postface by Huang (dated 1086) to another poem but explicitly states that the present poem
is arbitrarily assigned to 1086; the latter source quotes the same postface as if it were for the present
poem. Hu Shengs Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 180, makes no effort to sort out the mess. Another
eight sounds poem is given the date 1079 in Huang Tingjian quanji 2:992. Now, we know that in
1078 the Zheng Yanneng mentioned in the title went from Xuzhou to Daming, where Huang was
from 107280. (Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 1:17.389.) 107879 would thus be a plausible date for this
poem. Moreover, it seems to me that the repetitive allegorizing we see in Huangs poem is typical of
this early period. Zhengs name is Jin ; his dates are 10471113, and he is a native of Xuzhou. If
the eight sounds poem were written in 107879, Fanghui could have learned about it when he was
in the Daming area in 1081 or when he was in Xuzhou in 108286 (though Huangs poems must
have circulated widely enough that no special explanation is necessary).

ANCIENT VERSE

55

month of Yuanyou 1 (1086). Fanghui and Du Yan each wrote a pair of Ancient
Verses in which the character qing, representing the words for green, blue,
dark, etc., appears in every line. Fanghuis poems are titled
Harmonizing with Du Zhongguans qing-character Poems: Two Poems. 107 They present
romantic situations that had for the most part already been appropriated by the
lyric as its special province. Here is the first one, with the translations for qing in
italics:
084

A youthful lad in a blue gown

goes out alone from the Bice Gate to roam.
Meeting others, he seldom shows the dark of his eyes;
with frozen smile he gazes to the Blue Bower.
Within the window, a girl with bluish brows
is just then pining over her verdant springtime.
Matters of the heart she entrusts to the blue bird
can the grey piebald tarry a little?

Notes:
084-2/ The Bice Gate was one of the eastern gates of the Tang capital, Changan.
084-3/ This could also mean he seldom encountered others showing him the dark of their eyes. The
notion of displaying ones dark pupils to like-minded people and white eyes to vulgar intruders is a
familiar one, coming from an anecdote about Ruan Ji. 108
084-4/ A green bower is a brothel.
084-5/ Verdant springtime is youth.
084-7/ The blue bird is the messenger of the Queen Mother of the West.

It is important to note that Du Yan had known Huang Tingjian since at least
1083. 109 Huangs word games might have inspired the two younger men to do
their Qing-character poems. While the results do not rival Huangs poems in

107

3.12525; 3.3b.
See Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics, 80.
109 Fanghuis Answering Du Zhongguans Climbing Clustered Estrade,
Which He Sent to Me , 2.12515; 2.8b, dated the ninth month of 1080, is the earliest evidence for
contact between him and Du. Huangs acquaintanceship is attested in four poems,
and , Shangu shizhu, CSJC, 2249:wai.12.280; Huang Tingjian quanji 2:116667.
Huangs poems are traditionally ascribed to 1083. However, the first poem alludes to Huangs giving
up alcohol this year, and we know he took such a vow in the third month of 1084 on his way north
to Deping. (Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 147.) Somewhat more ambiguously, the first
poem in the second set says that Du Yan is holding office on the other side of the
River bank. If River refers to the Yangzi, the reference might be to Du Yan being a boat
official in Nankang, down in Jiangnan West Circuit. We know Du was in Nankang in 1082 (see our
note to Poem 064, Sent to Du Zhongguan), but that does not allow us to date Huangs poem with
precision.
In the second poem of the first set, Huang makes an intriguing allusion to He Zhizhang
(659744), regretting that the crazy stranger is absent. In context, this should be a reference to the
addressee of the poem, Du Yan, but it could plausibly refer to He Zhu, their mutual friend and
self-styled heir to He Zhizhangs image.
108

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complexity or allusiveness, the timing of the poems suggests the possibility that
Du and Fanghui transduced the germ of character polysemanticity from their
elder friend to playful poems in a different mode.

IMITATIONS
Late in 1086, Fanghui wrote three imitations of earlier poems, all of the dolorous
sleepless-night type. Two of them are modeled on the works of poets who have
left little or no mark on the pages of literary history. For example:
Imitating A Lone Beater Pounding Clothes, by Dharma Master Huikan of the
Southern Liang. 110 This poem begins naturally enough with the beater and fulling
block with which the new clothes (conventionally assumed to be for an absent
husband or son) have their seams flattened, but is unusual in specifying where the
wood for the beater and the stone for the block come from:
090

The tong beater from Yiyang sounds;

The stone fulling-block from Lianyue is flat.
Waiting for someone to echo the beat,
but lo, the emotion is unbearable.
Blowing her clothes, the breeze a little higher
trailing shadows, the moon slightly brighter
By chance a sleepless traveler
is listening to this innards-breaking sound.

Notes
090-1/ Yiyang, a mountain of uncertain identification, may be associated with wutong trees largely on
the basis of a mention in the Book of Documents. 111
090-2/ Lianyue (Lotus Peak) is the sheer central peak of Mt. Hua.

The opening references to the pedigree of the beater and block are odd in this
context. Song poets show great interest in the provenance of tea, inkstones, and
the like; yet the beater and fulling-stone are not objects to be used by the literati.
There are interesting precedents for listing objects with prestigious epithets, but
these are found in heptametrical poems that comprise a special tradition. One
example, from slightly earlier than Huikan, is an Imitation of The Road is Hard by
Bao Zhao (412?466). 112 Gu Kuang in the eighth century took up the
format with a list of four supernatural gifts in his Song of the Gold Earring and Jade

110

3.12525; 3.4b, written in the tenth month.

Legge 1865, 107; following one interpretation of the name, Legge translates the south of
[mount] Yih.
112 See Wei Jin Nanbei chao wenxue shi cankao ziliao, 2:498.
111

ANCIENT VERSE

57

Pendant . 113 Ouyang Xiu, in 1060, expanded beyond the mere listing
of gifts to a series of complete sentences for each object and further modified the
format by adding two lines praising the qualities of the items. 114 In 1084 and
sometime before 1087, Huang Tingjian and Chao Buzhi (10531110),
respectively, went back to Bao Zhaos model, opening poems with a list of four
gifts made of rare and precious materials. 115 Fanghuis 1086 poem resembles none
of these poems in form and does not pretend to be a poem that accompanies
actual gifts. I cannot rule out the possibility that his use of toponymical epithets is
mock-serious, but such a reading would be difficult to reconcile with the rest of
the poem. Does he take his cue from a lost original by Huikans original? Perhaps,
but our experience with He Zhus other imitations will suggest that Fanghui might
not feel obliged to reproduce such a distinctive hallmark.
This brings us to the larger question is how Fanghui goes about imitating a
poemand why he thinks the results are original or interesting enough to take
their place among his other works. Fortunately, we do have a poem by Huikan
that has a similar theme. While on the surface it is quite unlike what Fanghui wrote,
the relationships between the two works support a model of imitation that we
shall propose below.

Its not that theres no one to help;

the intent is to make the block sing by myself.
Shone on by the moon, I draw my lonely shadow in;
availing of the breeze, I send this far-reaching sound.
Beating paired strands of boiled silk
is like playing on a single string of the zither
Ill have you hear this solitary beater
and know your lady has an unswerving heart. 116

In both poems, the identity of the speaker is unclear in the first six lines (despite
my insertion of pronouns into the translation of Huikans poem). Whether lines
090-16 in Fanghuis poem are what the traveler/poet imagines as he listens to
the sound or whether they (perhaps even the entire poem) are from the point of
view of the woman or an omniscient observer is unclear, as is typical in early lyrics.
The same ambiguity obtains in Huikans poem up until the direct address to you

113

QTS, 265.2945.
, Ou-yang Hsiu quanji, 1:jushi ji.8.58.
115 For Chaos poem, , see Jibei Chao xiansheng Jile ji (SBCK), 10.59a;
Huangs poem is , Shangu shichu, 2243:nei.1.1719. See also Zhang Bingquan, Huang Shangu di
jiaoyou ji zuopin, 85, for a comparison of the two. We do not know when this poem was written, but
it was surely before 1087 (when Xianyu Shen [Zijun] died) and probably after the 1070s, when Chao
joined the circle around Su Shi; see Zhang Bingquan, 83; Peter Bol, Culture and the Way, 202.
116 Ding Fubao, ed., Quan Han Sanguo Jin Nanbeichao shi, 3:1577. Huikan is referred to there as a
Sengzheng (Sangha supervisor), not as a Dharma master.
114

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in line 7; only then can we retroactively ascribe the previous six lines to the female
persona. Noting that the seventh line in both poems is where a second person is
introduced, a person who is potentially the audience for the sound of the
cloth-beater, we begin to awaken to the structural parallels between the two
poems. A perfectly regulated couplet appears in each poem, each containing the
breeze and moon in corresponding positions (Huikans second couplet, an A1 B1
sequence; and Fanghuis third couplet, C2 D2). Then we have that intrguing
introduction of the real or potential auditor at the end of the poems, an auditor
whose point of view is kept ambiguous.
An intriguing possibilityalways with the caveat that we cannot know for sure
that this is the poem Fanghui imitatedis that the woman in He Zhus poem
merges with the woman in the predecessor poem so that the sleepless traveler
overhearsand finds himself addressed bya persona who is five hundred years
old. Such inter-textual relationships would make Fanghuis poem much more
than an imitation as we would ordinarily conceive it.
Let us consider the second imitation, written in the tenth month of 1086. The
model poet is an important figure in Chinese literary history and the model poem
is well known. The poem is after Ruan Ji, to whom Fanghui had begun alluding in
the beginning of the year, and to whom he would allude several more times. 117
While it could be said that it is the sleepless-night theme, rather than the originals
style, that is He Zhus starting point, his title announces that he is imitating a
specific poet: Imitating Infantry Commander Ruans In the
Night I Cannot Sleep: 118
091

The night grows long and dreams do not come,

turning up the lamp, I open that letter from the past.
Clear frost screens off the cloud-hue;
moonlight has come to the perron in the court.
That good time, alas, impossible to repeat,
I am not together with that fair person.
Closing the scroll, I give a long sigh,
gazing toward you at the corner of the citywall.

We note immediately that the profound and somewhat mysterious gloom of the

117 See Poem 263, Left in Parting from Kou Ding, 6.12564; 6.8b (written in Xuzhou); and
also Mooring at Yongcheng Together with Bi Shao. . ., Poem 267. Both allusions use pairs of illustrious
figures of the past as comparisons for contemporary individuals who stand in similar relationships, a
common technique in the Song that has no direct bearing on imitating past poetic models.
118 3.12526; 3.5a; tenth month. The last word in the first line is sleep in the Li Zhiding text
(Li notes dream as a variant). Both phrases, sleep does not come and dreams do not come, are
well-attested. We might expect Fanghui to avoid the former as too close to Ruans original wording,
but in the end both are clichs.

ANCIENT VERSE

59

third century poet has in He Zhus imitation a readily understood cause: separation from a woman. Fair person (jiaren, 091-6) is conventionally gender-specific;
line 091-8 evokes a love poem from the Classic of Poetry (no. 42) wherein a girl is
supposed by the speaker of the poem to be waiting at the corner of the citywall.
Despite this essential difference, we have here an acknowledged appropriation of
the structure of a famous Ruan Ji poemrising in the night, picking up an object
(a musical instrument in the original, a letter here), gazing sadly into the distancefor a private, personal expression.
Two of Ruan Jis lines may have contributed to the second couplet. One is
Grey clouds hide the front court. Qing (grey, dull in color) is similar
in sound to qing (clear) in line 091-3, and both adjectives are followed by words
written with the same precipitation signific: and . The courtyard of Ruans
line also appears in Fanghuis line 091-4. That line might take its reference to the
perron (stairway or stepped terrace) of the courtyard from Ruan Jis line
Swirling clouds shade the hall perron. However, Fanghuis phrase
courtyard perron is quite common; if he had wanted to make his diction more
obviously derivative of Ruans he would have used the rarer hall perron (which
is not found, to my knowledge, in Tang or Song poetry). 119
Let us turn now to an imitation of a Tang poet who is little known today but
was a friend of Han Yu, Meng Jiao, and especially Li Yi: Bao Rong (jinshi
809). Bao Rongs laments over the hardships of the road and the rise and fall of
political powers over the ages seem remarkably familiar to the reader of He Zhus
work. Fanghuis In Imitation of Bao Rongs Cold Night Lament raises
questions, however, about what was being imitated and how.
Bao Rongs Cold Night Song presents itself as the obvious candidate for
He Zhus model. 120 Since titles are not necessarily stable as poems are handed
down, the fact that the title Fanghui cites uses a different word for night and
speaks of song rather than lament does not necessarily invalidate this supposition. Another possibility is that the poem being imitated was ascribed to Bao
Rong then and to another poet nowmultiple ascriptions are common in both
Tang and Song poetry. There is only one title in the Complete Tang Poems that
contains the words cold night (xiao): Singing of a Cold Night, by Wen
Tingyun (81270). This poem more closely resembles Fanghuis poem: it
is pentametrical, it also concerns the plight of a lonely woman (though Wen

119 For the two Ruan Ji lines quoted in this paragraph, see Poems Singing My Feelings,
numbers 27 and 40. In the 1978 Shanghai guji edition of Ruan Ji ji , these are on pp. 99 and
107, respectively. My translation of chu as perron (accent on the first syllable; not a common word,
but very close in meaning) fits the context. Knechtges (Wen Xuan, 1:128, l. 253n) citing mid-Qing
research identifying chu (also written ) as a plank passageway, translates it as vestibule;
elsewhere (1:267, l. 300), he reverts to staircase.
120 Fanghuis imitation is Poem 092, 3.12526; 3.5a; eleventh month, in the capital. Baos poem is
at QTS, 15:486.552526.

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CHAPTER ONE

situates her among the remains of a luxurious party that has no equivalent in He
Zhus more austere poem), and it features wild geese (though Wen uses the word
yan, not hong) and clouds. 121 Perhaps Fanghui thought, correctly or not, that this
poem was by Bao Rong.
Nevertheless, I am unaware of any alternate ascription for Wens poem. We
shall heuristically take Baos Cold Night Song (translated below) as Fanghuis model
and carry out the same kind of analysis we proposed for the Huikan poem. Before
delving into the poems themselves, Id like to acknowledge that this concept of
imitation was suggested to me by an early twentieth century Japanese handbook
for the would-be writer of Chinese-language poetry. The handbook, Saku shi kaitei
(Steps to writing poetry), edited by Tanabe Shha and
Kamimura Baiken , includes a long section titled Z go oyobi z ku
(Making phrases and lines). 122 In this section, the authors counsel the
novice against making up original expressions, advising instead that diction be
sought in actual Chinese texts. They quote examples that Wang Shizhen
(16341711) cited of Tang poets reworking the couplets of Six Dynasties poets
and examples in which Wang himself either took the structure of a couplet from
an earlier writer or developed a quatrain out of the diction of an earlier couplet.
Then we are given two very interesting examples of how a beginner might rework
an earlier poem.
The first is fairly elementary in technique: a pentasyllabic line is expanded into a
heptasyllabic line. The famous quatrain by Meng Haoran,
Dozing in spring, unaware that dawn has
come, / everywhere I hear the crying birds. / All night theres been the sound of
wind and rain; / flowers have fallen-who knows how many? is expanded to

Dozing in spring, unaware that the fifth watch has passed, / I

hearguanguanthe orioles talk in harmony. / I know now last night the wind
and rain were bad; / by the hedge, everywhere, many flowers have fallen. Many
of the changes we observe in the poem could reward analysis, but the fact that the
original is so apparent behind the practice composition makes it less relevant to
our present inquiry. It is the second example that attracts my attention as a parallel
to what Fanghui might have done with Bao Rongs poem.
Here is the original, by a fairly obscure Tang poet named Gao Pian :

121

QTS, 17:582.6751. The poem has sixteen lines as opposed to Fanghuis eight lines.
Sakushi kaitei 13a16b. Harvard Universitys Hollis Catalog shows four works by Baiken; for
one of those, Tanabe is listed as co-editor and in another case, Kamimura is Romanized as Uemura.
None of the works is by the title Sakushi kaitei. My copy (purchased in Japan around 1970) actually
contains several works within the same covers, including a translation of Sikong Tus Ershisi shipin,
and all this is bound together one other work edited by Baiken and Tanabe that has its own cover:
Sakushi mond (Q and A on the writing of poetry). The publisher is Seikysha, as with two
of the Harvard holdings, one of which is dated (1919). The book I own has no date of publication.
122

ANCIENT VERSE

61

Green
trees shade is thick, the summer day is long; / pavilions and terraces, overturned
reflections, enter the pond. / A crystal curtain stirs, a slight breeze rises / one
trellis of roses, and the whole court is fragrant. 123 The practice composition
switches the season to autumn and shortens the lines:
Thickly, thickly, clean dew descends; / rising
early, I feel the chill of autumn. / Pink lotus are stirred by the breeze: / the whole
pond is fragrant beyond its measure. At first glance, this seems to have little in
common with Gao Pians original. Then we begin to notice that each poem ends
with fragrance and that line 3 in both has movement caused by a breeze. Furthermore, the character yi occurs in both fourth lines, but with a clever twist: in
the practice composition it means the whole, while in the same line of Gaos
poem that idea is expressed by another word, man. Yi means a single in Gaos line.
(The point, if I read the line correctly, is that a single trellis of roses is enough to
perfume the entire courtyard.) Next, we might notice that the opening lines of
both poems indicate the season, though the practice composition only implies
the autumn season through the conventional association of dew. That autumn is
explicitly named in the second line may be due to the fact that the word summer
appears in Gaos poem.
Even this preliminary analysis shows that there would be a considerable
amount of intellectual pleasure in the mixture of inspiration and intellect that
would be necessary to do this kind of imitation. I believe Fanghui went through a
similar process with Bao Rongs poem.
Because Bao uses a very unusual rhyme scheme that divides the poem into
units of five, four, and three lines, I shall mark the rhymes:
*

gheing2a
meing3a

syeing3b
dzyeing3b
pat3a

Watchmen in the Nine Boulevards

walk and walk by night;
In the upper palace, a nephrite clepsydra drips,
far away but clear.
A frosty whirlwind rides on darkness,
rises to scour the ground;
vagabond geese confused by snow
circle my pillow with sound.
The faraway persons dream of return
is not realized.
When [I?] stayed home we cherished the night
and our joy blossomed:

123 , QTS, 18:598.6921. Sakushi kaitei reverses the characters for rose; I have followed
QTS. In the practice poem, is misprinted ; I have made the correction to conform with
both the pronunciation indicated in the Japanese gloss (tan tan) and the fact that only is used as
a reduplicative; ever since Ode 94 of the Classic of Poetry, it has been associated with dew.

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CHAPTER ONE

kat4
8

ngwat3a
kan2b
ghan2b

12

ngan2a

Gauzy curtains and painted halls

were deep and glittering;
mid eupatorium smoke we faced the brew
so many guests
and fire from beast[-shaped charcoal] lifted its light
through the second and third months.
Tiny waists and ladies from Chu,
amid the strings and pipes:
White ramie, long sleeves,
songs dreamily lingering
How could they know the suffering and cold
that waste the ruddy face [of youth]?

Since this poem has such a distinctive rhyme scheme, one would expect an imitation to follow suit; but He Zhus poem does not. Even if Fanghui were simply
imitating Baos general style rather than this specific poem, one would think that
he would have written something besides a pentametrical Ancient Verse in eight
lines, which is Baos least favorite formhe leaves only two such poems. In truth,
however, the very fact that Fanghuis poem is formally unlike what Bao Rong
would have written supports our adoption of the concept of imitation used by
Wang Shizhen and Kamimura Baiken insofar as it was based on a change of line
length.
092

A lone lamp shines on sorrowful sleep,

now bright, now out: [she?] knows the night has lasted long.
Glistening moonlight falls on the bed;
soft sighing wind comes through the casement.
How sad is the lovely one
who awakens without her mate!
My heart is entrusted to the southward forging goose
that turns its head constantly by the Cloudy Han.

There are parallels between Fanghuis In Imitation of Bao Rongs Cold Night Lament
and Bao Rongs Cold Night Song despite the differences in form. Both poems
involve a shifting perspective. The first two lines of Baos poem describe the
capital; the next three lines appear to shift to the wintry reality of a person who,
we presume, is far away from the capital and may have been imagining that scene
in the capital; the poem is given over next to memories in the mind of the faraway
person that continue until he blurts out his bitter question, How could they
know the suffering and cold that waste the ruddy face? 124 Fanghuis first six lines

124 Faraway person in Tang poems can mean either the person who is far away from me here
at home, or I, who am far away from home.

ANCIENT VERSE

63

are somewhat more ambiguous. They seem to describe what the man who entrusts his heart to the southward forging goose in line 092-7 imagines his lover is
experiencing on a sleepless night, but it is possible that it is only the third couplet
that pictures the sadness of the lovely one who awakens without her mate; the
lamp, the moonlight, and the wind could all be part of his sleepless night.
In any case, both poems end with the perspective of a man in hardship.
Fanghuis last two lines are from the point of view of a man on the frontierthe
goose to which the speaker entrusts his heart (the bird conventionally carries
letters) is flying south. (It looks back forlornly as it crosses the Milky Way, the
Cloudy Han.) This reminds us of the goose in Baos poem, encircling the pillow
with sound.
There are analogs of the sort we described in the Japanese poetry handbook.
The water clock in Baos poem and the sputtering lamp in He Zhus poem both
tell us that the night has grown long; furthermore, one is heard clearly (ming) while
the other is bright (the same ming; 092-2); the sound of one and the light of the
other are intermittent; and there is an implied perceiver to whom the clepsydras
sound is distinct or who knows the night is long. Lines 3 and 4 in both poems
concern things of the sky and of the bed.
Fanghuis In Imitation of Bao Rongs Cold Night Lament certainly goes beyond
merely turning heptasyllabic lines into pentasyllabic lines. As with Wang Shizhens
expansion of Tang couplets into a whole Quatrain, we might be discovering
something analogous to what Burton Raffel calls imitative translation. The
imitative translator produces a hybrid form that is neither original poetry nor
translation. Practicing a superior form of poetic cannibalism, he writes a new
poem that has a unique sort of value: because it is inspired by an original in another language, it enables him to expand his poetic range in ways that might
otherwise be beyond his natural style. Fanghuis imitations could conceivably be
compared also to interpretive or appropriative translations (such as Ezra Pound
practiced). 125
However, when imitation and original are in the same language, the goal of the
imitation is clearly not to provide access to something the reader of the imitation
cannot read for himself. Even demonstrating what the original poet could have or
should have written (as Pound did with knowledge and genius in his appropriative
translations from many languages) would be either a beginners exercise or a
parody if no significant linguistic barriers were crossed. Song poets did revise
predecessors, but they did so in witty play on particular lines or couplets (as in
075-12, This day is worth cherishing; / this goblethow can I refuse it?; see p.

125 See The Art of Translating Poetry, 11528. Raffel has an intermediate category between interpretive and imitative translation: free translation. However, this category seems to exist to provide a
classification for translators who are practicing imitative translation while pretending fidelity to the
original.

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CHAPTER ONE

49) or on well-known parables (as in Fanghuis observation that a tree useless for
timber can still be cut for firewood; see Poem 041, p. 19). To revise an entire
poem this way would result in a weak derivative work of interest to no one.
Therefore, a poem that calls itself an imitation is one that can stand alone but
acknowledges that it was inspired on some level by an earlier work.

1088: FANGHUIS VERSION OF THE ZHANG LIANG SAGA

In the winter of Yuanyou 2 (108788), Fanghui left the capital for the south to
take up a new post. He hadnt gotten far from the capital before ice on the Bian
Canal halted his progress at Chenliu, where he had time to visit a shrine near his
moorage. Curiously, the shrine was dedicated to the Marquis of Liu, Zhang Liang
(?189 BCE), despite the fact that this revered historical figure was not at all
associated with the place. The poem is worth translating because it gives us an
opportunity to compare poems on the same Zhang Liang by Li Bo and Wang
Anshi. Furthermore, the always daunting task of understanding a composition
whose historical background is obscure to the modern Western reader is made
somewhat easier by the availability in English of excellent supporting materials in
the form of Zhang Liangs Shiji biography and a summary of the important points
in that biography by Ronald Egan, who also gives us a translation of Su Shis 1057
essay on Zhang Liang. 126 In the interest of brevity, I shall ask the reader to refer to
those materials for a more integrated picture of Zhangs life.
He Zhus preface begins by commenting on the title of the poem,
Composed below the temple to the Marquis of Liu: 127

I observe that [in 201 B.C.E.] the Marquis of Liu was enfeoffed in the walled town
of Liu [45 km north of Xuzhou] in the fief of Pei. At present an ancient shrine still
exists there. In the Yixi era [40519] of the Jin Dynasty, the Lord of Song occupied
Peng [Xuzhou] and sent down instructions to repair [the shrine]. 128 Although the

126 See Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty I, 99114, and Word, Image and
Deed in the Life of Su Shi, 1726
127 3.1252728; 3.7a8a.
128 In early 417, Liu Yu (363-422), founder of the (Liu) Song Dynasty but then nominally
serving the Jin, left one of his sons to hold Pengcheng and marched westward. He stopped at the
temple and decreed its repair. (Song shu, 1:2.41.) The decree was composed by Fu Liang
(374426). (Wen xuan 36.) The notice on Fu Liang in Cao and Shen, Zhongguo wenxuejia da cidian, dates
the event to 416, differing from the history and the Wen xuan title note.

ANCIENT VERSE

65

stone carvings in the shrine are smashed and cracked, one can still make them out.
When I had a post in Peng City [108285], I wanted to write a poem but was harried
and had no leisure to do so. In the winter of the dingmao year [1087] I followed the
Luo down [from the capital] eastward and was held up by ice at Chenliu. 129 At the
station there was a particularly holy shrine to a god; the placard said, Temple of the
Marquis of Liu of the Han. It must be that the local people mistakenly thought the
Marquis was enfoeffed at Chenliu. At the time, I was ill and in quite a bit of distress,
and thus I silently made a prayer there. At the end of the year, my sickness had
settled down. I composed this poem and called upon [the shrine] with my official
cap and tabula to intone it loudly before the seat of the god. This was to satisfy my
longstanding intention.

This is a very Confucian attitude toward spiritual phenomena: the existence or

nonexistence of the deity is unimportant as long as one is afforded an opportunity
to express appropriate reverence. For He Zhu, not only did the deity of the shrine
appear to grant him relief from his illness; the spurious shrine also gave him the
chance to write the poem he had not been able to write for the real shrine.
Few modern readers will find the poem intelligible without frequent explanatory comments, so notes are interspersed with the translation rather than being
relegated to the end. The name of the Hn feudal state annexed by the emerging
Qin Dynasty and the name of the Hn Dynasty that followed the Qinand to
whose founding Zhang contributed so muchare pronounced and written differently in Chinese; tone marks are used here to distinguish them.
099

Civil Accomplishment pondered Hn in pain;

liquidated the estate to spy on Qin.
With thousands in gold he recruited stalwart men;
the cudgel broke in the dust of the attending cars.

Notes:
099-1/ Civil Accomplishment is Zhang Liangs posthumous title. The destruction of Hn, which
took place before he was old enough to assume office, robbed him of his opportunity to serve that
state as chief minister, as his father and grandfather had.
099-23/ Zhang liquidated his property to recruit men who could help him kill the emperor of Qin.
099-4/ One assassination attempt with a heavy iron cudgel failed when the hurled instrument of
death struck the wrong carriage.

129 The Bian River was a canal constructed in 605 and connected to the Yellow River some
distance to the west of the Song capital at Kaifeng. In 1079, however, the Bian was joined instead to
the Luo River. This took place on the twenty-first day of the third month, but it must have been just
a preliminary link, for a canal connecting the two and called the Clear Bian was completed only on
the seventeenth of the sixth month (Sdaishi nempy, 143). The purpose of the project was to reduce
the effect of the Yellow Rivers seasonal fluctuations on the Bians flow, and indeed a lengthening of
the shipping season was achieved. See Aoyama Sadao, T -S jidai no kts to chishi chizu no kenky, 241
and 255n. Presumably, silting of the canal was also reduced. In any case, our poets reference to the
Bian as the Luo was not unusual after 1079. For example, Su Shi speaks of Sizhou, where the Bian
meets the Huai River, as the tail of the Pure Luo in the third line of (1088),
SSSJ, 5:30.1591.

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CHAPTER ONE

He left for the east, changing his name and surname;

floated and roamed on the shores of the Huai and Si.
Enduring an insult, he presented the shoe thrown away,
and obtained a bookfrom what old man?

Notes:
099-56/ Zhang Liang hid east of Xuzhou after the iron cudgel missed its mark.
099-78/ This is the pivotal episode in Zhangs life, according to Su Shis essay. The stranger (what
old man?) had thrown his shoe down from a bridge and curtly ordered Zhang to fetch it, which he
did, kneeling down to put the shoe back on the old mans foot. After Zhang had thus proven his
ability to forbear, to put up with petty insults and concentrate on achieving major goals, the old
stranger gave him a supposedly ancient text titled The Grand Dukes Art of War and told him they
would meet again thirteen years later, only then the stranger would be in the form of a yellow stone.
(The yellow stone will appear in the last line of Fanghuis poem.) Su Shis point is that it was nothing
about The Grand Dukes Art of War that led to Zhangs subsequent success; rather, it was his newfound ability to endure and reflect calmly on the situation and all its implications.

12

For ten years, a conjunction of wind and clouds;

the Red Emperor he aided in weaving the fabric of government.
At Hongmen, calamity began to take shape,
but with a single word he settled the quarrel.

Notes:
099-9/ Wind and clouds refers to perfect accord between ruler and minister. The phrase comes
ultimately from the Classic of Changes. 130
099-10/ The Red Emperor is Liu Bang, founder of the Hn Dynasty. Weaving the fabric of
government also comes from the Classic of Changes. 131
099/1112/ Hongmen was the site of a banquet at which the lieutenants of Xiang Yu, who saw in
Liu Bang a threat to their enterprise to snatch the spoils of the fallen Qin empire, attempted to
persuade their leader to kill his rival and then tried to do it themselves when Xiang Yu hesitated.
While Liu Bang and the rest of his party slipped away, Zhang Liang remained behind and presented
the gifts Liu had brought; he hardly settled the quarrel, but he did buy precious time for Liu. 132

16

Once Ying and Peng joined in alliance;

Xiang of Chu led an isolated army.
Grand it was! The chat over borrowed chopsticks:
the idiot Ritualist said no more.

130 The phrase is in a Commentary on the Words of the Text under the hexagram Qian: Clouds
follow the dragon; wind follows the tiger. The sage bestirs himself, and all creatures look to him.
(Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes, 137.) The connection with rulers and ministers is not
readily apparent, but this sense of the phrase wind and clouds was well established long before He
Zhus time. Su Shi used the phrase earlier in 1087 in , SSSJ, 5:28.1500; however, it is
common enough that there is no reason to think Fanghui must have taken his inspiration from Su.
131 The Commentary on the Images for the third hexagram, Zhun (Birth Throes), Lynn, 153. Su
Shi had used this phrase also, back in 1074 in a poem on Wang Mang (45 B.C.E. 23 C.E.), SSSJ,
2:12.599.
132 The Hongmen banquet story is told in detail in Xiang Yus biography. See Records of the Grand
Historian: Han Dynasty I, 2833.

ANCIENT VERSE

67

Notes:
099-1314/ Ying and Chu were both ancient realms, but in this context Ying refers to a man who
took the place name as his surname. One of the three critical allies of the Hn side, he is usually
known as Qing Bu . 133 Peng refers to Peng Yue , whose army inflicted the ultimate
defeat on Xiang Yus isolated forces. In this flurry of proper nouns, Fanghui has cleverly made
Peng [and Qing Bu of] Ying match Xiang [of] Chu. The grammatical difference is also the
strategic difference: an alliance against an isolated army.
099-1516/ The incident referred to is the origin of the phrase borrowing chopsticks, which down
to the present day means to plan a strategy on someones behalf. Liu Bang was badly advised by an
idiot Confucian to restore the pre-Qin system of independent states as a way of securing peace.
Zhang Liang entered while Liu was eating after this conversation; when Zhang heard of the plan, he
said, Allow me to borrow the chopsticks (diag ) from before to plot (dig ) it. This is usually
interpreted to mean Zhang wanted to borrow the chopsticks with which Liu Bang had just been
using, perhaps to count off the points he was about to make. I suspect that Zhang was making a pun
of some sort and announcing his intention to borrow the plan that had just been proposed and refute
the points one by one, which is exactly what he does. 134

20

He divided his territory to hook two generals,

who came like the clouds attending a dragon.
He dispelled rancor with the seal of being made a marquis,
and made plans to erase the mob of snakes and pigs.
He set the capital amid the storehouse of nature;
declining credit, he gave it to Fengchun.

Notes:
099-1718/ In 202 BCE, Liu Bang advanced to a place called Guling, where he was to have been
joined by Peng Yue (line 099-13) and Han Xin . Xiang Yus forces were pressing him hard. It
was Zhang Liang who pointed out to Liu that neither Peng nor Han had been rewarded with any
territory. When this oversight was corrected, they did indeed come like clouds following a
dragon 135 and Xiang Yu was defeated.
099-19/ This probably refers to Zhang Liangs recommendation that Liu Bang select his least
reliable follower (Yong Chi ) and give him a title and land; this would give assurance to all of his
restive officers that they, too, would be rewarded sooner or later. Fanghui rather awkwardly fits in
the phrase make a marquis from the Classic of Poetry. 136
099-20/ Snakes and pigs represent cruel and avaricious men, the followers who were wondering

133 See the commentary to Qing Bus biography in Takigawa, Shiki kaich ksh, 91.2. When Ying
Bu was young, someone read his physiognomy and predicted that he would be punished and be a
king. Qing means tattoo, and Ying Bu changed his name to Qing after he was tattooed for some
offense as a young adult. Qing and Ying rhymed (then and now, though their vowel sound has
changed), which probably made the new name something of a punning joke.
134 See Chou Fa-kao, entries 6604 and 6687. None of reconstructed pronunciations presented
there makes these exact homophones; in fact Karlgren, 45j, does not even have the final voiced stop
for the archaic form of chopstick that he has for plan (1090m). However: 1) Karlgren 45n, o, and
p open up the possibility of a final voiceless stop; 2) puns do not always involve exact homophones;
and 3) in whatever dialect Zhang Liang spoke the two words could have been closer or identical.
135 This part of the story is found in Xiang Yus biography, Shi ji 1:7.33132. See Watson, 44.
The reference to clouds following a dragon recalls the Classic of Changes reference in line 099-9.
136 Ode no. 300, second and third stanzas; in both cases the phrase is followed by the place of
which the person is to be made a lord

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CHAPTER ONE

what spoils (or betrayals) they could expect from Liu Bang.
099-2122/ The Lord of Fengchun (Liu Jing ) had advocated making Changan the capital of
the future dynasty, rather than Loyang to the east. It took Zhang Liangs persuasion to move Liu
Bang, though he did not take credit for his strategy. The selling point was Changans large and
defendable agricultural hinterlandit was a veritable storehouse created by nature, to use Watsons
wording.

At this point the focus shifts to court intrigues after the Hn Dynasty was more or
less established. The emperor was considering replacing the heir presumptive
with the son of his favorite consort. He was dissuaded only by the admonition of
four elderly and distinguished men who had hitherto remained aloof from the
court and indifferent to the emperors admiration for them. Needless to say,
Zhang Liang was responsible for bringing them to court.

24

The Four Elders fell to my art,

dusted off their caps and gave up reclusion:
In the court to the east, the wings had arrived;
the melody from Chu was bitter and sad in vain.

Notes:
099-25/ The banquet at which the presence of the Four Elders was revealed to Liu Bang was hosted
by the heir presumptive in the quarters of his mother, Empress L. These quarters were called the
court of the east. Liu himself compared the Elders to wings that would lift the heir presumptive
high aloft.
099-26/ Liu sang a song as his favorite consort danced to a melody from Chu.

28

32

Coming out or staying in seclusion, all situations were covered;

having made his lord, he begged for a private life.
Would he have craved a 10,000 household fief?
he was just on a par with Xiao of Cuo.
Huaiyin fell to his ruin in later times
but he was not my kind.

Notes:
099-27/ All situations were covered in line 27 comes from the Changes, where it is applied to the
mathematical operations that form the hexagrams; 137 however, it also applies to capable ministers,
of whom Zhang Liang is certainly one.
099-29/ Xiao He was another meritorious advisor to Liu Bang; he was enfeoffed as Marquis
of Cuo. 138
099-30/ Huaiyin is Han Xin, a native and later marquis of that place. He was one of the two
generals who came to Liu Bangs aid like clouds following a dragon (line 099-17), but later, feeling
he could not depend on the governments good will, he allied with the Xiongnu forces in northeast
China. He was eventually killed by the Hn forces.

Zhang Liang was inclined neither to accepting a fief within the realm of the new

137

Lynn, 62.
Watson, p 93, reads Cuo as Zan, but that is a different place (whose name is written with the
same character!). See Shi ji huizhu kaozheng, 53.5 and Hanyu da cidian, s.v. Cuo.
138

ANCIENT VERSE

69

dynasty like Xiao He nor seeking security beyond its territory, as Han Xin had. His
interest turned to attaining long life and weightlessness:

36

He wished to call on the Master of Red Pine

and roam freely to the ford of the Cloudy Han.
Forced to eat, he manifested his expiration;
his bright numen finally Ascended as Guest.
His stern shrine secures the shaggy margin of the river;
his lingering influence extends to the People.

Notes:
099-35/ It was only at the urging of Empress L after Liu Bangs death that Zhang Liang once again
included grains in his diet. This did not lead immediately to his death, as the line implies; the Shi ji has
him living eight more years.

Lines 099-35 and 36 offer an interesting combination of Buddhist and Daoist

terminology of a sort rarely seen in poetry. Eminent monks manifest their
deathshi ji or shi mie ; in Buddhism, of course, such matters are mere
appearances. 139 To ascend as a guest is to die or to become a Daoist immortal;
this phrase is barely used in Song poetry, and is only somewhat more common in
Tang poetry. In any case, whether in these unusual phrases Fanghui is calling
upon a popular tradition about Zhang Liang or simply going along with Zhangs
own aspirations, the lines prepare for the transformation of Zhang into a deity: his
shrine secures the area and his lingering moral force continues to nourish the
people of the land.
This return to the present brings us to the poet himself. Fanghui begins to
sound a little like Du Fu, lamenting his own ability to affect the tide of history as
Zhang had.
40

44

A travelerage is almost upon me

wanders aimlessly, superfluous in the lower ranks.
Ashamed I have no strategies to fit the times;
my innermost heart is gnarled in vain.
I am not in his class as one who can be taught;
I seek to stretch myself out, though, deeply moved,
Its unlikely that in the countless ages
Yellow Stone alone could be dmonic.

Notes:

139 Neither these two phrases nor Fanghuis expressions appear in Tang poetry or, to my
knowledge, other Song poetry. Even references to how Vimalakrti manifested his illness are rare
(though references to the sage abound in the Northern Song.) Two of Su Shis references to
manifesting illness precede Fanghuis poem on the shrine to Zhang Liang:
(1073) and (1082), SSSJ, 2:10.508 and 4:21.1118.

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CHAPTER ONE

099-44/ When Du Fu was unexpectedly summoned by the emperor, he wrote that he was
Suddenly about to seek to stretch myself out. 140
099-46/Yellow Stone is the old man in line 099-8.

The penultimate couplet could refer to Zhang Liang: He could be taught,

nonpareil, indeed; / deeply moved, he sought to stretch himself right then.
However, since the poet has obviously turned from Zhangs story to his own
situation in line 099-39, I think he is talking about himself, albeit with a brief
reference to Zhang: Of course, Zhang Liang is without peer as someone worthy
to be instructed by Yellow Stone, but I, having been so moved at this shrine, shall
try to move forward (after contracting during my illness?). The last couplet
proclaims that, whatever powers are present at this shrine, they are as numinous/daemonic as Yellow Stone.
This stands in marked contrast to Li Bos poem. 141 Li Bos Zhang Liang (called
Zifang in the first line) is a heroic failure.
*

12

Before Zifang had given a tiger-roar,

he liquidated the estate: no household would he have.
through the lord of Canghai he got a stalwart man
to cudgel Qin at Bolangsha.
Avenging Hn did not succeed;
yet Heaven and Earth were shaken.
Hiding himself, he traveled to Lower Pei,
yet who would say he hadnt been wise and brave?
Ive come up on the brudge,
to yearn for ancient times and honor his heroic air.
I see only the dark green flowing water;
never do I find Sir Yellow Stone.
I heave a sigh that this man should be gone;
forlorn, empty is the Si at Xu.

At the very brudge (the original story and this poem use the local dialect word
for bridge) where Zhang met Sir Yellow Stone, Li Bo does not celebrate that
critical encounter but instead sighs over the valiant spirit of an obscure man who
has not yet found the one who will appreciate his valor. Clearly, he recognizes this
situation as his own. To honor Zhang Liangs heroic air is to partake of that same
quality; to emphasize the absence of Zhang Liang is to imply that only Li Bo has

140 Line 26 of Dus ; see Yoshikawa Kjir, To Ho, 1:8. The core phrase
comes from the Changes: The contraction of the measuring worm is done in order to try to stretch
itself out. Translation from Lynn, Classic of Changes, 81. But see also the note to line 038-10.
141 (746). Zhan Ying, Li Bo quanji jiaozhu huishi jiping, 6:20.318186; no
Jitsunosuke, Ri Haku shika zenkai, 46567.

ANCIENT VERSE

71

the character to imagine his presence.

Fanghuis approach is personal in a different way: he has established a relationship with whatever power resides in the shrine. A second difference is that
Fanghui also celebrates the impact Zhang Liang had on history and the benefits
he still brings to the populace as a deity. Finally, like Du Fu, he achieves stature in
recognizing his own insignificance in a way that Li Bo would never do.
In the late Tang, there was a flourishing of heptametrical quatrains on history,
among them Hu Zengs series On History . Hu took up a type of
historical poem that had been pioneered by Du Mu (803-53) in previous
decades, poems that posed alternative scenarios to historical events. Thus, in his
quatrain on the earthen bridge, Hu Zeng asks how Zhang Liang would have
gotten The Grand Dukes Art of War if he hadnt offered the old man his shoe. Hus
quatrain on Bolangsha, the place where Zhang tried to assassinate the emperor of
Qin, asks the intriguing question of why no one besides Zhang tried to take revenge on behalf of the exterminated feudal houses. His poem on the banquet at
Hongmen speculates that if Xiang Yu had followed his advisors counsel he never
would have met his end being hunted down by Liu Bangs armies. 142 Whether
these types of questions are simply a ninth-century fad, perhaps prompted by an
increased interest in history, or whether there are more personal reasons to
imagine that things could be other than as they are, this is not a mode that we see
in He Zhu. 143
Nor do we see anything like the poem Xie Zhan (383?421) wrote when
Liu Yu decreed the repair of the shrine in 417. 144 Xie uses a highly elevated diction
that draws even more on the pre-Qin classics than does Fanghuis poem; fewer
phrases are taken from the Shi ji biography of Zhang Liang. He also sandwiches
his praise of Zhang between an introductory section emphasizing the cruelty of
the Qin Dynasty and a concluding section (half of the poem, really) on Liu Yus
greatness. Celebrating a critical figure in the founding of the Han Dynasty was
clearly an occasion for anticipating the rise of what we know as the Southern
Courts Song Dynasty. Fanghui has no need for the elevated diction or the flattery
of Xie Zhangs poem.
Closer to He Zhus poem in time are Wang Anshis two heptametrical poems
titled Zhang Liang, one a regulated quatrain and the other an Ancient Style
poem. 145 The quatrain focuses on Zhangs equilibrium:

142

QTS, 10:647.7422, 7428, and 7435.

On this type of poem in Du Mu and other poets, see Yamauchi Haruo, To Boku no eishishi
ni tsuite.
144 The poem is in Wen xuan, 21.
145 Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 32.356 and 4.111, respectively. The poems have been ascribed to
1070. See Li Deshen, Wang Anshi shiwen xinian, 208 and 209.
143

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CHAPTER ONE

The enterprise of Hn could be saved or perish

in an instant;
The Marquis of Liu faced up to it,
ever at his ease.
At Guling: he discussed
territory for Han and Peng;
on the covered walkway: he planned
Yong Chis enfeoffment.

The events behind lines 3 and 4 were covered in Fanghuis poem, although we did
not mention that the conversation about enfoeffing Liu Bangs old enemy Yong
Chi took place on a covered walkway between the palace buildings in Loyang. The
poetic interest in these lines probably lies in two words that are not translated, but
whose effect I have tried to reflect by using colons: shi and fang, both meaning just
then. Wang Anshi seems to be both suggesting the quickness with which Zhang
Liang responded to situations (represented here by the places where they were
dealt with) and the quickness with which we move from one critical moment to
the next in the course of the founding of the Han Dynasty.
Wang Anshis other poem on Zhang Liang is much closer to Fanghuis insofar
as it catalogues salient events in Zhangs life. One difference is that he adopts
more of the perspective of Sima Qian: in his remarks at the end of the biography,
Sima avers that it must have been Heaven who guided Zhang, not some supernatural power from the mysterious old man; and he also mentions his surprise at
discovering Zhangs face appeared quite feminine. The first two couplets are set
off by rhyme.
*

The Marquis of Liu was lovely

just like a lady;
Five generations, they were ministers to Hn
and Hn merged into Qin.
He overturned his household to be a leader,
assembling stalwart men.
There in Bolangsha they
struck at the emperor of Qin.
He got away to Lower Pei,
unknown to the world;
Throughout the country a great dragnet
what could he accomplish?
A document on silk, a single roll:
Heaven gave it to him!
The Yellow Stone at Gucheng
is not my teacher.
At Guling [Liu] took off his saddle,
[but Zhang] just spoke the word.

ANCIENT VERSE

12

73

and they caught Xiang Yu

like a baby.
Never before could the Four White-headed Ones
be summoned to the court;
for me they gave up in a thrice the
asphodel of Mt. Shang.
Loyangs Jia Yi
was a thin talent
with fuss and bustle he just made
Jiang and Guan suspicious.

All of the events in Zhang Liangs life that Wang Anshi mentions are also covered
in He Zhus poem. (Note, too, that both poets use first-person pronouns as if
they were placing themselves in Zhangs position) First we have Qins absorption
of Hn, then Zhangs conversion of his patrimony into liquid assets to finance his
revenge. The attempted assassination at Boliangsha is followed by a life in hiding
until Zhang receives the supposedly magic book. Mt. Gucheng is where Zhang
was to find the Yellow Stone years later. Guling is where Zhang advised Liu Bang,
under siege by Xiang Yu, that hed better grant some territory to Han Xin and
Peng Yue if he expected them to rescue him. Liu did so, and Xiangs final defeat
followed quickly. 146 Finally, the four old mens intervention in the succession
crisis is mentioned.
The last couplet finishes off the poem with a typical Song Dynasty rebuttal of
received texts or traditions. 147 Jia Yi (201169 BCE), a native of Loyang,
amazed the world with his quick intelligence and rose to be an important advisor
to the emperor, just as Zhang Liang had been. However, his proposals to revise
countless details of ritual and government soon after Emperor Wen had come to
the throne met with the opposition of the Marquis of Jiang (Zhou Bo ) and
Guan Ying , among others, and Jia found himself isolated and soon shipped
off to the miasmic south. 148 Jias intelligence was thin without the political skills
to go with it, and this gives Wang Anshi a clever foil for Zhang Liang. Whether he

146 Wang Anshis use of take off the saddle is puzzling. Over a year before the siege at Guling,
when he was surrounded at a place called Xiayi (not so far from Guling), Liu Bang had thrown
his saddle on the ground and squatted on it, wondering to whom he could entrust eastern China
since he was having so much trouble pacifying it. Zhang Liangs advice at that time led to the happy
result referred to in He Zhus lines 099-13 and 14 (Once Ying and Peng joined in alliance,/ Xiang
of Chu led an isolated army). Although Sima Qian observes that this was the critical decision that
led to Liu Bangs triumph, there were many ups and downs before the war was won. I conclude that,
because Peng Yue and Han Xin figure in Zhang Liangs advice at both Xiayi and Guling, Wang
Anshi has conflated the incidents. Adding to the confusion, take off the saddle (a phrase not used
in Sima Qians account of the siege at Xiayi) is associated with a totally different narrative. Several
decades later, Li Guang had his small patrol take off their horses saddles when a much larger
invading army caught them by surprise; as expected, the invaders left them alone, thinking Li Guang
had a defending army nearby waiting in ambush. (Shi ji, 9:109.286869; Watson, 2:119).
147 See my Can Latecomers Get There First, 17782.
148 Shi ji, 8:84.2492; Watson, 1:444-45.

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CHAPTER ONE

means to demonstrate that Zhang possessed a different kind of intelligence or to

say that Jia Yi lacked the support of Heaven is an interesting question that would
require more discussion of Wang than space allows.
In contrast to all the alternative treatments of the Zhang Liang saga we have
reviewed, Fanghuis is more objective, operative, and private. It is exhaustively
objective in retelling the story of Zhang Liang; it is operative insofar as the declamation of the story with so much detail can be explained, I suggest, by Fanghuis
desire to install Zhang Liang in a place that had hitherto carried his name only
spuriously; and it is private because the poet has been touched by a power whose
real identity will always be a mystery.

108889: THE SOUTH

GARDENS AND TEMPLES
After being freed from the ice at Chenliu, Fanghui continued down the Bian and
up the Yangzi, first to Jinling (modern Nanjing) and then to the seat of
Hezhou at Liyang . Liyang is across the Yangzi from Jinling and about
fifty kilometers to the southwest (in Huainan West Circuit). There Fanghui was to
spend three years roaming the region patrolling for bandits and smugglers. 149
His Ancient Style verses in Yuanyou 3 (108889) largely celebrate the temples
and gardens he visited in the south, where he found many beautiful scenes to
describe. One example will be quoted in its entirety; although written in the
second month, before he reached the south, it is of interest because it records
Fanghuis stop at a garden Su Shi had visited twice before: first in 1079 a few days
after Su had left Xuzhou for Huzhou, and again in 1085 as he passed by in the
opposite direction after his Huangzhou exile. In his commemorative essay of
1079, Su Shi had hinted that the Zhang family who owned the garden had strategically placed it on the northern bank of the Bian so that they could mingle with
the important people of the day who would pass by. It certainly is the case that the
garden was popular with several literary figures. 150 Among them was Fanghuis

149 As Border Patrol Supervisor, Fanghui would have been subordinate to local officials, who in
any case knew their territory best. He might have commanded one hundred local soldiers (tubing
), if Southern Song records for two other localities may be taken as indicative. See Sogabe Shizuo,
S dai seikei shi no kenky, 156-57, 165, and 167. Note that the Liyang dianlu compiled by Chen Tinggui
cites a Hezhou zhi to the effect that Fanghui was vice-prefect of Hezhou: 2:12.9a (599). I know of no
corroboration for this.
150 See SSWJ, 2:11.368; SSSJ, 4:25.1323; and Su Shi nianpu, 1:18.432 and 2:24.666. Poems by
other figures include Liu Ban (102389), , QSS, 11:609.722425 (pentametrical Regulated Verse); Liu Zhi (103097), , QSS,
12:683.7981 (heptametrical Regulated Verse); Wang Anli (103495), ,
QSS, 13:746.8688 (heptametrical Regulated Verse); and Huang Shang (10441130),

ANCIENT VERSE

75

friend Kou Changzhao, who, like many other visitors, had left an inscriptionin
his case, three or four poems. Fanghui tells us in his preface that he added his own
poem and sent a copy to Kou. The poem he wrote is titled An
Excursion to Eupatorium Bottoms Garden at Lingbi. 151
100

12

16

20

24

From the Assembled Immortals he supported his parents,

divined to build along a eupatorium esplanade.
Deep-secluded path: 10,000 trunks come together;
pure-limpid pond: 100 acres spread out in front.
Soaring rafters shade the leaning lotus; 152
crowding ridgepoles arch over, perilously poised.
From between the Huai and the sea the pink herbs were dug,
from the Xiao and Xiang halcyon seedlings transplanted.
The pines from Dai are bedecked with mistletoe and usnea;
rocks from the sea are stuck with moss.
wagons and horses put their din far away;
birds and fishes put their suspicions aside.
This ailing traveler is weary of boats and oars;
in search of springtime, he lingers here.
In a long year, the cycle of seasons is slow;
a day ago we already heard thunder.
Thin light has not yet dried the snow;
eastern breezes have just burst the plum buds.
The owner is an old friend from the capital;
with staff and espadrille, he allows me to attend him.
He points out for me a spot in the Gen corner:
they are just now building an autumn moon terrace.
My eyes make out some writing on the wall:
drunken ink inscribes Donglai.
Short lines, unique in their purity;
he was recommended early for his poetic talents.
With care I roll up white ramie

, QSS, 16:942.11069 (heptametrical Regulated Verse). Tao Jinsheng mentions these poems
in his Bei Song Shizu, 81.
151 3.1104.12528; 3.8a. According to Huang Shangs note to his own poem (see previous note),
Eupatorium Bottoms is the name of an odd stone.
152 The lotus are not leaning in the original, but Fanghui uses a rhyming bisyllabic name for the
lotus and I concocted an alliterative phrase to translate ithaving purloined perilously poised from
David Knechtges Wen xuan to translate the rhyming compound in the next line.

76
28

32

36

CHAPTER ONE

and brush away the dust and grime for him.

Would that we might hold hands once again
and tip a cup in the grove.
Wed drink until late and talk of times gone by,
and why would we look back on our bodily forms?
We go on our assignments, ever farther apart
human life is truly full of longing!
Toward sundown I turn my head again,
and sing in drawn-out tones The Return.

Notes:
100-1/ This may be a reference to the father of Zhang Shuo , Fanghuis host, who was an
official in the Academy for Assembling Worthies.
100-2/ Divining [to choose a place] to build [a house] is a conventional term.
100-710/ Exotic plants from all parts of China are found in the garden. Pink Herbs are herbaceous peonies, whose parts were used for medicine. Apparently the plants came from the Huai
River drainage near the sea. The unspecified halcyon seedlings come from the area of modern
Hunan, far to the southwest. 153 Dai is the 1,545-meter Mt. Tai in Shandong. Usnea is a hanging
moss. Mistletoe (mis)translates Ribes ambiguum, an epiphytic shrub that grows in the moss on trees.
100-1112/ This couplet could be translated Wagons and horses: [the garden] makes their din far
away; / fishes and birds: [the garden] makes them forget their wariness [of people]. The topic of a
poem is often grammatically present in a line even when it is not lexically present.
100-15-16/ This year will have a second twelfth month, and the cycle of seasons is late in a year
with an intercalary month. Fanghui must mean, The cycle of seasons is slow in this long year; and yet
we already heard thunder yesterday. 154

153 On the evolution of the term XiaoXiang from adjective-proper noun to two proper nouns,
see Alfreda Murck, Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Cambridge: Harvard
University Asia Center, 2000), 7.
154 For an excellent discussion of intercalary months, see Cohen, Introduction to Research in Chinese
Source Materials, 41415. We can use the vernal equinox as an index for the seasonal cycle; although
Fanghui does not record what day of the second month he visited the garden at Lingbi, it would
have been close to the vernal equinox. The following table shows that the vernal equinox (well use
March 21 in the Gregorian calendar, ignoring slight variations) will be late in a year with an
intercalary month. It is vital to remember that the progress of the seasons is based on the solar year,
so the vernal equinox will move in the lunar calendar and remain more or less the same in the solar
calendar.

Year
Yuanfeng 4
Yuanfeng 5
Yuanfeng 6
Yuanfeng 7
Yuanfeng 8
Yuanyou 1
Yuanyou 2
Yuanyou 3

Intercalary? Yes/No
N
N
Y (extra 6th month)
N
N
Y (extra 2nd month)
N
Y (extra 12th month)

Vernal Equinox in Lunar Calendar

2/9
2/19
3/1
2/13
2/24
Intercalary 2/4
2/13
2/26

Generally, the difference between years with and without intercalary months is at least a week. Now,

ANCIENT VERSE

77

100-19/ I am unaware of any prior friendship between Zhang Shuo and He Zhu, so my translation
of jiu is tentative.
100-21/ Gen, one of the sixty-four hexagrams, represents the direction northeast.
100-24/ Donglai, a region covering most of the Shandong peninsula, was the home district of Kou
Changzhao, whose poems are inscribed on the wall.
100-32/ The term for bodily form used here is not unusual, appearing in the Zhuangzi and many later
works, but it is worth noting in passing that Su Shi uses it only four times in dated poemsall in
108385. In two of these, bodily form is something one leaves behind with the aid of alcohol. 155
100-36/ The last line refers, of course, to Tao Yuanmings composition by that name, hints at the
expected resolution to retire from the world, and provides satisfying closure to the poem.

The unparalleled, absolute purity that Fanghui finds in the calligraphy of Kou
Changzhao foreshadows the purity he will experience in the hills and temples of
the South. In the following month, when he writes Making an Excursion to the
Terrace of Raining Blossoms in Jinling (third month), 156 the word qing
(pure, clear, clean) occurs twice in the last ten lines:
102

12

Master Shengs Dharma Hall remains,

in the pure night a reservoir of bright moon;
Turning around, I make out our excursion at the wall:
blossoms of spring out-dazzle sunny snow.
Long smoke stirs at Rivers cove;
faint clouds moor by the mountains flank.
Continuous masts depart and slowly return;
white birds repeatedly flare and vanish.
river and mountain are truly pure and lovely;
the people and things have long melted away.

Some readers may have noticed semantically parallel lines in these poems, lines in
which words in one line of a couplet correlate with their counterparts in the other
line in terms of parts of speech, function in the sentence, and so forth. Examples
would include the lines translated as Wagons and horses put their din far away; /
birds and fishes put their suspicions aside (100-1112) and Long smoke stirs at
Rivers cove; / faint clouds moor by the mountains flank (102-910). Although
metrically these couplets are unmistakably Ancient, regulated sequences can be

let us arbitrarily say that thunder is always heard first on the vernal equinox. Then thunder would be
heard on the ninth in Yuanfeng 4, the nineteenth in Yuanfeng 5, on the thirteenth in Yuanfeng 7 and
Yuanyou 2, and the twenty-sixth in Yuanyou 3, the year of this poem. Therefore, if Fanghui already
heard thunder at Lingbi, it must have been quite a bit earlier than the twenty-sixth (or whenever it
was that thunder could normally be expected), despite the fact that this is a long year.
155 (1084), and (1085), SSSJ, 4:24.1283 and 5:26.1402.
156 3.12528; 3.9a. We quote only a few of the twenty-six lines. The terrace was the ruins of the
lecture hall of the Liang Dynasty monk Daosheng , who is mentioned in line 102-5. Liu Yuxi
included this place in his , QTS, 11:365.4118.

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CHAPTER ONE

foundlines 100-310 are (A4) B1 (C4) D1 (A4) (B2) (C1) (D4) (A4) D2 (A3)
(B1). Only three of these eight lines are tonally regulated in themselves, but the
fact that the ABCD sequence of line types is followed contributes to the way these
poems evoke calm and lovely scenes. Likewise, insofar as semantic parallelism
provides a way of organizing experience that is natural to anyone trained in a
certain rhetorical and poetic tradition, it is most fitting in these poems. Strict and
consistent tonal parallelism, on the other hand, would be an inappropriately
prominent display of skill and control in a long poem whose circumstances of
composition call for informal grace. Other aspects of this relaxed mode will
emerge in our discussion of the following poem.
This poem was written on the equivalent of 4 August 1088, when Fanghui was
obliged to put up at a temple northeast of Wujiang , which was itself
northeast of Hezhou. There he composed Staying Overnight at
the Huiri Temple at Baoquan Mountain. 157
105

12

16

The sun has gone in; Ive no leisure to rest:

driving my chariot on, I keep going east.
The winding path emerges from smothering density;
loosening my sleeves, I welcome the breeze from afar.
From whence does this breeze arrive?
clear and distinct, a bell from South of the River.
I halt my reins at this aranya:
an empty courtyard, moon straight in the middle.
Flowing fireflies pause in deep bamboo;
white birds nest on green pines.
A flowery lamp brightens the halcyon awning;
jasper blossoms jut from a springtime thicket.
An isolated realm makes this pure night lovely;
not at all like meeting in the dusty world.
A pity I dont have a goblet of brew
to be privileged to enjoy with this person.
Tomorrow we set offsouth and north;
in a floating life, two flying tumbleweeds.

Notes:
105-1318/ In these lines, Fanghui addresses a traveler he met by chance at the temple, as described
in the headnote (not translated).

In this Ancient Verse, Fanghui uses what we might call notional correlation. In

157 3.1252930; 3.10b. The first eight lines are translated by Kako Riichir in
Ganlan 9:62.

ANCIENT VERSE

79

line 105-9, we are given fireflies against a bamboo grove in the night, a simple
image of dots of light against the dark. Line 105-10 uses words that make the same
implied contrast explicit: white and green. Then, the light-against-dark pattern is continued subtly, without color words, in the following couplet, where the
lamp and blossoms are the brightest objects in the scene. One does not feel these
four lines are repetitious, despite the fact that they all have the same grammatical
organization, Adj.NVAdj.N, each with basically the same subjectverbcomplement structure. Our acquiescence in the repeated patternor
better, the fact that our awareness of the pattern is almost subliminalcan be
explained partly by the avoidance of lexical parallelism. Deep and green are in
different semantic categories, as are flowery and jasper, lamp and blossoms, etc. It is also because the verbs seem perfectly chosen to convey the charm
of the scene.
One of these verbs, dou pause, is a fairly common one in poetryit is found
in sixty-one Tang poems, at least forty-three Song poems, and sixty-four lyrics of
the Tang and Song. (This discussion should be read keeping in mind that the
Hanyu da cidian distinguishes eighteen meanings for the character dou, thirteen of
which are illustrated by poetry citations. Our statistics cover more than one word
sailing under the flag of a single character.) Despite the moderate popularity of the
word, some of the poets we cite most often avoid the word altogether. Su Shi and
Huang Tingjian never use it. The only major Northern Song poet who provides a
close precedent for He Zhu is Mei Yaochen. He uses the verb in three pentametrical poems (and one heptametrical Ancient Verse), always as the middle
syllable, the third character in its line; Fanghui is the one poet who uses dou exclusively as the middle syllable in a pentasyllabic line. It appears that Fanghui and
Mei also use the word with a similar meaning. This is one more piece of evidence
that suggests Mei Yaochens influence on our poet in matters of diction and
theme.
Let us turn to Fanghuis actual uses of dou. About a half a year prior to Staying
Overnight in Huiri Temple at Baoquan Mountain, still back in Chenliu, he wrote,
The boatmen, startled by the morning drum, / take in the
hawser and push through (dou) the long grove. 158 One day after leaving the
temple at Baoquan Mt., he wrote, A milky stream
pushes through (dou) green bamboos; / zither and harp, the sound fresh and
cool. 159 On his way back to the capital from Liyang in early 1091, he will write A

158 Living on a Boat and Blocked by Snow in the Eastern Capital Region,
I Think of and Send This to Two or Three Acquaintances and Old Friends, second of three poems, Poem 097,
3.12527; 3.6b.
159 In the morning I cross the East Valley of Yellow Leaf
Hause: Thinking of and sent to kulapati Wang Xiansou of Jinling, Poem 106, 3.12530; 3.11a. The musical
bamboo Fanghui purports to see here is a small kind that is prized for making the reeds of
mouth-organs and is mentioned in the rhapsody on that instrument by Pan Yue (247300).

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CHAPTER ONE

faint moon pauses on (dou) the edge of the eaves. (126-5; see below, p. 87.) And
in 1096, he will say slight chill penetrates (dou) the tiny window.
(See Poem 223.) It is clear that this word named a phenomenon (or two, depending on its meaning) that Fanghui liked to capture in his poetry.
While it is possible that Fanghui was inspired by Mei Yaochen to find ways of
incorporating this word into his own language, we can also point to the Tang poet
Meng Jiao. We noted on p. 29 that Fanghuis poems on creatures followed the
sequence of similar poems in the works of Meng, suggesting that he read this
predecessor with particular detail. In light of that supposition, it seems significant
that both poems in which Meng Jiao uses dou are pentametrical Ancient Verses,
and dou is the third syllable in the line. 160 It would be difficult to argue that
Fanghui spent 108796 consciously working variations on Meng Jiaos use of dou,
but that is not what we are saying. The suggestion is simply that in Meng Jiao or in
Mei Yaochen Fanghui had seen a use of languagea word, in this casethat
stuck in his mind and from time to time emerged as the perfect piece with which
to complete a poem. With a musician, it could be a certain progression of chords;
with a painter, it could be a certain curve or a color; with a poet, it will be a phrase
or a word that some people use and some people dont. The musician, artist, and
poet may not be conscious of where their little motives originated, but the historian and critic can use these details to reconstruct what the process might have
been.
Written Below the Stpa at Sorewaist Hill, dated the tenth month
of Yuanyou 3 (1088), exhibits an interesting progression of modes. Readers familiar with Su Shis earlier fondness for undercutting the names of the very studios for which he has been asked to write a poem will recognize something very
similar in the opening four lines; the spirit of adventure and the impulse to explore
that make Su Shi so appealing to us are present here, too. Fanghui is not out to
create a humorous persona, however; the rest of the poem treats the hill and his
own spiritual needs with more seriousness. 161
107

This hill is not a towering one,

See Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 3:302. The Wang Xiansou mentioned in the title is Wang Zhuo, who will
come up again in our chapter on the Song.
160 See the first of , line 5, and , line 6, Meng Jiao ji jiaozhu, 4.155 and
162. Both poems are ascribed to 793.
161 3.12530; 3.11b. The hill was fifty li northwest of Liyang, according to Fanghuis headnote.
Chen Tingguis Liyang dianlu, 1:4.177, cites Fanghuis headnote as its only source for the existence of
the hill. It also notes that on the north side of Rufang Mountain, which is likewise fifty li northwest
of Liyang (see 3.20b [166]), there is a small hill the locals call Yaotou or Yatou, which it
speculates could be a corruption of Yaoteng, Sorewaist. Perhaps it is Fanghui who has misunderstood the name. In any case, we know Fanghui did go to Rufang Mountain in the tenth month of
1088the same month as this poemfrom his heptametrical Quatrain Climbing Rufang
Mountain (Poem 554, 10.12606; shiyi.17b). Moreover, there is a Sixth Patriarch Pagoda/Stupa on
Rufang Mountain that could be the stupa of our poets title.

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and its name is not carried in maps and tables.

Throwing down my whip, I clamber up at once,
never feeling sore in waist or backbone.
Watchet pines enwrapped in cold sun
mingle their shade with the storied st[pa].
Austere, that master with fulvous visage:
a pigmented mural, colors already ancient.
I coveted five pecks of rice and
bent like a stone chime to lads and infants.
Then I took on the toil of saddle and horse,
tiring the muscles, more grievous than caning and thrashing.
This body is different from metal or stone;
how many hot and cold seasons can it undergo?
Ill mow down floss reeds to make a round hut:
for sitting in peace, this is the place.
To cleanse my mind, daily Ill burn incense and chant;
perhaps I can uproot sufferings yet to come.
I gaze afar to the dust: what manner of men are they?
plodding drudges not worth considering.

Notes:
107-6/ The truncated transcription of stpa Fanghui uses here is rare, though Wang Anshi employed it in two poems before this.
107-9/ Five pecks of rice is borrowed from Tao Yuanming, although the phrase is so common as
to hardly constitute an allusion. This is the official salary for which Tao refused to toady to an
uncultured visiting inspector. 162
107-10/ The bent shape of stone chimes suggests the profile of a person obsequiously inclining the
upper body. The phrase I interpret as lads and [infants suckling] milk seems to be original with He
Zhu. He seems to have felt that some local officials with whom he dealt were arrogant youngsters,
notwithstanding that Fanghui himself is only thirty-seven sui in 1088.

Su Shi would have built a much longer poem on his witty questioning of the name
of the place, but Fanghui moves quickly to a visual description of the mountain
and the stpa, followed by six lines on his toilsome career. Though he does not
make an explicit comparison, surely we are to get the point that the career has
afflicted more punishment on his body than Sorewaist Hill. The last six lines go
a bit beyond the conventional rhetoric one expects from an official who visits a
temple in his spare time. The references to a round hut and sufferings yet to
come are highly unusual and as such enhance the impression that the sentiments
expressed here are anything but perfunctory.

162

Davis, 2:171.

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The last lines dismissal of plodding drudges is incongruous in a Buddhist

setting insofar as Mahayana Buddhism extols the bodhisattva ideal of saving all
beings. Perhaps we can excuse it by citing the necessity of poetic closure. To break
off his vision of a future retreat without giving the impression that he simply ran
out of things to say, the poet looks down from the hill in a final gesture of rejecting the world he has left. In truth, both he and we know that he will have to
give up this poetic fiction and rejoin the plodding drudges in the dusty world.
Gazing at Jinling (modern Nanjing) from across the Yangzi River inspired
more than one poet in Chinese history. When Lu You (11251210) passed
by Sanshan (Three Mountains/Islands) Rock on the eleventh day of the seventh
month in 1170, he would recall that both Xie Tiao (464499) and Li Bo had
written poems on looking back at Jinling from there. 163 Fanghui does his gazing
from Cypress Hill, twenty li northeast of Wujiang. There he writes
In the morning I climbed Cypress Hill and gazed back toward
Jinling; Thinking of, and sent to, Chan Master Quan of Mount Zhong. 164 After indicating
that he was on official business, Fanghui quickly moves into scenic description
and fond recollections of his earlier time in Jinling with the monk to whom he is
sending the poem. I am quite sure that this monk, whom Fanghui calls Chan
Master Quan in the title to his poem, is Faquan (Dharma Fount). Faquan
appears to have delighted in entertaining visiting poets. 165
108

Dawn expedition: mindful of the Kings Affairs;

worn-out mount: a nuisance to curse it often.
Weve climbed to the loftiness of stony crags;
we bade farewell to the closeness of thicket and tangle.
Black oxen are soaked in last nights dew;
white birds shine in the newly risen sun.
On the fresh River, locust skiffs move slowly;
from the verdant bank a stpa emerges.

163 See Lus Ru Shu ji, 2.3334, and Chang and Smythes translation, 7475. Lu states that the
Rock is 50-odd li west of Jinling. Fanghui, in the preface to his poem on Sanshan, says it is 100 li
southwest of the city. Both Lu and Fanghui consider Sanshan an essential part of the view from
Phoenix Estrade in Jinling but note that it is barely visible beyond the sky, in Fanghuis words.
Perhaps it is for that reason that Fanghui overestimates the distance, while Lu You is surprised to
see that it is not so far away. See Sanshan , Poem 119, 4.1a1b; 4.12533 (1088, sixth month).
164 3.12530; 3.11b.
165 Guo Xiangzheng (10531113) presented a poem to Chan Master Quan when he
stayed at Mt. Zhong. (Since Guo was a native of the area in which Fanghui was serving and spent
much of his time there between official posts, it is impossible to date the poem with any precision.)
See Guo xiangzheng ji, 6.120. Su Shi had an exchange of letters, poems, and gatha with Faquan in 1094
on his way to exile in the far south; see SSSJ, 6:37.2031,
, and Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1159. Fanghui reports that Faquan had passed away several months
before he revisited Jinling in 1096. See the headnote to Poem 516, Presented to Monk Yan,
10.12599; Shiyi.7b.

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My thoughts meander back to the outing in Moling:

once I tied my hawser on the Qin-Huai.
I shuffled my shoes to the gate of Baixia,
offered incense in the room of Golden Grain.
that I could hear your gatha in four lines
it was like receiving the law on three-foot slips.
Loss and gain are beyond my ken,
and the marriages will soon be over.
I hoped to pursue Old Pang;
in the twilight of my days I get a lucky chance.
I pledge to move the roots of my citrus tree
and wait as they turn into the orange of the South.

Notes
108-910/ Moling and Qin-Huai. The name Moling was used at a specific time for a specific place in
the Jinling vicinity but is also used as an alternative name for Jinling in general. The Qin-Huai is a
river in the city that was for centuries the site of sumptuous mansions and places for dining and
entertainment.
108-1112/ Baixia and Golden Grain. Baixia, like Moling, is a specific place as well as a poetic term
for Jinling. The room of Golden Grain should be a specific site, to match Qin-Huai in line 10.
Vimalakrti was a Golden Grain Tathgata in a previous incarnation. 166 If the room of a Tathgataa Buddhais a temple, perhaps Fanghui means the one on Mount Zhong where Faquan
lived. If the room of a Vimalakrti is the home of a lay Buddhist, that brings to mind the most
famous such place on Mount Zhong, the home of Wang Anshi, converted into a temple in 1084.
108-13/ In 1094, Faquan will answer Su Shis questions with two gatha; this must have been his
preferred mode of communication with the literati.
108-14/ The law on three-foot slips. In ancient times, laws were supposedly written on three-foot
bamboo or wooden slips; the phrase Fanghui uses is conventional for law or an order. However,
one wonders if he is punning on l, which refers to both laws in the secular sense and the Buddhist
vinaya, the rules that govern the conduct of monks.
108-16/ The marriages of the poets children must be taken care of before he can renounce the
world.
108-17/ Old Pang. In 1087 Su Shi and Huang Tingjian used this appellation to allude to Pang
Degong, a recluse who lived at the end of the Han. 167 Before and after this time, Su Shi also used
Old Pang to refer to Pang Wen , a lay Buddhist in the Tang dynasty. 168 Fanghui probably has
Pang Wen in mind, given the Buddhist context.
108-1920/ Several pre-Qin texts mention the belief that the orange tree, transplanted to the north,
metamorphoses into a different kind of orange, outwardly very similar but with a different taste. Bad

166 Vimalakrti was a wealthy townsman who manifested illness, causing the Buddha to send a
series of disciples and bodhisattvas to inquire after him. His intellect and techniques for leading
beings toward enlightenment are in no way inferior to the Buddha himself. See the translations of
his teachings by Robert Thurman and Burton Watson.
167 Su Shis poem is , SSSJ, 5:28.1479. Huangs is , Huang
Baohua, Huang Tingjian xuanji, 209212.
168 See , SSSJ, 3:19.962 (1079), line 30;
, SSSJ, 5:28.1496 (1087), line 6; and , SSSJ, 6:38.2050 (1094), line 6.

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changes in a persons character that might come with a change of environment were sometimes
compared to this metamorphosis. Fanghui uses the metaphor in reverse to express his intention of
settling in the South and becoming a better person thereby.

There are several points about this poem that might have given He Zhu satisfaction. He describes the journey in constructions that have the solid feel of
parallelism without the fastidious craftsmanship we would expect in Regulated
Verse. Lines 108-5 and 6 are semantically parallel, but not tonally so. Lines 108-7
and 8 are tonally regulated (they are B1 and A1 lines) and parallel, but of course
they are in the reverse of a regulated AB sequence. The order is required by the
rhyme, but if we mentally reverse lines 7 and 8 we realize how much more effective it is, with the slow-moving boats first and the upward thrust of the stpa
second; note that the sequence of subdued and eye-catching images repeats the
order of the dark oxen and brilliant birds in the previous couplet. Lines 108-9 and
11 allude generally to the poets visit to Jinling and lines 10 and 12 to specific
places he visited within the locale. This X Y X1 Y1 structure is another example of
formal structure and dynamic flow in balance.
The rest of the poem conveys the expected admiration for the monk and
yearning for the religious life, while noting that there are still obligations that tie
one to the world. Most cleverly, the last couplet elegantly resolves these conflicts
by reversing the direction in the old belief about transplanting a southern tree to
the north: Fanghui the northerner will now improve himself just by taking up
residence near Jinling and letting the environment (including, by implication,
Faquans influence) work its magic.

TEN HISTORICAL SITES IN LIYANG

In the fifth month of Yuanyou 4 (1089), Fanghui wrote a series of ten poems on
sites in Liyang at the urging of the local magistrate; his title is Ten Songs
on Liyang. 169 In nearly all cases I have seen where the title format <TOPIC> shi yong
(ten poems on <TOPIC>) is chosen, the poems are pentametrical octaves
and the topic is either a place or a conventional theme. The tradition of decades of
pentametrical poems on the sights of a place had a local exemplar of some interest.
Across the Yangzi in Dangtu, , Li Bo had written Ten Songs on
Gushu. Su Shi is said to have debated the authenticity of Lis poems with Guo
Xiangzheng in 1084, a story that might have given the poems extra prominence in
local lore, spurring the Liyang magistrate to do a set and ask He Zhu to join
him. 170 (It appears that it was quite common for people to write poems in sets of

169

Poems 10918, 3.1253032; 3.12a14b.

Su Shi accuses Guo of having written the poems himself; I wonder whether he feigned his
rejection of Li Bos authorship in order to make a joke that alluded to the fact that Guo Xiangzheng
170

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ten and then challenge other poets to respond.) 171

Another set of ten poems is potentially even more relevant. In the same month,
a former chief minister under from the deposed New Policies faction, Cai Que
, was moved from his exile in Anzhou (in modern Hubei) to Xinzhou
in the far south (in modern Guangdong). He would die there in Yuanyou 8
(1093). Cai Que was the victim of the blatant misinterpretation (by an official who
had a personal grudge against him) of five poems in a set of ten Quatrains he had
written on the sights of Anzhou, a misinterpretation that caused the young emperors mother to believe that Cai was maligning her person and her administration. 172 Fanghuis Ten Songs on Liyang belong to a different genre from Cai Ques
poems, insofar as Cais poems are heptametrical Quatrains. 173 Nevertheless, is it
mere coincidence that Fanghui and the magistrate (to whom he seems to have
been quite close) 174 wrote their decade of poems just when Cai Que was being
persecuted for his own decade? Could the existence of these ten poems be early
evidence for Fanghuis emerging sensitivity to standards of truth in public life? It
is plausible that Cai Ques persecution would have upset He Zhu. Two and a half
years earlier, Fanghui had sent off the young Zhao Lingzhi (10611124)
to work under Cai Que at Chenzhou . Presumably, he did not consider Cai
Que a villain then, for he offered no warnings. Moreover, on the eleventh of the
fifth month of 1089, Su Shi himself had urged the empress to pardon Cai Que,
albeit unsuccessfully. 175 We dont know what day of the same month Fanghui
wrote his poems, but he would have been in good company if he saw injustice in
Cais persecution.
We should note that it probably took some time for Fanghui to obtain his
information. He researched Liyang lore in the county office; each of the poems
has an explanatory note that cites the xian pu , which must be equivalent to a
local gazetteer. Fanghui arranged his poems by the type and chronology of the
lore connected with them, beginning his set with semi-legendary events of the

had been pronounced by some to be the reincarnation of Li Bo, owing to his wild poetic style. See
Kong, Su Shi nianpu, 2:23.63435; Chang and Smythe, 7879; and Lu You, Ru Shu ji, 36. Lu You
shares Sus opinion; see Chang and Smythe, 92; Ru Shu ji, 47.
171 All of Mei Yaochens decades, including those designated by the phrase shi ti (ten
topics), are written to harmonize with others.
172 See Xiao Qingwei, Bei Song xin-jiu dang zheng yu wenxue, 5056 and Chegai ting shian pingyi
for a discussion of Cai Ques case. On the fact that women successfully ran the government of
China at various times in the Song Dynasty, see John Chaffee, The Rise and Regency of Empress
Liu.
173 Also, Cai Ques title uses the phrase shi shou (ten poems) in the title instead of shiyong.
Decades whose titles are marked by the phrase shi shou are usually pentametrical octaves, too, but
competing forms appear more often than in shiyong sets. Huang Tingjian wrote nine of these; in the
Tang, Yuan Zhen was the most enthusiastic poet in this form, producing seven sets.
174 See Poem 284, I was Reminiscing with Zhang of Liyang about the Joy
of the Pursuit and So Wrote This (1088), 7.12568; 7.1b.
175 Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:28.86667.

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later Han and ending it with three places linked to Tang poets. The location of the
sites around the county seat was irrelevant. His topics are, in order, 1) Liyang Lake,
which had been a populated district until an emperor flooded it in the first century
CE; 2) Chicken Pannier Mountain, where a woman saved from a flood by a gods
warning put down her chicken basket, which changed to stone; 3) a fort where
Sun Quan had repulsed Cao Caos army in the third century; 4) a wall built to halt
the advance of a southern kingdom in the fourth century; 5) a harbor associated
with a naval assault on the Wu capital in the late third century; 6) a mountain from
which an emperor had viewed his navy in the mid fifth century; 7) a rocky stretch
of the Yangzi where Li Bo had lived as a hermit; 8) a temple where Zhang Ji had
once lived and where his portrait could still be seen; 9) a fort that had been the
same poets villa and where he and Meng Jiao had had a drink together; and 10) a
medicinal hot springs that Liu Yuxi had mentioned.

109193: JINSHAN AND THE CAPITAL

TEASING MI FU AT JINSHAN
Fanghui stayed in Hezhou until his three-year tour of duty ended near the end of
1090, then started toward the capital at a measured pace. We pick up his story in
the second month of the following year (Yuanyou 6, 1091), when he was a hundred-some kilometers downstream at Jinshan. Jinshan was then an island near
Zhenjiang, where the Grand Canal joined the Yangzi from the south. Because of
its location, its height, and the reputation of the temples upon it, the promontory
figured often in the poems and diaries of travelers. 176 Of the three Ancient Verses
Fanghui wrote there, we shall translate a typical one that is slightly atypical insofar
as it involves an extraordinarily important cultural figure: Mi Fu.
Fanghui and his friends invited the great calligrapher to join them at Jinshan. 177

176 Jinshan is now joined to the southern bank of the Yangzi because of silting and/or land
reclamation.
177 The friends, listed with their full names and native places in Poem 124, Excursion to
Jinshan, are Huang Cai , Huang Shu (Cais brother), Chen Yu , and Zhang Siyong
. If we knew more about these people, we might be able to gauge the level of importance Mi Fu
would place on an invitation to join them. Zhang Siyong could well be the person who administered
Yongchun xian sometime between 1111 and 1117, Quzhou during Gaozongs reign,
and Quanzhou also in Gaozongs reign, sometime in 11271131. (See Zhejiang tongzhi,
2:1115.2049b; Fujian tongzhi, 4:93.1833b and 1839a.) He is probably not the person by the same
name from Jianan who passed the jinshi examination in 1134 (Fujian tongzhi, 5:147.2579a), since
Fanghui says his Zhang Siyong is a native of Wuying, and I doubt that an important post such as
Quanzhou would be assigned to someone who had not received his jinshi, even in the chaotic first
four years of the Southern Song. People by the names Huang Cai and Huang Shu appear in some
gazetteers, but they lived much too late to be identified with He Zhus companions, even if in 1091
they were mere boys, as he refers to them in line 126-7.

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Mi Fu had been moving around southern China in minor posts and was now in
the process of adopting Runzhou (as Zhenjiang was then known) as his
home. 178 We cannot know whether Mi Fu intentionally snubbed He Zhu and
company, but his failure to show up is conspicuously commemorated in the title
of Fanghuis poem: Written upon assembling at night at
Jinshan and inviting Mi Yuanzhang, who did not arrive. 179 Lines 126-1114 treat Mis
absence with lighthearted wit.
126

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On a scented isle we pick eupatorium pendants;

in the clear night roost in Precious Precincts.
The evening wind drives flying billows;
stone plinths wave a long gallery.
A faint moon pauses on the edge of the eaves
to augment the light of our lamps and candles.
The Huang boys are world-class talents;
fountains of elegance are Chen and Zhang.
Our wild songs are laced with startling language;
we hold our bellies and shake the halls with laughter.
A pity we dont have the thing in the cup
that might entice the Madman of Chu:
Impulse waning, he turned off halfway here,
wantonly imitating Wang of Shanyin.
Leaving tomorrow, Ill be returning;
across the watchet waves Ill gaze from afar.
What if you fellows from beyond the mundane
recklessly took a post, imposing on the government granary?
Proper is your cool autumn integrity;
come from your white clouds to the clime of the god!

Notes
126-2/ Precious Precincts: refers here to the temples on Jinshan.
126-7/ Huang lads: two of He Zhus companions, the other two being mentioned in line 8. The
term Huang boys recalls a figure of the Later Han, Huang Xiang , who was a poor but bright
child from Jiangxia. In the capital he was called Without peer in all the world, the Huang boy of
Jiangxia. 180

178 On Mis first period in Runzhou, see Peter Charles Sturman, Mi Fu: Style and the Art of Calligraphy in Northern Song China, 9396. Mi Fu was already a noted figure; Su Shi had written a pair of
poems in 1087 to follow his rhymes: , SSSJ, 5:29.1536 and 38. He had
also called on Mi in the sixth month of 1089 on his way to Hangzhou. See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu,
2:28.882
179 126, 4.12535; 4.3b.
180 Hou Han shu 9:80A.2614. In 1087, Su Shi spoke of many talented young people in Shu whose

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126-9/ risky language: poems with difficult rhymes to follow.

126-1112/ The thing in the cup is brew; perhaps the party was dry because it was held in a
temple. The Madman of Chu image, associated with drinking, is particularly apt here because (actively ignoring his Central Asian heritage) Mi Fu fancied himself a man of Chu. 181
126-1314/ In this couplet Fanghui pivots on a common allusion to explain Mi Fus absence. While
he was living in Shanyin (in or near modern Shaoxing, Zhejiang), Wang Huizhi (?388)
decided to go see a friend on a snowy night and traveled all night by boat to the friends gate. Upon
reaching the gate, he turned around and went home, explaining that he had gone on an impulse and,
when the impulse was spent, he simply returned. 182 Fanghui was probably aware that Wang Huizhis
father, Wang Xizhi, was the calligrapher Mi Fu studied most assiduously.
126-15/ I presume this line refers to the poets return to the capital. 183
126-17/ This line could mean, Whod have expected a fellow from beyond the mundane, referring to He Zhu himself.
126-19/ The translation of this line and the next remain tentative. Yao He (755?855?) provides a possible precedent for He Zhus usage in Fatuous is my
unordinary nature; / proper and forbidding is your solitary stance. 184
126-20/ Clime of the god/thearch probably refers to the capital. The white clouds seem to have
some connection with the Huang brothers. The following poem in the collection, written to say
farewell to them across the River in Yangzhou, assures them that out of sight does not mean out of
mind and, There is no restriction on news by post; / assiduously [Ill]
ask after my White Cloud elder brother(s). 185

The uncertainties of interpretation in the final four lines detract from our enjoyment of this poem somewhat, but it does have its pleasures, not the least of
which are the teasing remarks about Mi Fu. Lines 126-3 and 4 offer some vivid
diction: references to the wind driving water are rare enough in Tang and Song
poetry; to speak of stone plinths waving a long covered walkway is unprecedented, as far as I can tell. The poem exuberantly praises the Fanghuis companions, but it does not allow us to forget that he is on his way to the capital. Is it
possible that he knew that about six months later he would be promoted from the
military bureaucracy to the civil bureaucracy? Or was he merely anticipating
something better than the assignment he had just completed?

reputation was equal to that of the Huang lad, evidently meaning Huang Xiang.
181 Quoting Sturman, Mi Fu, 91; on Mis family background, see 5758.
182 Richard Mather, Shih-shuo hsin-y, 2nd edition, 419, item 47. Su Shi alluded obliquely to this
story in 1071 when he claimed to have tired of seeing the sights at Jinshan with a group and decided
to take a boat to Jiaoshan, another island to the east (and visible from Jinshan, according to the
previous poem in He Zhus collection). See line 9 of , SSSJ, 2:7.308.
183 The verb return could be appropriate for the capital because that was the place from which
Fanghui had been dispatched on his latest assignment, or because six generations previously his
family had been registered residents of Kaifeng. See Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 4.
184 , QTS, 15:497.5645.
185 Assembling in Shanguang Temple in Guangling by Night; Left in
Farewell to the Huang Cai brothers, Poem 127, 4.12535; 4.4a; still the second month. Guangling commandery was administered from Yangzhou, so Fanghui had crossed the Yangzi.

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1091: WIT IN THE SU SHI MODE

In the capital in the sixth month of Yuanyou 6 (1091), Fanghui wrote a poem that
is strongly reminiscent of several poems by Su Shi. Those poems typically question the conventional rationale behind the name of someones studio, often
through an extensive consideration of the phrase in question from several angles,
a hallmark of Sus intellect. A good example is Su Shis 1084 pentametrical Ancient Verse Xu Dazhengs Studio of Idleness . 186 Characteristically, Su
presents several arguments to undercut whole idea of naming a room or building
Idleness. A truly idle person immersed in an idle place does not know the flavor
of his own idleness: an eye does not see itself. Thus, Su Shi himself cannot talk
about idleness using idle language. In any case, Xu is a vigorous man with
martial skills, a man who will be called upon for important deeds and for whom
idleness is out of place. Another example is the poem Su wrote for the studio of
Zhou Dunyi (1017-73) in 1089, which will come up again later in this
chapter (p. 95n.). Though Fanghuis poem presents what appears to be only a
simplified version of Su Shis approach, its brevity belies its sophistication. The
title is Inscribed on the No-Mind Hut at Chongsheng Temple. 187
128

An old crane would take refuge beyond the forest;

a lone cloud lodges among the hills.
Tying floss reeds, the poor disciple of Buddha
enlodges here in such leisure.
To have a mind is to be confused like dust.
to have no-mind is to be as unyielding as stone.
To have or not to have the mind may both be put aside:
the sun has set and visitors come and go.

Note:
128-3/ Floss-reeds are tied to a roof as thatch.

The play on the name of the monks hut comes in the second half of the poem
and extends beyond a single couplet, as we would expect if Fanghui is adopting Su
Shis technique. Having a mind is interpreted here as the beginning of ones
troubles, since it means having intentionality, desire, a general involvement with
the unstable and unreal world that confuses the mind, like dust. Having

186 SSSJ, 4:24.1283. Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:23.656, places the poem in the eleventh month
of 1084. Xu Dazheng was leaving Su Shis party after having accompanied him from Huangzhou to
the Huai River, and this poem must have been for him to take with him to Jianan (in the
interior of modern Fujian). According to an undated record by Qin Guan, that was the site of the
Studio of Idleness; see Huaihai ji, juan 38. Chen Shidaos heptametrical Regulated Verse for the
Studio comes later, in 1090: Houshan shi zhu bu jian, 1:2.8788.
187 4.12535; 4.4b.

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CHAPTER ONE

no-mind is interpreted rather perversely as being insentient, like a stone. I say

perversely because Fanghui knew very well that the state of no-mind is usually
understood as a state of being unattached to things, thus interacting with the
world with utter spontaneity. In truth, however, he is probably pointing out that
to name a hut No-Mind and make it ones goal is to lose the spontaneity that it
should designate. As a concept rather than a state of mind, it is as unyielding as
stone. Line 128-7, with its advice to put the whole dichotomy aside, actually
represents the way to true no-mind. The visitors to the temple coming and going
represent the phenomena of the world that one is to observe with calmness
andyes, with no-mind.
We have no record of contact between He Zhu and Su Shi in 1091 or any other
time, but we know that Su played a role in the successful promotion of He Zhu
from the military to the civil side of the bureaucracy, a change apparently finalized
in the eighth month of 1091. 188 They must have met at some point. It seems to me
that a poem such as this one would have been among those works that impressed
Su with the younger mans intellect.

1093: THE PAST RECOVERED

Around the time of his promotion, Fanghui wrote two poems that remind us of
the gap between present and past. The first is Inscribed on
the Northern Studio of Master An in the Tianqing Temple. 189 The temple is on the Bo
family terrace, originally part of the extensive gardens built by the Filial Prince, Liu
Wu (in the second century B.C.E.). Fanghui observes that the songs of old
are now stilled; only the myriad rooms of the Buddhist temple remain. 190 The loss
of the past is even more acute in Moved by a Jujube in the Courtyard. Taking as
its theme the rapid passage of time, the poem points out that that people in the
past deceived themselves in hoping for fame after death: even if the myriad
bamboos of the Southern Mountains were covered with writing, they are faint and

188 Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 50. He was recommended by Su Shi, Li
Qingchen, and Fan Bolu (103094).
189 Poem 131, 4.12536; 4.5a.
190 On the Bo pagoda, see Du Benli et al., Dongjing menghua, 14146. Fanghui adds a note to his
poem telling us that the name (Be1) is to be pronounced (be1), which would be Po in Mandarin,
but Dongjing menghua (142) gives the pronunciation as Bo. Although Fanghui does not seize the
opportunity to compete head-on with earlier Song poems about climbing the pagoda at the temple,
much of what he describes implies a commanding view of the region, making one wonder if the
studio he visited was not in fact part of the pagoda. Mei Yaochens amusing poem
is in Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:14.260 and Chaves, 127. Su Shunqins
(100848) poem on the occasion alluded to by Mei is and is quoted in Dongjing menghua,
142. Both are ten-line pentametrical works, shorter than Fanghuis and more focused on the topic.

ANCIENT VERSE

91

dark and one knows nothing in the end. 191 As with the broken steles in earlier
poems, information is all too easily lost.
Still in the capital in 1093 (there are no Ancient Verses for 1092), Fanghui
finally reverses his position on the accessibility of the past. The pivotal poem is
Dispelling my Feelings on a Summer Night after the Rain Clears. 192
This poem is quite informative. First, in its preface, Fanghui gives us details of
his residence in the capital east of Wangchun Gate (the northern gate on the
eastern side of the inner wall of the city), where he has been lying sick. Although it
has been raining up until the end of the fifth month, his home is not humid and
hot, cooled as it is by trees. In fact, his home is the former lofty studio of a man
I tentatively identify as Gao Huaide (92682), an important military hero
of the previous century. 193 Secondly, he tells us in the poem that he has been
reading extensively during his illness:
134
8

12

Left and right I lay out charts and histories,

open them out and suddenly have an insight.
Having always laughed at the otter arraying fish,
I find myself taking after insects nibbling books.
Here I am dipping up the language of the ancients;
Who says My Way is at an end?

Notes
134-9/ The otter arraying fish is a poet who surrounds himself with books as he digs for allusions
and precedents to use. (Otters were said to set out the fish they caught around them on all sides as if
offering them in sacrifice.) The phrase seems to have been applied in the Northern Song especially
to Li Shangyin (812[?]58). 194
134-12/ When Confucius was shown a unicorn that was captured and injured in a hunt, he exclaimed that his way was at an end and brought his chronicles of the state of Lu to an abrupt close. 195

191 Poem 132, 4.12536; 4.5b. Su Shi wants to smear all the hyperbolic bamboos of the South
Mountains with his writing in a poem written in the ninth month in Yingzhou:
, SSSJ, 6:34:1809. He Zhus poem is dated the seventh month, but
it is placed between poems from the eighth and tenth months in his collection and it speaks of the
autumn wind, leading me to suspect that the correct date would be the ninth month. This raises the
possibility that Su Shis poem had been circulated back to the capital, where it was seen by Fanghui
and stimulated his recollection of the phrase bamboos of the South Mountains.
192 4.1253637; 4.6a.
193 Fanghui calls him , Master Bohai of the Bureau of Military Affairs. Gao was
given the title of Prince of Bohai, and this is the basis of my tentative identification. Gaos biography
in the Song shi, 25:250.882123, notes that he composed fine music, though he had a military mans
dislike of reading and social niceties. The location of the Wangchun Gate comes from Du Benli et al.,
Dongjing menghua, 81.
194 See a poem by Wen Tong , the fifth of , imagining Li in his
studio surrounded by rare books, and a characterization by Wu Jiong of the way Li composed,
both passages quoted in Liu Xuekai et al, Li Shangyin ziliao huibian 1:14 and 27, respectively.
195 There are conflicting interpretations of the significance of the unicorns capture: did it
stimulate or end the chronicling activities of the Master? I have selected the theory (narrated in Shi ji,
6:47.1942) that fits best with He Zhus rejection of Confucius lament. Either way, Fanghuis line

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CHAPTER ONE

The situation here is the opposite of what Fanghui discovered in the broken steles
and silent peasants of earlier years. The past does speak; the Way of Confucius is
not exhausted. The charts and histories can be read and they do produce insight.
The difference, we may interject, is that Fanghui is living in the print culture that
had largely replaced the manuscript culture of China over the course of the previous century; multiple printed copies of a text have a permanence that even texts
on stone could never have, as Fanghui knew at the site of the city of Ye in 1078.
While in 1078 the difference between wise and foolish was unknowable
because of the obliteration of the inscriptions that preserved the judgments of
history, in 1093 the poet knows enough about history to make an assertion about
what wise and foolish people have in common. Our floating life is like a dream, he
says; we are as mortal as objects in their transformations and in this respect,
now and before, wise and foolish are alike (line 134-16). To say that
wise and foolish people share a common aspect of their humanity is not unusual;
what was startling was the 1078 observation that we cannot know the character of
the people whose history is recorded in fragmented inscriptions. Perhaps
Fanghuis residency in the capital from 1091 to 1093 has given him time and
occasion to take full advantage of the information revolution, or perhaps, as we
shall argue later, he thinks that history is the only forum in which human judgment can make sense of the deteriorating political situation. He believes in history
because history is so badly needed.
In the ninth month of Yuanyou 8 (1093), Fanghui was about to set off for the
area of modern Shaoxing, where the southern branch of his family (whose most
illustrious member was He Zhizhang , 659744) had remained after his
own branch had moved north in the turbulent mid-eighth century. Before leaving
the capital, he sent a forty-line poem off to be inscribed on a pavilion. Presumably
there had been some negotiations over the length of the composition that had
been requested, since it was designed for display in a specific architectural setting
with which the poet was certainly unfamiliarthe site was far to the northwest,
25 km to the east of Chengzhou, Qinfeng Circuit (about 380 km
west of modern Xian). Forty lines push just beyond the upper limits of what we
might expect for an inscription in verse.
Aside from its length, the poem is interesting for the view it gives of Du Fu. In
759, Du Fu had gone from Qinzhou straight south to Tonggu (also
known as Chengzhou), from which he would soon continue on over the mountains into the Sichuan Basin. Tonggu had been relatively untouched by warfare

asserts the continuity that Confucius had doubted and the meaning of the unicorns appearance can
be set aside for our purposes. As Carl Crow prudently observes, The appearance of the chi lin was
set down in the historical records of the day by Master Kung himself in a manner to indicate that he
looked on it as an event of supreme importance. . . . An intelligent examination of the event can
record this fact and go no farther. (Master Kung: The Story of Confucius, 337.)

ANCIENT VERSE

93

and seemed to offer an escape from the hardship Du and his family had experienced hitherto. In his poem Going Forth from Qinzhou, Du Fu had said that
the reputation of Liting was even finer (geng jia ) than Tonggu, so the pavilion
for which Fanghui was asked to provide the inscription was named Pavilion of
Fine Reputation. Fanghuis poem, Sent as an Inscription for the
Pavilion of Fine Reputation in Liting, will be broken into sections in our translation: 196
135

Shaoling once sought a place of refuge

and shrouded by the river at Fenghuang.
For once he would seize his proper place,
and he wrote a poem: here I shall dwell to the end.
I yearn for those foothills of lovely groves
shading the richest, most fertile fields;
Sunny slopes are rife with pendant pearls;
shady valleys team with nephrite elongate.
With thrust-hoe Ill diligently grub them;
ingesting them, Ill catch up to the flying immortals.

Notes:
135-1/ Shaoling: Du Fu. He took the name from a district south of Changan in which he lived for
a time.
135-2/ There is a Fenghuang Mt. just east of Tonggu. Du Fu mentions thinking back on Fenghuang Village as he leaves the area on his way south through the mountains. 197 A stream there
empties into a river that flows southward into the Sichuan Basin, and this must be Fanghuis river
at Fenghuang.
135-4/ Going Forth from Qinzhou implies Du Fus confidence that the Tonggu area will afford him a
stable living. This and the following lines could be based on the general optimism of that poem. On
the other hand, in mentioning that he wrote a poem, Fanghui may have in mind the twenty-line
poem that a visitor to the area in the mid-ninth century said Du Fu had written as an inscription,
though it was lost by then. 198
135-7/ The pendant pearls could be fruit or some kind of melon. In the thirteenth of twenty
poems on Qinzhou, Du Fu imagined planting melons on a sunny slope. 199
135-8/ Nephrite elongate is one name for a yam the color of milky-white nephrite. 200

The next six lines counter Du Fus optimism.

135
12

The miasma of war snatched away the air of harmony;

strenuous plowingbut no good year.

196 4.12537; 4.7a. Fanghui gives the name of the magistrate and the relative through which the
request was sent, but I have been unable to find any mention of them in other sources. Du Fus
poem: Du shi xiangzhu, 2:8.67275.
197 , Du shi xiangzhu, 2:9.7067. The road he takes runs west of Liting.
198 See Zhao Hong , , QTS, 18:607.7010.
199 , Du shi xiangzhu, 2:7.583.
200 See the commentary to Su Shis , line 7; SSSJ, 7:40.2216.

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16

Over forest and outland spread ice and snow;

for a full ten days kitchen fires ceased.
Alas! He sang seven songs and
in the last season of the year moved southwest.

Notes:
135-14/ Du Fu wrote seven mournful songs in Tonggu. The seventh line of each starts, Alas, this
is the Nth song . . . In the second song, the poet talks to his thrust-hoe, telling the tool he depends
on it for digging up the yellow yams that will keep his family from starvingbut the yams lie buried
under snow. 201

The next ten lines turn to the magistrate (His worship), who has evidently
rebuilt and enlarged the pavilion.
135

20

24

His encircling walls are long overgrown and lost;

but in this pavilion the name is still handed down.
His worship condoled himself for ancient times,
and added to the honor, much exceeding precedent.
Carved purlins hold high long blinds;
below, ten guests have room to feast.
A gentle mountain haze beyond a springtime copse
unsullied bamboo giving voice to summer cicadas
There is a lofty gusto in breeze and moonlight,
and it is told on strings of Wucheng.

Notes:
135-17/ The walls are probably around the old pavilion site where Du Fus poem had been inscribed.
See the note to line 135-4.
135-26/ This line allusively praises the magistrate. Wucheng is a city where Confucius heard stringed
music indicating the civilizing influence of the local magistrate. Fanghui and Su Zhe appear to be the
only Song poets who picked up this allusion from the handful of earlier poets who used it. 202

The last fourteen lines interject the poet into the poem. Since the magistrate
valued He Zhus literary talent enough to request the inscription, this interjection
of the author is not inappropriate; it adds to the poems value by personalizing it.
In line 135-27, Fanghui refers to himself as the Crazy Stranger. This is an instance
of his identification with his ancestor He Zhizhang, who called himself The
Crazy Stranger from Siming. Siming was a range of mountains along the eastern
border of Tang Yuezhou; He Zhizhang was born in the western tip of the prefecture (across the Qiantang River from Hangzhou) and was granted lands near
Mirror Lake, an ancient manmade body of water near the prefectural seat at the

, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:8.693701.

For the allusion: Analects; Legge, 319. Sus poem is , Su Zhe ji,
1:9.160.
201
202

ANCIENT VERSE

95

city of Yuezhou, modern Shaoxing. Thus, his identification with the area was very
strong, and Fanghui copied this identification. It seems to have been his lifelong
ambition to return to the ancestral homeland. There is no evidence that he succeeded, though when he wrote this poem in the ninth month of 1093 he was
about to leave the capital with the apparent intention of achieving this goal. 203
135
28

32

36

40

This Crazy Stranger is rickety and useless;

my wasted muscles cannot be forced.
What leisure have I to climb and view?
I can only mumble the whale-ocean poem.
I still suffer from the burden of eight mouths,
distantly like that worthy of the past.
My remaining years are given to the realm of illusion;
Ive not severed the karma that shuttles me east and west.
In the Jiang-Huai the price of rice is steady;
in a single barque I go at my leisure.
Luckily this is a rich and happy year;
to float and wander is where my fancy takes me.
Another time Ill visit the old traces
and make latecomers think of me.

Notes:
135-30/ The reference to the whale-ocean composition is unclear. It may refer to the fourth of a
series of heptametrical quatrains by Du Fu that praise various writers. It reads, In talents it should
be hard to surpass these masters. / At the present time who is the hero above the crowd? / The
writings of some may be comparable to a kingfisher atop the epidendrum. / None of them can
harness the giant whale in the deep blue sea. Apparently alluding to this poem, Du Mu compared
Du Fu himself to a whale stirring in the sea. Thus, Fanghui may mean I can only mumble Du
Fus poems. 204
135-31/ Fanghui had two sons and two daughters of whose existence we know. The poet, his
mother, his wife, and the three children still at home (the oldest daughter was already married) add
up to only six mouths to feed. Eight mouths may include children who died young and were

203 See He Zhichangs biography in the Jiu Tang shu, 190.5034, or the discussion in Zhong
Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 1214; Zhong covers the familys division on pp. 4 and 1415.
One poet who frequently refers to He Zhizhang as The Crazy Stranger is Li Bo. See for example,
, Zhan Ying, Li Bo quanji, 5:14.239497; no Jitsunosuke, Ri Haku shika zenkai,
25253. On Mirror Lake, see Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants, 14445 and 15455. It is
difficult to say how much of Mirror Lake was left in Fanghuis time. The name of Fanghuis collection, Poetry Collection of the Left-over Elder of Lake Qing, is based on one of the three versions of the
name of the lake. Even within Fanghuis own works and others who discussed him, the name is
inconsistent. See Zhong, op. cit., 42.
204 Du Fus poem is , Du shi xiangzhu, 2:900; translation by Shirleen Wong,
The Quatrains of Tu Fu, 15354. Du Mus poem is , Fanchuan shiji
zhu, 2.18485.

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CHAPTER ONE

omitted from his biographical records, a married child and his or her family, or household staff. 205
135-32/ The worthy is presumably Du Fu. In line 82 of a poem written in late 755, Du Fu
mentions the ten mouths of his household, then discovers that one of his young sons has just died
of hunger. 206
135-35/ The Jiang-Huai is the territory between the Yangzi and the Huai Rivers, not the Yue region.
As we shall see, Fanghui ends up two months later in Hailing , which is in the Jiang-Huai. Does
this line anticipate that change of plans?

There are intriguing incongruities in these closing lines, if we understand them

correctly. On the one hand, Fanghui will spend his remaining years in the realm
of illusion, which, the few times it is used in poetry, appears to mean the world of
officialdom; he will also continue his galloping east and west. On the other, he
aims to wander on the waterways of the south, confident that food is cheap. If the
latter plan is meant as an escape from the hopelessness of the former situation, the
relationship is not spelled out by any means.
It is interesting to see the continuities with the past and the future in these lines.
Here, too, there is a certain inconsistency. On the one hand, the poets anxiety for
his family replicates Du Fus concern. On the other hand, in this time of peace
and prosperity, Fanghui can postpone his visit to Liting for another time, and
when he goes, it will be not to find a place of refuge but to create an event that
future generations will look back on, as the people of the eleventh century look
back on Du Fus time in Liting. In both respects, Fanghui makes links between
himself and Du Fu that are quite startling insofar as they imply that he is in some
measure commensurate to the great Tang master.

1094: NO-MIND IN HAILING

As he progresses southeast in the ensuing weeks, Fanghui stops in Xuyi (or
Sizhou ), in Huainan East Circuit, where he visits an expert in pharmacopoeia, Yang Jie . 207 While in Xuyi, Fanghui also sees Du Yu , a student
of Su Shi and Chao Buzhi. Du is away but sends a poem asking He Zhu to wait for
him to return, perhaps not wanting to slight Su Shis recent protg. In the
headnote to the poem he writes for Du, Fanghui claims conditions on the Yangzi
are reported to be unfavorable for crossing; giving up his goal of going to the

205 See Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 3233. Other poems refer to ten mouths,
which may or may not be a rounded-up number.
206 , Du shi xiangzhu, 1:4.272 (the poem begins on p. 264); tr.,
Stephen Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 419 (the poem begins on p. 417).
207 Poem 136, Touring South Mountain in Xuyi; Shown to Yang Jie, 4.12537, 4.7b.
In 1100, Huang Tingjian will look back on his friendship with Yang and regret that he didnt study
medicine with him, but he does not specify when he knew Yang. See his ,
Huang Tingjian quanji, 3:bie.2.148687.

ANCIENT VERSE

97

Shanyin area, he has decided to make Hailing his destination. 208

Fanghui stayed in Hailing visiting relatives until late in 1094. Despite the fact
that in other genres he maintained a moderate to high output, he produced no
extant pentametrical Ancient Style verse in Hailing, except for one in the fifth
month of Shaosheng 1 (1094). This poem, Inscribed on the
Cloud-Roosting Hut at Kaiyuan Temple in Hailing, was written at the behest of Zhou
Bin , prefect of the commandery, who also wrote an inscription. 209 Zhou
was a senior official whom Su Shi mentions in the titles of twenty poems between
1073 and 1085. Fanghuis poem skillfully blends the clouds that figure in the name
of the hut with language that is specifically Buddhist or carries Buddhist overtones,
all the while examining the topic from many angles in a manner worthy of Su Shi.
139

12

16

The Man of the Way is like the floating clouds

issuing from the Aiguilles of Wangwu.
In the morning, fingers of cloud are seen to join
to become by nightfall soaking rains on all within the seas.
Its a game played by the Fashioner of Things;
floating clouds are by nature without intention.
Forever they decline summons from Yinglong;
hidden they perch in the grove of the Paired Trees.
The myriad people, in a land of heat and woe,
for a thousand years have looked to their merciful shade.
The gleaming moon manifests itself as half or new;
the clear breeze knows neither ancient nor present.
Someone is raising a Sweet Dew ode;
booming is the sound of the oceans tide.
Crippled, the sick kulapati
harmonizes on his stringless qin.

Notes
139-2/ The Wangwu mountain range in southern Shanxi Province just north of the Yellow River
was a landmark in ancient times and a Daoist center often mentioned in Tang literature. However,
according to He Zhus headnote, Wangwu was also the name of the ninth-century monk who
founded the temple on whose grounds the Cloud-Roosting Hut stood. 210
139-34/ This couplet is a variation on several texts that describe rain clouds spreading in the course
of the day from Mount Tai in Shandong.

208 Poem 137, , 4.12538; 4.8a. In the ninth month of the previous year, Su Shi
had passed visited Du Yu on his way to the capital after a half-year tenure as prefect of Yangzhou.
See Kong Fanli, Su Shi Nianpu, 3:31.1059.
209 4.12538; 4.9a. Zhou was prefect there from sometime in 1092 to sometime in 1094; see Li
Zhiliang, Song Liang-Huai da jun shouchen yiti kao, 146
210 The Taizhou zhi lists a temple built by this individual in 825, but calls it Kaihua Dhyana
Temple (2:769).

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CHAPTER ONE

139-7/ Yinglong is a winged dragon with the power to bring rain. He appears in many early texts.
139-8/ Pairs of la trees (Shorea robusta) sheltered the Buddha when he entered into nirvana; here,
they are a kenning for a place of meditation; a Buddhist temple or retreat.
139-13/ Sweet Dew: this is not only a common kenning for the benefits of good government but
also translates amta and stands for the nourishing and healing effects of the Buddhist teachings.
139-14/ The sound of the tide is a metaphor for the powerful voice of the Buddha or a bodhisattva.
This couplet may be referring to the sound of chanting coming from the temple.
139-1516/ The sick kulapati recalls Vimalakrti, the important model of the lay Buddhist. Here it
probably refers to Zhou Bin, who asked He Zhu to join him in writing poems on the
Cloud-Roosting Hut. Crippled or rickety may not seem complimentary, but perhaps Zhou was
indeed suffering from some handicap, and handicaps are often said (in literature, at least) to be the
way to avoid being useful to, and used up by, others. The stringless qin is the ultimate in refinement,
as Tao Yuanming knew and many poets remind us. 211

Given the name of the Cloud-Roosting Hut, it is no surprise that the first ten lines
of the poem are a meditation on clouds. The first four lines compare a Man of the
Way, which I take to be Wangwu, the founder of the temple, with the clouds that
come from the mountain range by that same name, spreading over the world and
bringing steady, moderate rains that succor the people. This theme is repeated,
apparently, in lines 139-910, but the intervening lines introduce other ideas that
require some explanation. No-intention or no-mind as an attribute of the
enlightened person is not at new concept for us; we touched on the spontaneity of
no-mind in discussing the 1091 poem Inscribed on the No-Mind Hut at Chongsheng
Temple (pp. 89ff). Five of Sus poems written up through 1091 link clouds to the
concept of no-mind and assert, explicitly or implicitly, that this is an ideal frame
of mind for humans. 212
Both no-mind and the Fashioner of Things mentioned by He Zhu in line 139-5
figure in a poem written by Su in nearby Sizhou in 1071. 213 Su confesses that he
does not have the no-mind of an enlightened man, for he cares where he is
going. More pertinent to He Zhus poem, he is skeptical that the Fashioner of
Things could answer the prayers for a favorable wind on the waterway without
changing the direction of the wind a thousand times a day, simply because the
supplicants are trying to go in opposite directions. Fanghui borrows the notion
that the Fashioner of Things is not responding to any human need when it
spreads the clouds over the land. Nor do the clouds themselves have any particular intention, which seems to suggest that Chan Master Wangwu ended up
staying in Hailing by chance. We must admit that Fanghuis language suggests a

211

See Taos biography in the Jin shu, 8:94.2463.

(1076), SSSJ, 3:14.670;
(1082), SSSJ, 4:21.1110; (1082), SSSJ, 4:21.1137;
(1090); SSSJ, 5:32.1681; and (1091), SSSJ, 6:33.1757. See
also the later poem (1096), SSSJ, 7:40.2190
213 , SSSJ, 1:6.289. See Ronald Egan, Word, Image, and Deed in the Life of Su Shi,
17980.
212

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99

darker side of the Fashioner of Things by reminding us of less cheerful poems by

Su Shi. The complaint that the Fashioner of Things is wont to play games, with all
the nuances that notion evokes, is a familiar one from Su Shis poems of 1082,
1084, 1086, and 1088. 214 The clouds in our poem, however, do not seem to suffer
from the Fashioners whims. In fact, once they reach the temple in Hailing (it is
implied), they stay there, ignoring the summons of the rain dragon and lingering
above the hut on the temple grounds. This reminds us of He Zhus 1091 line
(128-6), to have no-mind is to be as unyielding as stone. We can also cite Su
Shis first Hundred Pace Rapids poem from Xuzhou, 1078:
But it should be that this mind has no abiding; / though the
Fashioner of Things may push, what can it do to me? 215 These precedents give
us the key to the reasoning behind lines 139-58. The idea is that if the clouds are
in a sense selfless, they cannot be pressured to answer the dragons summons.
Lines 139-11 and 12 in He Zhus poem are rich in meaning and, again,
somewhat ambiguous. One interpretation would stress that the moon only appears
to us as a half moon and a new moon, but it is still the same moon. Thus, the moon
is unchanging, as is the clear breeze, and it is only an illusion to think that the
passage of time makes any difference in them. Appropriately for the setting, there
is a Buddhist sense in the use of the verb shi (manifest); as noted above (see p. 69).
By stressing the illusory nature of change, this reading might imply that the vicissitudes of life are not to be taken to heart. A slightly modified reading of the
couplet would be that although the phases of the moon tell us that time is (apparently) passing, the clear breeze or the unsullied atmosphere of this place remains unchanged. This keeps the focus of the poem on the timeless and holy
atmosphere of the temple area where praises of the Sweet Dew of the Buddhist
teachings can be heard right now.
Perhaps we could see this as another solution to the problem of the unknowable past: the passage of time is illusory, at least on the level of the clear
breeze and the stringless qin, whose music has no ending point.

214 , SSSJ, 4:21.1133, line 1note that there is a variant version that uses the
same xi (game) character as He Zhu and the three following poems use;
, SSSJ, 4:23.1240, line 6; , SSSJ, 5:27.1435, line 5; and
, SSSJ, 5:30.1594, line 20.
215 , SSSJ, 3:17.89192.

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1096: HANYANG
THE INSCRIPTION FOR ZHOU DUNYIS THATCHED HALL
Apparently He Zhus elevation to the civil side of the government was not enough
to keep him from being assigned to another mint. When he meets and becomes
friends with the sons of the pioneering Neo-Confucian thinker Zhou Dunyi in the
fifth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096), he is on the north side of the Yangzi in the
military prefecture of Hanyang after a journey of six months or so down
from the capital. He will fall ill and stay in Hanyang for three months before
crossing the river to his post, which is the Baoquan copper coin mint at Ezhou
. 216
He Zhus interest in Ancient Verse revives considerably in 1096, a year from
which we have seven works plus a set of ten twelve-line poems, making a total of
seventeen poems. In the eleventh month, Fanghui will complete his first poetry
collection, making him rather more aware of the necessity of taking care not to
lose his manuscripts, one would suppose. If we take He Zhu at his word, one 1096
Ancient Verse is a restoration of a poem written in the seventies or eighties and
rediscovered in tattered and incomplete form as the poet was drying papers used
to wrap medicinal herbs!
Let us begin with the poem for Zhou Dunyis thatched hall, which was some
distance to the southeast, on a tributary to the Yangzi below Lotus Peak in the
Mount Lu massif. 217 Su Shi and Huang Tingjian had also supplied poems at the
request of Zhou Dunyis sons. Su Shis poem is ascribed to 1089, when Zhou Tao
, the second son, was an assistant to the fiscal commissioner in Hangzhou,
where Su was Prefect. 218 Huangs poem is plausibly dated to 1081, when he and
the first son, Zhou Shou , served in Taihe , in Jiangnan West Circuit. 219

216 The Baoquan mint, only two or three li east of Ezhou, had been established in 977, shut
down at some point, and revived in 1075. See Liu Sen, Bei Song tongqian jian shulue, 7, 9, 12, 13. For a
concise summary of Fanghuis sightseeing in Hanyang in the fifth month, presumably before he fell
ill (though he had not been well on the journey at the end of the previous year), see Wang Mengyin,
He Zhu nianpu, 99. The fact that Hanyang was a commandery and not under the jurisdiction of
Ezhou at this time (though it had been from 1071 to 1086; see Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ci ren He
Zhu yanjiu, 6263) is important for understanding that Fanghui was waiting for his health to improve
before entering Ezhou and reporting for duty.
217 The site was washed away by a flood in 1760, and its location has been something of a
mystery ever since. Zhong Mingli provides evidence for the location in his article Lianxi kaoxi.
218 The poem is , SSSJ, 5:31.1666; see Su Shi niampu, 2: 28.886 and 9012.
See also Matsukawa Kenjis article on the poem.
219 Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 11415, accepts the 1081 date given in the Shangu
shizhu edition for Huangs Lian Stream : CSJC, 2252:BieA.1. It is possible that Huangs poem
postdates He Zhus. The Huang Tingjian quanji 1:308 supplies the date of Chongning 1 (1102) under
the title. The fact that the Zhou brothers had some kind of base in Hanyang is overlooked by all
discussants. Admittedly, He Zhus 1096 Ancient Verse to Zhou Shou (Poem 141,
Seeing off Zhou Shou, Yuanweng, going up the western route, 4.12539; 4.10a.) indicates that Zhou is leaving

ANCIENT VERSE

101

Huangs poem uses an archaic format of varying line length and many kinds of
line structures. The majority of lines have the old Chu ci particle xi in them, either
in the middle or at the end. Both the preface and the poem borrow phrases liberally from the Confucian classics. Su Shi and Fanghui opt for pentametrical
Ancient Verse. Fanghui is somewhat more consciously ancient in repeating a
word (stream) four times in the first eight lines, while Su Shi repeats the same
word more subtly only in lines 5, 12, and 16 in a sixteen-line poem. Because of its
length and allusiveness, we shall treat Fanghuis Sent as
an Inscription for the Thatched Hall of Mr. Zhou of Xunyang 220 as we did his poem on
Zhang Liang and intersperse comments, making comparisons with the poems by
Su and Huang, though we do not have space to quote them here.
140

The waters of Lian Stream are clean,

But not enough to wash His Honors capstrings.
All his life, he embraced bitter Control,
and so accomplished this streams name.

Line 140-2 alludes to the Canglang Song, but only to say that even the clean waters
of the Lian stream are not clear enough to match the purity of Zhou Dunyi. This
directly contradicts Huang Tiangjians opening couplet, which merely declares the
stream fit to wash ones capstrings. Fanghuis line 140-3 similarly has Zhou Dunyi
exceeding the measured judgment of the Classic of Changes, which states that bitter
Control cannot be practiced with constancy. 221 Zhou, in contrast, has been
practicing it all his life.
Line 140-4 alludes to a passage in the Li Ji that states, When we speak of
bright water, it is because the purity of the host has created this water. 222 Su
Shis poem had asserted that it is only in the eyes of the common person that the
stream is to be identified with Zhous virtues. (Lian means shallow but is also a
homophone of a word meaning sparing or without avarice.) Zhous virtues
are more all-inclusive, Su argues. 223 As is typical, Su Shi is finding a way to undercut the assumptions behind the name of a place or structure. Fanghui does not
follow his lead this time.

for the capital. However, that leaves plenty of time for him to return to the area before 1102. Indeed,
given the closeness of Zhou Shou and Huang, one could imagine Zhou making sure he returned to
Hanyang when he learned Huang Tingjian was staying in Ezhou; Huang was there from the ninth
month of Chongning 1 to the end of Chongning 2. It should also be noted that Huang visited Mt. Lu
in the fifth month of Chongning 1 (Hu Sheng, 367), providing another opportunity to commemorate Zhou Dunyis site, though I have no information on whether the sons would have been
there to host him and request the poem.
220 4.12539; 4.9b.
221 Tr. by Lynn, The Classic of Changes, 518. Control is the sixtieth hexagram.
222 Ruan Yuan, Shisan jing zhushu, vol 2, Li Ji zhengyi, 26.229b and 230c (1457b and 1458c).
223 My reading of Sus poem is based on the discussion by Zhao Cigong (twelfth cent.)
in So Shi itch , 1:199200 and its elaboration in Shikajikkai, 4:101833.

102
140

12

CHAPTER ONE

A long whistlehe set aside the passports;

a lone cloudthoughts of return so light.
At the head of the stream, four walls in which to dwell;
below the stream, a hundred mu to plow.
They draw water in measure for His Honors early ablutions,
are assigned woodcutting for the evening cookstove.
Rarely do you meet him roaming with stick and sandals;
one only hears the sound of string instruments and song.
For his guests he has cut out three paths;
to his family bequeathed understanding of one classic.

Notes:
140-5/ Setting aside letters of passport, Zhou Dunyi was able to put a stop to his peregrinations as
an official. 224
140-6/ A variation on line 057-6 in the 1080 poem Evening Prospect from the Tower of Handan Commandery one bird, thoughts-of-return light (p. 34).
140-910/ Presumably, it is Zhou Shou and Zhou Tao who did these chores for their father.
140-12/ For a similar reference to the civilizing influence of music, see the note to line 135-26 on p.
94. An inscription in one of the academies associated with Zhou Dunyi refers to customs honoring
string instruments and song. 225
140-13/ Three paths is a conventional reference to an hermitage. Jiang Xu , who retired
from office under Wang Mangs oppressive regime near the beginning of the Common Era, had
three paths around his retreat. 226 This Han period allusion is matched by another in the next line.
140-14/ Wei Xian (14860 B.C.E.) passed his knowledge of the classics on to his youngest his
son, who as a result rose to the highest executive offices in the Han. This led to the saying that
Leaving your sons one classic is better than a basket of gold.227

The allusion in line 140-14 provides a transition from describing Zhou Dunyis
retreat to praising his sons. I interpret the rest of the poem as addressed to the
brothers.
140
16

20

This pair of pearls shines from the four-in-hand,

conjoined jade disks worth more than cities in a string.
Wearing rude cloaks, you have an excess of joy;
asking about the silk, you have no hidden feelings.
In the cassia forest, two branches are fine;
on your account, these common eyes are honored.

224 On the long whistle, see Donald Holzmans remarks on the range of possible meanings in
Poetry and Politics, 15052.
225 Quoted in Zhou Jianhua, Zhou Lianxi yu Gannan san da Lianxi shuyuan kaoshi, 49.
Zhou Jianhua refers to this as an original duilian (inscription in parallel lines), but the meaning of
that characterization is unclear.
226 See Li Fang et al., Taiping yulan, 3:510.2b (p. 2321b).
227 Han shu, 73.3107.

ANCIENT VERSE

103

In the past I looked up to you as sons of a renowned father;

now I praise you as brothers impossible to rank.

Notes:
140-15/ Two conventional expressions of praise are combined here. Paired pearls stand for
brothers of distinction. Pearls shining from a four-in-hand represent treasure or, by extension, fine
writings or talented people. 228
140-16/ The jade disk of Mr. He appraised as worth fifteen walled cities comes from
another story in the Shi ji. A set (of two) disks may represent the sun and moon rising together (with
the five planets as pearls in a string) at certain auspicious junctures, or two halves of disks brought
together. 229 Here, the disks must represent the brotherss.
140-17/ The most likely precedent for this line is Tao Yuanmings in Davis translation, In coarse clothes I rejoiced at contentment. 230
140-18/ I take asking about the silk to be equivalent to wen juan , simply using a different
term for the silk bolt. The allusion is to a third century official and his son who were both loathe to
spend money on themselves; when the father gave a bolt of silk to his son for travel expenses, the
son would not accept it until he ascertained that it had been properly earned. 231
140-19/ A cassia branch symbolizes success in the examinations; here, it must be the success of
Zhou Shou and Zhou Tao. 232
140-20/ The only precedent I find for on your account is the last line of Bo Juyis . 233
140-2122/ There are several precedents for the phrases sons of a famous father and brothers
impossible to rank, but if Fanghui had particular ones in mind, they might have been ones in the
Nan shi and Bei shi because of the symmetry of sources: a history of the southern courts and a history
of the northern courts. 234

For the rest of the poem, Fanghui foresees a continuation of Zhou Dunyis values
into the future, along with this poem.
140
24

Of Wenfans descendants it cannot be

said in haste that the ministers are shamed by heralds.

228 See the letter by Kong Rong quoted in the commentary to the Wei shu in the Sanguo zhi,
2:10.31213 and Shi ji, 6:46.1891.
229 For the disk and cities parity, see Shi ji, 8:81.2439. For the conjunction of sun and moon as
jade disks, see the Han shu, 4:21A976. For the disks as half disks joined together, see the by
Jiang Yan (444505).
230 , Written when passing through Que while beginning my service as aid to the
general of the Stabilization Army, Davis, 1:7981.
231 For the story, see Mather, Shih-shuo hsin-y, 1314. Gao Shi (700?765) uses He Zhus
wording in , QTS, 6:214.2236.10.
232 The third-century figure Xi Shen , having obtained a position by offering up an outstanding policy statement, bragged to the emperor that his brilliance was like a branch in a cassia
forest, a slip of jade from Mount Kun[lun].(Jinshu, 5:52.1443.)
233 QTS, 13:429.4731.8.
234 The fifth-century figure Liu Jingsu was the son of a famous father (the phrase is at
the end of his biography, Nan shi 2:14.402.7). Liu was not only filial but also frugal and uninterested
in the luxuries to which his office entitled him. Du Zhengxuan and his younger brother
Zhengcang were unusually brilliant at composing complex rhapsodies on the spot, but their
younger brothers were also very talented. Thus, the Bei shi historians appraisal of these early seventh-century siblings was that they were impossible to rank as older brother or as younger brother
(3:26.963). But see also the next note.

104

28

CHAPTER ONE

So if you are enfeoffed with oath of belt and whetstone,

do not be swayed by power and profit.
The place is truly like Deformity Hill;
surely the powerful will never annex it.
Carve the poem in stone on the high bank
with due consideration to instruct those born in later ages.

Notes:
140-23/ Wenfan was the posthumous name of Chen Shi (10487). Like Zhou Dunyi, he did
not hold high office (in fact, he refused offers of high positions), he had two sons of prominence
(but he also had four others), and he was highly respected. 235
140-24/ The full expression is A minister is the shame of a herald, and a herald is the shame of a
commandery chief. This was coined to characterize a supposed decline of the virtue of the descendants of Chen Shi, though they rose in rank. 236 Fanghui rejects such a possibility for the Zhou
family.
140-25/ Those who were enfeoffed by Liu Bang in the early years of the Han Dynasty took an oath
to preserve their territories even if the Yellow River shrunk to the width of a belt and Mount Tai
were reduced to the size of a whetstone. 237
140-2728/ Deformity Hill was a place in the southern state of Chu that was so poor and blessed
with such a name that no one would covet it. Thus, one who was enfeoffed there would be able to
retain the territory indefinitely. 238
140-30/ This is a variation on , the final line in a section of the Jiu Tang shu (7:64.2438) that
sums up the best and the worst of the sons of the first Tang emperor.

It is striking to see Fanghui give instructions on the use of his poem, though Su
Shi commonly does this. Of course, he knows that an inscription will probably be
carved on stone, but to mention this explicitly and, moreover, to present the
poem as a message to the ages indicates the poets awareness of the work as an
artifact that has impact beyond the immediate occasion. Fanghui assumes in this
poem the power of the historian to communicate across the ages. He also adopts
the function of the historian to praise and even to warnthe Zhou brothers are
not to be seduced by the power and profit that should come their way if their
merit is recognized (line 140-26).

235 See the Shishuo xinyu for several anecdotes about Chen Shi. In one of these, 1.8, Chen says his
older son is impossible to [rank] as older brother and his younger son is impossible to [rank] as
younger brother. I take this as an earlier version of the Bei shi phrase cited in connection with line
140-22.
236 I use the translation of Roger Greatrex. See his annotated translation of the Bowuzhi ,
attributed to Zhang Hua (232-300), 104.
237 Shi ji, 3:18.877.
238 I take my translation of Deformity Hill from Knoblock and Riegel, The Annals of L Buwei,
234.

ANCIENT VERSE

105

THE REINTERPRETATION OF TAO YUANMING

It may seem unremarkable that Fanghui collated a copy of the works of Tao
Yuanming in Hanyang. Tao is in the pantheon of great Chinese poets, and
Fanghui was a bibliophile of intense dedication. That Fanghui should collate a
copy of the works of Tao Yuanming in the year 1096, however, raises the possibility that he is participating in an elevation of Tao Yuanming and a modification
of his image that was going on at the time, a cultural movement that, as we shall
suggest, reflected a general disenchantment with Song politics.
It is sometimes stated that it was only when Su Shi discovered Tao Yuanming
that Tao rose to the top ranks of poets in the tradition. On the surface, this seems
an absurdity, but it is true that although Tang poets often alluded to Tao Yuanmings life, his poetry was not considered particularly important in literary history. 239 Su Shi, on the other hand, clearly engaged with Taos poetry with unprecedented intensity over the years, following Taos rhymes and/or writing
imitations of his entire oeuvre. He had a pivotal role in changing the meaning of
Tao Yuanming as a person, a change that he seems to have effected in 1096.
Xiao Qingwei, in his recent work on the relationship between Song literature
and the evolving factional struggles of the Northern Song, builds from an observation made by Hu Zi (10821143) that Su Shis 1096 poem using the
rhymes of Taos Singing of the Three Good Men presents a view that is actually
opposite to his 1061 poem on the same theme. It should be explained that the
Three Good Men were retainers of a Duke Mu who were buried alive in his tomb
when he died in the late seventh century B.C.E. In the 1061 poem, written at the
site of the tomb, Su Shi had argued that Duke Mu was not the bloodthirsty tyrant
this incident would seem to make him, but rather that the three retainers had
chosen death as an expression of their loyalty and their gratitude for his favor. In
1096, however, he emphasizes that blind loyalty is not to be prized; rather the
cause for which one sacrifices ones life must be a worthy one, and there is a
responsibility to know when to make the sacrifice and when to withhold it. This
applies also to the decision to serve or not to serve within the bureaucratic system,
and of course Tao Yuanming is most famous for his decision to retire from public
life. 240
Su Shis discovery of Tao Yuanming, however, is broader than what we see
in his 1096 Harmonizing with Taos Singing of the Three Good Men. Throughout the

239

See Qian Zhongshu, Tan yi lu, 8893 (section 24).

For Hu Zis observation, see Tiaoxi yuyin conghua houji (CSJC ed.), 2565:3.432. Sus poems are
, SSSJ, 1:3.118, and , SSSJ, 7:40.2184. See Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature,
2627, for a translation of the Classic of Poetry poem (no. 131, Yellow Bird) and the Zuo Tradition
passage on the incident. Davis gives the same material, Tao Yuanmings poem, and precedents to
Taos poem, in Tao Yan-ming, 1:14548.
240

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CHAPTER ONE

1090s he had begun to argue that the significance of Tao Yuanming lies in the fact
that his attitude toward serving and retiring was the samehe served when he felt
like serving and he retired when he felt like retiring. Neither course was nobler by
itself, just as following ones lord in death or not doing so was a decision to be
made according to the circumstances. Authenticity lay in acting according to these
circumstances and ones feelings. As Xiao Qingwei points out, the new Tao
Yuanming model pretty much replaced the Du Fu model of anxious loyalty that
had dominated for most of the century. Perhaps the clearest articulation of the
new image of Tao is found in a colophon by Su dated Yuanyou 6/12/4 (15
January 1091), when the poet was in Yingzhou , on the upper reaches of the
Huai River. It is worth quoting the relevant portion of this colophon because it
anticipates details in He Zhus 1096 poem.
Tao Yuanming wished to serve and so he served; he did not consider it a shame to
seek it [i.e., office]. He wanted to live in obscurity and so he lived in obscurity; he did
not consider himself noble because he left it. When he was starving, he knocked on
doors and begged for food; when he had plenty, he laid out chicken and millet and
invited guests. If ancients and moderns consider him a worthy, it is because they
prize his authenticity. 241

It may not be coincidental that Fanghui should be collating a copy of Taos works
in the mid 1090s. First of all, he may have heard of or seen the colophon we have
just translated through friends of his close to Su Shi. He could have even been in
correspondence with Su himself; after all, Su had helped accomplish Fanghuis
promotion to civil status only a few months before the date of the colophon.
Though there is no documented contact between the two men, it is hard to
imagine that Su Shi would undertake this exceptional mission without either an
interview or an extensive perusal of Fanghuis poems and other writings. Nevertheless, since there are no texts or anecdotes to support this, we shall explore
the opportunities for information to flow through a third party.
Zhao Lingzhi is one possible conduit. He had been a minor official in Yingzhou and participated in the lively literary exchanges among Su and other literary
figures there. Zhao even compiled a collection (now lost) of the poems that were
exchanged in Yingzhou. Zhao Lingzhi owned a copy of Tao Yuanmings works
with corrections and apparent ideas for a poem scribbled in by Su, who may have
given the book to him in Yingzhou. On Yuanyou 7/2/5 (15 March 1092), before
he left Yingzhou for Yangzhou, and again on Yuanyou 7/12/22 (21 January 1093),
Su Shi recommended Zhao for a position at court. 242 Zhao is a possible conduit

241 , SSWJ 5:68.2148. Chicken and broomcorn millet appear in the Analects as
food prepared by a recluse to show hospitality to one of the disciples. See Legge, XVIII.vii.3, p. 335.
242 See Su Shi nianpu, 3:31.1023 for the first recommendation to court; 31.1027 on the collection
of Yingzhou poems; 31.1029 for evidence about the copy of Taos poems; and 31.106364 and
31.1071 for the second recommendation. The memorial (zhuang) referenced on 31.106364 is not

ANCIENT VERSE

107

to Fanghui because they had known each other since at least 1086, when Fanghui
saw Zhao off from the capital to Chenzhou for an unspecified post under Cai
Que (as noted above). Moreover, Fanghui was in the capital in 1092 at the same
time Zhao was. When we consider the volume of correspondence that we can
document among the Song literati, Fanghui included, and assume a far richer
traffic that has left no trace, we are justified in suspecting that Zhao and Fanghui
kept in touch at least occasionally.
Another possible source of the latest Su Shi lore would be Mi Fu. We reported above that Mi Fu stood our poet up in 1091 in Zhenjiang. However, four
pentametrical Regulated Verses in Fanghuis collection tell us that Mi visited He
Zhu in the capital in the eighth month of 1093, the two parted at Yongqiu
just southeast of the capital two months later, and Fanghui sent a poem to Mi
from Mis old studio in Zhenjiang in the ninth month of 1094. 243 We know that in
late 1092, on the way back from Yangzhou to the capital, Su Shi corresponded
with Mi at Yongqiu, and while he was in the capital, the two were in frequent
contact. As he left for Dingzhou in 1093, Su sent Mi a letter with recent poems
and prose works. 244
Yet another source would be Chen Shizhong. Fanghui and he were companions in Xuzhou in 1084 and 1085, and Fanghui wrote a pentametrical Ancient
Verse to see Chen Shizhong off from the capital in 1087. 245 Chen joined his
brother Chen Shidao and the active group of poets at Yingzhou in early 1092.
Although Su Shi was to leave soon for Yangzhou, Chen Shidao had been one of
Sus close companions for the previous five months and would have had much to
tell his brother. 246
If Su shared a copy of the colophon with one of these individuals, and if they
passed on the text or the contents to He Zhu, it could explain why Fanghuis 1096
poem refers to Taos decision to retire as an uncomplicated one and also mentions
Taos begging for food. Note that neither notion is evident in Fanghuis 1085
Inscribed on the Yuanming Studio for Chen Shizhong. That poem was a heptametrical
Regulated Verse for a studio Chen had created by remodeling his quarters in
Shuanggou. Since Chen had resigned his position as collector of merchant taxes

dated (SSWJ 3:37.1044) and I see nothing to indicate that it does not coincide with the dated one (a
zhazi) referenced on 31.1071 (SSWJ 3:35.993), although Kong Fanli treats them as separate incidents.
The first recommendation is at SSWJ 3:34.956; I follow Kong Fanlis emendation of the date.
243 In the headnote to the pair of poems at Yongqiu, Fanghui says Mi is wild in a pure sort of
way and contrary , using the same phrase many antagonisms that we will see in the Tao
Yuanming poem. See also Inscribed on the Pure Name Studio at the Sweet
Dew Temple and Also Sent to Mi Yuanzhang, Poem 218 (10 November 1094), 5.12554; 5.12b.
244 See letters 12 and 15 to Mi Fu in SSWJ 4:58.1779 and 1780 and Su Shi nianpu, 3:32.1088 and
32.1072
245 Seeing Chen Chuandao off to a Post at Lower Pei. Poem 095, 3.12526, 3.6a.2.
246 See the many entries about Su and Chen in the Su Shi nianpu from 3:30.997 to 31.102930
Chen Shizhong appears in the first entry for Yuanyou 7 at 31.1022.

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CHAPTER ONE

there about the time he asked He Zhu confer a name on the studio, Fanghui called
it Yuanming Studio, after Tao Yuanming. 247 The new image of Tao Yuanming is
not evident in 1085.
A second factor that might explain why Fanghui is collating a copy of Tao
Yuanmings works in 1096 is that earlier in the year he had passed through
Yangzhou. Yangzhou is where Su Shi had been prefect for a few months in 1092,
at which time he had started matching the rhymes of Tao Yuanming. 248 Most
significantly, one of Su Shis most famous pronouncements about Tao Yuanming
is reported by Chao Buzhi to have been made in Yangzhou, presumably in 1092,
when Chao was vice-prefect there. This pronouncement concerned the choice of
verb in a line in the fifth of Taos Drinking Brew series. Down to the eleventh
century, all versions use wang to gaze at in this famous line, which Stephen
Owen translates off in the distance gazed on south mountain. Su Shi considered
that an unscholarly variant and preferred jian to see; to espy; thus A. R. Davis
translates, I distantly see the southern mountains. Wherever this version came
from, Su insisted that it was the correct one, because wang, implying the intention
to look at the mountain(s), destroys the spontaneity of the moment; that spontaneity, of course, is in Sus view an essential part of the character of Tao, who
supposedly served or retired almost on the whim of the moment. 249 Chao Buzhi
was almost certainly not in Yangzhou when Fanghui passed through in 1096, but
the story must have been circulating. 250
Here is Fanghuis poem, Inscribed at the End of Tao Yuanmings
Collected Works: 251
142

Yuanming was not happy in service;

untying his seals of office, he returned to Chaisang.

247 Inscribed on the Yuanming Studio, Poem 260, 6.12563, 6.8a. Zheng Qian observes that
Chen Shizhong held his post for less than three months, based on evidence from He Zhus poems,
but he also asserts that Chen returned to Xuzhou on resigning his position. Zheng cites no support
for this assertion, but it probably lies in Fanghuis penultimate line, which states that from now on
the windows will be broken and the eaves will teeter, implying that Chen is leaving. See Zhengs
Chen Houshan nianpu, Part One, 17273.
248 Su Shi nianpu, 3:31.1042.
249 Chaos recollection, dated quite a bit later (the equivalent of 19 November 1104), is under the
title in his Jile ji 33 (the Sibu congkan 1929 edition has no pagination). See the discussion in Xiao Qingwei, Bei Song xinjiudangzheng yu wenxue, 26168, and the minor emendation to the
text suggested on p. 267. Chao Buzhis recollection is also cited in Su Shi nianpu, 3:31.1056. Essentially the same pronouncement is made in Sus , SSWJ 5:67.2092. For the translations cited, see Owen, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 316; and Davis, Tao Yan-ming, 1:96.
250 In early 1095 Chao had been demoted from prefect of Qizhou to vice-prefect of the
Southern Capital on account of his role with Su Shi in the construction of a Star-Picking Loft.
Virtually nothing is known about the significance of the structure, but the consensus is that Su Shis
enemies at court were looking for an excuse to punish an ally of Su Shi, Su himself already having
been virtually sentenced to death in the malarial remote south. See Su Shi nianpu, 3:34.1186 and Liu
Huanyang, Chao Buzhi yu Su Shi jiaoyou kao, 42.
251 4.12539; 4.10b.

ANCIENT VERSE

12

109

Breasting the breeze below a north window,

clothes open to the waist, he looked down on August Xi.
Grain in storage having a way of disappearing,
he begged for food, in such a fluster!
To have a body is a catastrophe;
these words Ive heard from Boyang.
As for me, I too have many antagonisms;
to the hills and rude fences I long to retreat.
Chagrinned that I lack the art of avoiding grains,
In tiny measures I consume the government granary.

Notes
142-2/ Chaisang: Taos home village.
142-4/ August Xi is Fu Xi , the ancient sage credited with the invention of much of civilization.
In his , Tao Yuanming wrote, I often say that in the fifth or sixth month, I lie below
the north window and when the cool breeze comes suddenly, I make myself out to be a person who
lived before August Xi.
142-6/ Tao has a poem on begging for a meal. See Davis, 1:5556.
142-78/ Boyang is one of the names of Laozi; the notion that it is a disaster to have a body appears
in the Laozi. 252 Boyang is also, however, the name of one of the Seven Friends of the legendary sage
emperor Shunanother of whom is Fanghui, whose name is our poets cognomen. 253 Could
Fanghui be playing on this coincidence to say he really heard this truth from Boyang?
142-11/ Avoiding grains: As we have already seen with Zhang Liang, excluding grain from ones
diet was sometimes advocated as a means of prolonging life.

The first two lines of this poem are almost a prcis of Su Shis 1095 lines
Yuanming at first was in
service, too; / with lute and song rooted in words of sincerity. / When he was
not happy, he returned straightaway; / looking at the world and chagrined at his
solitary toil [on the kings business]. 254 Sus allusion to lute and song comes
from Tao Yuanming himself, who was considering becoming a magistrate in
order to provide resources for his eventual retirement. He said to his relatives
and friends: I should like with lute and song to support a three-path existence. When the authorities heard of it, they appointed him Magistrate of
Peng-tse. Taos statement alludes to a passage in the Analects in which Confucius
heard one of his disciples, who was a local magistrate, instructing the populace

252 Su Shi refers to this idea at least twice late in his life. The first time is in his Motto
for the Studio of No Deviating Thoughts, which is likely to have been written in 1094. See SSWJ,
2:19.57475; I date it on the basis of , SSWJ 2:21.606-7, which appears to have been
written in the same place and is dated 30 November 1094. The second time is in a poem written,
significantly enough, two days before Sus death brought an end to several weeks of acute physical
distress in 1101: , SSSJ, 7:45.2459; see Su Shi nianpu, 3:40.1418.
253 See Wang Yinglin (122396), Xiaoxue Ganzhu, CSJC, 177:5.181.
254 The final four lines of the second of seven , SSSJ, 7:39.213738. I add on the
kings business based on the Classic of Poetry, no. 205, the locus classicus of solitary toil.

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CHAPTER ONE

through lute and song. (See note to line 135-26, above.) Su Shi alludes to Taos
allusion. 255 That Tao Yuanming should serve out of economic necessity vitiates
Sus new argument that he entered officialdom on an impulse, but Su glosses over
that. The revised Tao Yuanming image offered a way to endure the exiles and
restorations Su Shi and his followers were forced to endure in these decades: if
these ups and downs could be translated into exercises of spontaneous impulses,
they would not drive one mad. Fanghui does not forget that Tao entered service
to earn enough to sustain himself in retirement to the three paths. In fact, he
appears to allude to Su Shis new image of Tao Yuanming in order to show its
weakness: Tao may have quit his post on an impulse, but he suffered from hunger
as a result. That knowledge keeps He Zhu nibbling away at the government
granary. Fanghui lacked the economic freedom to act on impulse and, since his
life to date had seen no traumatizing fall from a position of power, he had little
need to frame such a change within the new Tao Yuanming model.

OBFUSCATION
Fanghui was supposedly below the political storms; yet one poem he wrote in
Hanyang suggests that he had something to hide. It is obscure in the extreme. Our
poet claims it is the restoration of an old poem from drafts that had been used to
cover medicine bottles, drafts of a series of over ten poems he wrote in the Xining
and Yuanfeng periods (which comprised the years 106885). That he or someone
in his family should use old drafts of poems to wrap medicine is an amusing detail,
but what is even more interesting is the nature of the poem itself.
The title suggests that we might expect the poem to be a difficult allegory. It is
Restored Poem of Being Moved and Lodging the Feelings in Words. 256 Seeing
ganyu2 in the title, many readers will be reminded of numerous ganyu3
precedents in the Tang. (I use the numbers 2 and 3 to distinguish them in pinyin transcription, since the yu in the title Fanghui uses was the second, or rising,
tone in the Tang and the other yu was the third, or departing, tone. In modern
Mandarin, they are both in the departing tone.) There are altogether fifty-five
poems in the Quan Tang shi with ganyu3 in the title as a phrase, all but five being
pentametrical Ancient Verse. Ganyu3 is generally understood to mean being
moved by what one encounters or by how one is treated. Poems that carry this
title or incorporate this phrase into the title are generally topical allegories that
avoid prettiness and strive to make morally serious points. As we have noted, the
two ganyu phrases were pronounced differently in the Tang, but at some stage on

255 For the lute and song allusion, I use Davis translation from Taos biography, Tao
Yan-ming, 2:171.
256 4.12540; 4.11a.

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111

the road to modern Mandarin their pronunciation became identical; given the fact
that tonal differences are often ignored in Chinese puns, the question then arises
as to whether these two titles were seen as overlapping in meaning. In fact they
did overlap in meaning, at least in the eyes of some people. The commentary to
a ganyu3 series (twelve poems) by Zhang Jiuling (678740) states, Some
people say that ganyu3 means being moved and lodging [yu2] the emotion in
words, but that is false. 257
This false reading of ganyu3 gives us a good gloss on the meaning of ganyu2:
being moved and lodging the emotion in words. For our purposes, we can
ignore the title that Fanghui did not use, assume that the title he did use carried
some generic expectations for him, and look for the precedents that would signal
those expectations. It turns out that there are very few ganyu2 poems. Seven poets
use this phrase in their titles in the Tang. Four of these poems, pentametrical
works that use the kind of nature imagery that Fanghui employs, might represent
the tradition in which he placed his poem. 258 Of the major Song poets, only
Fanghui, Chao Buzhi, and Lu You use this title. 259 Rather than attempt a full
survey of the Tang precedents, we shall translate one of Chaos poems after
Fanghuis to show that he and our poet shared a concept of the ganyu2 poem as an
exercise in opacity.
Fanghuis poem is startlingly violent as well as difficult. It appears to be addressed to two animals, a tiger and a falcon. Presumably, they represent two different but equally treacherous types of political animals. It would be tempting to
see in them the New Policies faction and the opposition factions, the former
partisans aggressive tigers from the outset and the latter partisans relatively docileuntil their ascension in the Yuanyou period raised the viciousness of Song
politics to a new level, ensuring that they would be the targets of the neo-New
Policies factions devastating revenge in the present Shaosheng period.
143

Before a fierce tiger comes out of the pen,

its in a frenzy like a wild cat who has got a rat.
When the grey falcon is still on the glove,

257

Dai Kan-Wa jiten, 4:10953..39.

These Tang poets title their poems ganyu2 or use that phrase in a title: Liang Deyu :
two pentametrical poems, one in eight lines, one in twelve (QTS, 6:203.2125); Quan Deyu ,
one pentametrical poem in sixteen lines (10:320.3606); Du Xunhe , one epigrammatic
pentametrical quatrain (20:693.7977); Meng Jiao, one pentametrical six-line poem alternatively titled
yonghuai or yongqing, singing of my feelings (11:374.4202); Wu Yuanheng , one heptametrical quatrain on a battle site, (10:317.3579); Liu Wei , one heptametrical
poem in eight lines (17:562.6524); and Zhang Hu , one heptametrical poem in eight lines,
(15:511.5826).
259 http://cls.admin.yzu.edu.tw/QTS/HOME.HTM writes Chao Buzhis title with ganyu3; in
his works it is ganyu2. This appears to be an isolated case; when ganyu3 is returned in the titles of
works by Ouyang Xiu Mei Yaochen, and Zhang Lei (10541114 or 10521112), that is what I
find in their printed works.
258

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4

12

16

CHAPTER ONE

it is meeker than a nesting female.

You slack off to avoid disaster;
who would say you are obtuse?
If you meet with kindness and are let go,
you turn around and say people can be cheated.
Apparently you [both] dont think about your former shame,
when you wagged your tail or drooped your wings.
You pick your target and strike your fellows;
brutality is still your natural character.
I shall blame the foresters:
what can we do when they deliver you alive?
On the south mountains are layers of barriers;
in the Forest of Deng there are no declining branches.
Trapfalls and bird nets
where shall they be deployed now?

Notes:
143-58/ I suggest that lines 56 are addressed to the tiger and lines 78 to the falcon.
143-910/ These lines must be directed to both the tiger and the falcon; their shame is having
been locked in a pen or tamed on the falconers glove, respectively.
143-13/ The term yuzhe clearly means forester in three biographies in the earlier dynastic histories,
though other meanings are attested in later texts. 260 The phrase I shall blame wu jiang zui is found
in Du Fus , where the Tang poet castigates the Creator. 261
143-14/ Du Fus poem speaks of delivering alive nine rhinoceroses. 262
143-1516/ Du Fu speaks of his intention to move to the side of the southern mountains, where he
will watch Li Guang shoot tigersLi Guang being the Han general who withdrew to the southern
mountains in Lantian , spent his time hunting, and buried an arrow in a boulder that he mistook for a tiger. 263 While Du Fu never refers to the vast primeval Deng Forest, in his Ballad of the
Painted Eagle he speaks of magpies and crows who fill the declining branches (the term designates
branches that twist and coil in a downward direction), fearing the raptor. 264

A paraphrase of the penultimate couplet that retains the dual focus on the tiger
and the falcon and recognizes the precedents in Du Fu would be: There are

260 See the Jin shu, 8:92.2398; the Chen shu, 2:30.404; and the Sui shu, 5:57.1379 (where the yuzhe
sets traps); the Forest of Deng, to which Fanghui refers in line 143-16, appears coincidentally in the
Sui shu, 5:57.1401.
261 Du shi xiangzhu, 2:9.71922.
262 Du shi xiangzhu, 3:12.105561.The only other precedent I know is Lu Luns (d. ca. 799)
, QTS, 9:277.315051.
263 See Du Fus , Du shi xiangzhu, 1:2.139.Yoshikawa, To Ho 1:8384, and
the Shi ji, 9:109.217172.
264 , Du shi xiangzhu, 2:6.47778. Cf. Knechtges perplexity over why a parrot should long
for Deng Forest in Mi Hengs Rhapsody on the Parrot: I believe that Denglin does not refer to any
specific geographical location, and simply designates the grove that is the parrots home somewhere
in the remote northwest. Wen Xuan, 3:56.

ANCIENT VERSE

113

many obstacles between us and the place where Li Guang shot the tiger, / and in
all of Deng Forest there is no place for little birds to hide from the falcon. In the
final couplet, Fanghui must be lamenting that once the beasts have escaped there
is no way to capture them again.
Chao Buzhis set of ganyu2 poems suggest that the obscurities in He Zhus
poem might be characteristic of the ganyu2 tradition as the two men conceived it
in the 1090s. The title of Chaos set is
. The poems follow the rhymes of a set of ten poems titled
, sent from Huang Tingjian to one Chao Yuanzhong in
1082. 265 Because Huang Tingjian is identified as an assistant editorial director in
Chao Buzhis title, we know that Chaos series was written sometime after 1087. 266
(Chao Yuanzhong was related to Chao Buzhi in some way, which may account for
the poems coming into Chao Buzhis hands.) 267 This temporal gap between the
set of poems by Huang and the later set by Chao Buzhi is parallel to the (reported)
gap between He Zhus original ganyu2 series and his 1096 reconstruction of one
poem from that series. This and the fact that Fanghuis poem was from an original
set of ten are intriguing coincidences. Unfortunately, because Chaos set can be
dated no more precisely than post-1087 we cannot presently posit a direct
connection between the works of He and Chao.
Here is the first poem in Chao Buzhis set:
*

If the dove on an impulse had dwelt by herself,

who would have escorted her with a hundred carts?
Before I see her Im sad and anxious,
now that Ive met her I appreciate her favor and kindness.
They blow the mouth organ to stir up the market of Qi;
drizzling rain darkens the Hollow Mulberry.
A cold song below Ox Harness;
fervent, the vital force swells with resolution.

265 Huangs poems are dated Yuanfeng 5 (1082) in the Congshu jicheng edition of his poems (2247:
table of contents, 24; see 2249:wai.12.26972 for the poems themselves) and Yuanfeng 6 (1083) in
the Huang Tingjian quanji edition (2:93335). Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 130, argues for
the 1082 date.
266 Quan Song shi, 19:1276364. Huang Tingjian became an assistant editorial director in 1087 and
left the position in 1091. Chaos title also tells us the couplet whose words Huang had apparently
used to set the rhymes for his group of poems: it is the final couplet from Xie Lingyun
(385433), (Wen Xuan 26): .
(Frodsham [ 1:116] translates: I shall walk the untrodden ways of mountains and sea, / Yet never
more meet the one who delights my heart.) Chaos quotation of Xies couplet substitutes for .
267 In a letter to Chao Yuanzhong, Huang says that he knows of Chaos writings through the
latters brothers and he mentions Chao Duanren (10351102) specifically as one intermediary. Chao Duanren was a cousin of Chao Buzhis father; see Osada Natsuki, Ch Tanrei to
Smon to kinshugaihen no shijintachi, 44.

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CHAPTER ONE

Notes:
12/ The first couplet probably refers to the second stanza of Ode 152 in the Classic of Poetry, which
reads, The nest is the magpies; / The dove possesses it. / This young lady is going to her future
husband; / A hundred carriages are escorting her. 268 The dove in that poem is traditionally understood to represent the demure and proper brideso demure that she cannot make her own nest.
34/ Lines 3 and 4 are a conflation of a stanza from Ode 14 in the Classic of PoetryWhile I do not
see my lord, / my sorrowful heart is agitated; / Let me have seen him, / Let me have met him, / And
my heart will then be stilled. (Legge, 23)and a line from Ode 173 (Legge, 274). Perhaps the
dove is the person Chao Buzhi longs to see, who lives alone and is not escorted by a hundred
carts.
5/ This recalls a passage in the writings of the third century B.C.E. philosopher Han Fei: a certain
man in the state of Qi who couldnt play the mouth-organ well was nevertheless able to earn a
stipend because the dukes mouth-organ music was always performed by an orchestra of 300 players
and his own ineptitude couldnt be noticed. When the dukes successor announced that he preferred
to hear each player one by one, the man fled. 269 Blowing the mouth organ can be a humble term
for ones own capabilities or accomplishments; moreover, the market of Qi could be Qizhou,
where Chao Buzhi served briefly as prefect in 1094. 270 I think, however, that in this context the
phrase might refer to the crowd of people who get by with inferior talent in the capitalthe market
of the ancient state of Qi standing for the contemporary capital of Song China. This would contrast
with Hollow Mulberry.
6/ Robert Henricks summarizes the early meanings of Hollow Mulberry: It is the name of a
mountain, a mountain that is in some cases at least is an axis mundi; it is the name of a city ruled by
various [Di]; it is a city or mountain threatened by flood waters; it is literally an empty mulberry tree
used as a boat by a hero who survives a flood in a story where a mortar plays a critical role; and it is
the name of a zither, a musical instrument which like mortars and drums among southern minority
peoples in China today may have been made by hollowing a log. It is also a place where heroes are
born, heroes connected with new beginnings (e.g. Yi Yin and Confucius). 271 Finding no similar
use of this term in Tang or Song poets, I can only speculate that Chao could be using it to refer to an
exiled person who is worthy to be a Yi Yin or to a neglected person whose zither stands in
contrast to the blare of the mouth organs.

Because we know Chao is following Huang Tingjians rhymes, perhaps the poem
is about Huang. If Ox Harness (line 7) is a place name, on the other hand, the exile
could be Su Shi. There is a place by this name on or near the route by which Su Shi
passed on his way to Huizhou : a village near Qianzhou in southern
Jiangnan West Circuit. There is another Ox Harness on or near the route by which
he later went to Hainan Island: a range of hills one hundred li north of Yangchun
. This would be on Su Shis route from Xinhui to Tengzhou ,
where Su Shi would rendezvous with Su Zhe before proceeding south to the
Leizhou Peninsula. Several things must be emphasized here. First, my sources for
these place names are much later than the Song. 272 Second, I know of no text by

268

Legges translation (2021).

Han Fei zi (SBCK) 9.49a.
270 See Li Zhiliang, Bei-Song jingshi ji dong-xi lu da jun shouchen kao, 296, and Su Shi nianpu, 3:34.1186.
271 Robert G. Henricks, On the Whereabouts and Identity of a Place Called Kung Sang
(Hollow Mulberry) in Early Chinese Mythology, 83.
272 For the village near Qianzhou, I am using the China Historical GIS system, http://fas.har269

ANCIENT VERSE

115

Su Shi or any of his contemporaries that mentions these places. At the same time,
however, if this is not a place name, I know of no allusion or precedent for below
the ox harness. If we provisionally assume Chao knew that Su would be passing
by below Ox Harness Range on his way to an exile from which no one expected
him to return, the cold song makes sense: Li Bo uses the phrase to refer to the
sad song that was sung when Jing Ke set off to assassinate the Qin ruler, at best a
do-and-die mission. 273 Despite the gloomy association, the song is fervent (jilie
generally characterizes speech or song) and Su Shis spirit remains strong.
After struggling through these two ganyu2 poems, I think we can conclude that
poems under this title were meant to conceal more than reveal what the poet felt
about dangerous topics. The language of the poem is obscure because it points to
no recognized parables or situations that can be recognized as precedents.
Moreover, the diction does not recur in other works by the same poets. Fanghuis
animal allegory is somewhat more coherent, but although we surely feel that he is
using the tiger and falcon to denounce specific peoplethis is not a
moth-in-the-flame allegory about general human behaviorwe dont have
enough information to say who the animals represent. Chaos puzzling allusions
to the Classic of Poetry do not illuminate each other, nor are they illuminated in the
very different second half of his poem. Undoubtedly, either poet could tell his
trusted friends what his allegory meant, but use of the title ganyu2 evidently means
to signal that such information will be conveyed only orally.

109698: JIANGXIA
1096: THE CONNOISSEUR
A set of poems written to Zhou Shou in the tenth month of 1096,
Thinking of and Sent to Zhou Yuanweng, Ten Poems, returns us to the realm of
poetry that is supposed to communicate. 274 These poems are relaxed in tone,
written all at once in a single sitting (according to the last of the set). Each poem
begins with the words Master Zhou, and Hes admiration for Zhou Shou is
everywhere in evidence. The second poem tells us that Fanghui is sending some
tea, since he knows that Zhou shares his fondness for the beverage; the tea is a
treasure reserved for high officials in the secretariat, and

vard.edu/~chgis/, accessed 7 January 2004. The time point is 1911. I found the village north of
Yangchun in the Jiaqing chongxiu yitongzhi in the electronic version of the Sibu
congkan. That source writes Niue as our poem has it; the CHGIS system gives it as , pronounced the same.
273 , Zhan Ying, Li Bo quanji, 2:5.82227; no Jitsunosuke, Ri Haku zenkai, 123133.
274 4.12541; 4.12b14a.

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CHAPTER ONE

If a poet gets a taste, / he can lord it over the rich. (147-910) He doesnt
say how he got the tea.
The fourth poem humbly suggests that Fanghuis poems are like autumn
insects whose sad buzzing is likely to depress the older Zhou Shou needlessly.
This may remind some readers of similar comparisons Su Shi made in 1078,
though the comparison was by no means invented by Su. 275 Fanghui goes further
in evoking those past decades when he adds, .
Making cries in poetry, one must be poor; / Im poorhow could I wish for
that? (149-910) This ingeniously conflates a statement that Ouyang Xiu had
made to the effect that good poetry came out of poverty or hardshipa statement that was repeatedly reformulated and argued over in the ensuing decadesand Han Yus famous comparison of poetry to the sounds (cries) that
things make when their equilibrium is disturbed. Su Shi provides precedents for
the expression shi ming (poetic cries) and for continuing the conversation about
poetry and povertyhe sometimes asserted that Heaven denied people success
(impoverished them) in order to make them good poets. He Zhus accomplishment, in any case, is to bring the seminal formulations of Han Yu and
Ouyang Xiu together in this couplet. 276
Perhaps the most interesting poem is the sixth, in which Fanghui compares
Zhou Shous calligraphy with that of Huang Tingjian and Su Shi.
151

When Master Zhou smiled to the west,

he folded and sent two cases of letters.
The feelings were intimate, the language in earnest,
even more than with flesh and blood.

275 and , SSSJ, 3:16.821 and 17.859, respectively.

Translated in Fuller, 23031 and 23738.
276 For the expression shi ming, see Sus (1077; compliments a general who uses
poetry to ming), SSSJ, 3:15.759; (1084; an attribute of Meng Jiao), 4:24.1255;
(1086; the term stands for Meng Jiao), 5:27.1439; and
(1090; means monks who express themselves through poetry), 5:32.1681. To these may be added
allusions to the upsetting of equilibrium that Han Yu had talked about: see (1078), SSSJ,
3:17.905; Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 19899; (1080), SSSJ,
4:20.1058. Su Shi had the most to say about poverty and poetry in seven poems up through 1080,
and then in three poems in 1089, 1091, and 1092. See (1062), SSSJ, 1:4.158;
(1071),1:6.265; (1073), 2:9.451; (1074,
quoting Ouyang explicitly), 2:12.576; (1076), 3:14.696;
(1077), 3:15.726; (1079), 3:18.948; (1089), 5:31.1639;
(1091), 6:34.1799; and (1092), SSSJ,
6:35.1905. Fanghui himself alludes to the link between poetry and poverty in early 1091: he says that
although poverty can make you poor, that doesnt necessarily make your poetry good! See Poem 017,
Left in Farewell to Monk Na (1091), 1.12503; 1.8b. See also , Ill for a Long
Time: Sent to Two or Three Relations and Friends (Poem 212; 1092), translated in our chapter on pentametrical Regulated Verse. (For more on Meng Jiao as the epitome of the suffering poet, see Shang
Wei, Prisoner and Creator: The Self-Image of the Poet in Han Yu and Meng Jiao.)

ANCIENT VERSE

117

The marvelous brushwork was forthright, forceful, and free,

pressing close to Huang and to Su
Huangs gauntness, dragging wasted sinews;
Sus richness, congealing fatty flesh.
Im between Ji and Meng:
I add whats lacking, discard whats extra.
But I dare not speak of my household chicken,
and shall hoard these pearls in the satchel.

Notes
151-1/ Smiling to the west: This is a common expression meaning to hanker after life in the capital
city (which was in the west in the Han, when the phrase was first reported, and the Tang, when it is
used in several poems); however, the expression may simply indicate that Zhou is looking westward
toward Jiangxia, where our poet is. In the tenth month Zhou has apparently returned to Lian Stream,
down the Yangzi to the southeast. 277
151-9/ To be between Ji and Meng is, in general usage, to be neither the best nor the worst. Thus,
Confucius was insulted when the Duke of Qi decided to treat him as halfway up the pecking order,
between the head of the Ji clan at the top and that of the Meng at the bottom. See the Analects (Legge,
332). Fanghui, however, seems to be using the expression to say he avoids the aesthetic extremes of
Huangs gauntness and Sus richness.
151-11/ The Jin Dynasty general Yu Yi once compared his own calligraphy to a well-fed
domestic chicken and that of more popular calligrapher Wang Xizhi to a wild duck. These phrases
could thereafter stand for fleshier and leaner styles of calligraphy, but household chicken could
also be a way to refer to ones own calligraphy. Thus, in a 1074 poem, Su Shi advised someone who
had calligraphic talent in the family but had nevertheless asked him for a specimen of his writing not
to ask other people for calligraphy just because he was tired of the household chicken. 278

This poem typifies the set insofar as it expresses the value Fanghui places on the
friendship Zhou Shou has shown to him while seeking to insert Fanghuis own
values and stature into the conversation. Just as the pedigree of his gift of tea in an
earlier poem in the set asserted quietly but unmistakably his membership in a
network through which such treasures might flow, Fanghuis standing in elite
society is demonstrated by his apparent personal knowledge of the calligraphic
styles of Huang Tingjian and Su Shi.

1096 AND 1097: HISTORY

This chapter began with the artifacts of history and the limits of the physical
record in transmitting information from the past. In 1096 and 1097, Fanghui
speaks of the power of writing or editing history. In the ninth poem to Zhou Shou,

277 The first poem says Zhou is living in Pen City , which is in that area; the fifth poem
indicates that there has been a drought since Master Zhou returned to Lian Stream.
278 , SSSJ, 2:11.542.

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CHAPTER ONE

he begins by saying Zhou has a talent for history and can even rank with the most
famous historians of the past, Ban Gu and Sima Qian. Then he adds,
Those who slander others in a flurry; fear the punishment of
your writing (154-34). Since Zhou Shou was not in a position at this time to be
writing official history, perhaps is it unofficial history that Fanghui has in mind.
We must remember that Huang Tingjian had been living in exile in the upper
Yangzi region since the previous year because he insisted that documentation
from the reign of Shenzong that put the New Policies in a bad light remain part of
the official record. If official history was to be censored, unofficial history would
have to tell the story.
In the same tenth month of 1096, history comes up in a poem for a pavilion in
Wuchang. (Wuchang is in Ezhou but is not the modern sector of Wuhan by that
name; it is downstream, opposite Huangzhou.) The pavilions name puns on the
nodes of the straight bamboos that surround it, for node also means integrity. 279
Thus, straight [bamboo] nodes means honest integrity. The poem,
Inscribed on the Straight Node Pavilion of Administrative Assistant Zheng in
Wuchang, 280 suggests ways in which the bamboos might or might not be used, then
ends by recommending that they be cut into strips to be cured and used for
writing history:
156
24

28

I would make cured writing strips

bright with lacquer-black and cinnabar-red.
Praise and blame, condensed from the annals of Lu
are handed down for all the ages, never to be erased.
But when you look at this place where youve taken root,
the shame! To forever coil in the mud.

Notes
156-24/ Black lacquer was used in government archives, or so Fanghui might have believed. A
memorial by Wang Wei upon being appointed to such a unit politely expresses trepidation at having
to put in order lacquer slips and approve the texts of classics to be carved into stone. 281 Cinnabar
was used to record misdeeds, according to a few scattered references. 282
156-25/ Confucius condensed the historical records of his home state of Lu to produce the Spring
and Autumn Annals, which were understood by pious readers in later times to reflect, through lexical

279 Or the character for node was borrowed to write the homophonous word for integrity; to
have two unrelated but homophonous words written with the same sign is unusual only when both
remain in the active lexicon. Cf. Alvin P. Cohen, Introduction to Research in Chinese Source Materials, 21.
280 4.12542; 4.14b.
281 , Quan Tang wen, 7:324.8b. Tsuen-hsuin Tsien discusses the evidence for and
against lacquer as a writing medium and concludes that it could have had only a very minor role. See
Written on Bamboo and Silk, 16871.
282 See the Zuo Commentary B9.23.3 (Xiang 23); Legge, 501, translates the red book (Book of
Criminals). Lu Ji (261303) suggests that the people may be pacified if the red books are erased: see
his , Wen Xuan 37. Finally, the term survives in the Daoist realm as a ledger of
misdeeds, as in the phrase in , Yunji qi qian, 106.763b.

ANCIENT VERSE

119

subtleties, praise and blame for good and bad actions. For the use of Fanghuis verb yue (condense)
in this context, Dugu Ji (72577) provides a precedent and the Song shi, noting the importance Confucius placed on recording celestial and meteorological phenomena, provides a fourteenth-century example. 283

Despite the outburst in the last two lines of the poem about the obscurity in
which Administrative Assistant Zheng and his bamboos must dwell, Fanghui has
clearly placed some hope in history as a meaningful exercise. In fact, if we see the
closing couplet as counterfactual (the shame! [If you were] to coil forever in the
mud), it may be that the writing of history will prevent Zheng from disappearing
from history.
In the eighth month of Shaosheng 4 (1097), Fanghui wrote a poem in response
to one from Pan Dalin, a longtime friend of both Huang Tingjian and Su Shi. Pan
had written a work called the Zuo shi , which probably means The Zuo
[Tradition] history. It may have been an attempt to fashion biographies of some of
the more than one thousand individuals mentioned in the Zuo Tradition, to judge
from the following portion of Fanghuis thirty-line poem, Inscribed on the East Studio
of Pan Dalin : 284
157

16

20

You write a book to analyze the annals of Lu;

a hundred biographies are drafted.
the brigands on rampage have long escaped punishment;
now we shall chastise them with all our might.
Below the Twin Watchtowers we should
capture not only shaozheng Mao.
You can be proud before the Minister without Portfolio,
and make his pupils brighten.

Notes
157-1718/ Shaozheng is the name of an office of unknown function held by a person named Mao in
a story of unlikely authenticity. This Mao was executed at the foot of two watchtowers by the order
of Confucius himself, who justified this extreme action by saying that Mao embodied five evils that
singly were each sufficient cause for punishment. 285
157-19/ The Minister without Portfolio is Zuo Qiuming, supposed author of the Zuo Tradition.
Confucius is commonly called the Ruler Without a Throne (a deserving sage who never held political power). 286 Zuo Qiuming, as the interpreter of his Spring and Autumn Annals could be seen as

283 Song shi 4:48.950 and Dugus , juan 7 in his , Sibu congkan,
electronic version, pagination unavailable.
284 4.12542; 4.15a. On the daunting task of fashioning geneologies and unified accounts of the
people mentioned in the Zuo Tradition, see Barry B. Blakely, Notes on the Reliability and Objectivity
of the Tu Yu Commentary on the Tso Chuan.
285 See Kongzi jiayu, 2.1, p. 205 in the translation by R. P. Kramers.
286 The preface to the Chunqiu Zuoshi zhuan by Du Yu (222-81) in the Wen
Xuan, 45, refers to this view of Confucius, although Du thinks Confucius would have rejected this
formulation because his aim was simply to restore the ways of the Zhou founders, not establish his
own order. See Kamata Tadashi, Saden no seiritsu to sono tenkai, 765.

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CHAPTER ONE

the Plain Minister to the Ruler without a Throne.

157-20/ Zuo Qiuming would be delighted with Pan Dalins work.

It is clear that history writing and the suppression of disorder are associated in
Fanghuis mind. Recalling that fomenting factionalism was one of the talents for
which Mao was executed by Confucius, and knowing that factional wars were
paralyzing Song China, we can reasonably read into these lines Fanghuis frustration and anger: there are many more like Mao who must be reigned in and
punished.

1098: WATCHFUL EYES

The last Ancient Verse we have for He Zhu, dated Yuanfu 1 (109899), is a much
less serious composition, possibly concealing a private joke. The identities of the
Great Wife and the girl she is watching are unclear; they could be wives in the
same household, mother and daughter, or wife and potential rival. Their relationship is clear, however: the wife (like the historian) is keeping an eye out for
misbehavior. The poem is Harmonizing with Pan Binlaos
Watching on the Han River. Pan Binlao is Pan Dalin. 287
159

White clouds shroud the mountain top;

A clear river below the mountain flows.
On a fragrant isle, a girl picking sweet smells
at dusk bobs along in her home-bound boat.
Joined stems and paired lotus leaves
when she meets him, they screen her shyness.
She holds her feelings inside and cannot speak them:
the Great Wife is on the high tower.

Note:
159-5/ Conventional symbols of union between lovers.

This is one of the fourteen Ancient Verses by He Zhu in which the first line
rhymes. The rhyme may give the poem a more musical tone, the lightness of a
ballad. As such, it provides a bridge to our next chapter, on the poems Fanghui
called Songs.

287 4.12543; 4.16a, fourth month. Pan must have been close to leaving Hanyang; he had come to
Hanyang with his father, Pan Geng , who was collecting Brew taxes in the last post he would hold
before retiring to Huangzhou, where he would die in the tenth month of this year at age 63. See
Zhang Lei, Zhang Lei ji, 2:60.89496.

ANCIENT VERSE

121

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON IMITATION, INSCRIPTIONS, AND RHYME

Let us pause first to consider whether Imitations and Inscriptions called for Ancient Verse preferentially and to suggest aspects of rhyme that need to be explored more fully.
Five of the seven poems in He Zhus oeuvre whose titles or prefaces explicitly
identify them as imitations are Ancient Verses. (The other two are also pentametrical and will be translated in later chapters.) A partial explanation for He
Zhus preference in line length would be that if the poem being imitated is a
pre-Tang work, it is likely to be pentametrical because most poetry that was meant
to be taken seriously then was pentametrical. If the poem being imitated is a Tang
work, evidently it was still the case that a pentametrical poem was seen as more
timeless in its significance, in contrast to the casual heptametrical Song. Fanghuis
preference for Ancient Verse can be explained by the fact that, although Regulated Verse was fully developed in the Tang, if one followed the dynamics of
semantic and tonal parallelism of a Regulated original too carefully, the imitation
would seem like a forgery, too close to the original to be honest as a poem in itself.
To ignore these aspects of the original, however, would be to ignore its most
significant traits. Another way to put it is that, once one was beyond apprenticeship, the idea was to maintain a formal distance from the original while employing types of diction and situations typical to the target poet and a plot that
reproduced the inner structure of the original poem using new but analogous
imagery. Fanghui took the maintenance of formal distance to an extreme when he
used an eight-line pentametrical Ancient Verse to imitate Bao Rong, who wrote
almost no poems in that form (see Poem 092).
Further research on other Northern Song poets is needed to see whether they
practiced imitation in the same ways. It appears that among the major poets Mei
Yaochen was most like He Zhu insofar as he imitated many single works. In
contrast to Mei and He Zhu, most Tang imitations and many Song Dynasty
imitations specify only a period, an anthology style, or even simply the ancient
as the model. We shall see He Zhu do this in his heptametrical Songs, but he does
not call those evocations of past models imitations.
For inscriptions, Fanghui was equally likely to use either Ancient Verses or
heptasyllabic Regulated Verses. The former account for fifteen poems, the latter
for fourteen titles (or seventeen poems; poems 507510 are a set under one title).
Fanghui also wrote pentametrical Regulated Verses and Heptametrical Quatrains
as inscriptionsseven eachbut clearly Ancient Verses and heptasyllabic
Regulated Verses were favored. The majority of inscriptions in all genres are
meant to be displayed on structures or, as in the case of An Excursion to Eupatorium
Bottoms Garden at Lingbi, (Poem 100, 1088) to be appended to other texts that are

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CHAPTER ONE

already on view in a garden or building. 288 Fanghui also wrote inscriptions in

books (the Ancient Verse Inscribed at the End of Tao Yuanmings Collected Works, Poem
142, 1096; and two heptametrical Regulated Verses) and on paintings (Inscribed on
a Painting of Shamanka Mountain, Poem 047, 1080). These are included in our statistics (except for a small number of hexametrical painting inscriptions to be
discussed in our chapter on heptametrical Quatrains). Although at first glance
they would seem to be unlike the other inscriptions, they, too are expressly and
physically attached to something whose primary purpose is independent of the
poems existence.
What factors would argue in favor of an Ancient Verse inscription as opposed
to a heptametrical Regulated Verse? We can answer this better after we have
looked more closely at the latter genre, but one obvious consideration is that
Ancient Verse does not limit the poet to eight lines. In some cases, longer poems
could be profitable. The poem sent to Liting (135) in 1093 must have been written
on request, so perhaps it is no coincidence that it is Fanghuis longest inscription:
forty lines. Similarly, Zheng Shen asked for a poem in 1096 when he built a
pavilion and planted bamboos near his office, we are told, so surely he rewarded
He Zhu for Inscribed on the Straight Node Pavilion of Administrative Assistant Zheng in
Wuchang (156), which stretched to thirty lines. Of course, we dont know if the
poet was literally paid by the word; and why would a long inscription necessarily
be worth more to the person who commissioned it, anyway, except to convince
his less literary guests that he had gotten his moneys worth?
There are less materialistic considerations. Length was an advantage for an
inscription that had to stand up to repeated exposure, that was always on display,
not hidden away in a book or in a packet of letters to be rediscovered just often
enough to keep its freshness. Length was one safeguard against the
over-familiarity that could so easily threaten any text that was a daily companion.
Moreover, length gave an inscription weight, the weight to compete with other
inscriptions that might be at the site, the scale to command attention as an artifact
that had obviously taken great effort to produce, that could not be read in a single
glance, and therefore must have something to say. For the poet writing when no
compensation was expected (as perhaps was the case with An Excursion to Eupatorium Bottoms Garden at Lingbi in 1088, Poem 100), depending on the circumstances under which the poem was likely to be on view, these factors could be
decisive in determining the choice of genre.
We can also posit that when tonal and/or semantic balance would distract us

288 This poem and one other Ancient Verse are counted as inscriptions despite the fact that their
titles do not use the verb ti, inscribe, because the headnotes specify that the poems were inscribed.
Naturally, many poems about which we have no such information would end up serving as inscriptions to no ones surprise, but our purpose here is to try to understand the choices made by a
poet when this was the express function of the poem.

ANCIENT VERSE

123

from an argument or create an unwanted impression of sophistication, Ancient

Verse will be the choice for an inscription. A poem on an ancient stele, such as the
1080 Inscribed on the Back of the Stele of the Prince of Lanling (056) quoted briefly in this
chapter, should be appropriately old-fashioned.
In later chapters we shall discuss first-line rhyme as it relates to other genres,
but let us mark it here as a topic in the pentametrical Ancient Verse that needs
broader study. Length does not appear to be a factor in the decision to rhyme the
first lines: while half of He Zhus fourteen Ancient Verses marked by this oddity
are eight lines long, the rest are anywhere from twelve to forty lines in length.
Rhyme change is present in only two of the fourteen poems; all others feature the
same rhyme throughout. 289 Whether it is significant that the unchanging rhyme is
almost always an even-tone rhyme is difficult to say. (The sole exception is one of
a pair of octaves under the title Autumn Thoughts ; see below.)
The most striking thing is that six of the poems in question were written in
1080, in the Fuyang period. Inscribed on a Painting of Shamanka Mountain, (047) and
On Night Duty in Winter (059) are examples translated in this chapter. (Although we
chose to translate a variant version of On Night Duty in Winter that does not rhyme
the first line, it is certainly plausible that the version in QSS, where the line does
rhyme, is an equally authentic draft.) The two poems from 1082 are somewhat
problematic: Climbing the Yellow Tower and Having Thoughts of Su [of] Meishan (066)
begins with two three-syllable rhyming lines, which we have already noted is very
unusual in pentametrical Ancient Verse, and it might be best to remove this as an
example of first-line rhyme. The second of the two octaves under the title Autumn
Thoughts (067, 068) has an entering-tone rhyme, which is anomalous in our set of
fourteen poems. 290 If we pass over these 1082 poems, then, we find two examples
in 1085, then one each in 1086, 1091, 1096 (Sent as an Inscription for the Thatched Hall
of Mr. Zhou of Xunyang, Poem 140), and 1098 (Harmonizing with Pan Binlaos Watching
on the Han River, Poem 159). Looking only at the poems from 1085 to 1098, we
could safely conclude that first-line rhyme was an occasional phenomenon of no
overarching significance. Why the cluster of poems from Fuyang, then?
Perhaps that early period was a time for experimentation. Some of the experiments worked and were kept for the poetry collection but they did not lead to
further developments along the same line. Fanghuis witty poems on a withered
tree (041), mosquitoes (048), a moth (049), and a rooster destined for the cooking
pot (054), for example, have no parallel in his post-Fuyang poetry.

289 Coincidentally or not, both poems in question begin with rising tone rhymes. The poems are
Asking my Wife (052, 1080), 2.12513; 2.5b; and Seeing Off Kou Yuanbi and Wang
Wenju (082, 1085), 3.12524; 3.2b.
290 The first line of Poem 067, ends with ghwanQ3a, which looks like it wants to rhyme
with the words at the end of the other couplets, kan2b, sran2b, phan2a, and ghwan2a, except that it is in
the wrong tone. Su Shi sometimes put ghwanQ3a in similarly ambiguous positions; perhaps this is
some sort of slant rhyme, but it is safest to exclude it as an example of first-line rhyme for now.

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CHAPTER ONE

We shall want to test such statements against He Zhus works in other genres,
of course, alert to the possibility that a theme or mode will take a different form in
another type of poetry. We dont see later reportage on village life as in the 1079
Ancient Verses discussed above (040 and 041), but there will be glimpses of rural
life and satirical Quatrains on the plight of the peasants, at least immediately after
the Fuyang period. There will be different ways of being witty, of talking about
historical time and personal history, of capturing a scene with precision, of admiring Su Shi and keeping ones distance from factionalism.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SONGS OF HE ZHU, 108098

Song (gexing ) is He Zhus term for heptametrical poems unrestrained by the
rules of Regulated Verse. It was his least favorite genre, if numbers can be used to
gauge such things: his thirty-eight surviving Songs amount to only seven percent
of his total oeuvre. Yet it was also the genre in which he mourned his daughter,
poked fun at friends, celebrated precious gifts given and received, and performed
some odd experiments. Some of his most memorable works are Songs. As is usual
with the form, he varies the line length to create exclamatory and other effects. (It
is in only about a quarter of his Songs that the line length is uniformly heptasyllabic.) As is also usual with the form, he often (in thirty-one of the thirty-eight
poems) breaks Songs into sections by changing the rhymeeven if there are only
eight lines in the poem.
In several ways, this genre requires more of a poet simply because there are
more options, meaning more choices, from large to small. How long will the poem
be? How many sections will there be, and how long or short does each need to be?
How prosy should it be, or how musical? Because of the longer line and unpredictable line length, one is apt to use rhyme at the end of more lines in order to
keep the structure from dissolving, and so there is a great deal of pressure to come
up with rhymes. True, one can change rhymes freely, but changes driven solely by
limitations in ones creativity and bearing no relation to the content of the poem
would be fatal. Fanghui had a great deal of fun with the Song, I sense, but this was
not a form to be used lightly.
Perhaps for that reason, we dont get a Song from He Zhu until 1080, and it not
until 1084 that he gives us a second one. An additional oddity is that while the first
ten Songs are identified as songs in their titles, 1 after 1088 only a single heptametrical Ancient Verse (Poem 036, dated 1097) is called a song. We may
wonder why the subgroup of poems with song in the title dominates those first
few years to the exclusion of all other heptametrical Ancient Verse and then nearly
disappears. There seem to be no tendencies in meter, rhyme, or mixed line length
that consistently distinguish those songs from the other heptametrical Ancient
Verses in He Zhus collection. After all, in his preface to his collection Fanghui
expansively lumps together as Songs all poems that have mixed line-length [or]
that change rhymes, regardless of whether [the meters of individual lines are]

1 Five of the titles in 1080 and 1084 use the term ge; the remaining five in 1084, 1085, and 1088
use other terms.

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CHAPTER TWO

ancient or regulated. However, in He Zhus collection a song will tell us in its

title that it is on a set topica place or an objector is a performance of an old
song type. If we understand a song as a work on a topic rather than as the explicit
outgrowth of an experience, it comes as no surprise that Poems 002 through 007
were written in Xuzhou in 1084 and 1085 as part of group exercises, with the
topics distributed among the participants. This does not tell us why no earlier
Songs were written on our poets own initiative as responses to events rather than
to topics, but it does suggest that it was the prodding of others that eased He Zhu
into this genre. The non-song heptametrical Ancient Verses start even later, in
1089; these poems indicate in their titles a use, an occasion, or a context: presented to so-and-so, sent to so-and-so, seeing off so-and-so, and so forth.
This kind of poem accounts for the vast majority of He Zhus heptasyllabic Ancient Verse.

108085: HANDAN AND XUZHOU

1080: AN ANCIENT SITE IN HANDAN
Song of the Clustered Estrade 2 is on the topic of an edifice originally constructed in the fourth century B.C. The location is Handan, at that time a populous
and prosperous city on the western edge of the North China plain. Invasions and
population flight seven centuries before Fanghui's time had spelled the end of the
city's glory, but Handan and the Clustered Estrade were still celebrated in the
works of such poets as Li Bo, Du Fu, and Bo Juyi. Apparently taking its name
from the fact that it had been built as a complex or cluster of terraces and pavilions, the Estrade was but a ruin in the northeast corner of the city wall when
Fanghui climbed it with his friend Du Yan in the seventh month of Yuanfeng 4
(1080). 3
001

Piled-up earth for three hundred feet;

declining Fire[-Star] for two thousand years.
A
In human life, the Numbers of the objective [world]
do not wait for us;
b
shattered and ruined, an old relic
faces the winds of autumn.
A

1.12497; 1.1a.
Fanghui ascribes the poem to 1081, but Zhong Zhenzhen, Du He Fanghui nianpu zhaji,
43738, points out several reasons why this is an unlikely date. He proposes the seventh month of
1080 as much more plausible. Two months later, Fanghui will draw on his memory of the outing
with Du Yan as he writes Replying to Du Zhongguans Climbing the Clustered Estrade, Which He Sent
to Me (058), from which we quoted in the previous chapter.
3

SONGS

Wulings old barrow

where is it now?
Bare trees cast no shade,
beset by the harvest of woodcutters.
The nephrite flutes and gold mirrors
have not melted from sight;
now and then I see the ploughmen
go to the city to sell them.

127
B
B

Do you not seewhen the Clustered Estrade was in C

12

16

20

24

full glory,
Marquisette gauzes formed a throng
to sojourn in the spring sunlight.
Once the carved Imperial Carriage
was shut away in unkempt grasses,
scatteredmoving clouds
they never returned.
Summoning his soul, I imagine
the outflow of that style remains,
in clear-day flowers and dewy creepers
still vaguely discernible.
Twisting and turning, the thorny path
pulls at our clothes;
Millet ripens late and
badgers and raccoon dogs grow fat.
Green tiles from serried roofs,
broken on the level ground,
dream they are mandarin ducks
flying as companions.
I climb to overlook, mourning for the ancient times;
to whom can I tell my question:
The citywalls, the people
are they the same or gone?
I point out for you to see
the things of former times:
in the south there is a clear flow,
in the west a mountain haze.
We pace about the Flowered Pillar,
cannot bear to leave;
it is not only Liaodongs
Ding Lingwei who felt that way!

C
b
C
C
C

C
C
C

Notes:
001-12/ The Fire-Star declining in the west has been associated with the seventh month since the
Classic of Poetry (Ode no. 154). Fanghui, viewing this site in the seventh month, reflects that the same
month has come and gone there for two thousand years (give or take a few centuries).
001-3/ The phrase wushu, object and number, refers to the world of objects changing through time,
in accord with its own teleology.

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CHAPTER TWO

001-5/ The barrow he cannot find is King Wuling's grave (see Poem 058, line14).
001-13/ Summoning the soul is soul of Shao [music] in some editions. I am unable to
determine what the soul of Shao might mean.
001-16/ The raccoon dog and the badger would clearly not make their homes at the Clustered
Estrade if it had not become farmland. The raccoon dog (Nytereutes procynoides), now raised in North
America for its fur (and eyed warily as a potentially invasive species), eats a wide variety of plants,
animals, and carrion. 4
001-20; 2324/ A Daoist adept from Liaodong went away to master the Way and returned to Liao
one thousand years later in the form of a crane. Perching on a flower-carved pillar, he found himself
the target of a youthful archer and had to fly away up into the heavens. The song he sang includes
the line The citywalls are as before; the people are different. 5 This language is
clearly echoed in line 001-20.

As is customary in Songs, rhyme changes divide the poem into stanzas of four
lines or a multiple of four lines. (Because, with rare exceptions, interlocking
rhymes are not recognized in Chinese poetry, the rhymes in lines 001-3 and 13 are
represented with a lower-case b.) More unusual, I think, is the single pentametrical couplet at the beginning of the poem. Huang Tingjian and Chao Yuezhi
(10591129) write the only other two heptametrical ge I know that start
with a single pentametrical couplet. 6 I have not tried to survey heptasyllabic Ancient Verse as a whole, but if we look only at He Zhus Songs that start with
pentasyllabic lines, in no other case are these lines limited to a single couplet. In
1084 and 1085, he starts three poems with two pentametrical couplets, and in later
years he starts another three poems with four pentametrical couplets (in 1089,
1092, and 1096). The 108485 poems are designated as some kind of song in
their titles; the later poems are not. Perhaps Fanghui associated the shorter pentametrical openings with real songs and the longer ones with heptametrical Ancient Verse more broadly conceived. One would like to find corroboration in the
works of other poets before drawing a conclusion on this point.

4 Both collections of Fanghuis poetry regularly cited in this study have instead of .
The former two terms can refer to northern barbarians, but I have been unable to find them used
together with this or any other sense. In fact, the characters can be alternative ways of writing the same
word. I emend the text based on the version of the poem given in the Mirror of Writing for our August
Court , compiled in the Southern Song by L Zuqian (113781), as it appears in
the electronic edition of the Sibu congkan. (Other variations in that version have little to recommend
them, however.) The badger and racoon dog appear together in the Huainan zi (ICS 19/206/4), and
although the context there is irrelevant to our poem, at least we know that 1) these terms could
occur together and 2) they refer to animals.
5 See Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 17071 for Fanghuis use of this story in a lyric.
6 Huangs poem, , is ascribed to 1078, when Huang was in nearby Daming;
CSJC, 2247:wai.3.53; Quanji, 2:1010. Lines 26 and 27 do briefly return to the five-syllable line. Chao
Yuezhis poem is , QSS, 21:1208.13706. See also a Song by Wang Ling ( 103259)
that starts with one pentametrical couplet, switches to a heptametrical couplet, then back to two
pentametrical couplets before concluding with three heptametrical couplets: 5, 5; 7, 7; 5, 5; 5, 5; 7,
7; 7, 7; 7, 7. Wang Lings Song is the first of a pair: , QSS, 12:813536.
(The second poem in the pair comprises six pentasyllabic lines followed by one heptametrical
couplet.)

SONGS

129

Whatever the generic associations behind these first two lines, they are capable
of holding their own in the spotlight. The relationship between Piled-up earth for
three hundred feet and declining Fire[-Start] for two thousand years is multilayered. Most obvious is the semantic parallelism of the phrases three hundred
feet and two thousand years. More subtly, fire correlates with the earth;
they share equal status as two of the Five Phases (wu xing ) of early Chinese
thought. Even more subtly, the first words in each linepiled up and declining, literally, flowingare opposites (that which flows away is not piled up,
and vice versa), yet both words start with the same initial l~: lwiQ3b, lou3b. Tonally,
we have a saliently ancient configuration of (A1) D1 ( /
), but all the syllables in the two lines except for the second syllables are neatly
antithetical. We are probably not expected to puzzle out the literal relevance of
two thousand years to a landmark that is only seven hundred years old; rather,
it is the emotional truth married to the formal correspondences we have just
enumerated that make this a strong opening to the poem.
Line 001-3s In human life, the Numbers of the object[ive world] do not wait
for us is both strange and familiar. In the philosophy of Shao Yong, who had
died just a few years previously (in 1077), number was of paramount importance
in the production of the universe and, because numbers can be calculated, they
offered a way to interpret and predict history. 7 To speak of such things in poetry
was unusual (even for Shao). I have found only one contemporary poet and one
twelfth-century poet who use some variation of the phrase object and number.
Guo Xiangzheng wrote, Tides rise, tides
drop; night reverts to dawn; / objects and numbers intersect; who can exhaust [the
combinations]? 8 L Benzhong (10841145) will write,
If the objects and numbers reach to the end of long life; / this is
simply Heavens allotment. 9 If in poetry objects and numbers are unusual, the
notion that the world does not wait for us, that that time is running away, should
be more familiar to the reader by now. This theme was a preoccupation three
months earlier in Facing Brew (044) and also in other Ancient Verses from 1080.
The second section of the poem (lines 001-58) establishes continuity, but only
in an ironic sense: the trees at the site and the relics dug from beneath the earth are
commodities for the woodcutters and peasants to sell. This sardonic humor,
though its object is different, is reminiscent of Lament for Boiled Chickens (054),
written in the same month.

Wing-tsit Chan, Source book, 48182, 49091.

, Guo Xiangzheng ji, 2.20.
9 QSSi, 28:1615.18136. The term translated long life is three jia, and it comes from the
biography of Guan Lu in the Sanguo zhi, 3:29.826: Guan says that he will not live long because
he does not have three jia on his back or three ren on his stomach. Giles does translate this sentence
in his Gallery of Chinese Immortals, 88, but covers up the fact that no one seems to know what Guan
Lu is referring to by calling them, based on context, marks of longevity.
8

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CHAPTER TWO

 The standard ballad phrase Do you not see introduces a lengthy, rambling
description of what is seen (and what no longer remains to be seen) on the present
outing. Rhyme change no longer helps organize the presentation, nor is there any
semantic parallelism within couplets, and thus at first glance there seems to be
little pattern hereperhaps appropriately enough, given that the site is in ruins.
On closer examination, however, we can see a careful division into three parts,
each one led off by a rhyming couplet. Lines 001-914 (CC C C) present a double
vision of elegance lost and elegance still felt. Then we have four lines (CC C) that
describe the scene that has replaced lost elegance, lines 001-1415 showing how
wild and desolate the place is, lines 001-1617 making the very ruins an object of
our pity: how sad to imagine broken roof tiles scattered on the ground dreaming
they have been returned to the air, alive now as the birds that symbolize lifelong
companionship in love. Finally, the rhyme structure CC C C is revived for six lines
that center on the speaker and his companion. The preceding lines were the observations and thoughts that resulted from the acts of looking, gesturing, and
questioning that are now named.
 There is a reason why the poet brings himself and Du Yan into the poem only
at the end. This enables him to close with the affecting thought that he and Du
Yan are like Ding Lingwei insofar as they have come upon the remnants of a past
to which neither they nor anyone else can return.

108485: SITES AND POETRY SESSIONS IN XUZHOU

After the Song of the Clustered Estrade of 1080, Fanghui writes only in other genres
until 1084 and 1085, when he is at the mint in Xuzhou. With one exception, all the
Songs written at that time are part of a group activity. Strangely, there is no indication that the Xuzhou poetry society was interested in Songs. Although
Fanghui almost always names his companions on Song-composing occasions; he
does not identify them as members of a poetry society, and indeed perhaps it
was a different set of people.
In Yuanfeng 7 (108485), He Zhu, Zhang Zhonglian , Kou Changzhao,
Chen Shizhong, Wang Shi, and Wang Gong met and chose local sites as their
topics. (Wang Shi [105589] had accompanied Su Shi on several occasions
in Xuzhou and was an expert flute player.) 10 The topics Fanghui chose are all
associated with the Qin-Han transition: the Horse-Sporting Estrade, built by
Xiang Yu; the swamp where a drunken Liu Bang had cut in half a huge white snake
lying across his path; and the estrade in Liu Bangs hometown where he composed
the famous Song of the Great Wind. It was rare for anyone up to this time to write

10

See my Music in the World of Su Shi, 6567.

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131

a Song of significant length about these sites, though they certainly were alluded
to in passing; when they are the subject of a poem, the poem is likely to be a
heptametrical Quatrain or a pentametrical Ancient Verse. I think this is because
the stories surrounding the sites were so familiar that the most effective way to use
them was to make a brief point about them and rely on the readers knowledge of
the circumstances to fill in the blanks.
Let us take the topic of the third Song as an example. Fanghuis title is
Lyric of the Song of the Wind Estrade. 11 In his Song of the Great Wind, Liu Bang
had both celebrated his sway over the empire and wondered whether he could
attract the bold men he needed to help him govern it. I believe the only Tang
poem that makes more than passing reference to the Estrade is one by Bao Rong,
a sixteen-line pentametrical poem titled Thinking of the Past in Pei (Pei
being the home district of Liu Bang, about sixty km north of the city of
Xuzhou). 12 The 1874 gazetteer for Xuzhou Prefecture quotes only one poem on
the Estrade prior to He Zhus. It is a heptametrical Quatrain by Zhang Fangping
(100791) that cleverly asks why Liu Bang needed to worry about attracting worthy men since he already had Peng Yue and Qing Bu. 13 The question
virtually repeats an observation made by Hu Zeng in his Palace at Pei, one of
his heptametrical quatrains on history. 14 As we have noted, heptametrical Quatrains by Hu and others that questioned why history had happened as it did or that
suggested alternative outcomes to critical moments were rife in the two centuries
before He Zhu. The last four lines of our present poem follow Zhang Fangpings
lead in slyly critiquing Liu Bangs discovery that he needs the goodwill of determined and heroic men. Preceding that critique, however, is a sketch of Liu Bangs
triumphant homecoming that is strangely at odds with the canonical historical
accounts.
005

The Han progenitors high wind,

a hundred-foot estrade:
Thousand-year-old soil from another place
sprouts weeds.
What end is there to human affairs?
the rivers flow ever eastward;
as of yore, the terrain:
mountains come on all sides.

11 1.3b4a; 1.12499. This is the only Song of the three that calls itself a ci (lyric) instead of a ge,
possibly to avoid the repetition of ge in the title: Song of the Song of the Wind Estrade. See our
discussion below of the 1088 set consisting of a yin, a ci, and a xing.
12 QTS, 15:486.5522.
13 For Peng and Qing, see the note to line 099-1314. (Like Fanghui, Zhang refers to them as
Ying and Peng.) For Zhang Fangpings poem, see the Xuzhoufu zhi, 2:507. Slightly different versions
appear in the Quan Song shi, 6:306.3838 and Qian Zhongshus Song shi jishi buzheng, 2:11.760. The titles
are given in these three sources as , , and , respectively.
14 QTS, 19:47.7420.

A
A

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The River and the Huai still boiled

with the blood of whales;
Eighty-one chariots
bent themselves to the ruts leading home.
White-headed old men come out to greet him,
all friends of yore;
with animal sacrifices and brew, and happy shouts
they regret the impending farewell.

B
B

Xiao-Mian is far away

and not my homeland.
C
In life or death, this place

could never slip from mind.

C
The
drinking
stretches
on:
his
singing
harp

stirs the cloud-hue,

12
and lads in blue gowns
swoop and rise as they follow along.
C
At
that
juncture,
had
there
been
no

merus and brachium fine?

C
Needlessly he longed for

fierce men to guard the four quarters!

C
Have you not heard: When Huaiyin went to his shackles,
how stirring it was?
16
he understood enough to say: when all the birds are gone
the fine bow is put away.
C
Notes:
005-1/ High wind can also mean lofty air. The pun is probably intentional here.
005-2/ Soil from another place is dirt brought in to build up a mound. 15
005-5/ The word used for whale here is commonly a reference to rebels and troublemakers. The
River and the Huai may refer to the Yangzi and Huai Rivers, which at one time defined the borders
of Chu. 16 (Xiang Yu, Liu Bangs rival for control of the collapsing Qin empire, was King of Chu.)
005-6/ Eighty-one chariots simply means a lot of chariots, such as might accompany an emperor,
in this case Liu Bang as he returns home. 17 Bending to the ruts refers to this mighty entourage
humbling itself to visit the simple village that was Lius home.
005-9/ This is a strategic area that leads into the old Qin heartland, now the location of Liu Bangs
capital.
005-1112/ Liu Bang played the harp and danced, then taught his Great Wind song to the boys of
Pei. 18
005-13/ Merus and brachium (thigh and upper arm) is an old and oft-used metaphor for close
advisors to the ruler. The word translated fine is also the name of Zhang Liang, Liu Bangs most
important advisor. Fanghui may be punning: Had there been no merus and brachium Liang.

15

Han shu, 1:10.320, note 6.

Shi ji, 14.509. The term can also refer to the territory between those rivers.
17 See Bo Juyis , which criticizes the emperor for maintaining palaces that he cannot visit
without eighty-one chariots, a myriad cavalry, and other expenses. QTS, 13:427.4700.
18 Shi ji, 8.389.
16

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133

005-14/ Quoting from Liu Bangs Song of the Great Wind.

005-1516/ Han Xin (Lord of Huaiyin) is one of the generals who eventually came to the aid of Liu
Bang. During one of his periods of estrangement from Liu, he was trussed up and put into a cart,
whereupon he declared (in rhyme), When the cunning hares have died, the good dog is cooked.
When the lofty birds are gone, the good bow is put away. When the enemy is broken, the advisor
perishes. The empire is pacified; I shall be cooked! 19

The most striking aspect of this Song is that very little of its diction comes from
the historical account of the story, or even from the Han Dynasty, in contrast to
the 1087 Ancient Verse on Zhang Liang (099). Fanghuis poem even alludes to
events that are not found in the standard story of Liu Bang. First, I know of no
significance to the hills or mountains surrounding the place. Second, the Jiang-Huai region as such is not mentioned in the accounts of the Han founding,
though it was mentioned often later in the Han and from then on as a region of
famine or unrest. Third, the term used for sacrificial meat and brew (005-8) does
not appear in the histories (or in the Wen xuan or Tang and other Song poetry)
until the history of He Zhus own dynasty, compiled in the fourteenth century.
Fourth, the Xiao-Mian passage between east and west does not figure in Liu
Bangs story; it is nearly 100 km west of Loyang (where he initially wanted to locate
his administration) and it is nowhere near Xianyang (modern Xian), where Zhang
Liang convinced him to place his capital instead.
These observations lead to a hypothesis, for which evidence is presented below,
that Fanghui is drawing on a popular tradition for his language in this poem. One
might ask skeptically whether he has to draw on any tradition to tell a story, but the
question overlooks the fact that this is not a narrative poem. Lyric of the Song of the
Wind Estrade does not tell a story but refers to a story or, better, evokes our
memory of a story. A short poem may simply use its title or one or two key phrases
to call up a story in our minds, in which case the bulk of the poem can be new
language. In contrast, a long poem such as this one needs to refer again and again
to shared knowledge in a fairly explicit way (unless it is truly a narrative poem, in
which case far more context and plot is part of the poem). Otherwise, it risks being
either a mere digest of unfamiliar information or a private and unintelligible soliloquy. A known background story gives the poem coherence; more importantly,
it gives the reader the pleasure of recognizing the linguistic and cultural links.
If objects and actions whose connotations are conventionally agreed upon are
placed in relationships that are unintelligibleor unacceptableto the culture,
we are moving toward a different aesthetic, the aesthetic of surrealism. Whale
blood boiling in the Jiang and Huai can be understood as referring to the death of
scoundrels in a certain region, but if that image and that place have no previous
connection with the Song of the Wind Estrade, we may wonder if the poet is

19 Shi ji, 92.2627. Versions of this aphorism were quoted by several others in the histories, but
obviously Han Xins is most relevant to a poem about Liu Bang.

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questioning the coherence of his culture, perhaps the coherence of human experience itself. We do not expect to find this in classical Chinese poetry. In genres
where different cultural codes are brought together in a dialogic relationship, on
the other hand, the injection of new images and events into an old plot line is to
be expected. In the eleventh century, such a genre would be oral storytelling or
drama.
The apparent allusions to places or events that are not part of the Liu Bang
story as we know it suggest that Fanghui is writing in the context of popular histories, song sequences, or plays. Such texts (not necessarily written) would naturally use more contemporary language, as well as elaborations and oral formulae
absent from the officially sanctioned written versions. 20 The fifth lines reference
to the Jiang and Huai boiling with the blood of whales offers a link to the popular
tradition. At the beginning of the Ballad of the Capture of Ji Bu , a long
narrative in heptametrical lines from the Dunhuang caves in a version dated 978,
we find the line For years on end the armies had been defeated; the Jiang and He [Yellow River] boiled. 21 This suggests that boiling rivers
are a formula in oral storytelling, useful for filling out a line and suggesting protracted military conflict. Moreover, Ji Bus story being part of the Liu Bang saga,
this ballad shows that stories of the Han founding were recited in the early Song
Dynasty. We can also document the existence in the tenth century of a recitation
text on one of Liu Bangs generals: the Transformation on the Han General, Wang Ling
. One of the MSS extant is dated 939. 22 Given the inherent drama in
so many of the episodes of the Qin-Han transition, it would be surprising indeed
if they were not celebrated in non-elite literature in the tenth and eleventh centuries and indeed throughout Chinese history.
More research may or may not uncover the contemporary popular origins of
the four anomalies I listed above, but extrapolating from the evidence in the Ballad
of the Capture of Ji Bu, I suggest that Fanghui made a non-canonical narrative version
of the Liu Bang story his background text in this poem. Perhaps, when more
eleventh-century poets receive the attention they deserve, we will be able to tell
how unusual this was in the elite poetry of his time.
The sudden shift to Han Xin (Lord of Huaiyin) in lines 005-1516 of Lyric of the
Song of the Wind Estrade does not necessarily reflect a plot detail in the popular

20 It is a peculiarity of the set of poems of which this Song is a part that two poems contain the
phrase Do you not hear, which is rare in Tang and Song poetry. One contains the more commonin ballads and SongsDo you not see? These phrases may also point to an oral storytelling background, though such a case could not be built on these phrases alone.
21 Or.8210/S5441 (ff 112). See Ji Bu, Ballad of at the International Dunhuang Project
website http://idp.bl.uk/ for this and two other versions. It is also found in Yan Tingliang, ed.,
Dunhuang wenxue, 308. See also Victor Mair, Tang Transformation Texts, 28.
22 Or.8210/S.5437 (ff.1R). See Mair, Tang Transformation Texts, 15, 1920 et passim. See also
Eugene Eoyang, Word of Mouth, 11540 and, for a translation, 24768.

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135

tradition. The introduction of Han Xin makes perfect sense after lines 005-1314,
where Fanghui took Liu Bang to task for whining that he might not have stalwart
men to support his enterprise. Look, says the witty poet, since Liu Bang failed
to make proper use of people such as Han Xin, he has only himself to blame for
this anxiety.
In the twelfth month of Yuanfeng 7 (note that all but the first two days of this
lunar month fall in 1085 C.E.), Fanghui, Zhang Zhonglian, Chen Shizhong, and
Wang Shi met again, and once again they allotted topics. The topics selected are
unremarkable in themselves: the fisherman, the woodcutter, the farmer, and the
herder. All four float on a tide of classical precedents and conventional associations in Tang and Song poetry. The fisherman and the woodcutter move freely on
the outskirts of both the agrarian and urban society; the farmer is often a happy
celebrant at village festivals, but can be the object of pity or exhortation; the
herdboy (unlike the Western shepherd) does not stray far from home, but the lazy
rhythm of his bovine charges gives him time to play his flute and dream.
What is unusual about the topics chosen by He Zhu and his friends is that they
should be conceived of as a set. James Crump, in a delightful survey of the pairing
of fisherman and woodcutter in the Yuan Dynasty aria, does not report any expansion of their dialogue to include farmers and herdboys. 23 The closest thing I
have found to a full set of poems on this quartet is Chu Guangxis
(706?62?) poems on the fisherman, the woodcutter, the herdboyplus the lotus
picker and water chestnut picker. The farmer is not included. There is no way to
know if these five poems were a set, though they appear together in Chus poems;
but since the first three are identical in form (pentametrical, fourteen lines) and the
last two are one couplet shorter or longer, it is possible that Chu treated the
fisherman, woodcutter, and herdboy as a distinct trio. All have the same import:
the simple life among the folk is the happy life. 24
Fanghuis explanatory headnote uses the term nong for farmer, whereas references to field families, tian jia , are more common in singing of the happiness of the simple folk. (Nong is such a general term that it must be hard to strip
it of associations with the drudgery and uncertainty of the farming life.) Nevertheless, even adjusting for terminology, one does not find sets of poems including
all four of the topics Fanghui and his friends allotted among themselves.
Fanghuis song is on the most common topic of the four, the fisherman, but his
treatment is anything but commonplace. Rhyme changes divide the Song into

23 Songs from Xanadu, 81103. To supplement Crumps survey of precedents, we might note that
in the Tang, Lu Guimeng (d. 881?) composed a set of Ancient Verses (pentametrical) on the
woodcutter to restore some parity with the fisherman, on which his friend Pi Rixiu
(834?83?) had composed a set. See QTS, 18:611.704349 and 620.713440 for the various sets that
went back and forth.
24 QTS, 4:136.137374.

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three parts of four lines each, each with a separate subtopic, mood, and structure.
Rather than depicting the happy, anonymous fisherman we might have expected,
the poem begins with two famous recluses of the past who happened to fish. This
portion is pentametrical and restrained. Next, the poem breaks into heptasyllabic
lines that move more quickly: whereas line 006-1 had named one recluse and line
006-2 the other, all in matching syntax, in this section a fisherman of the southeast
gets an entire couplet and the kitchens of the nobility the other couplet. The
syntax here is relatively continuous, not parallel. Still, the fisherman and the
kitchens are simply juxtaposed, leaving the relationship between them open to
interpretation and preserving a measure of restraint. It is the last four lines,
translated below, that startle the reader when the speaker of the poem steps
forward as the fishermana fisherman of fantastic proportion and ambitionin
a rush of language from which balance and symmetry are banished:
006

12

Ill hold one hook

and dangle ten steers down,
Laughing as I lean on the Fusang Isle
not reckoning the years.
The kun and whale will take the bait in their breasts
and be torn from their element
so that everyone in the southeast
may gorge themselves on fresh fish.

C
C

Notes:
006-10/ Fusang is a mythical tree whence the sun rises in the east, or an island in the eastern sea
where many of those trees grow.
006-11/ The kun is an enormous mythical fish. The phrase translated their element literally means
mutual getting. It sometimes is a kenning for a ruler and minister being in perfect harmony in their
respective roles, like fish and water. For example, this couplet (late ninth or early tenth century)
celebrates Liu Bei and his advisor Zhuge Liang, who established the state of Shu in Sichuan as the
Han empire was breaking up: When fish and water got each other, / the
mountains and rivers [=the realm] then found the object of their allegiance. 25 Whether He Zhus
use of the phrase to refer to the literal relationship between fish and their element is creative or
distracting may be a matter of taste. 26

This splashy fantasy is worthy of Li Bo in its exaggeration and of Du Fu in its

ambition to succor the people. Though his lines lack Lis wild variations in length,
Fanghuis structure of escalation, as described above, ensures that these last

25 Li Zhong , ;QTS, 21:748.8525. This poet, who served the Southern Tang court
after the fall of the Tang, happens to provide an early example (, 747.8507) of the chummy
fisherman and woodcutter who reappear in the Yuan and Ming texts discussed by Crump. The
earliest example Crump finds of the idle talk of these folk is from the eleventh century (Songs from
Xanadu, 102). Li Zhong does not use the phrase idle talk, but the way the two meet for a drink
after work (and ignore the anxious Qu Yuan lurking in the background!) fits the pattern perfectly.
26 Such judgments must always be tempered by an awareness of the limits of our knowledge of
eleventh century Chinese as it existed in the texts we have not had time to read, texts that are lost,
and discourse that was never frozen in print.

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137

four lines will be experienced as unfettered and wild. Truly we may say our poet
has overleaped the weir of traditional expectations for the topic.
The 1084 Song that was not composed as part of a group activity is Fanghuis
Song of the Yellow Tower , which might have been better titled Song of Su
Shi. 27 It does more than celebrate the much-celebrated leadership of Su Shi in
overcoming the Xuzhou flood of 1077; it also, according to the headnote, gives
voice to the longings of the people of Xu[zhou] for the man who left them for
Huzhou in 1079, the year after the Yellow Tower was completed, was sentenced that same winter to exile in Huangzhou, and had been reassigned to
Ruzhou five years later. (That reassignment had come in the third month of
the present year. 28 Although Ruzhou, only 150 km southwest of the capital, represented a reduced degree of exile, in the eleventh month of 1084 it probably
appeared that Su would continue to drift about the empire. Indeed, he would get
another transitional assignment early the following year before ever arriving in
Ruzhou. But the important thing for the people of Xuzhou was that he was not
with them.)
Every line but one rhymes, which gives the poem a fast pace. Changes in rhyme
define changes in topic. Lines 002-17 are about the flood and the building of the
Tower. (Line 002-1, Do you not see, in the autumn of the
ding-si year of Xining is a sort of ballad-cum-chronicle opening affixed to the
poem. As a result, all subsequent couplets end on odd-numbered lines.) Lines
002-811 cite the fact that earth (whose yellow/brown color accounts for the
name of the Tower) overcomes water in the progression of the Five Phases and
describe the taming of the water creatures and the return of commerce to the
now-placid waters. Lines 002-1215 imagine the scene when Su Shi inaugurated
the Tower, with sword dances and poems, geese descending over the mirror-like
water, and fishermens songs echoing in the empty hills. Lines 002-1619 turn to
Su Shis departure and exile. Lines 002-2025 close the poem with a lament that
uses the ~zai exclamation. Su Shi has not returned to Xuzhou: thus, whether it
was during his exile in Huangzhou or, now, as he is going to his transitional appointment to Ruzhou, ones mind is filled with distant longing ()
and the children of Xuzhou, riding on their bamboo horses, wait in vain to greet
Su again. 29

27 1.12498; 1.1b. This was written in the eleventh month and in Fanghuis collection is placed
before the Songs just discussed.
28 Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:23.600.
29 Ruzhou was only a little over 150 km southwest of the capital; Su had received his appointment in the third month and was still on his way to the new post while hoping for other
options. The allusion to the children on bamboo horses will be repeated by Su Shi himself when he
passes through Mizhou in 1085. See his , SSSJ, 5:26.1381. The
allusion is to a very capable official named Guo Ji (39 BCE47 CE). Guo was once greeted by
several hundred children on bamboo horses as he approached a town under his administration
(just inside modern Inner Mongolia and up within the great bend of the Yellow River); when he left,

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The single line that does not even come close to rhyming is 002-18, in the
fourth rhyme group, where the meter and mood change:
002
Below the Tower on the isles
16
(C15)
sweet-scented grasses grow;

A2

With a wave of his banner he exited southward

on the Peng Gate Road.
D

B1

Just yesterday on a spring outing,

he sang of white duckweed;

C2

on a subsequent night in autumns wind

he sorrowed over the houlet.

Notes:
002-18/ Su Shi mentions white duckweed in three poems that were probably composed in Huzhou,
where he was prefect in 1079 after leaving Xuzhou. 30
002-19/ Jia Yi composed the Rhapsody of the Houlet when he was in exile in Changsha in the second
century B.C.E. 31 . Fanghuis allusion here is to Su Shis exile to Huangzhou in 1080.

This is an excellent example of Fanghuis skill in using form to reinforce his

meaning. We indicate the meter to show the preponderance of regulated lines;
except for line 002-16, the lines are also in the regulated sequence of ABC. This is
not an embedded regulated Quatrain, of course. First, a Regulated Verse cannot
(strictly speaking) rhyme in deflected tones. 32 Second, the B and C line types
should be in adjoining couplets, not within a couplet. They adhere (which
minimally requires that the second syllables be the same tone), whereas within
couplets tonal antithesis between the lines (minimally in the second and final
syllables) is called for. I dont think the pairing of B and C lines is accidental. As
we shall see in our chapters on heptametrical Regulated Verse, a similar degree of
tonal identity is sometimes used within couplets (albeit only at the opening of the
poem) to stress a contrast between two situations. The two lines in question here
do precisely that insofar as they juxtapose Sus last days of freedom in Huzhou,
when he sang of white duckweed, and his exile in Huangzhou, when he sorrowed over the houlet.

the children escorted him beyond the outer walls and asked when he would return. Guo Ji gave them
a date; later, when he found himself arriving back a day ahead of schedule, he put up for the night
at a rustic posthouse rather than break his promise to the children. Hou Han shu, 4:31.1093.
30 The commentary to , SSSJ, 3:19.97475, points out that there is a
White Duckweed Isle in Huzhou. See also the next poem (details in Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu,
1:18.441) and , 19.98687.
31 I follow Knechtges use of the dialectical houlet for the dialectical name for the owl whose
intrusion gave rise to Jia Yis musings. See the translation and notes in Wen xuan,3:4349.
32 There are cases in which a poem with deflected-tone rhymes has been classified as a Regulated
Verse. Bo Juyi did so in one instance, and there are cases in which Quatrains by Du Fu that are part
of a set in which they have the only deflected-tone rhymes are retained in the Regulated category
along with the rest of the set. See Qi Gong, Shi wen shengl lungao, 4n and 5n.

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139

Su Shis departure from Xuzhou in the spring of 1079 down the Peng Gate
Road, (line 002-17) was one of the most moving episodes of his life. 33 The
importance of that event and the poignancy of his subsequent catapulting from
Huzhou to Huangzhou are acknowledged here in the formal uniqueness and
careful balance. After pausing on this transition point, the Song turns to themes
of absence, using unregulated meter and rushed rhyme again to give full reign to
the emotions.
The last Song from Xuzhou and the only one dated Yuanfeng 8 (108586) is
like all the other Xuzhou compositions insofar as it is part of a group activity,
though in this single case the parties are not named. Fanghui says that topics were
allotted and he received Song of the South , so other poets must have
been present; and since this is an old ballad (yuefu) title, presumably other members
of the implied group got other ballad themes. 34 Because the poetry society as we
encountered it in our chapter on Ancient Verse was consistently involved in
imitating Tang precedents, it is possible that this antiquarian interest in old ballads
reveals the presence of the Xuzhou poetry society.
007

Wandering chanteuses pluck up pollia;

(A2)
At the parting cove, mandarin ducks descend. A
A1
Toward evening, the carp wind;
D2
visiting masts from 1,000 miles are moored.

D4

Peach Leaf from those days

is in a new tune;

B4

For a thousand years it will always remain:

love across the waters.

A1

In Blackrobe Lane,
who is still alive?

B1

Around White Egret Island

wild plants grow of themselves.

C1

Notes:
007-1/ Duruo is generally identified as Pollia japonica Thumb.or yabumyga, but there are fifteen
varieties in tropical and subtropical areas of Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, and the Japanese one is

33 At a conference on Su Shi in Xuzhou in 1999, I witnessed the unveiling of a large stone engraved with this scene at Jinshan Park on the shore of Cloudy Dragon Lake at the
southern end of Cloudy Dragon Hill. (The lake was created in 1958.)
34 1.4b; 1.12500.

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merely the northernmost. Nanjing Universitys website of botanical information states that the plant
flowers in May and June and bears its small dark berries AugustOctober. Line 007-3 places the
scene in the ninth lunar month or roughly October. The modern identification of the plant may be
inaccurate. As Luo Yuan (113684) said when he noted that duruo is also called duheng ,
The reason herbaceous and woody plants are so hard to speak of is that name and reality are
confused with each other. This happens all the time. Luo tells us that duruo has yellow-crimson
flowers and crimson berries (). Whatever color yellow-crimson is, it does not
characterize the white flowers universally shown in pictures of Pollia japonica in modern sources. (The
Nanjing University website states that the flowers are pink (), but they look bright white in the
photograph provided.) Luo Yuans description is important, regardless of the accuracy of his identification, because he asserts that duruo is not just another fragrant plant; it was supposed to prevent
forgetfulness and so was given to a lover to express the hope that one would be remembered. He
seems to draw this conclusion from the appearance of the plant in the Songs of Chu, and one of the
verbs used there for plucking duruo is the same verb Fanghui uses. (Tang or other Song poets
dont refer to picking duruo, as far as I can tell, most of them being content to acknowledge its
fragrance.) We may conclude that the young women are picking the plant in He Zhus Song to give
to their lovers. 35
007-3/ The carp wind is a name for wind that blows in the ninth month (or autumn months).
Early references to it come from the Southern Courts.
007-5/ Peach Leaf was a beauty much loved by Wang Xianzhi (34488). Her name also
graces a mountain on the opposite side of the Yangzi River from Jinling, hence the reference to
love across the waters. Fanghui makes use of this common allusion to her/it in six of his lyrics.
007-7/ Blackrobe Lane was a neighborhood of aristocrats, including the family of Wang Xianzhi, in
Jinling.
007-8/ White Egret Island, in the Yangzi, was another Jinling landmark. In 1089, having actually
been to Jinling, Fanghui will note that it is no longer an island. See line 011-12 below.

At eight lines, half of them pentasyllabic, this is Fanghuis shortest Song, but it is
not as simple as it might look. The first four lines keep the scene at a distance, so
to speak; one cannot say the scene is static (there are three verbs, after all: pluck,
descend, and moor), but each vignette stands in isolation from the others except
insofar as they share the same general context. Each is presented without any
reference to an observing poet, let alone a poet who is moved. It is in the last four
lines that the speaker becomes involved with the scene. He identifies Peach Leaf
in the new music (the verb shi marks predication, an affirmation by the poet), and
asks a (rhetorical) question about the fourth-century residents of Blackrobe Lane.
Implicitly, he finds poignancy in the contrast between the love/feeling embodied in Peach Leaf Mountain ever since those times (007-6) and the indifference
of the grasses growing on White Egret Island (007-8); likewise between the
mortality of the aristocrats of Blackrobe Lane and the perennial return of the
vegetation on White Egret Island.
In some Songs that begin with pentasyllabic lines, we shall speak of those lines

35 See http://www.nju.edu.cn/cps/site/NJU/njuc/plantsweb/species/yazhicaoke/duruo.htm
and http://www.ed.city.odawara.kanagawa.jp/odawara_sizen/syokubutu/robou/a_yabumyoga.
html, both accessed 14 February 2006, and Luo Yuans Erya yi, CSJC, 1145:2.21, 23.

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141

as creating a pent-up force that is released in the heptasyllabic lines that follow.
This poem is too short to work quite the same way, and whatever forward motion
Fanghui establishes in the couplet devoted to Peach Leaf and the sorrow that
lingers after her is arrested abruptly in the parallel couplet that ends the poem.
Nevertheless, the eruption of feeling in the heptasyllabic lines does contrast with
the objectivity of the pentasyllabic opening.
All four heptasyllabic lines in this poem could be a regulated Quatrain with a
rhyming first line (which is normal), except for the fact that the line-type sequence
would properly have to be DBCD, not DBAB. Lines 007-2, 3, and 4 are also
perfectly regulated and lines 2 and 3 adhere (the second syllables are the same
tone), so here we have a pentametrical Quatrain that approaches regulated status
but for the rhymes in a deflected tone. This Song is a good reminder that a
non-regulated poem can be almost entirely composed of regulated lines. Presumably, the predominance of regulated lines in this Song is not accidental. My
supposition is that Fanghui wanted the polish and smoothness associated with the
Southern Courts, where the standards of Regulated Verse were gradually developed.
It is possible that if Fanghui did not tell us in his headnote when and where he
wrote the poem, we would assume that he was in Jinling in the autumn of some
later year, responding to real scenes. However, two things might make us suspicious. Knowing that this is a ballad title, we should expect an expression of a
theme rather than a reaction to experience. Also, once we become familiar with
the rest of He Zhus Songs, we will be aware that they become more personal only
after 1085 (with the exception of Poem 012 [1090], an odd experiment to be
discussed below). Placed among the later Songs, Song of the South would be conspicuous for its absence of engagement. The suite of three 1088 Songs we shall
discuss next also revisit old topics, but unlike Song of the South they are implicitly,
and in some details explicitly, tied to the poets own situation.

108890: SENDING SONGS FROM LIYANG AND JINLING

1088: A SUITE EXPERIMENT
All three Songs preserved from Yuanyou 3 (108889) are sent to friends in the
capital, apparently as a suite: Songs of Three Birds (Poems 008, 009, and 010).
The three birds are the Raise-the-jug, the bamboo partridge, and the cuckoo.
Fanghui had never heard these creatures before he went south to Hezhou and
spent his days chasing bandits in the countryside.
Naming creatures for the sounds they make is a practice not unique to China
and may be presumed to be very ancient. It is especially common with birds,

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CHAPTER TWO

whose loquaciousness is often undiminished by the nearness of humans. 36 The

semantic content of the birdcalls is most interesting when we hear phrases in the
sound. These phrases might become alternative names for the birds or they can
be understood as messages delivered wittingly or unwittingly by the birds, or
they can cross back and forth from one function to the other. 37 Poems (in all
forms, Regulated Verse, Ancient Verse, Ballads, and so forth) that make use of
this conceit appear in great numbers from Bo Juyi and Yuan Zhen on, but it
appears that building an entire poem around this idea begins with Mei Yaochen in
the Song Dynasty.
What distinguishes the Song Dynasty poems is that they are in essence poems
on objects, yong wu shi of a special kind; they take the call of the bird
(rather than the bird itself) as a theme to be given extended treatment. Because the
words of the bird have meaning, the poet usually reacts to that meaning in the
context of his own situation or, in the case of some satirical verses, the context of
the social situation. The poems may have a light, or almost folk flavor, as in a 1037
set by Mei Yaochen that includes one about the grannys cakes are fried bird, or
they may have a bit more of a bite to them, as in one of the five poems Su Shi
wrote in imitation of the style (ti ) of Meis four bird words poems:

Last night it rained upon South Mount. / Cross West Brook? you
cant! / By the brook the sow-the-grain boy / urges me to shed my tattered pants.
/ Its OK to shed the pants, but the waters cold / and will reflect the scars from
being pressed for rent! Su Shi wrote his poems in 1080 at Huangzhou, basing
them on the local names for five different birds. The standard name for this bird
is sow-the-grain; the local name is shed-tattered-pants. 38 (Huang Tingjian responded to this poem in the series by going one step further and saying there were
no pants to put on because last years rent was so high. 39 )
For bird-speech topics, Song Dynasty poets seem to have favored heptametrical Ancient Style poems with varied line length. The freedom to use three syllable
lines, especially, allowed for the bird itself call to be introduced and repeated.

36 The wide-ranging essay of Zhang Gaoping on the subject in his Song shi zhi chuancheng yu kai tuo,
esp. 140212, offers numerous earlier examples of bird calls in poetry.
37 To cite a recent example from a relatively young language, cf. the alternative name of a species
of goatsucker: whip-poor-will. According to the online OED, the earliest appearance of the word
coincides with its explanation in 1709: Whippoo-Will, so namd, because it makes those Words
exactly. William (Will?) Wordsworth exploits the meaning of the name, in the manner of the
Chinese poets, in A Morning Exercise (1828): A feathered task-master cries, WORK AWAY! / And,
in thy iteration, WHIP POOR WILL! / Is heard the spirit of a toil-worn slave, / Lashed out of life,
not quiet in the grave. (http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww740.html consulted 2 February 2004.)
38 , SSSJ, 4:20.1046; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuan ji, 138. Mei Yaochens
four-poem set by the same name is in Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:7.1034.
39 , CSJC, 2243:nei.1.13 ; Huang Tingjian quanji, 1:5.106. Ascribed to 1083 on no
particular evidence. Kurata Junnosukes translation, K Zankoku, 47.

143

SONGS

Other variations could be used for a relaxed, humorous effect.

Fanghui does not follow the format of any of the three poems just cited, which
themselves are quite varied. Each of his Songs of Three Birds is three to four times the
length of the poems by Mei, Su, and Huang. Beyond that, Fanghuis announced
format is, as far as I know, unique. What appears to be without precedent is the
fact that each individually titled poem under the general title is identified as a
different type of song or, as we shall suggest, each poem is titled in such a way as
to identify its place in a sequence. Specifically, the titles are: Raise the Jug yin
; Bamboo partridge ci ; and Cuckoo xing . 40
Now, yin, ci, and xing are familiar enough in poem titles, but one usually translates them indiscriminately as song because they are presumed to reflect the
poets vague imitation of ballad traditions whose musical distinctions are lost and
no longer relevant. When Fanghui places these terms side by side in a set of songs,
however, the implication is that there should be some distinction between them.
A first step in discovering his intention is to compare their forms, as is done on
Table 1.
All three poems have four rhymes (designated A, B, C, D in the table) and are
predominantly heptametrical. All three of them address the bird directly in a
three-syllable line somewhere near the middle of the poem.
Probing further, we see distinctions between the xing and the first two poems.
It does not contain nearly as many descriptive bisyllabic compounds composed of
reduplicatives or rhyming syllables. While the first two poems contain the ballad-marking phrase Do you not see jun bu jian at the beginning of a heptasyllabic
line in the final rhyme group, the xing does not insert this phrase anywhere.
Table 1

Form of Songs of Three Birds

Raise the Jug yin

7A reduplicated compound
7A
7 rhyming compound
7A rhyming compound
5B names bird
7B
7B
7B
7C
7C
7C
7C
3 address to bird
7D reduplicated compound

Bamboo Partridge ci
7A
7A
7 reduplicated compound
7A reduplicated compound
7B last word starts next line
7B
7B
7B
7B rhyming compound
7B
3 address to bird
7C
7C
7C

Cuckoo xing
7A rhyming compounds 41
7A
7
7A
7 rhyming compound
7A
7A
3B address to bird
5B
7
7B
7C
7C
7

40

Poems 008010, 1.12500501; 1.4b6a.

There are two rhyming compounds in this line. There is a variant in the Cao Anthology that
makes one a reduplicated compound: miQ3bx miQ3bx instead of miQ3bx yiQ3b .
41

144
Raise the Jug yin
10D (jun bu jian~)
7D
7D
7D
7D
7D
7D

CHAPTER TWO
Bamboo Partridge ci
7C
10D (jun bu jian~), reduplicated
compound
7D
7
7D
5D
5D
7D rhyming compound
7D
7D reduplicated compound
7D
7
7D

Cuckoo xing
7C
7D
7D
7D
7D
7D

The middle poem, the ci, distinguishes itself somewhat by its quicker rhythm or
more musical sound, achieved by the greater number of reduplicatives and
rhyming compounds, the somewhat longer runs of rhyming lines, and the single
instance of the last word in a line being repeated as the first word of the next line
(lines 009-5 and 6).
It may or may not be the case that these distinctions could be detected in the
works of other poetsthat other xing are likewise less ballad-like, for example.
However, to verify this would be a complex undertaking beyond the scope of the
present project. 42 Moreover, a typology of these three song forms might be of
limited use in explaining what He Zhu had in mind when he juxtaposed them with
each other under one general heading, since no other poet apparently did this.
It may be fruitful to ask whether the poems are a sequence of movements, a
suite in which each type of poem has a formal function. Shi Decao (active
in the early Southern Song Dynasty) gives us a partial answer on two of the three
terms by proposing a difference between a ge (song), a xing, and a yin. Shi suggested
that the three types evolved out of song sequences or movements of a single
composition, and he used the common meanings of the terms to explain their use
in this context:

42 Su Shi wrote one yin. It does not contain Do you not see. One of his xing does contain that
phrase. That makes him opposite to He Zhu. On the other hand, Sus six other xing, like He Zhus,
do not contain the phrase. Also consistent with Fanghuis xing is the fact that five out of seven of
Su Shis xing also exhibit little interest in reduplicated or rhyming compounds. The two exceptions
are and , but they are anomalous for other reasons, too. The former is different
from all Sus other xing in much use of the filler particle xi and having extreme irregularities in line
length. The latter is of uncertain attribution. See SSSJ, 8:48.2646 and 49.2713, especially note 1 on
2714. In sum, Su Shi offers confirmation of a hypothesis that xing are less ballad-like, but it is not
strong confirmation. Tang Dynasty xing include many pentametrical poems, as do the xing of Mei
Yaochen; most Northern Song Dynasty xing seem to be heptametrical poems. This sole xing by He
and Sus xing are longer than most. (Excluding the two exceptional poems just named, Sus xing are
12, 20, 16, 20, and 36 lines in length.)

SONGS

145

. Ge, xing, and yin were originally one tune. In

a single tune there are these three nodes [sections]. When the sound starts, it is
called yin. Yin means to draw forth. Once it is drawn forth, the sound is let go
somewhat, and so it is called xing. Xing means the sound moves. Once it is moving,
the sound thereupon is released, and this is what is called song (ge). 43 It seems to
me that this presents a general way to understand what Fanghui had in mind, with
the added bonus that Shis characterization of the yin fits our sequence quite well.
The main differences are that Fanghui uses only Shis first two movements, he
puts a ci between them, and his xing has closural properties not contemplated in
Shis scheme.
The yin moves smartly through three four-line rhyme groups; it names its bird
early; and it also packs its rhyming/reduplicated compounds close to the beginning. It does draw forth the sequence. The fact that the ci is the longest of the
three Songs, with more lines in each section (defined by rhyme), suggests that it
may the centerpiece of Fanghuis sequence, more complex and detailed. The
closing xing dampens the phonic exuberance of the other two poems. It features
the longest opening rhyme section of the sequence, it has fewer of the rhyming
binomes and no reduplicatives, and it comes to a fast conclusion with just five
rhyming lines, uniformly heptasyllabic.
Thematically, the three poems seem unrelated; they certainly do not refer to
each other or present a unified plot. On the other hand, they do use the birds to
talk about the usual complaints of the poet, and their sequence seems right. The
first poem, about the bird whose call urges people to drink, mentions that Fanghui
has been assigned to the eastern part of the district for just a few days and that he
is abashed at having to be stuck so long in the south, far from the capital and its
wineshops. The second poem, about the bird whose call sounds like mud
slick-slick, speaks of the mire through which the poet has to struggle on patrol
and contrasts that with the splendor of the capital, where the wind does not
startle the dust, and the rain for its part is dry. The cuckoo sings, Its best to go
home. Thus, the final poem, from the viewpoint of a tired traveler fighting sleep
in his saddle, speaks not of the capital but of Sumen (the mountain in Weizhou
that stands for home in He Zhus poetry) and of the vanity of his youthful hope
of showing off golden seals of office and fine clothing in the lanes of his village.
It closes with a vow to start looking for a plot of land and a farmhouse, which
might offer a better way to feed the ten people in his household. The closural force
of this theme and mood is obvious, but if one mentally reverses the order of the
first two Songs, it confirms that they are also in the best order. The relatively witty
and lighthearted yin works best at the beginning to draw us into the sequence and

43 Ye Jun, et al., Zhongguo shixue, 18, quoting the Chibei outan (1691) quoting Shi Decao.
See also Wang Kunwu, Sui Tang Wudai yanle zayan geci yanjiu, 33334.

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the exploration of present misery in the ci provides a serious motivation for answering the cuckoos call to go home in the xing.
It appears, based on the information available to me now, that what Fanghui
has done here has no precedent and sets no precedent, at least if we hold to the
details of his terminology. There are many examples of poem sequences from
earlier times, and there are song sets in Yuan Dynasty arias, but to my knowledge
none uses He Zhus terminology. The analysis presented here shows, I hope, that
it is an interesting and not unsuccessful experiment.

LIYANG EXPERIMENTS IN 1089 AND 1090

Another unusual form occurs in another Song written to be sent away,
On Horseback in Donghua, Cherishing Master He
of Qingliang Temple and Sending Him This, Also as a Letter to Kulapati Wang Zhuo of the
Society. This was written in 1089 across the River from Jinling, where the Qingliang
Temple was located. 44 The Society of the title can be understood by reference
to line 011-16: it is surely a contemporary Buddhist society patterned after the
White Lotus Society founded in 402 by several friends of Tao Yuanming, both lay
and religious. 45
The unusual thing about the form of this poem is that it consists of eight
pentasyllabic lines followed by ten heptasyllabic lines.
011

Cocks crow: boom the fifth [watch] drum;

I race my horse along the Donghua Road.
The moon drops when the tide rises;
clouds blanket where the sun emerges.
Rocking, the fishermans bateaux
hoist mat-sail and traverse the River.
I see them off with my eyes, thoughts reaching far
and with halberd crossways Ill just offer a poem:

A
A
A
A
A

44 1.6a; 1.12501. Master He is probably the same monk to whom Su Shi will later present two
poems: (1094) and ( 1101), SSSJ, 6:37.2032 and 7:45.2456,
respectively. (One may consult Grants translations in Mount Lu, 179 and 166, keeping in mind that
her dating is faulty and that she omits the first line of the first poem.) He Zhu addresses a dozen
poems to Master He between 1088 and 1096. Wang Zhuo was a Buddhist layman (translating jushi
as kulapati is thus more appropriate than the alternative retired scholar) in Jinling. Fanghui addresses five poems to him over the same period. (Since Mei Yaochen, who died in 1060, also
addressed a poem to Wang Zhuoaccording to QSS, 18:11783, where Wang is represented by a
single poemhe must have been much older than Fanghui. Wang Anshi wrote a heptametrical
Quatrain for him titled , Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 31.346.)
45 See Davis, Tao Yan-ming, 1:65 and 2:186 and references cited in the latter.

SONGS

12

16

Geese fly southward,

the River flows north;
Straight and tall, double pagodas:
thats Shengzhou.
From former courts, how many fine scenes
can be seen in the present day?
White Egrets level sand
joins Stony Head;
Atop Stony Head Enceinte,
a Pure and Cool realm,
in which youll find, filling the sky,
a great bikshu.
The distant grandchild of the Army of the Right
is one who stands up to the times
and with turban and begging bowl
goes about with the Lotus Society.
For my part next year I reach
the ripe melon replacement;
a single hut for lodging,
what else could I ask for?

147
B
B

Notes:
011-1/ The word translated boom does not occur in Tang poetry, where the abbreviation of the
fifth watch drum to fifth drum is also very rare. On the other hand, this diction does occur in Song
Dynasty poetry. 46
011-34/ Lines with shi (time) and chu (place) at the end are often challenging to parse. Fanghui may
be inverting the normal order, placing the time-when clause and locative clause after the main verbs.
Or, the lines may themselves be such phrases: The time when the moon drops and the tide rises;
/ the place where clouds cover and the sun is born. 47
011-8/ Holding a weapon crossways while composing a poem on horseback is a bit of stage
business that does not appear in Tang poetry, although Yuan Zhens epitaph for Du Fu provides the
locus classicus. Yuan refers to Cao Cao and his sons writing poems while clutching their saddles and
holding their halberds athwart; this explains, he says, the strong spirit of their poetry. The phrase
turns up now and then in Song Dynasty poetry (twice in Su Shi) in reference to a military official
composing poetry.

46 The diction echoes a ditty that the people of Wu Commandery had sung about their administrator, Deng You , after he left: Boom, the fifth watch drum. / Cocks crow and dawns
about to come. / We tried to keep Deng You longer; / Magistrate Xie overstayed his welcome. See
the Jin shu, 8:90.2340. Ouyang Xiu has this line: the fifth drum [when you] hear the cocks send off
the traveler. See , Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji.5.381. After staying overnight in a temple near Hangzhou in 1073, Su Shi wrote Boom, the fifth watch drum, the sky is not
yet bright. Su Shis poem is , SSSJ, 2:10.496. This is the only time he uses the word
translated boom.
47 Su Shi uses time and place in similar configurations four times, but the lines are heptasyllabic and he does not bend the language as Fanghui does. See (1073),
SSSJ, 2:9.455 (Wang Shuichao, Su Shi xuan ji, 68, follows one of two variant texts that have in
place of ) and (1083), SSSJ, 4.22.1181 for the words in adjacent lines. See
(1084), SSSJ, 4:24.1271, and ( 1086), SSSJ, 5:27.1427 for the words in the first lines
of adjacent couplets.

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CHAPTER TWO

011-10/ Shengzhou appears as a name for different administrative levels in Jinling from 758 on into
the Song Dynasty. 48 Twin pagodas are common in temples, and it is unclear if we are supposed
to recognize a particular landmark here.
011-12/ The channels between White Egret Island and the shore had by this time been silted up, so
that the island no longer existed as such. Stony Head is a hill northwest of Jinling that had once
dropped off precipitously into the River until the shore moved away from it.
011-13/ Stony Head was fortified in 212 C.E. Qingliang Templethe name means Pure and
Coolwas built in the southern folds of Stony Head. 49
011-14/ The bhiksu, or monk, is Master He. (As is standard, he is referred to only by the first
syllable of his religious name; in this case, we do not know the full name.) To say he fills the sky is
to speak of his greatness, but it also alludes to Daoans amusing self-introduction as
kya Daoan, who fills the skies. 50
011-16/ Wang Xizhi, a native of Jinling, reached the rank of General of the Army of the Right and
is commonly referred to as Army of the Right Wang. Wang Zhuo may indeed be a descendant of
the great calligrapher.
011-17/ Melon replacement is a conventional phrase for the end of ones assignment. It comes
from the Zuo Tradition, Zhuang 8. Tours of duty fluctuated between thirty months and three years
at this time, depending on ones position and whether an assignment was the first appointment or
a reappointment. 51
011-18/ The term used for hut implies a religious retreat.

The Song effectively exploits the ranges of expression possible in pentasyllabic

and heptasyllabic lines. By stretching the introduction of the song proper to eight
lines, Fanghui makes the exuberance of the last ten lines that much more dramatic
in contrast. Lines 011-1 and 2 catch our interest with the unusual (in poetry)
boom of the bell and the image of a horse racing along the roadway at dawn;
lines 011-34 slow us down abruptly as we ponder the ambiguous structure of the
language. Then we have gently rocking boats and far-reaching thoughts. It is after
the warrior on horseback offers a poem that the lines explode to seven syllables
and things begin to happen: birds fly one way, the Yangzi flows the other way, and
pagodas thrust skyward as the speaker declares the name of the district across the
river. The excitement subsides somewhat as changes in the topography are noted,
the poets friends are placed in their religious settings and flattered with suitable
allusions, and we revert to Fanghuis own situation. His conventional expression
of intention to join his friends in the religious life may represent a genuine inclination.
Su Shi used this construction of eight pentasyllabic lines plus ten heptametrical
lines once, in 1073. However, when we take note of the rhymes, we see that it is

48

Yang Zhishui et al., Nanjing, 295.

Yang Zhishui et al., Nanjing, 49 and 52 (maps of the Southern Tang and Southern Song cities,
showing the disappearance of White Egret Island); 20 (picture and description of Stony Head);
2046 (history and pictures of Qingliang Temple).
50 In the Jinshu, 7:82.2153, Daoan (31285) is the first to speak, and Xi Zuochi replies with Xi
Zuochi, who fills all within the four seas. In the Gaoseng zhuan (T2059), 5.352.3, it is Daoan who
gives the response to Xis pompous introduction.
51 Song huiyao, 3:zhiguan.15.7, 4:zhiguan.47.16, et passim.
49

SONGS

149

really not the same structure. Su Shi used five rhymes, not three, each change of
rhyme marking a change of topic. 52 Two other poems by Su Shi also provide
material for comparison. One comprises four pentasyllabic lines plus eight heptasyllabic lines; 53 the other, four pentasyllabic lines plus ten heptasyllabic lines. 54
Fanghuis poem differs from these earlier works insofar as his initial segment sets
a scene in more detail, lulling the reader into thinking this will be a leisurely description of a morning ride along the river. The only clue that this might not be
one of Fanghuis standard Ancient Verses is the fact that the first line rhymes,
which is less common in pentametrical poems in general and especially rare in
Fanghuis pentametrical poems.
It would be interesting to know whether Fanghui got his inspiration from Su
Shis poems and reshaped the form to his own purposes and taste. Future work
on other contemporary poets may help us measure the uniqueness of the structure
we have described.
Now we turn to what appears to be a truly unique experiment. In the seventh
month of Yuanyou 5 (1090), still in Liyang, Fanghui fills out or expands
someone elses poem. In search of a precedent that will tell us what this means,
we turn first to two poems in the TangFive Dynasties period.
Liu Changqing (718?90?) wrote songs to the tune Resentment
of the Banished Immortal. Because Liu apparently did not know that (by some accounts) the tune had been composed by Xuanzong after the death of Honored
Consort Yang (Yang Guifei) at the hands of his soldiers, another poet wrote
words to the tune and had musicians sing them in order to fill out what he [Liu
Changqing] was unaware of . Then, a third poet, who didnt think
the correction had gone far enough, wrote his own filling out. 55
 Fanghuis title is Filling out the Four Sorrows; Sent to Li Hui. 56 At
first glance, this suggests that Fanghui differs from the earlier poets insofar as he

52 , SSSJ, 2:9.426. Michael Fuller has a complete English translation in Road to

East Slope, 17677. Fullers careful analysis breaks new ground, but on some points I recommend
instead the Japanese translation and scholia by Uchiyama Seiya in Ganlan 7 (1998), 11931. For other
Japanese translations, see also Kond Mitsuo, So Tba, 11011, and Ogawa, So Shoku 1:6870.
53 , SSSJ, 1:1.19.
54 Sus poem is (1072), SSSJ, 2:8.365. Ouyang Xius poem is
, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji.4.375. The poem Ouyang is imitating is by Han Yu, but
Hans poem is not an exact precedent for the structure. His poem is in thirty-eight tetrasyllabic lines
with one rhyme all the way through on even-numbered lines. (The rhyme categories are somewhat
loose, I believe, and often involve what we could call slant rhyme, a nasal final preceded by slightly
different vowels.)
55 See Liu Changqing ji biannian jiaozhu, 56264, and QTS, 25:890.1005758. The other two poets
are Dou Hongyu and Kang Pian . The poems are divided into two stanzas of four lines
each, but whether they have crossed the line to become ci (lyrics) is unclear; the distinction might not
have made sense to an eighth-century poet.
56 1.12501; 1.6b. The poem was sent some distance; Fanghuis headnote tells us Li is an official
in Baima , on the south bank of the Yellow River due north of the capital.

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CHAPTER TWO

fills out a very ancient poem, not a composition by a contemporary. The Four
Sorrows by Zhang Heng (78139) is a well-known piece alluded to often in
poetry before He Zhu. It has a very definite structure and theme: four seven-line
stanzas repeat with slight variation an allegory in which a beautiful woman reputedly represents the ruler, whom the persona seeks to win over with gifts of
precious objects, but has his way blocked by high mountains, deep snow, and
impassable rivers (petty men). 57
 The problem is that Zhang Hengs structure is barely reflected in Fanghuis
poem. To appreciate the heterometrical formal structure of the poem, it helps to
see the text arranged as below. (For reasons of space, we shall not translate the
poem.)
012

12

16

20

A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A

It is readily apparent that the seven-line stanza of the supposed model has been
discarded. Moreover, whereas Zhang Heng used heptasyllabic lines (his poem is

57

Knechtges, in Wen Xuan, 3:398. The poem itself is in juan 29.

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often cited as the first example of heptametrical poetry), only the first six lines here
are heptasyllabic. The refrain-word xi is very noticeable (I add a comma after it).
This word breaks the lines into distiches in the second line and from line 012-7 to
the end of the poem. Zhang Heng does use the particle xi, but only in the first line
of each stanza. Even in the single line where Fanghui imitates the rhythm of
Zhangs distich (3xi3), the syntactic structure is different: The Dipper stars
glitter, xi, the [Sky] River is distant and cold (He Zhu, line 012-2) vs. The one I
long for, xi, is on Mount Tai (Zhang Heng).
 Other Song Dynasty Songs that make liberal use of the xi particle tend to be
very heterometrical. Fanghuis poem stays with one line length for several lines
more consistently than do most such poems, and for good reason: blocks of four
different line types help us see some structure in his poem, there being no rhyme
changes to guide us as in most of those other Songs. It appears that a given line
length corresponds to a segment that is internally unified thematically. Lines 012-1
through 6 form a sleepless night poem; the next three lines center around the
floor-zither, the qin, which the speaker eventually discards in favor of singing
boldly to cover his weeping; lines 012-1015 are about separated lovers, making
them closest in content to Zhang Hengs poem; lines 012-16 to the end are filled
with diction and imagery reminiscent of the Chu ci (Songs of Chu, of the South)
tradition. (Although line 012-17 is formally consistent with the previous section,
the shift in diction starts with the short line 012-16.)
 The four-part division of the poem recalls in a distant way the division of Zhang
Hengs more homogeneous poem into four stanzas. Still, it would seem that, if
one is going to fill out or supplement a prior composition that has a distinctive
form, there should be a closer thematic and formal relationship between the new
poem and the original than we see here. Some echoes of earlier texts that would
have been immediately recognizable point away from Zhang Heng. Line 012-1 is
a direct quotation of the first seven syllables of Ode 182 in the Classic of Poetry:
How is the night? It is not yet dawn! More intriguingly, Greensilk lute (012-7)
and tears and snivel (012-9) are shared with a third century imitation of the Four
Sorrows by Zhang Zai. The word for soaring (012-12) and the reference to the
cowherd and weaving maiden stars (012-15) are seen in another imitation, by Fu
Xuan (21778). 58 However, there is still no formal similarity to suggest that
the sharing of such common terms and allusions is anything more than coincidental.
 Perhaps we have misidentified the original. Perhaps Fanghui is imitating a
different poem, most likely by Li Hui, the man to whom Fanghui is sending his

58 Anne Birrell, New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 24041 and 24344; Xu Ling, Yutai xin yong, juan 9.
Note that both Zhang Zai and Fu Xuan expand beyond the seven-line stanza. Fukuyama Yasuo
argues that Zhang Hengs work was originally intended as a love song and that the motive of
political frustration was attributed to it only later. See his Ch K Shishshi o megutte.

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composition. We have no way to verify this, unfortunately. Li Hui leaves no extant

poetry, and even if he had left us something like this poem, we would still have to
ask the same question of it that we are asking of He Zhus poem: what is the
relationship between it and Zhang Hengs poem?
 Another possibility is that filling out an original poem was a step or two
beyond imitation insofar as the poet could write pretty much as he pleased on
the basis of something in the original poem without any commitment to reflecting
the structure of the original. This would be reminiscent of the translations in
Robert Lowells in Imitations: as he himself tells the reader, Lowell dropped lines,
moved lines, moved stanzas, changed images and altered meter and intent. 59 This
model does not apply to the two poets who corrected Liu Changqings song, for
they did not depart from the form of the original. However, there is another Song
Dynasty poet who fills out someone elses poem and explicitly states that he was
stimulated by the original to come up with his own imagery. Coincidentally or not,
the original is explicitly tied to Zhang Hengs Four Sorrows.
 The poet is Wang Ling; his poem is Filling out the Second Longing Poem by Wang
Chun (Zhengshu) . 60 Wang Lings poem begins with a double
metaphor of tree leaves and water: tree leaves fall close to the tree from which they
came and protect the tree roots, while water forgets its source and flows away
forever. Before going on to apply this comparison to the conflict between
standing by ones parents and being pulled away by the lure of fame and advantage,
Wang Ling explicitly states that Wang Chuns poem stimulated the poet to speak
in terms of these two things. This probably means that some metaphor in the
original poem prompted the new metaphors, or that a similar theme in Wang
Chuns poem was the trigger. Either way, to add new elaborations on the original
would be to fill out the theme.
 We dont know whether Wang Lings pentasyllabic Ancient Verse is the same
form as Wang Chuns original, because the latter is not extant. What we do know
is that Wang Chuns poem probably has some affiliation with Zhang Hengs Four
Sorrows. The key is the term er si Second Longing in the title. If we go to Zhang
Hengs Four Sorrows in juan 29 of the Wen Xuan, we discover that each stanza is
preceded by The first longing says, The second longing says, and so
forth. (In modern anthologies I have seen, these tags are stripped away.) Appropriately, the first verb in each poem is to long for(si). My hypothesis is that Wang
Chun wrote four poems using this same enumerative title, in imitation of Zhang
Hengs original. Under such conditions, it is plausible that he imitated Zhang
Heng fairly closely in other aspects of form, too. If this is true, then the fact that

59 Imitations, xii; see also again Burton Raffel, The Art of Translating Poetry, 12628. Raffel calls this
imitative translation and considers it less translation than a legitimate way of stimulating a poet to
explore new potentialities.
60 QSS, 12:692.8081.

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153

Wang Lings response to the second of the four poems is in meter and structure
very unlike Zhang Heng is significant for our understanding of He Zhus poem.
 My theory about Wang Lings example leads to the general hypothesis that in
the Song Dynasty filling out a poem did not mean rewriting it correctly, as
we might have thought from the earlier precedents. It means finding some starting
point, some stimulus in the original from which one conceives a new poem. I
cannot explain why Fanghui chose to write a four-part composition the seventh
month of 1090 that is so heterogeneous in form and content, without parallel in
his other extant works; perhaps what we have are notes for a project that was
never completed. Nevertheless, I think we may have found the reason why his
composition did not have to look like Zhang Hengs.

109092: INNOVATIVE SONGS FROM JINLING

Other poems from the period appear more conventional but can be made to
betray their own innovative touches. The following poem (undated but placed
between two poems written across the river in Jinling in the twelfth month of 1090)
has an interesting rhyme scheme, dropping the first rhyme and then resuming it
later. 61 The recipient is a Daoist who had known Su Shi in 1088 and would meet
Su again just a few months later, in Runzhou not far downstream. The title of the
Song is Presented to Daoist Jian Gongchen ; Jian is also known as the
Baoguang Dharma Master, and is addressed as Master Baoguang in the poem: 62

61 A similar, though somewhat more complicated rhyme reversion is seen in Su Shis

( 1094), SSSJ, 8:47.2557; Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1174. I cannot say at this time how common
such patterns are. Readers surprised to see line 014-13 marked as rhyming (b) should see line 10 of
Sus (1079), SSSJ, 3:19.964. However, in Fanghuis poem one would not expect this
line to rhyme, whereas in Sus poem the line is required to rhyme.
62 1.12502; 1.7b. Baoguang means Shaded Light; the phrase is found in the Zhuangzi. Dharma
Master was one rank of Daoist priests in the Tang Dynasty, surely reflecting an appropriation of
Buddhist terminology in the competition for prestige. To judge by the shared syllable in their names,
Jian Gongchen might have been related to Jian Xuchen , who was active about this time and
is mentioned several times in the dynastic history. Xuchens cognomen, Shouzhi (Instruct),
shows a formal resemblance to Gongchens cognomen, Yizhi (Protect), but more tellingly,
Xuchens father, Zhoufu , was from Sichuan, and we know from He Zhus poem and from Su
Shi that Gongchen was from Sichuan. Gongchen and Xuchen could have been cousins, if not
brothers. Su Shi copied a portion of the Sutra of the Yellow Court for Jian Gongchen in 1088; we have
his postface to that specimen, recovered from a commentary to Huang Tingjians poem using the
rhymes of the poem Su wrote on that occasion. See SSWJ 6:2571 or Shangu shizhu 2250:wai.17.385
for the postface. The poem Su wrote on this occasion is , SSSJ, 5:30.1596. He
wrote another poem soon afterwards to see Jian off for Mount Lu: , SSSJ,
5:30.1597; Grant, Mount Lu Revisited, 16768. See also Su Shi nianpu, 2:27.838. The poem that seems
to follow He Zhus is , SSSJ, 6:33.1765; Su Shi nianpu, 3:30.969. Kong Fanli
supposes that Su and Jian met in Runzhou, so when Fanghui wrote this poem in Jinling Jian would
have been on his way downriver, apparently toward Tiantai Mountain (see line 014-7).

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014

12

I once viewed, from a marvelous hand,

a painting of someone riding the wind.
And I imagined that such a man as this
would not exist in the world.
Now I know Master Baoguang
with the Yellow Cap of a Daoist
and a free-flowing spirit that soars aloft
the painting falls short.
From the Emei and Min eastward you came
nine thousand leagues,
Eyes satiated with high mountains
and flowing rivers, too.
Taking advantage of the springtime, though,
you plan to visit Tiantai:
that year Chan and Zhaos adventure
was purely chance!
Master Baoguang!
What are you doing?.
The Dragon and Tiger in the cauldron
are smelted into the Treasure;
beneath your brush wraiths and spirits
are driven like slaves.
You must needs set such things aside
for the nonce:
Read and reread the Book
of the Emperor of Mystery Prime.

A
A
b
A
B
B

B
B
A

A
b
A

Notes
014-56/ Mount Emei and Mount Min are partially joined in Sichuan and are often mentioned
together to represent that region. Coming down from there, Jian Gongchen would indeed have seen
his fill of mountains and rivers.
014-8/ Liu Chen and Ruan Zhao got lost on Mount Tianti in 62 C.E. but ended up
enjoying the favors of Undying maidens there. 63
014-11/ This line refers to alchemy, most likely involving amalgamation of mercury and lead. 64
014-14/ Emperor of Mystery Prime is one of the titles given to Laozi; Fanghui is probably referring
to the text we know as the Laozi or the Dao De jing.

The poem begins on a lofty note, saying that Jian Gongchen in reality outdoes the
iconographic Daoist riding the wind in a painting Fanghui had seen. The inserted section, set off by rhyme (lines 014-58, excluding line 9 as part of the
apostrophe that governs the last section), then undercuts the noble image. Jian,
considering his origins and the journey he has taken through the gorges down to
the lower Yangzi area, cant be going to Mt. Tiantai to see more mountains. He must

63
64

Taiping yulan (SBCK), 41.2b3a.

Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, v. 5 pt. 3, 66.

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155

be lusting after the Undying maidens there! Fanghui does not say so directly, of
course, but he insinuates it when he points out to Jian that Liu Chen and Ruan
Zhao were just lucky. In other words, Jian cannot count on repeating their experience. After lowering his voice with the deflected-tone rhymes in this section
to show he knows the real motives for Jians trip, the poet goes back to the clear,
more public level tones. Now that we are in on the secret, however, we understand what Fanghui is referring to when he says Jian, the successful alchemist
and writer, should set aside such things and keep up on his Laozi instead. That
such things should re-insert the rhyme of lines 014-58 confirms our intuition
that the pursuit of Undying maidens is what is meant.
 Jocular insinuations in poetry that ones friend is a lusty old man are not unusual
in Northern Song poetry. Prudish men were particularly susceptible to such
treatment at the hands of their poet friends. It helps to know, therefore, that Jian
Gongchen was reputedly a strict celibate who disapproved of the fact that Daoists
in his native Sichuan routinely married and had children. 65
 The two poems between which the preceding poem was placed deserve some
attention because they are both eight-line poems of uniform line length, and
Fanghui was just ending an extremely fertile period for heptametrical Regulated
Verse. (From Hezhou in 108890, he kept twenty-four such poems.) There is no
possibility of genre confusion, however. The rhymes schemes of these two poems
show immediately that they are not Regulated Verses. The second poem, for
example, rhymes AAXABBXB and starts with an entering-tone rhyme. Parallelism is studiously avoided. 66
 The first poem, My Boat Makes a Stop in Jinling: Sent
to Clerk Wang Xiang, of Whom I Am Thinking, in Liyang, is worth studying more
closely: it consists entirely of rhyming couplets. 67 While it does exhibit semantic
parallelism in lines 013-14, it is a particular type of parallelism in which the first
line of a couplet is parallel to the first line of the following couplet and the second
line to the second line of the following couplet. This is sometimes called folding
fan parallelism.
013

D2

In a past time from north of the River

I gazed to south of the River;

B1

As I grasped my brew, the sorrow of parting

was already unbearable.

See the commentary to Su Shis , SSSJ, 5:30.1597.

Mooring My Boat in the Qin-Huai, I Call on Shiqi Yu in the Snow, Poem
015, 1.12502; 1.8a.
67 1.12502, 1.7b. Wangs cognomen is Yuanxu , but I have not been able to discover the
cognomen of any of the other Wang Xiangs in the sources to make a positive identification.
65
66

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On this night south of the River,

I gaze to north of the River;

Clapping excitedly in a pure conversation

where can I find that now?

(D7)

Neither Li Lake nor Baixia

are my homeland;

D2

When you are an official, the eyes of the vulgar

forbid you to be wild.

(C14)

On some future day, in a tiny boat,

Ill go on to the West;

(A7)

North of the River, south of the River

where will they be then?

(C15)
C2

Notes:
013-3/ Li Lake is a lake in Liyang; Baixia is on the Jinling side of the Yangzi.
013-78/ Fanghui would sail west to cross the Yangzi to return to Liyang, but here he seems to
imagine a journey further west, so that the time-honored boundary between the North and the
South would cease to be relevant. Whether he has a particular destination or allusion in mind is
unknowable from the context.

The play with north and south that occupies the first two couplets is resumed in
the last couplet; one reason to break the poem into rhyming couplets might be to
introduce a formal complication to balance the fact that this single conceit governs
so much of the poem. Another distraction is the fact that it is only in the fourth
line that the reader discovers this is not a Regulated Verse. Roughly half of
Fanghuis heptametrical Regulated Verses open with DB lines, as we shall see, and
the D and B lines here are perfectly regulated. The third line is unregulated, but it
is a C line following a B line, so we still think we are in a Regulated Verse. Then
we come to line 013-4. It is regulated, but it does not rhyme with lines 1 and 2 as
expected; it rhymes with the preceding line. On top of that, it ends in an entering
tone, impossible for an even-numbered line in Regulated Verse. We have been
catapulted out of Regulated Verse and into Ancient Verse.
 The semantic correlation between lines 013-1 and 3 should be apparent even
without reference to the original; the translation obscures it in lines 2 and 4, but
similar types of words in parallel relationships are there in the Chinese. Bo Juyi
frequently employed folding-fan parallelism in both Ancient and Regulated
Verse. For example, lines 14 and 1316 in his New Ballad Road in the
Taihang Mountains use this structure. As in Fanghuis poem, the lines are also in
rhyming couplets. However, Bos poem is distinguished from He Zhus eight-line
poem not only by its length but also by the varied line lengths (lines 13 and 15 are
pentametrical parallel lines followed by heptametrical parallel lines 14 and 16) and
the repetition of the same words in the same places in the parallel lines. More

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157

research may or may not confirm that He Zhus use of folding-fan parallelism
with rhyming couplets in a uniformly heptametrical poem is an innovation. 68
 It remains to mention a question that will arise from heptametrical poems in
other genres written in this month and the first month of the following year
(Regulated Verses 306, 307, 308; the heptametrical Quatrain 562). As will be seen,
I sense in He Zhu at this time a feeling that the world is somehow less substantial
than usual. Were it not for those other poems, I would say that it is simply a truism
that Li Lake and Baixia are not the poets homeland (line 013-5) and I would never
see in line 013-8s suggestion that distinctions between North and South might
disappear anything more than a witticism relating back to lines 013-1 and 3.
However, reading the Song in the context of those other poems written in some
cases at almost the same time, one has to ask whether there is more to these lines
than the surface meaningeven if Fanghui himself not was conscious of a deeper
significance. We shall, of course, return to this issue when discussing the poems
that first raised it in my mind.

A GIFT ENHANCED BY RHYME (I)

The last Song preserved from Yuanyou 5 (109091) is Sending
Ink [and Poem] Instead of a Letter, Presented to Yang Shi. 69 It is worth mentioning for
several reasons. First, it is written to accompany a gift, which is an important
function of poetry in the Song Dynasty. 70 Secondly, the recipient is Yang Shi
(10531135), one of the important thinkers of the Northern Song. Yang and
Fanghui had known each other as officials in their late twenties in Xuzhou.
(Fanghui believed Yang was now a penal administrator in Nankang, Jiangnan
West Circuit. In fact, Yangs father died about this time, so Yang may have left his
post before the ink and the poem reached Nankang.) Third, this poem is a good
example of the Boliang form; more precisely, it exemplifies poems that miss
by one line being a Boliang poem, which seems to happen fairly regularly. The
Boliang poem has a long history that I have discussed elsewhere. 71 The basic
characteristics of the form are that it is heptasyllabic, that it avoids parallelism, and
that every line ends in the same rhyme, which must be an even-tone rhyme. It is

68 For Bos poem, see QTS, 13:426.4694. On this type of parallelism, see Ye Jun et at., Zhongguo
shixue, 24849. To judge by the examples cited there, most folding-fan parallelism is found in
pentametrical poems. In an eight-line poem, it is most likely to occur in the first half, as it does here;
in longer poems it can be placed anywhere.
69 1.125023; 1.8a.
70 See my Huang Ting-chiens Incense of Awareness, 60.
71 City of Lotuses. When I wrote that article, reference works such as Wang Yonghaos and
Qi Gongs were not available to me, so I was unaware of how prevalent the form was, nor did I
know that some later literary historians saw the Boliang form as the basis for the development of
heptametrical verse itself. See Ye Jun, et al., Zhongguo shixue, 94.

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generally fairly long (Su Shi has one eight-line Boliang poem, but the average
length for him is around twenty-one lines). This enables the propelling rhythm to
have full effect and shows off the prowess of the writer in coming up with so
many rhymes. Because Regulated Verse also requires an even-tone rhyme, the
poet who uses the Boliang form makes a special effort to avoid the euphony of
Regulated Verse. Typically, this involves making sure the last three syllables of
many lines are awkward combinations of even-even-even, or even-deflected-even;
any string of four syllables of the same tone will have a similar effect. It may be
said that the clumsiness of the tonal combinations is a counter-balance to the
forward propulsion of the constant rhyme.
 Below we provide, with the text of the poem to Yang Shi, the prosody of each
line in order to show that there is not a single regulated line. It may be readily seen
that some lines are extreme in their awkwardness: line 016-2 is all even tones;
lines 7 and 9 are deflected tones in all but the final syllable; and so forth.
016

12

(D6)

On Culai Mountain snow oppresses,

hoary pines topple to the ground;

(D24)

Soaked with sap, the roots

twist and coil around.

(A13)

The woodsmans ax cuts and splits,

sparks from stone are hot;

(B29)

in the kiln a hundred paces long, twig-smoke

congeals in a sooty surround:

(D8)

Grapes, the fruits of autumn,

in hanging clusters do abound.

(D15)

Glue from the ocean refined nine times,

fit for repairing strings to sound.

(B19)

Ten thousand pestles beat with force,

nearly through the mortars pounding. A

(D5)

Then its molded into tablets and rings

as one pleases, square or round.

(B19)

A dot of lacquer is like unto its color,

its stony hardness will dumbfound.

(B27)

It all would make Li and Wei

upset theyre not still around.

(D4)

Pan Gu of the Chen Estrade

was aged and with wisdom crowned.

(D3)

He gave to the cognoscenti only,

figured neither pence nor pound.

SONGS

16

159

(D15)

That old gent, like a cicada from its pupa,

is now from life unbound.

(B29)

Who can continue his work in future,

I have not heard or found!

(D19)

I entrust to you one tablet,

inscription intact and sound.

(B29)

It will last for thousands of years

if protected and kept without renown. A

(D28)

Your family is of good and noble air,

and for generations will hand it down. A

(B3)

Dont just talk about the Mystery;

you must draft a Mystery Profound!

Notes:
016-1/ Culai Mountain, in Shandong, is conventionally associated with pine trees because its pines
are praised in Ode 300 of the Classic of Poetry. By Fanghuis time, the pine forests there were much
reduced, as they were in other parts of Shandong. 72
016-2/ Abundant resin in a pine tree with thick, large roots was a measure of suitability for the finest
grades of ink. 73
016-4/ Sparks from stone often means as brief as sparks from flint, but here it may indicate that
the pine wood is so hard that it throws off sparks when struck by the axes.
016-5/ The best soot congealed near the chimneys shaped like pearls or tassels. 74 Fanghui exaggerates the pearls into hanging grapes.
016-6/ Glue is mixed with soot to make ink sticks. Glue made from fish bladder is extremely
strong. 75
016-10/ In all likelihood, Li is Li Tinggui of the Southern Tang and Wei is Wei Zhongjiang
; both were experts on ink. 76
016-11/ Pan Gu was a contemporary purveyor of quality ink well-known among the literati for his
eccentricity and his ability to judge ink. (See Su Shis poem to him, cited in the previous note.)
Fanghui alludes to Pans habit of giving ink away to people who came by without bringing any
money.
016-18/ Yang Shis interest in philosophy was in place when he and Fanghui first met; before he
went to Xuzhou in 1081, he had already called on Cheng Hao . Perhaps he was prone to

72 Shen Gua reports the decline of the pine forests in Qi and Lu in his Mengxi bitan. See
Herbert Frankes discussion of the shift in pine production and his translation of Shen in Kulturgeschichtliches ber die chinesische Tusche, 12 and 11011. Chao Guanzhis Mo jing includes
Culai as historically one of the best sources of pine but states that by his time (he is a contemporary
of He Zhu) the pines in that region are no more than a few decades old and cannot be compared
with the stock from other regions. See Franke, 54, for a translation and Li Shou-mei, Chinese Ink
Making Techniques, for the text (in which see pp. 12). The Mo jing is also attributed to Chao
Guanzhis brother, Chao Yuezhi.
73 See Chao Guanzhis Mojing, op. cit. and Franke, 54.
74 See Chao Guanzhis Mojing, 3, and Franke, 55.
75 Su Shi mentions this glue in his 1085 , SSSJ, 4:25.131920, line 5.
76 See the commentaries to Su Shis (1084), SSSJ, 4:24.1276 and the poem referenced in
the previous note.

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engaging taking about the mysteries like the intellectuals of the Six Dynasties. Fanghui points out
that with the ink he is giving him he can write it all down. He is also drawing on a common allusion
to Yang Xiongs absorption in his great work, the Tai Xuan jing: drafting the Mystery refers to
devoting oneself to writing with little thought or time for playing the game of politics.

The joke in the final line is in keeping with the bravado style typical of the Boliang
form. As to why a non-rhyming line is included (016-3), I have no explanation, but
this is a fairly regular phenomenon. Out of twenty Boliang poems by Su Shi that
I have identified so far, five include a non-rhyming line.

1094: HAILING
LAMENTS
During the year in Hailing when he wrote only one pentametrical Ancient Verse,
Fanghui favored heptametrical forms, both the Song and Regulated Verse.
A remarkable poem he wrote to mourn his daughter is the first Song from this
period we have. His daughter, he tells us in the headnote, had married Yanxiu
of the Zhu family of Wenyang , which was east of the Liang-shan area
notorious for its bandits; there is no way of knowing whether she and her husband
resided there. 77 The Song, Words of Mourning for Our Late Daughter
Shengzhang is startling in both content and form: 78
023

(D13)

A hundred illnesses, sunken and tired,

I endured a full two years;

(D2)

Who could foresee my healthy girl

would die before me?

(D3)

Ive lost my voice, I stifle my cries,

my breath is blocked and choking.

(D19)

These tears are like well-ropes let down

to draw from the Nine Springs.

(D6)

Woe and alas! I still dare

to hold Heaven at fault.

77 There are a few men named Zhu in the historical records whose first names begin with the
syllable Yan and who thus might be cousins or brothers of Yanxiu, but their surnames are written
with the more common . Fanghui might have corrected the writing of his son-in-laws name in
the belief that it was derived from , the name of an ancient state in the Shandong area.
78 1.12504, 1.11a. I have not seen comparable formats for ai ci ( or ); the only heptametrical
examples I have found for the Song Dynasty are one regulated verse (Su Shi, , 1084;
SSSJ, 4:24.1280) and two poems in Sao couplets of 6 syllables + xi / six syllables (by Qin Guan).
Wang Wei has a very irregular sao-meter poem, ; I see no other example from the Tang
Dynasty.

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161

(A26)

We entrusted you to the wrong person;

you died without your proper place.

(A20)

Your father is a lout, your mother is stupid;

we actually threw you away.

Swallowing sorrow, gnashing teeth in suffering,

where could you tell your woes?

A withered sprout, a fallen blossom;

spring washed its hands of you.

Woe and alas! For ten thousand ages

youll be rancorous soil.

A1
(A17)
A1

Notes:
023-4/ The Nine Springs are the realm of the dead beneath the earth.

With a poem of such bitter sorrow, it almost seems insensitive to study the
structure, but upon doing so we realize how important the structure is in giving
voice to the emotion. First of all, the Song is divided into two equal parts by the
rhyme change that comes as the poet turns from his grief to his guilt and anger. (I
add the second-person pronoun to the translation in the second part, though it
exists only in line 023-7 in the original: we threw you away.) One purpose of
having two five-line units is to upset the balance and elegance that comes with
couplet-based poetry, but what is going on here is a bit more subtle. In fact, all but
lines 023-5 and 6 fall into couplets, though tonally and semantically they avoid
symmetry. Lines 023-1 and 2 treat the paradox of a sickly father being preceded in
death by a child in her prime; line 023-3 and 4 are devoted to the ways his grief is
felt. Lines 023-7 and 8 and 023-9 and 10 fall again into pairs because of implied
causal relationships (we threw you awayso you have no place to come for solace;
you are like a fallen blossomand will become soil). Line 023-5, taking the fathers complaint to Heaven, stands alone, as does the indictment of the son-in-law
in line 6: We entrusted you to the wrong person. The fact that the poem returns
to thematically paired lines after these two solitary lines is undercut by the repetition of Woe and alas! in line 023-10. That is, echoing the same words in line
023-5, this refrain lament lays a conflicting pattern over the paired lines, dividing
the poem into two outbursts of five lines each. The situation, the grief, cannot be
contained within stable two-line units of thought.
The fact that every line rhymes creates a compelling forward movement, but
equally important is the fact that the second syllable in every line is in the level tone.
The resulting strings of D-type and A-type lines are not only impossible in
Regulated Verse; they are surely rare in Ancient Verse of any line length. The
unchanging tone in the second syllable maintains a constancy that we did not see
in the light-hearted poem to Yang Shi. Weve said that repeated rhymes in a long
poem create an impression of bravado; thats not what is wanted here. He Zhu has

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CHAPTER TWO

found a different kind of intensity, a ruthless repetition appropriate to his theme.

Note also that a level-tone second syllable in both the D and A line type requires a level-tone sixth syllable if full euphony (as codified in regulated meter) is
desired. Fanghui relentlessly forces the sixth syllable into the deflected tone for the
first four lines of this poem, and for three of the five lines after the exclamatory
line 023-5. It is almost as if the wailing level tone in the second syllables is accompanied in the sixth by a fist-pounding deflected tone. Or, in view of the way
the strings of four deflected tones in lines 023-2 and 3 mimic the blocking and
choking of He Zhus breath, we may hear sobbing in those sixth-syllable deflected tones.
The deflectedleveldeflectedlevel tonal sequence of line 023-7 is particularly
striking. Those syllables seethe with self-hatred as they castigate both Fanghui and
his wife in jerky rhythms: Your father is a lout, your mother is stupid.
After that angry line, we encounter the gentleness of a tonally regulated line in
line 023-8, and again in the final line 10. It is almost as if the father, despite the
continuing sadness and anger in all that he says, is struggling to soften his tone.
The last words he addresses to his daughter must fall more gently on her ears, even
as she turns to rancorous earth for the rest of time.
Form does have meaning. These words in these rhythms make us weep again
for He Zhus daughter a thousand years after she abandoned hope and life; and
while we can never know what she was like, in our modern accents we can at least
repeat her name as immortalized in the title of her fathers powerful poem: He
Shengzhang.
Later in 1094, Fanghui uses his skill to make a plea on behalf of a pair of cranes.
During a summer drought, the pond that a Mr. Su in Hailing had dug dried up, but
the negligent Mr. Su did nothing to succor the pair of cranes he kept
therepresumably they depended on little fish or frogs in the pond for food. This
is the opening of He Zhus Lament of the Old Cranes; the words are those
of the cranes: 79
024

Flowery pillar, flowery pillar,

shall we homeward hie?
Theres no chariot for us to ryde,
No fish on which to dyne.

A
A
A

Anyone familiar with Harold Shadicks textbook for Classical Chinese will recognize the echo of the complaint of Feng Xuan , who tapped on the hilt of
his sword and sang, Long hylt, long hylt, lets homeward hie, / Theres no chariot
for me to ryde; / Theres no fish on which to dyne. (This was one step in testing
the degree to which his lord would invest in him, though there was no evidence

79

1.125045; 1.11b.

SONGS

163

that he had any talent whatsoever; he later bought his lord a reputation for
justice by forgiving the debts of those unable to pay them.) 80 Allusions to this
song were common, and in fact Fanghui had more conventionally evoked it in
1091, in Left Behind in Farewell to Tian Zhou: 81
020

12

Cloudy thoroughfares recede into the vastness,

and I decline to climb up to them;
the long hylte and I will
go back to our old perch.
If in future time you harness your four-in-hand
and come to the southern acres,
the one plowing will be this old man;
the one hoeing will be his wife.

A
A

(This is an enjoyable poem that I omit from further study only as a gesture towards
economy of discussion. Let us note in passing, however, that it is another example
of a poem that leaves then resumes the opening rhyme. See p. 153.)
In the 1094 lament for the cranes, Fanghui cleverly overlaps three allusions.
The flowery pillar or column (024-1) the cranes address (echoing Feng Xuans
address to his sword) is associated with cranes because Ding Lingwei perched on
such a pillar in the form of a crane. (See the note to line 001-20 of the 1081 Song
of the Clustered Estrade.) As for the chariot (024-2), of course Feng Xuan complained
that he was not granted one, but mention of the vehicle take us to another allusion:
in the Spring and Autumn Period, Duke Yi of Wei was inordinately fond of cranes
and conveyed them about on the cross-rails of chariots. 82 So not only do these
cranes not have the chariot Feng Xuan was eventually granted; they dont have the
chariot that Duke Yi provided his cranes. When the cranes complain they dont
have fish (024-3), they are once again repeating Feng Xuans grievance, but this
time the secondary reference is not a textual allusion; it is to the fact that Mr. Su
has allowed the pond to dry up.
This is all so skillful that I once thought He Zhu cared less about the cranes
than about his own cleverness. (The rest of the poem is also very allusive.) I think
now that his aim was to amuse Mr. Su with his tour-de-force of allusions and
rhymes (only three lines out of seventeen do not rhyme). Having gotten his ear, so
to speak, he could then remind him of his responsibility to the captive birds. The
progression of secondary references we have just noted in the first three lines
embodies this strategy: after directing our attention to other texts in the first two

80 In addition to your copy of Shadick, see the Zhanguo ce, Qi ce, juan 4. Or Crump, Chan-kuo Tse,
19598. I purposely use an archaic spelling for hilt because the Chinese term is very rare; as far as
I know, it occurs only in the context of this allusion.
81 1.125034; 1.9b. Tian Zhou is Tian Zhiming. Fanghui met him again and wrote this poem
over a decade later in Gaoyou in the second month of 1091 as he was on his way up the Grand Canal
to the capital.
82 Zuo zhuan, Min 2.

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lines, the poem turns in line 024-3 to point the finger at the real crisis at hand. One
hopes that Fanghui was successful in getting fish for the feathered Feng Xuans.

FIRST FAREWELL SONGS

Although Fanghui uses Songs as often as Ancient Verses to send people off (seven
poems in each genre), it is not until 1094 in Hailing that Fanghui he employs one
for this purpose. We can only suppose that this late start was governed by the
same factors that retarded He Zhus general adoption of the genre. The first
person who was sent off with a Song is a first cousin of Wang Anshi who is on his
way south to be a district defender at Wukang, about 45 km north of Hangzhou. 83
Somewhat more interesting for the light it shows on the different uses of pentasyllabic and heptasyllabic lines is Sending off Prefect of
Hailing, Zhou Bin, who has Received His Replacement and is Returning to the Court. 84
026

12

Mighty and strong the waters eastward flow.

What can we do? They carry his
westing boat.
Boom, the fifth [watch] drums
sound from the citywall top.
The commissioner is leaving
and we cannot keep him here.
One day in the past the commissioner came:
The Son of Heaven favored this district.
Word was sent of his Guancheng administration:
his reputation sent robber gangs fleeing.
No one locked their outside doors,
watchdogs ceased to bark.
everyone grasped sickle and hoe;
who wore an ox?
Rain and sunshine came according to his prayers;
barren land doubled its yield.
Clerks wouldnt take a single coin in bribes;
the prison was empty of five-dice prisoners.
In the Yellow Hall he sits and whistles,
having plenty of leisure;

A
A
A
A
A
A

A
A
A

83 Seeing off Wang Anjie going to his post as defender of Wukang, Poem 025,
1.12505; 1.12a.
84 1.12505; 1.12a. We have met Zhou Bin in connection with the Ancient Verse Inscribed on the
Cloud-Roosting Hut at Kaiyuan Temple in Hailing, written in the previous month (Poem 139).

SONGS

16

165

a new set of Eight Songs

patterned after the Reticent Marquis.
A
The People place their hopes in the commissioner;
the rest of our lives we have relief.
A

20

Suddenly he was at the melon season replacement. B

In this court a post within is prized.
B
Before, you were on the roles of the Bronze Gate;
now you will give answers in the Nephrite Palace. B

24

If he asks you by what method

you ruled Hailing,
C
Just say, It was the virtue of the sagely ruler;
what abilities does your servant possess? C
Crazy Sheng would like to be
aide to the commissioner of waterways. C

Notes:
026-3/ The allusion to Deng You is especially appropriate in the context of Zhous departure. See
p. 147n.
026-7/ Fanghui tells us in his headnote that Zhous administration in Guancheng (modern
Zhengzhou, sixty-some km west of the capital) was exemplary. 85
026-9/ An ox in this context is a sword. In a well-ordered society, people sold their swords and
bought oxen; when they no longer felt safe, they would sell the oxen and buy swords; since a sword
was thus convertible into an ox, to wear a sword was to wear an ox.
026-14/ The Indian game chaupar was played with five two-sided dice. 86 Clearly, the game was
associated with activities that could land a person in jail.
026-15/ The Yellow Hall is the hall of a prefect. 87 Whistling in this context may be close to our
notion of producing sound by blowing out through puckered lips, but for possible Daoist connotations see again Holzman, Poetry and Politics, 15052.
026-16/ The Eight Songs alludes to another prefect, Shen Yue (441-513), whose posthumous
title was Reticent Marquis. See Mather, Shen Yeh, 94110.
026-17/ For similar uses of xing, see the following line from an indictment of an ancient god of
drought by He Zhus friend Zhang Lei, The people place their hopes in God, oh!
and He issues orders to the cloudy troops, and, from a poem by the slightly younger Li Zhi
(10591109), The people of the commandery place their hopes in his
coming, / competing for the glory of catching sight of him first. 88
026-18/ The translation of this line is tentative. Ouyang Xius Only an
officer who is good can give rest on my behalf to [the people who have been exhausted by warfare]
offers the only precedent of which I am aware. Yang Wanli (11271206) uses the expression
wu xiu in two poems where it appears to mean rest for me; my rest. In Ouyangs example xiu is a

85 Zhou was magistrate of Guancheng xian in 1085. See the Xu Zizhi tongjian changbian, 10:361.2b
(3665) and Su Shi nianpu, 2:24.699.
86 See Shishuo xinyu 31.4 for one mention of it; also, Mathers glossary, p. 643.
87 See the biography of Guo Dan , Hou Han shu, 4:27.941
88 Zhangs poem is , and it is datable to 1080. See Zhang Lei ji, 1:5.5556, and the nianpu
therein, 2:98081. Li Zhis poem is , QSS, 20:1202.1358182. In the latter
case, xing could also be understood as consider [something] a blessed event.

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transitive verb because it has an object pronoun after it. I suspect that in both Yang Wanli and
Fanghui the expression is derived from some such usage and has been abbreviated. The full connotation would be something like the relief that has been granted me/the people by a good administration on behalf of the emperor. 89
026-21/ The Bronze Horse Gate is a kenning for the bureaus of officials.
026-22/ It would appear that Zhou is being recalled for an examination before the emperor.
026-23B25/ This section alludes to a story of a much earlier prefect who was called to the capital.
The prefect asked one of his underlings, a Wang Sheng, what he should say to the emperors
questions. Wang told him, When he asks by what method you ruled Bohai, it would be well to say,
It was all the virtue of the sage ruler, not the effort of your humble servant. The emperor asked
the expected question and got the prepared answer. However, the prefect had to confess that he had
been instructed by Wang Sheng. The emperor, amused, gave the aged prefect the largely honorary
job of commissioner of waterways and made Wang his aide. 90 In our poem, Fanghui is playing the
part of Wang Sheng.

Sending off Prefect of Hailing Zhou Bin who has Received His Replacement and is Returning to
the Court is divided by rhyme into three sections. The first and longest (lines
026-118) tells why Hailing will be sorry to see Zhou Bin go; it uses a mixture of
pentametrical and heptametrical sets of lines to vary the register in interesting ways.
The second section (lines 1922), all pentametrical, explains that this is not only
a scheduled rotation but a shift to the more prestigious court official status;
moreover, Zhou has been an official in the capital before and should have no
problem being interviewed by the emperor. The likelihood of such an interview
leads to the joke in the final section of three rhyming heptasyllabic lines (the
second of which is prefixed by Just say: , adding two extra syllables).
There are several comparisons that can be made between the pentasyllabic and
heptasyllabic lines. The pentasyllabic lines each contain a single idea, encouraging
one to look to a matching line for context, cause, result, or amplification. The first
two couplets of pentametrical lines imply relations of cause and result. That Zhou
Bin came (line 026-5) to Hailing was the result of kindness on the part of the
emperor (line 6); Zhous administration in Guancheng (line 7) has been reported,
and this causes the thieves in Hailing to run away (line 8)from which we may
of course infer something about that administration. The second two couplets of
pentametrical lines are driven by amplification: it is true that we could see timely
rain and sunshine (line 026-11) as the cause for barren land doubling its yield (line
12) but I read both phenomena as coordinate indications that agriculture is
flourishing, especially since the honesty of clerks and the cessation of gamblers
brawls (lines 026-1314) as signs of Zhou Bins good influence on local mores are
clearly equal but independent.
The heptasyllabic lines work differently. They are more likely to contain two

Ouyang Quanji, 1:waizhi ji.3.606, .

See the Han shu, 11:89.364041, in the biography of Gong Sui . Su Shi alluded to this
story in 1091: , SSSJ, 6:33.175556,
line 15.
89
90

SONGS

167

ideas and require less support from their mates. There is room to include two
sentences: The commissioner is leaving (exclamation); [we] cannot detain [him]
(line 026-4). An idea and its amplification can thus appear within the same line:
[People] dont lock outside doors; put-to-rest barking dogs (line 026-9). Actually, this line and the following one (derived from the old saying about selling
swords to buy oxen) both give the result of the robber gangs flight from Hailing,
reported in the pentasyllabic line 026-8. The structure of this sub-section from line
026-5 through line 10 gives the effect of a solemn, classical declaration at the
measured pace 1 2 || 3 4 5 , followed by a commoner stepping forward,
perhaps beating time with a pair of wooden sticks, and amplifying on what has
been heard in a spirited, quick 1-2 3-4 || 5-6-7. This pattern repeats itself in the
next six lines, where Zhou Bins effect on agriculture and morals is reported in
pentametrical couplets, after which the result is reported in sprightly rhythms: the
prefect who governs by moral example has nothing to do but whistle and write
poetry (as opposed to hearing court cases and traipsing through the fields to
exhort the farmers).
The beginning of the poem has its own dynamic. The quiet and vaguely ancient-sounding Mighty and strong the waters eastward flow in five syllables
releases a flurry of thoughts in rhyming heptasyllabic lines that refer directly to the
occasion: these waters are taking him away from us! Listen to the morning drum
urging him to leave! We cannot stop him! The fact that lines 026-1 through 4 all
rhyme gives this introduction a quick rhythm that is damped by the pentasyllabic
retrospective in the following lines, though the energy bursts out periodically in
the heptametrical interjections we have already discussed.
Though we have not marked them, there are regulated lines in Sending off Prefect
of Hailing Zhou Bin. They never follow a regulated sequence, but they seem to evoke
a momentary dignity or formality, especially in One day in the past the commissioner came; / The Son of Heaven favored this district (026-56) and The
people place their hopes in the commissioner (026-17). Using regulated lines for
Suddenly he was at the melon season replacement; / In this court a post within
is prized (026-1920) might underscore the shift in topic from Zhou Bins past
to his immediate future at court.
The only regulated heptasyllabic line in the entire poem is the last one: Crazy
Sheng would like to be aide to the commissioner of waterways. Here, the meter
may be designed to create mock-dignity. Moreover, this is the punch line to a joke
that has just been set up in two very prosy lines; the poet wants it to roll off the
tongue smoothly and stay in the listeners mind to be savored, while ending the
poem with an appealing, euphonious pattern of sound.

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109698: JIANGXIA
TAO YUANMING OUTDONE
In our chapter on Ancient Verses, we noted that Fanghui was collating Tao
Yuanmings works while in Hanyang in the seventh month of Shaosheng 3 (1096).
One Song written in the fifth month of 1096 (as Fanghui was still on his way up
the Yangzi to Hanyang) makes a great deal of Tao Yuanming. It also begins with
eight pentasyllabic lines, like Song he wrote in 1089 across from Jinling (p. 146).
This Song is a bit longer than the 1089 poem. Like the earlier one, it has one rhyme
for the first eight lines and another rhyme for the ten following heptasyllabic lines.
Unlike the earlier one, the first line does not rhymenormal for pentametrical
poetryand there are eight more heptasyllabic lines in another rhyme at the end
of the poem. The interlocking rhymes in the middle of the poem are highly unusual. 91
The title of the poem is Seeing Off Zhang Bangjie
Moving to Baojia Mountain at Yuhang. To understand several references in the Song,
it is necessary to know that Zhang Bangjie (an office friend from Fanghuis
earliest posting as a wine tax collector in Lincheng ) had quit his job as
magistrate at Ruichang in Jiangzhou , Liang Zhe Circuit, then remained
in the city for thirteen years without participating in the affairs of man, i.e.,
politics or administration.
The first section of the poem takes Tao Yuanming as Zhangs predecessor. The
second section of the poem, on the other hand, shows how Zhang Bangjie exceeds Tao Yuanming. (This section is from Zhangs [and Fanghuis?] point of
view; the first-person pronoun, which can be singular or plural, is present in the
original. Note that here the paired heptasyllabic lines do look to their mates for
meaning; this languorous rhythm seems to support the drollery.) Finally, the third
section builds on the fact that Zhang has been invited east to Baojia Mountain by
friends in the Way/Dao; this accounts for the references to Daoism and alchemy. 92
030

Wise magistrates of Jiujiang

gaze at each other across a millennium.

91 Rhymes were confirmed by using the Su Shi concordance; whether every one of these syllables was always considered to rhyme with the others or only when a liberal definition of rhyme was
being applied is beside the point; they could be heard to rhyme in He Zhus time and when the
pattern is clearly not random we must assume that they were meant to rhyme. For an example of
interlocking rhyme in the Classic of Poetry, see Ode 133, though that structure is in no way ancestral
to what we see in the present Song.
92 1.12506; 1.14a. Zhang came aboard He Zhus boat in Jiujiang ( the administrative seat
of Jiangzhou).

SONGS

Of old, Tao of Pengzi,

and in the present, Zhang of Ruichang:
Shaking out their clothes, laying aside the five pecks,
in high spirits they salute August Xi.
Avoiding the vulgar: Tao never regretted it;
attaining true life: Zhang and I.

Yuanmings three paths:

overgrown pines and chrysanthemums;
I bring along a gourd dipper
and lodge in monkish rooms.
Yuanming begged for food
going in person to peoples doors;
I sell pills of the gods
and peddle vegetarian gruel.
Yuanming for brew
would receive Xiuyuan;
I always send letters
to put off the prefectural head.
Yuanming with paper and pen
taxed the youthful cohorts;
My sons sing aloud
the Purple Asphodel Song.
At peace was my gate
for thirteen years;
And still I fear ties to the dust,
that a place once new will become familiar.

12

16

20

24

You are going off to hide away

on Baojia Mountain.
Vowing to smelt, for the myriad people,
the Pill of Great Return.
I hope that outside your door youll
kill the thorns and weeds.
Those who come, reject them not:
allow them to climb up.
The Leftover Old Man of Mirror Lake
is both old and infirm.
Still he can watch over the cauldron
and scold away the goblins.
Task accomplished, hell uproot his whole family
and go off to the Undying just like that,
leaving behind only the well and mortar
in the human world.

169

A
A
A
B
B
c
B
c
B

B
c
B
C
C
C
C
C
C

Notes:
030-56/ Tao Yuanming refused to bow and scrape for his salary of five pecks of rice; he shook
out his robes and returned to farming; Tao also said he sometimes felt as if he were living in the age

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of Fu Xi (August Xi). Fu Xi was not only one of the legendary founders of culture; he was part
of the Daoist pantheon. 93
030-78/ I think these two lines mean Fanghui and Zhang share Taos values and accomplishments.
Du Fu provides a precedent for pairing avoiding the vulgar and attaining true life (da sheng) as
attributes of Tao Yuanming. Wu Yun ( d. 778) has a poem in which he praises Tao for attaining
true life. 94
030-9/ Tao himself says his three paths were overgrown when he returned, though the pines and
chrysanthemums were still there. 95
030-10/ The gourd dipper is probably for brew. Su Shi speaks of sharing the brew from a gourd
dipper. 96
030-11/ Tao Yuanming wrote a poem called Begging for Food. 97
030-13/ One of Tao Yuanmings drinking companions was a former fellow official and later
(41825) prefect at Jiangzhou, Wang Hong ; on one Double Ninth festival when Tao Yuanming had no wine, Wang Hong dropped by with some and they got drunk together. 98 Fanghui uses
Wangs cognomen, Xiuyuan.
030-1516/ Tao Yuanming complained that his sons all had no liking for paper and brush. The
Song of the Purple Asphodel was attributed to the Four Elders Zhang Liang brought out of
reclusion. The song mentions that the purple fungus wards off hunger. Su Shi sings this song as a
mark of his transcendent air in the fifth of his six poems following the rhymes of Taos Returning to
Field and Garden (1095). 99
030-18/ This line could also mean You still fear becoming familiar with the place where dusty karma
is born (or gathers), or You fear that what is unfamiliar about the world of dusty karma will become
familiar. 100

93 Shaking out the robes comes from the nineteenth of his Drinking Wine poems; Davis 1:101.
For Tao and Fu Xi, see Davis, 2:173 and Tao Yuanming ji, 18791. The relevant passage is often
understood to mean that Tao feels like someone who lives prior to Fu Xi, and the Tao Yuanming ji cites
a lyric by Xin Qiji that rewrites the passage slightly to give it that meaning. However, in Fanghuis
poem, Tao seems to be greeting Fu Xi as a contemporary. Fu Xi appears in a fourteenth-century
mural described briefly by Steven Little in his chapter Daoist Art, in Livia Kohn, ed., Daoism
Handbook, 729.
94 Du Fus poem is the third of five :
Fanghui would have known
this poem if for no other reason than that the next in the set is about his ancestor He Zhizhang.
The poem is a bit shocking insofar as it says that that old man who avoided the vulgar could not
necessarily attain the Way and that attaining true life is not enough. Some readers have said Du Fu
is really talking about himself, but yane Bunjir explains Du Fus scorn by pointing out that the
two men lived in very different ages and naturally had very different aspirations. See his T Enmei
kenky, 32021. Wu Yuns poem is the last of his fifty Songs of Lofty Gentlemen , QTS,
24.853.9661.
95 See lines 17 and 18 of his famous Return Home! Davis, 1:193.
96 For example, (1083), SSSJ, 4:22.1159, lines 9 and 10.
97 Davis, 1:5556.
98 Davis, 2:172.
99 For Taos Reproving My Sons, see Davis, 1:112. To translate a fungus with magical powers, I
follow Stephen Owen in using a flower associated in English language poetry with Elysium; see his
Anthology, 513. One version of the Song of Purple Asphodel is in the Gao shi zhuan by Huangfu Mi
(215-282), CSJC, 3396.B.65; it is attributed to Cui Hong ( d. 418) in Guo Maoqian,
Yuefu shiji. Su Shis poem is at SSSJ, 7:39.2106.
100 Qian Qianyi (15821664), albeit much later, uses the same phrase as Fanghui. Qian
is talking about an ideal in studying the Dao that can be applied to poetry: one should be familiar
where it is unfamiliar and unfamiliar where it is familiar. This is a bit over three hundred years before

SONGS

171

030-25/ Since ba zhai means to take ones household with one upon ascending to the Undying, I
translate zi not as by (one)self but just like that, naturally.
030-26/ The well and mortar stand for the hard labor of household life.

If we want to draw a parallel between this poem and the Ancient Verse Fanghui
wrote later on his journey after collating the works of Tao Yuanming, it might be
this: Tao is a source of images and diction for this culture, but there is a gap
between Tao and the modern ageor between his simplified image and the details of his real life that we can glean from his works. The later poem will point out
that Tao needed to work to support his family, just as Fanghui does. This poem
suggests that Tao did not go far enough down the Daoist road. Either way, we
cannot rest in the popular picture of Tao Yuanming as the happy gentleman
farmer. Perhaps the occasion and Zhang Bangjies plans require the rhetorical
pretense that one can exceed Tao Yuanming. Still, Fanghui clearly felt that he
could question the reality of the Tao Yuanming image or the limits of its validity
without being dismissed as a raving lunatic.

LEFTOVER ELDER OF MIRROR LAKE

This is the first poem in which Fanghui refers to himself as the Leftover Elder of
Mirror Lake. In a 1094 heptametrical Regulated Verse written at Hailing, he spoke
of yearning for Mirror Lake, (Chapter Four; line 507-8) but naming himself after
the lake appears to happen sometime on the route from the capital to the mint at
Ezhou (Jiangxia).
Having arrived at the mint in Jiangxia in the tenth month of 1096, Fanghui
opens a Song with the same reference:
The Leftover Elder of Mirror Lake is condemned to poverty for the crime of
poetry. / In the years he forces himself to serve, a hundred ailments assail him.
This Song is titled Sent to Zhao Mian, Defender of Hanyang , and
we shall turn to it in a moment. 101 First let us note that in 1097 Fanghui will aver
that the Crazy Old Man of Mirror Lake is tired of court accoutrements (see the
Song introduced on p. 179, Poem 036), and in 1098 he will see the outgoing
prefect of Wuchang off for the capital with the lament that
The old man from Mirror Lake is sad to the point of breaking. 102 The life of

the word defamiliarize entered the English language to convey similar concepts from Russian
Formalism. See Qians letter , Qian Muzhai quanji, 6:Youxueji.39.135657.
101 Poem 033, 1.12507; 1.16a. Fanghui tells us Zhao is a paternal first cousin of his friend Zhao
Pang, and the Guangdong tongzhi, 1:15.298b tells us that he had an unspecified post in Guangzhou in
1104. Otherwise, I have no information on him.
102 The 1098 poem is Song of the Southern Loft: Seeing Off Prefect Shen
of Wuchang Returning to Court, Poem 037, 1.12509; 1.18a. Li Zhiliangs Song Liang-Huai da jun shouchen
yiti kao lists no Ezhou prefect for 1097 or 1098 (p. 52). The prefect, Shen Zongjie (Fanghui

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CHAPTER TWO

such a sobriquet, learned from a reference work or encountered in the name of a

poets collected works, seems to us at a distance to be coterminous with the life
of the poetit is easy to forget that there was a time when he did not have that
name and to overlook the fact that its use may be tied to specific circumstances.
For example, Su Shis references to himself as East Slope start in 1084,
immediately after his exile in Huangzhou, with five poems. Four references follow
in 1085. In 108690, however, he makes only one reference per year to himself as
East Slope. In 1091, when he escapes the capital to become prefect of Hangzhou,
there is a momentary increase to three references. The next remarkable increases
are in 1095 (five poems) and 1100 (six poems), when Su Shi is in his final exile.
These are only poetic references, of course; letters and other prose works may
show a different distribution. With that caveat, and with no claim to having analyzed differences in the phrasing of the appellations (Mr. East Slope, Old Man of
East Slope, etc.), I theorize that Su Shi was most apt to call himself East Slope
when he was in stressful positionsit was a way of anchoring a part of himself,
albeit as a subsistence farmer, in a place where he had once been almost entirely
free of conflicts with the people around him.
Fanghui surely hated his job as director of the Ezhou mint, which exposed his
family to the pollution around the facility. 103 It now seemed that he would never
be allowed to have a job commensurate with his new civil status and education.
Thus, perhaps it was only by giving himself a label that represented both his
lineage and his dream of returning to a pure and clean ancestral land that he could
endure his present existence.
Perhaps not incidentally, Su Shi, Su Zhe, and He Zhu are the only TangSong
individuals I know who called themselves the Leftover Elder of Such-and-Such
a Place. Su Shi uses the term once (in poetry; I cannot speak to his prose works):
You thought of the leftover elder of East Slope. This line
comes from a Song written for Wang Shi, who was later a companion of He Zhu
in Xuzhou (see p. 130) 104 Because he links East Slope and Leftover Elder with
the connective particle zhi of, we cannot say for certain whether he considered

tells us his name and that he is from WuSuzhou?) does not appear in any source known to me.
Calling him a prefect from Wuchang suggests that Fanghui is not referring to the xian of Wuchang in
the eastern part of Ezhou and across the river from Huangzhou but to Ezhou/Jiangxia, which had
the name Wuchang at previous times (and the present day, as part of Wuhan).
103 Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 50, quoting from a 1091 letter protesting an
assignment to a mint in what is modern Hunan. (Fanghui never took the assignment.) It must have
been his hope and expectation that his subsequent promotion to the civil bureaucracy would save
him from further assignments of this nature.
104 , SSSJ, 8:48.2642, line 11. The poems title tells us that it was
written when Wang Shi was returning to Yunzhou. In mid-1084, after leaving Huangzhou, Su Shi
went to Yunzhou and saw Wang Shi, so we know Wang had been in Yunzhou during this period
of time. He must have been one of several friends who went back and forth between Yunzhou
(where Su Zhe had been since mid-1080) and Huangzhou, as this poem would seem to indicate. See
Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:23.619.

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173

this a name. The situation is clearer in the case of his younger brother. When Su
Zhe completed his autobiography in the ninth month of 1105, he called it
A Biography of the Leftover Elder on the Shore of the Ying. 105
The term leftover elder is not rare; it denotes a seasoned veteran or, more
commonly, a person who served or lived under a former court or dynasty. That
suggests that these three individuals meant to imply that they were loyal to the
ideals of one or more administrations of their younger years. Another possibility
is that they were claiming to be the surviving embodiments of a particular tradition
associated with the place named: for Su Shi, it would be Bo Juyis East Slope; for
He Zhu, it would be his familys association with the lake; and for Su Zhe, there
was Tao Yuanmings vow to escape to the banks of the Ying. 106 Whatever the
connotations, it is striking that only Su Shi, then his admirer He Zhu (inspired by
Sus poem to their mutual friend Wang Shi?), and finally Su Zhe (following the
examples of He and/or his own brother?) would use such a name.

TAO YUANMING OUT OF REACH

Sent to Zhao Mian, Defender of Hanyang touches on some ideas and themes that we
have seen in earlier poems. He Zhus 1081 Song of the Clustered Estrade presented us
with the difficult line In human life, the Numbers of the objective [world] do not
wait for us. (See discussion of line 001-3.) Now, in 1096, we have
The odd and the even of human life are like fortune
tallies; / how could the Fashioner of Things allow the Numbers of man to be
foreseen? (Lines 033-1112.) This must mean simply that one cannot tell what
course his life will take. However ones numbers were calculated (most likely by
time of birth), odd numbers were considered unlucky. We know this much from
the biography of Han general Li Guang : before a crucial battle, the emperor
instructed the leading general not to allow Li Guang to lead the main force against
the enemy because his number(s) were odd. 107
More interesting in light of our earlier discussion of Tao Yuanming are the
allusions to Tao in the third section (as marked by rhyme):
033

In the past I never wantedto leave home

and in a hundred days ascend to the Three Offices. C

105

Zeng Zaozhuang, Su Zhe nianpu, 199.

For a good summary of the problematic relationship between the East Slopes of Su and Bo,
see Michael Fuller, Road to East Slope, 27172. For Tao Yuanmings reference to the banks of the
Ying, see , Tao Yuanming ji, 2.4648. We shall refer to A. R. Davis
translation of this poem below. Tao is in turn alluding to an earlier recluse who farmed by the Ying
River, but banks of the Ying must have come to Su Zhe from Tao.
107 Han shu, 8:54.2448.
106

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CHAPTER TWO

In the present I dont wantto go home

with six seals of gold hanging in bunches.

All I want is my government ration

so I can provide for my parent,

16 and return with enough left
to maintain my three paths.
Over the wall next door youll get up late
and come to inquire after me;
Youll
pour
and Ill sing

of the time of Yao and Shun.

Ay me, this ambition

will be truly hard to secure.

20 I swallow my voice and eat cork
sweet as honey!

C
D
D

Notes:
033-13/ Three Offices refers to different high positions depending on the historical periods.
Fanghui is saying he never expected to be like the Later Han scholar Xun Shuang , who was
called out of retirement and raised to the position of Minister of Works in ninety-five days. 108
033-14/ Six seals of office were worn by Su Qin, who was chief minister to six states allied against
the Qin. 109
033-16/ The three paths is a kenning for an hermitage. See note 140-13 in Chapter One.
033-20/ For the bark of the amur cork tree as a symbol of suffering, see the note to line 15 of the
1079 Ancient Verse Calling on Administrator Chao Duanzhi, Poem 042. This line alludes to Bo Juyis
contention that the sourness of the plum and the bitterness of the cork are sweet as honey in
comparison to the sorrow of being separated from his family. 110 See also the discussion below.

There is a subtle borrowing from Tao Yuanming in lines 033-17 and 18. In his
poem To Zhou, Zu, and Xie, Tao expresses his desire
to live next to his friends, saying, I long to be neighbors with you;
the pronoun you (there are several in Chinese) and the word for
next-door/neighbor are the first words in Hes lines. These lines are also
reminiscent of the first of Taos Miscellaneous Poems , where he mentions
assembling the next door neighbors when he gets some brew. 111 Finally, line
033-18 reminds us of Taos frequent yearnings for the ideal past, the ages of rulers
such as Yao and Shun.
The concluding rhymed couplet (033-1920) is an effective but abrupt closing.
Rejecting the idealistic vision of the future, it foresees nothing but suffering.
Perhaps this skepticism about realizing the Tao Yuanming ideal is a by-product of

108

Hou Han shu, 7:62.2057.

The six seals of office of Su Qin stand in contrast to the two acres of land he wanted to farm
by the wall of Loyang; see p. 39n.
110 , QTS, 2:26.35556. The title, Separated in Life, takes its meaning from the observation
that separation while the parties are alive entails more sadness than separation by death; death is
inevitable, but the living separation ought to be remediable.
111 See Davis, 1:54 and 129.
109

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175

the overall revision that ideal is undergoing at this time.

In the previous month of 1096, Fanghui wrote a poem whose conclusion seems
related to this revision, though there is no explicit allusion to Tao Yuanming. The
Song is one of the few that is not written to be sent or presented to someone; thus,
it has the appearance of being a private mediation occasioned by hearing the
sound of a horn blown from a garrison. That was a sound that, as Su Shi had
written in 1084, was sad and stirring at the same time, evoking the scene of an
expedition going forth from the northern fortified passes. 112 It is often heard with
the military drums and is heroic or as cold as autumn. 113 Fanghuis poem is
titled Going Out from the Jiang[xia] Citywall in the Evening and Hearing
the Horn. 114
032

12

The old moat is a morass ground,

lotus leaves dried out.
Hobbling about, an adjutant-stork
fishes as he moves.
Hills envelop the beams of the sun,
the waters-gate is closed;
on a lone tower they take up the horn
and blow The Khan.
A Turkic horse whinnies in the wind
the rapture so profound!
The old traces of grand ambitions
have been rolled away with the dust.
Autumn is done, and by the lake
geese come no more;
drifted here, this is the time I grieve
that I have gone so far away.
At the juncture with the tenth month
the five night-watches stretch long.
The River lies athwart, the Dipper is straight up,
the heavens are vast and cold.
Sumen and my old village
are below the handle:
how could my brothers not be there
unweary in their gazing?

A
A

A
B
B

B
C
C

112 See Sus , SSSJ, 4:23.1202. The Wuchang to which Su Shi

was crossing was, of course, unambiguously the one across the Yangzi from Huangzhou, not
Jiangxia.
113 For the heroic, or manly, sound (xiong ), see Su Shis (1077), SSSJ, 3:15.720,
line 12, and (1089), 5:31.1637, line 2. The coldness is in line 6 of (1095),
7:39.2142.
114 1.12507; 1.15b. Dated the equivalent of 18 October, 1096.

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CHAPTER TWO

16

20

Do you not see? Whittled rushes make the arrows,

the bow is strung mulberry.
When a male-child drops to earth,
his determination fills the four quarters.
My shoes have no roots
to hold them to the lanes of home;
Passing through Liang, going to Chu,
these are like my homeland.
Grackles do not cross the Ji.
The orange crosses the Huai and becomes a citrange.
If you compare my heart to such objects,
it isnt necessarily so:
Im an officer following my orders,
and its but a diversion for me.

C
C

C
D
D

Notes:
032-4/ Yin, translated take up may mean play, perhaps stretching out the notes. 115 The
Khan is some kind of tune played on wind instruments. It is mentioned in lyrics, usually, not in
poems.
032-10/ The River is the Milky Way.
032-13/ The Record of Rites states that when a noble son is born the archer shoots at heaven and earth
and in four directions with a bow of mulberry wood and six arrows of the wild rubus to symbolize
the fact that the ambition, or the will, of the child extends to the four quarters. 116
032-16/ Liang represents the Song Dynasty capital; Chu would be the South, perhaps the poets
present location in Jiangxia.
032-1718/ For the belief that the orange tree metamorphoses into an inferior kind of orange when
transplanted to the north, see our note to lines 108-1920 of In the Morning I Climbed Cypress
Hill(1089). In the Huainanzi, the orange lore is juxtaposed with the belief that the grackle dies if
it crosses the Ji River. 117
20/ Its but a diversion is used by several Northern Song Dynasty poets, but most especially by
Su Shi, who uses the phrase six times. 118

The first two sections of the Song skillfully blend the autumn scene, the feelings

115 For another rare example of this verb used with a horn, see Chao Yuezhi,
, QSS, 21.1211.13780.
116 Wild rubus is Legges translation; see Li Ji, 472. Rubus is actually a genus of brambles and
berries; peng is more likely to refer to a type of water grass straight enough to be used as an arrow, if
only symbolically. The meaning tumbleweed is surely irrelevant here
117 Huainanzi 1.4.2. Grackle is Legges rendition in his version of the Spring and Autumn Annals
(Zhao 25). A French translation of the Huainanzi makes it a pigeon. Est-ce que les orangers doux,
plants au nord du Fleuve, / Ne se transforment pas en citronniers acides? / La grive et le pigeon
ne peuvent pas dpasser la [rivire] Ji. Claude Larre et al, Les grand traits du Huainan zi, 52. Eva Kraft
does not attempt to translate the name of the bird: Also, geht ein Orangenbaum auf die Nordseite
des Stromes, dann wandelt er sich um sum Zitronenbaum [note: sie wde sauer, bliebe aber Orange].
/ Der Ch-y geht nicht ber den Chi-Fluss. Zum Huai-nan-tzu, 222. Citrange is as arbitrary
as grackle, and I doubt that this hybrid fruit of the early twentieth century is inferior to the
orange.
118 My translation is based on Ronald Egans rendering of line 13 of
, Word, Image, and Deed, 290; SSSJ, 5:28.1502.

SONGS

177

evoked by the music, and the poets yearning for home. There are no geese (traditional carriers of messages north and south), yet the Dipper gives him a signpost
by which to find the direction to his birthplace near Mount Sumen. Then, surprisingly, he chooses to reinterpret his situation. He was born a man, with a will
and determination that stretches in all directions. His shoes do not take root in
any one place, and he considers the great cities and regions of the empire to be his
homeland now.
After this, we have a strong closing with more surprises. Fanghui rejects the
traditional metaphors that would have him dying or changing for the worse when
away from his natural habitat. (Lines 032-17 and 18 can best be understood in light
of the sense of regional cultural differences that was as strong in the Song Dynasty
as in any other period.) He rises above his plight by declaring that his peripatetic
life is but a diversion. This, I think, is an attitude that was fostered by the revision of the Tao Yuanming image to impute to him a spontaneity that governed his
decision to serve as well as his decision to retreat from the world. Though we have
seen He Zhu questioning that notion, it serves him well in the present context.
A similar transcendence is seen in the twelfth month of Shaosheng 3 (109697).
An otherwise unknown figure named Wu Xiang, a native of the Changan area, has
come down to Jiangxia from Badong in the Yangzi Gorges and is asking He
Zhu for a poem. Wu has decided to retire to the Zhongnan Range south of
Changan; he has taken the name Old Man Today is Right . This name
comes from Tao Yuanmings repudiation of his decision to enter public life in his
rhapsody Return Home: Today is right; yesterday was wrong. What is significant
is that Fanghui, very much in line with Su Shis revision of the Tao Yuanming
model, questions the whole notion that yesterday was wrong.
Here are lines 034-19 and 20 of Seeing off Wu Xiang Going Back
to Reclusion at Zhongnan: 119 ? An official has
been exchanged for an Old Man Today is Right; / what bound you in the past, and
who has released you now? The answer to the rhetorical question, what bound
you is, nothing. Wu Xiang was not forced to be an official; the ties from which
he now has released himself really did not exist except insofar as they were self-imposed. The wit is worthy of an earlier Su Shi, undercutting a supposedly
sacrosanct cultural concept; but it assumes adoption of the new Tao Yuanming
modelserve when it feels right and withdraw when that feels right. It also ignores all the economic burdens that tied He Zhu to his position and any obligations that might have come from the Wu familys evident tradition of service in
the military side of the government. (Like He Zhu, Wu Xiang longed for a civil
position and had held only low posts; see lines 034-56.)

119

1.12508; 1.16b.

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CHAPTER TWO

HISTORY
The concern with history that we noted in the Jiangxia period in our chapter on
Ancient Verse is likewise evident in Fanghuis Songs. The concluding lines of this
Song to see Wu Xiang on his way pick up on an earlier reference to Wu Youxu
(651723), a recluse of the Tang Dynasty. Wu Youxu was no ordinary
recluse: the nephew of Empress Wu Zetian , he resolutely stayed in seclusion and was spared when all the other princes in the family were exterminated
after her fall. 120 Having thus saved the lineage from extinction, Wu Youxu set an
admirable precedent for reclusion:
034

36

Congratulatory missives came in streams,

for how many generations now?
G
Among the cloud of grandsons, Wu Xiang continues to
roam beyond society.
G
At a future time in unofficial histories
when they write of those who hid away,
He Zhu will grind his lead
and wait on tiptoe.
G

Note:
034-36/ Lead probably refers to something like massicot or ceruse, used to paint over incorrect
characters.

The last line probably means that Fanghui is eager to see an unofficial history
published so that he can read it, the correction of wrong characters being a normal
part of the reading process. In any case, it is significant that the history he looks
forward to so eagerly is an unofficial history. I suppose that to look forward to an
official history with an entry on Wu Xiang would be to hope for the end of the
dynasty, since such histories are written only after the fall of a dynasty closes the
books, so to speak; presumably not hoping for the disintegration of his nation,
the only history of his own time he can reasonably hope to read is an unofficial
history. Still, Fanghui is by implication calling for the recording of history now,
not in some future age. These are the years, we recall, in which He Zhu furiously
demanded historical judgment in his Ancient Verse.
Note that it is in the chapter on People Who Hid Away that Fanghui will look
for Wu Xiang, not a chapter on Lofty Scholars or Literary Figures. This term yimin
is often used for survivors of a fallen dynasty, but though we resist ascribing such
a cataclysmic vision to our poet, his choice of terms still indicates that these are
troubled and troubling times.
In a poem for a man he had seen off from Hailing to Ezhou three years previously and who now (in mid-1097) had resigned his office and was returning to
Hailing, Fanghui again concludes with history writing. The poem is

120

See the Xin Tang shu, 18:196.56023 and Jiu Tang shu, 14:183.474041.

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179

Seeing off Ezhou Penal Administrator

Wang Mao (Yuangong), Who is Quitting his Post and Returning to Hailing; Sent Also as a
Letter to Master He in Jinling. 121 This is the concluding rhyme section:
035

Fare thee well, then; Ill do without

D
the clerk who shared my conversation.
I
shall
see
in
the
spring
breeze

D
flowers filling the county seat.
Obscure or prominent, in future years

dont leave me out;

16 do a continuation for us of the eighteen biographies
of those in the White Lotus Society.
D

Notes:
035-13/ Wang Maos position, yuan, can be translated administrator or clerk; in either case, it is a
low-ranking post, so I have used clerk here. Tong yu generally means talk with, and sometimes
it is used in the longer phrase sharing conversation and silences, showing the closeness of two
individuals.
035-14/ The phrase flowers fill the county seat signals an allusion to Pan Yues planting many
blossoming trees when he was magistrate of Heyang in the late third century. The allusion is
commonly used in poetry to express praise for a local administrator or for the beauty of a place. I
assume Fanghui means to compliment Wang Maos record in Ezhou while simultaneously implying
that next year he will be viewing the blossoms without Wang.

Wang Mao is apparently younger than He Zhu (line 035-9, not translated, tells us
this). Thus, he has plenty of time to write a continuation of a book we know as
Biographies of the Lofty Gentlemen of the Lotus Society . This book covers
the eighteen men who joined with Huiyuan in 402 to form the Buddhist White
Lotus Society. 122 Fanghui means to assure his Buddhist friend(s) in Jinling that he
still intends to join their Society there. (Cf. the 1089 Song On Horseback in
Donghua [Poem 011], p. 146.) At the same time, this conclusion reiterates He
Zhus faith in unofficial histories as successful transmitters of traditions that lie
outside the realm of official history.

A GIFT ENHANCED BY RHYME (II)

In comparison with his contemporaries, poems associated with gifts are rare in
He Zhus collection. The reader may recall the poem to Yang Shi (pp. 157ff) as
one example. That 1090/1091 Boliang poem involved only the poets gift of ink
to the other party; the following 1997 Song of the Jade Hook-and-Ring
describes the both the gift received and the five objects Fanghui gives in return. 123

121
122

1.12508; 1.17a.
The Song shi bibliography, 15:205.5188, lists a in one juan. No author is

given.
123

1.12508; 1.17b.

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CHAPTER TWO

The gift received (from a member of the royal clan) is a belt hook and a ring into
which the hook is inserted; this is less commonly seen than the simple belt hook
and may be considered a luxury item. 124 The poem must first show a proper
appreciation of the origins and artistic quality of the article:
036

12

16

A fine artisan got some nephrite

from a cave at Indigo Creek.
He read the block and endowed it with shape:
the craftsman of the mind showed himself.
The praying mantis, stubborn and proud,
seems to have a backbone;
Around his neck is fastened the ring
and still he wont submit!
The old crazy one of Mirror Lake
is tired of court robes and tabul.
His plain white housecoat tied with pale pink sash
needs this thing.
Its value is like unto to a string of walled towns;
its not something you could ask for.
The Prince has given up what he is fond of,
hard to do for most.
With what shall I requite him?
a bright moon tray;
A censer with waves on its face
and mountain poking high.
From my homeland a fine aruwe
with great fowl plume;
Min potterya rabbit bowl,
frosty hair cold
It matches the chief tribute item:
a paired-dragon brick.
Ill just send these off to your studio
to augment the surplus you have.
This short song will roughly serve
to appraise your precious largess.
Right now Im dressing in rustic weeds,
devoted to wandering and doing as I please.
I lumber along with gaunt face,
dragging my goosefoot staff.
In the gathering dusk I hum my poems softly
on the Yangzi and Han.
That fisher gentleman
comes to visit me in error,

A
A
A
A
A
A
A
B
B
B
B
B
B
C
C
C
C
C
C

124

For a picture of a Yuan Dynasty hook-and-ring, see Zhang Guangwen et al., Jadeware II, 145.

SONGS

20

Thinking I have the looks of

the Lord of the Three Wards.

181
C

Notes:
036-1/ Indigo Creek is probably a creek that flows near Indigo Fields (Lantian), a locale famous for
its jade. Although a Ming writer once asserted that Lantians jade production was a myth, a recent
researcher has established that the greenish serpentine marble from there can be considered a kind
of jade. 125
036-34/ The mantis literally seems to have bone; the phrase denotes a certain sturdiness of spirit,
hence the translation have a backbone. A mantis stands with the front part of its body raised; on
this carving it must be disposed in such a way as to form a hook, over which the ring part of the
assembly fits.
036-5/ The tabula is a narrow flat object that officials would hold in front of them while attending
an audience; notes could be taken on it (or on paper supported by it).
036-9/ The five gifts are enumerated in the headnote to the poem. This bright moon tray is the
jade saucer that heads the list.
036-10/ The Boshan incense burner, made of metal or pottery, has a peforated top in the shape of
a massif rising above the waves, suggestive of an isle of the Undying in the Eastern Sea.
036-11/ This line refers to an arrow made by the Cheng family, according to the headnote. The
poem uses an alternate and less common term for arrow; I follow suit with aruwe.
036-12/ The fourth object was a cup from the Jian kiln (in Fujian, Min). The cup is decorated
with hares hair streaks, fine lines of lighter colored glaze that run down from the rim; although
the line seems to indicate that the streaks are a frosty white, they are typically ochre on extant Jian
ware; perhaps frosty hair refers to the texture that characterizes a winter coat of rabbit hair rather
than to the color. 126
036-13/ Into the cup, the recipient may pour tea brewed from a round tea brick that has a pair of
dragons embossed on it.
036-17/ Goosefoot, the standard translation for this plant, may puzzle those who know the genus
(Chenopodium) as made up of herbs or bushes that spread near the ground or grow less than a meter
tall. However, the staff-goosefoot is Chenopodium giganteum. One of the larger species in the genus, it
grows to 3 m. See http://flora.huh.harvard.edu/china/ (accessed 29 April 2004). The stems, when
dried, are both light and strong. Poets who refer to the goosefoot staff most include Du Fu (20), Su
Shi (8), He Zhu (8), Zhang Lei (10), and Wang Anshi (12).
036-18/ Jiangxia is at the confluence of the Han and Yangzi Rivers.
036-20/ The Lord of the Three Wards is what the fisherman calls Qu Yuan. (We referred to this
encounter in a comment on line 23 of Poem 063, Last Night of the Year Lament.)

This song is impressive for the relentless rhymes, especially in the middle section,
where the catalog of gifts must be made to fit the pattern. This quick rhythm
creates the short song that is the sixth present Fanghui gives. Taking this Song
and the Song that went with the present of ink to Yang Shi together, we can
conclude that Fanghui found a poem with an audacious rhyme scheme the best
enhancement to a gift.

125

Zhou Nanquan, Zhongguo gu yuliao dingyi he chandi kao, 67.

For pictures of typical Jian ware bowls and a technical description of the glaze, see Feng
Xiaoqi et al., Porcelain of the Song Dynasty II, 22124. 1112 cm in diameter at the rim, these were
probably tea bowls, and if I understand line 12 correctly Fanghuis gift was for drinking tea. Note,
however, that the word Fanghui uses in the headnote typically refers to wine cups.
126

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CHAPTER TWO

The entertaining nature of the form, however, cannot distract us for long from
wondering how Fanghui can afford the luxury items he presents in return for the
hook-and-ring. According to his epitaph, when Fanghui entered the civil bureaucracy in 1091, it was at the next-to-lowest rank of 9a; in 1101, however, when
he was vice-prefect of Sizhou, he was only a little higher, at a rank of 8b. 127 There
are known salaries that pertain to these ranks, to which we would have to add
whatever salary, lands, and supplemental benefits pertained to his functional
offices in order to arrive at a reasonably accurate estimate of his income during
this period, not counting whatever private income he had from houses or land that
he owned. Rather than trying to tabulate his income and then determine how
adequate it was in the capital and in the provinces, or how much of it he would
have to spend in order to buy the five gifts enumerated in this poem, I prefer to
focus on the fact that, if Fanghuis rank in 1091 was only one step lower than it
would be when he held the important office of vice-prefect in 1101, he must have
been able to live more comfortably during the 90s than he lets on. Compared to
higher officials and powerful merchants, of course, he must have seemed quite
impoverished. The fact remains, however, that he received and gave luxury items
as presents. This poem is the proof.
In this connection, the last couplet is intriguing. Normally, Fanghui identifies
with Qu Yuan as a forlorn poet standing by the marshes, intoning his poems in an
uncaring world. Here, he avers that the fisherman is wrong to confuse him with
Qu Yuan, despite the relevance. He is an insider, not an outcast!
One small caveat: Song literati often prided themselves on buying books or
luxury items that were beyond their means. This showed their superiority to the
common run of men who thought only of investment and profit. Mei Yaochen:
At home there isnt half a cup of grain / And here Im buying a vase for a
hundred cash! 128 To be sure, Fanghuis poem conceals whatever imbalance there
might be between his standard of living and his devotion to the finer things in life,
but we must keep in mind that he might have lived frugally in order to buy what
he needed to show his status as a connoisseur of the finer things in lifeincluding,
let us note, the finer things that his distant relatives within the imperial clan could
afford.

EAST SLOPE
The last surviving Song by He Zhu was written in 1098 for a studio that Pan Dalin
and his brother built at Dongpo, Su Shis East Slope. The name of the studio

127
128

His respective ranks were chengshilang (9a) and xuanyilang (8b).

Jonathan Chaves translation, Mei Yao-chen, 200.

SONGS

183

comes from the Fayan by Yang Xiong, specifically a passage in the first
chapter in which Yang says that people who look up to and model themselves
after Yan Hui are also Yans sort. 129 Yan Hui is the disciple of Confucius who is
most noted for his contentment in poverty. This phrase was quoted often enough
that the Pan brothers could name their studio Also Yan in the confidence that
others would understand the reference. The Song, written at the request of the
Pan family, is Inscribed on the Pan Family Also Yan Studio
at East Slope in Huanggang. 130
One wonders whether it was displayed at the Studio without punctuation,
because the extreme variation in line length makes it difficult to read in an unpunctuated text. In partial compensation, however, the first rhyme group is very
regular and establishes a pattern of rhyme, rhyme, no-rhyme, rhyme that persists throughout the other rhyme groups. Additionally, as can be observed in
historical gardens or buildings today, figuring out how to parse the inscriptions
that grace the site is one of the chief pleasures for the Chinese visitor; the more
challenging the inscription, the greater the gratification in solving the puzzle.
038

There are fields at East Slope;

who is taking care of them?
With burnt sienna face and grey hair:
the Pan family sons!
They tied thatch on and inscribed a tablet:
Also Yan Studio;
at intervals in the farming work, they hold a book
and just enjoy themselves.

Pan, Oh Pan! Truly you are

in a class with Yan Hui.

A
A

A
B

What do you talk about all day?

Its hard to truly be like that fool.

B
In
this
world,
friends
in
the
four
classes

of Father Kong exist no more;

yet you manage to do

the bamboo tray eating, the gourd drinking, B

the humble lane and encircling walls.

129 Here is von Zachs translation of the relevant passage: Das Studium is der Weg, um ein
Edler zu werden. Dies erfolglos anzustreben, kommt vor: dagegen kommt es nicht vor, dass jemand
nicht danach strebt, und doch ein Edler wird. Ein Pferd, das einem Renner nachstrebt, ist auch schon
ein dem Renner hnliches Pferd; ein Mensch, der Yen Hui bewundert und ihm nachstrebt, gehrt
auch schon sur Klasse der Yen Hui. . . . Wenn Du einem Anderen nicht nachstreben willst, so habe
ich nichts mehr zu sagen. Wenn Du aber einem Anderen nachstreben willst, wer hindert Dich
daran? Yang Hsiungs Fa-yen, 4.
130 1.12509; 1.19a. Huanggang is Huangzhou. Presumably, Fanghui gave this poem to the Pan
brothers before they left the Jiangxia area.

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CHAPTER TWO

12

The harvest from an hundred mou,

well, you can count the grains.
South of the sky, biding his time,
the master of East Slope.
On top of which you lose one tenth
to fill out the government granary;
how many scoops remain
to take care of the sparrows and rats?

But you must not alter your joy,

16

for it pleases your old father.

Labor
in
the
fields: water or drought

are taken care of by the Lord of Heaven.

This vastly surpasses Adjutant Ruan,
heart and deeds at odds, who,
north south east west,

wept that the road gave out.

C
C

C
C
C

Notes:
038-4/ Intervals in husbandry is a phrase used in the Zuo Tradition (Yin 5) and other early texts,
but it is rare in poetry.
038-6/ Yan Hui is said to be like a fool in the Analects. This line should be understood as meaning
it is hard to achieve the genuineness that is fool-like.
038-7/ The four categories are virtuous conduct; speech; administration, and cultural learning. Two
disciples under each category were listed in a supplement, juan 9, to the collected works of Tao
Yuanming. (This list does not include Yan Hui, although he and Zigong, Zilu, and Zizhang are
designated, elsewhere in the same juan, as the Four Friends of Confucius. This may be what Fanghui
was thinking of.) Juan 9 was most likely in the collection that Fanghui collated. 131
038-8/ These familiar marks of Yan Huis humble life are listed in the Analects. The phrase translated
encircling walls should be taken as the equivalent of , common shorthand for the small
abode of a poor scholar.
038-10/ This line must refer to Su Shi, who is in Hainan, so far south it is south of the sky. The
phrase translated biding his time can probably be understood in light of its use in the Kongzi jiayu,
where Confucius says, In conducting himself, the gentleman places his expectation in inevitable
success. Within himself, when he can bend, he bends; when he can stretch, he stretches. Thus,
bending in accordance with integrity is how to bide ones time. Seeking to stretch is how to seize the
moment. Thus, though bending is imposed on one, he is not destroyed; though his ambition is
successful, he does not violate the common good. 132
038-13/ Yan Hui did not alter his joy despite his poverty. This comes from the same Analects
passage as line 8. Su Zhe alluded to this cluster of motifs in a letter to Huang Tingjian. 133

131 This supplement to Tao Yuanmings works was in existence as early as the sixth century.
Yang Xiuzhi (50982), a Northern Qi person who edited Taos collection, notes its absence from
the collection edited by Xiao Tong (50131). Song Xiang, a Northern Song editor, also singles out
this material for mention, saying that he suspects some items might have been added by someone
other than Tao. (Xiaofei Tian Owen, email communication, 10 March 2004.)
132 Juan 8, section 37.

I use the 1915 edition of the Kambun taikei ed., Vol. 20.
133 , Su Zhe ji 2:22.39192. The letter, the first direct communication from Su Zhe
to Huang, was probably written after the third month of 1084 (it alludes to Huangs resolution to

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185

038-15/ It was Xie Lingyun who said his heart and deeds were never in synch, that, in Frodshams
translation, Inever did what I really wanted to do. 134
038-16/ A well-known anecdote about Ruan Ji, in Holzmans translation: From time to time, as
his fantasy led him, he would ride out alone, not following the by-paths. When the car tracks gave
out, he would cry passionately and without restraint and then return. 135

This Song does not attempt to undercut the concept behind the studio of the Pan
family. It praises their success in modeling themselves after Yan Hui. Of course,
the Yan Hui model can be summed up in one line if you make it long enough, and
that is precisely what Fanghui does in line 038-8: eating from a simple bamboo tray,
drinking from a rustic gourd, and living happily in a small house surrounded by
walls in a humble lane. The creativity in this Song is to be found in what the poet
does with the other fifteen lines.
The opening segment asks who is taking care of East Slope (now that Su Shi is
gone). The answer is, of course, Pan Dalin and Pan Daguan , humorously
depicted has having the sunburnt faces and grey hair of aged farmers. We may
safely take this as an exaggeration. (Pan Dalin died before he was fifty and was
probably about the same age as He Zhu, who was forty-seven sui at this time.) 136
In any case, they are not peasants but gentlemen farmers who have the leisure and
education to enjoy reading in their Also Yan Studio (line 038-4).
The second segment affirms the Pan brothers in their pursuit of the Yan Hui
ideal. Whether he means to or not, Fanghui reveals that this is somewhat of an
intellectual exercise: they spend the whole day debating the difficulty of being
authentically innocent (foolish) human beings. However, that is perfectly understandable, given that no one who embodies the different categories of Confucian virtues exists in the present generation (line 038-7).
The third segment acknowledges that farming is usually not economically viable.
The few (countable) grains that are harvested are consumed by taxes and rodents. South of the sky, biding his time, the master of East Slope is an odd
intrusion in this segment. Does it imply that the crops will be better if Su Shi
returns to East Slope? It might be possible to parse line 038-10 as a rearrangement
of something like [The farm] is waiting for Su Shi, who is south of the sky. Still,
the line strikes me as an eruption into the poem of hidden anxieties about Su Shis
fate on Hainan Island; the need for a rhyme raised the option of zhu, master, which
in the context naturally suggested master of East Slope, a title pretty much

give up meat and wine in that year) and before Su Zhes arrival in the capital in 1086, when the two
would have surely met in person. Zhang Bingquan, however, dates the letter to which Su Zhe must
be responding to 108183. See Huang Tingjian di jiaoyou ji zuopin, 4344. The letter, , is
found in Huang Tingjian quanji, 2:45960.
134 Murmuring Stream 1:134; Wen Xuan, 26.
135 Poetry and Politics, 223. Holzmans view that this story has significance beyond the traditional
interpretation that it represents Ruans regret that he could not travel far on the road to political
success has much to recommend it.
136 See the material in Xue Ruisheng, Dongpo ci biannian jianzhu, 4056.

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CHAPTER TWO

owned by Su Shi, which then led to an acknowledgement of the presence of

the absent one-time tiller of that piece of land.
The concluding section returns from the reality of poverty to the virtues of the
man who never allowed poverty to alter his conduct, Yan Hui. Fanghui notes the
strength that such a model gives us. If we do not anguish over those things that
only Heaven can control, we will not be perpetually distressed as Ruan Ji was. The
enjambed final two lines triumphantly define the superiority of the Yan Hui by
contrasting him to the despairing Ruan Ji.
It should be noted in passing that there is one echo of a 1094 poem by Su Shi
in this Song. The poem was sent to a man who may have left Hailing and gone
south across the Yangzi about the same time as He Zhu made a similar journey.
In it, Su says, Look at the old man from East
Slope, south of the sky; in his whole life, could he have given up reading? 137 Two lines
earlier, Su mentions taking ones copy of the classics into the fields to read while
hoeing. Both the language (this is the only poem before 1101 in which Su uses
south of the sky, though the phrase has ample precedents in the Tang) and the
combination of reading and farming (see line 038-4) have analogs in He Zhus
Song. I am not arguing that Fanghui alludes to the poem, simply that there is a
possibility that it might have been in the back of his mind as he wrote the inscription for the studio at East Slope.

INNOVATIONS IN SONGS: A BRIEF REVIEW

At the beginning of this chapter, we noted that Fanghui began writing Songs later
than poems in other forms and that he wrote fewer of them. We attributed this to
the difficulties of the genre. This chapter has shown, I hope, that when Fanghui
did use the Song form, he was equal to its challenges. Perhaps it was these same
challenges that stimulated him to make what I provisionally propose to be innovations. These would include the use of what I postulate to be unofficial diction
and plot elements from popular storytelling in place of the usual allusions to
canonical sources when singing of a well-known historical figure (005; 1084); the
construction of a suite of poems whose titles appear to indicate that each poem
has a distinct formal role in the suite (the yin, ci, and xing on the birds in Liyang, 008,
009, 010; 1088); filling out a prior poem by taking that poem simply as a point

137 , SSSJ, 8:47.255758. Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1174, dates this poem
to the ninth month of 1094. In it, Su refers to the man specified in the title, Jia Shou , as the
kulapati of Hailing, which suggest to me that Jia had lived in Hailing. Fanghui was in Runzhou in
the ninth month of 1094 (Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 51). That places him on the
route to the Lake Tai area where Jia Shou is known to have settled, though there is no documentation suggesting that the two knew each other.

SONGS

187

of departure (012; 1090); and the use of interlocking rhymes, tentatively marked in
line 001-3 but unmistakable sixteen years later in lines 030-918 of Seeing Off Zhang
Bangjie (1096).
It may be that Fanghui was not the first to do these things and that more research will show other examples, both earlier and later, by which his innovativeness and influence can be measured. (We already know he was not the first to fill
out a poem, but we dont have enough data yet to say just what that practice
involved in the eleventh century, as noted above. With this problem and the
question of suites of poems, we have to be alert for alternative terminology, also.)
More research may or may not also shed light on whether it is purely coincidental
that Fanghuis pentasyllabic opening lines increase in number from one to two to
four between 1080 and 1096, as observed earlier in this chapter. (It is also only
between 1090 and 1097 that Fanghui uses uniform line length and/or one rhyme
throughout a poem, especially in 1090 and 1091. Is that coincidental?)
Where the Songs break new ground is in their complex treatment of Tao
Yuanming in 1096. Tao is both a model to be followed and something of a
hypocrite whom a modern recluse can outdo (030); on the other hand, his life is
a tantalizing ideal that cannot be attained by the poet himself (033-1520). This
latter view is closest to Fanghuis practical criticism of Su Shis new image of Tao
as the epitome of spontaneity that we saw in the Ancient Verse Inscribed at the End
of Tao Yuanmings Collected Works, written three months earlier (142). At the end of
the year, though, Fanghui rejects Tao Yuanmings own assertion that yesterday
I was wrong; today Im right as being inconsistent with a notion of spontaneity
(034-1220). This is a witty use of Su Shis idea together with Sus older technique
of undercutting someones inspiration for a studio name.
Songs also add subtle humor to the irony we detected in Ancient Verses in or
around 1080: see lines 001-58 and, ten years later, 014-58. Perhaps we can
conclude that this genre that confronts the poet with so many formal decisions
also opens up the flexibility to treat themes in new ways and with modified modes
of expression.

CHAPTER THREE

THE PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE OF HE ZHU, 107698

The world of pentametrical Regulated Verse (wuyan lshi or wul ) is one
in which the focus is on language. The poet explores and exploits tensions of
sameness and difference between the words he places in corresponding positions
within parallel couplets (usually, the two middle couplets of an eight-line poem).
Sameness and difference include sound as well as meaning. The canonical tone
patterns for the four types of lines are defined, it will be recalled, by level and
deflected tones in the second and final syllables. Fanghuis seventy-two dated
pentametrical Regulated Verses always follow the ABCD sequence of line types.
This does not condemn the poems to sameness, for there are four different ways
of starting the sequence. Since the choice will determine the metrical limits for
what one wants to say in each line in the rest of the poem, the four ways of starting
a poem are not equally favored, nor do all poets share the same predilections.
Within the overall framework of line types, the poet can create some tension by
slightly violating the meter of an individual line. In certain places in pentametrical
Regulated Verse this is actually the norm. Violations open up another choice for
the poet: to compensate or not with another violation in the same or an adjacent
line.
Perhaps for these reasons, Fanghuis pentametrical Regulated Verse is much
more likely to be written in apparent solitude, either in contemplation of a scene
or while stopping on a journey. Heptametrical Regulated Verse is always the first
choice for a quick response to a social occasion that calls for poetry; it requires less
exactitude and refinement. Pentametrical Regulated Verse is comparable quantitatively to pentametrical Ancient Verse for use in farewells and correspondence.

POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE XUZHOU

The earliest pentametrical Regulated Verse Fanghui chose to preserve is the kind
of quiet, apparently solitary meditation characteristic of this form in his hands. It
describes an evening scene in the fifth month of Xining 9 (1076) in or near
Lincheng . Although he entered the bureaucracy in 1071 at the age of twenty
sui, Fanghuis posting to Lincheng in 1075 is the first known assignment for our
poet. His job was the collection of brew taxes, but he appears to have been an

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

189

acting magistrate for a time. 1 The single poem in this genre from that period is
Evening Prospect in the Aftermath of Rain. 2
160

Answering one another, baby pigeons call.

D1
Among the mulberries, sunlight comes back level.
B1
Bright fordage: a small raft crosses;
(C4)
high slope: a single ox plows.
D1
Grove and thicket: the homeward heart is hale;
A2
dust and dirt: these sickly bones grow light.
B1
The poet Qus spirit is still present:
C1
it is not allowed that only you are pure.
D2

Notes:
160-7/ Qu sao could refer to Qu Yuans Li Sao, Encountering Sorrow, but I have chosen to see sao
as short for sao ren, or poet [with the connotations associated with Qu Yuans lonely stance against
his times]. The expression Qu sao is virtually unknown in other writers. In a Song from the year
1091, Fanghui repeats it, saying he pursues Qu sao. 3

The scenic description in the first four lines is placid in the extreme, a classic
example of a scene (jing) waiting to be completed by feeling (qing). The poet
skillfully takes us from the sound of the birds to the horizontal rays of the setting
sun, establishing the rural setting and time of day. Then he moves from the
low-lying ford to the high, sloping field; most effectively, the raft and the ox each
present a tiny point of activity in the midst of vastnessand, implicitly, a daily
routine by which one might mark the flow of time.
The middle couplets are of great interest in a Regulated Verse. It is there that
the poet is expected to use semantic parallelism but to do so in a way that surprises
us somewhat. Semantic parallelism is based on the correlation of the corre-

1 Lincheng is about 130 km north of Fuyang, about halfway between modern Shijiazhuang and
Handan on the western edge of the plains of Hebei Province. Both were in Hebei West Circuit. On
He Zhus status, see Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 47.
2 5.12544; 5.1a.
3 See Poem 017, Left in Farewell to Monk Na, referenced in connection with poverty and poetry in
Chapter One, pp. 11314n. Monk Na was Shouna (10471122); see headnote to the 1090
poem , Answering Monk Na, Poem 494, 10.12595; Shiyi.2a.

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sponding parts of two lines in a couplet: nouns should match nouns, verbs, verbs,
and so on, but the corresponding words should belong to the same semantic class,
also. In the second couplet of this poem, for example, fordage and slope are
not only nouns but nouns that name topographical features.
The pleasure of parallelism comes when one has to find the rationale behind a
less obvious correlation. Every other pair of words in the second couplet besides
fordage and slope is brought into a correlation that would never be expected
if one simply listed them at random and assigned them properties (animate, name
of color, number, etc.). Bright and high relate to different categories of
measurement, yet they correlate here as features that help define the vastness of
the scene. Rafts and oxen are not intrinsically in the same category, but in the
context of this couplet, the crossing raft and plowing ox share a visual similarity
as small dots of movement in the landscape. Similarly, small should correlate
with words denoting size and one should go with other numbers, but if they are
matched with each other here it is because they both work to sharpen the quality
of isolation or singularity that the ox and raft have in common.
It must have been important to the poet to emphasize that isolation, because it
came at the cost of the single tonal violation in the poem: the word small, in line
160-3. It is not a major violation, but it calls our attention to something the poet
could not say any other way. The level-tone gu lone, is sometimes correlated with
one, and it would have allowed He Zhu to avoid the violation; however, in this
context a lone raft and single ox would have been too much a restatement of
the same idea. Small gets the same quality without the redundancy.
The third couplet offers echoes of famous precedents. In Grove and thicket:
the homeward heart is hale; / dust and dirt: these sickly bones grow light, I
cannot help but hear echoes of Du Fu, especially of his famous couplet
Setting sun: my heart is still fit; / autumn wind: my illness
about cured, 4 and even the famous: His body light: a single bird passing, which
four years later Fanghui would draw on for his Ancient Verse couplet The many
insects, with evening, hum and stir; / one bird, thoughts-of-return light (057-56).
The key words and concepts are splintered and redistributed in the present couplet, so they may seem to fall short of allusion. Nevertheless, when he says in line
160-5 that his homeward heart is hale, Fanghui reminds us of more typical
recastings of Du Fus heart is still fit language. These would include these lines
by Wang Yucheng (9541001): My robust heart is still
here! and My lords kindness is not repaid, but my heart is
still robust; and this 1056 line by Wang Anshi: I want to
transmit the Way and the righteous, and my heart is still in it. 5 It is crucial to note

Du Fus couplet is from his , Du shi xiangzhu, 5:23.2029; translation in Owens Anthology,

439.
5

For Wang Yucheng: QSS, 2:64.725, and 66.747, . For Wang Anshi:

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

191

that all these lines are a protestation of continued vigor that argues against retirement. Fanghui cleverly adapts this language to voice the opposite sentiment: as
he calls to mind the groves and bushes of homeor is reminded of home by the
groves and bushes he sees this eveningit is his desire to retire from public life
that is strengthened.
In line 160-6, dust and dirt: these sickly bones grow light, the obvious
meaning is that the poet feels frail because he is ill and trapped in the dusty world
of officialdom. Before He Zhus time, however, bones growing light were a sign
of transcendence, not illness. 6 Thus, Ouyang Xiu writes to a Daoist in 1068,
With green hair, square pupils, and skinny
bones light, / airily you mount a crane and go off to play the mouth-organ. 7 The
normal connotation of light bones has been reversed by He Zhu, just as that of
hale heart was inverted in the previous line.
This sly teasing of our expectations veers into opacity in the closing couplet,
and it must be admitted that Fanghuis closing couplets are often difficult in this
genre. When the speaker says it is not allowed that only you are pure, many
readers will think of Qu Yuan, who declared to the (unimpressed) fisherman that
he alone was pure in a turbid world, sober in a drunken milieu. Perhaps when Fanghui
warns that Qus purity has never been allowed, there is a topical allusion, the key
to which is lost to us. Had the young He Zhu been firmly advised to go along to
get along in his Lincheng post?
The second pentametrical Regulated Verse Fanghui preserved was written in
Yuanfeng 1 (1078) at Fuyang. It is called Accusing Myself. 8 In this poem,
semantic parallelism of greater or lesser degrees of exactitude runs through every
one of the couplets, and the poet appears to use more tonal violations to offset
this. Du Shenyan (645?708) gives us an early Tang example of four
semantically parallel couplets in an eight-line poem; its tone pattern is similarly
regulated overall with violations in the third lines of each half: A1 B1 (C6) (D3)
A1 B1 (C4) D2. The poems of Du Shenyan and He Zhu are unrelated in content,
but the precedent does show that parallelism all the way through was permitted in
a very courtly poem. 9 Here is Fanghuis poem, written in the sixth month:

Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 22.264, ; dated in Cai Shangxiang, Wang Jinggong nianpu kaolue,
83.
6 I understand Du Fus couplet , despite the reference to illness, as
also referring to the lightness of the body as a transcendent state: Unto my eyes appear no vulgar
things; / [even] with many illnesses, yet my body grows light. The commentators interpret the
poem as showing Du Fus ability to follow his own nature, and nothing in the poem suggests that
it ends on a note of complaint. The poem is the first of two , Du shi xiangzhu, 2:10.797.
7 QSS, 6:295.3718, (1068). Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:Jushiji.14.105.
8 5.12544; 5.1a. I follow the variant noted in the Quan Song shi for the first line.
9 , QTS, 3:62.736.

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161

At dawn I obey the sounding bell and go out;

A2
at dusk I follow the yamen drum and return.
(B6)
Dawn after dawn and then dusk after dusk;
(C4)
declaring right right and wrong wrong.
D2
My deeds are entrusted to a road that rises and sinks;
A1
my words are cast to the trigger of good and bad fortune.
B1
What ending is there to the affairs of a lifetime,
(C6)
which needlessly make my mind go awry?
D1

Notes:
161-4/ To affirm the right and reject the wrong is usually interpreted as showing clarity of judgment,
but in this context I think Fanghui may be referring to disputes of some kind with which he is forced
to deal. To the extent that these disputes have no absolute standards by which they may be settled,
line 4 reminds us of these lines by Ouyang Xiu (written in 1032), To praise what is right verges on
obsequiousness, while to find fault with what is wrong verges on censoriousness. If one must err on
either side it is better to be censorious than obsequious.10
161-5/ To entrust ones deeds (literally, footprints) to a realm of activity is to commit oneself to
that realm of activity. 11
161-6/ Note that words are the medium by which one declares right is right and wrong is
wrong (line 4); giving voice to judgments exposes one to unseen mechanisms of fortuneor
voicing judgments is itself the spring from which good and bad fortune arise. 12

Let us say a little more about the tonal violations that, as we suggested, compensate for the degree to which semantic parallelism runs all through the poem.
The manuals of meter will tell us that that these violations are quite standard. In
line 161-2, for example, the level tone in the third position offsets the deflected
tone in the first syllable. 13 I would submit that this is not just a random failure

10 Ronald Egans translation, from Ouyangs Faultfinding Studio. See The Literary Works of
Ouyang Xiu, 204. Original text in Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji.13.453. Su Shi repeated Ouyangs
language in a later poem, , SSSJ, 7:45:2452 (1101).
11 A Tang example: Quan Deyu (761818) writes, My
heart is led along by the worldly teachings; / my deeds are entrusted to the field of brush and ink.
, QTS, 10.320.3610.
12 The biography of Wang Chang in the Sanguo zhi, 27.745, as taken into the Zizhi tongjian
by Sima Guang and translated by Achilles Fang, uses the same terms to state, Now praise and
blame are the sources of like and dislike, the springs of calamity and fortune. (Fang, 508; emphasis mine.)
13 See Wang Li, Hanyu shil xue, 9699. This is a B-type line, the only one of the four types in
which the first syllable is allowed only one value, the level tone.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

193

to come up with a B1 line where needed, however. First of all, that first syllable,
dusk, is critical for its semantic contrast with dawn in line 161-1; the tonal
contrast could be said to underscore the opposition in meaning. More importantly,
I think, the limping or broken rhythm of tones in line 161-2 is an analog to the
weariness the speaker feels as he returns to the city after another day of drudgery.
A euphonious B1 line that responded cheerfully to the A line before it would
destroy the whole point of the couplet.
 As for the violation in the penultimate line, since a disruption and resumption
of regularity at the end of a series is a basic device for closure, the formal structure
of the poem remains satisfying. Wang Li, a pioneer in modern linguistic research
on traditional Chinese poetry, did a survey of the fifty pentametrical Regulated
Verses in the Three Hundred Tang Poems and found that twenty-four of the poems
had what in our terms would be a (C 6) structure in line 7 and one poem had a (C
5)this amounts to half the corpus. 14 This indicates that Fanghuis metrical
violation is actually one standard option for closure. Let us observe that, as in
Accusing Myself, five of the final couplets with (C 6) lines that Wang lists also are
part of a rhetorical question in the final couplet. (None of the concluding couplets
with regulated C 1 lines in his survey includes a rhetorical question.) Since rhetorical questions often are meant to express frustration or exasperation, the semantic content provides further justification for formal breakdown in this
position.
 The entire first half of Accusing Myself expresses the feeling of cyclical and
meaningless time we have noted in other poems of He Zhus early career. Line
161-3s fu, and then, again, shows up three months later, in the Ancient Verse
The Former City of Ye: White dew and then green
overgrowth; / inexhaustible, the seasons change (039-1920); and again in the
conclusion of a Xuzhou Regulated Verse of 1083:
To my homeland Ive betrayed my pact to return; / dust and dirt, year after year. 15
Fu is used to indicate one kind of repetition or another about twenty-five times in
He Zhus poems and at least once every year in 108290, so it is not a rare word. 16
However, from its first use in 161-3 through early 1084 (see line 246-1 in the next
chapter), fu is almost always associated with cycles of time. Sometimes units of
time are named: Dawn after dawn and then dusk after dusk; or a ji year has reverted
to a geng, (057-10, 1080; this poem also presents the pattern of time running away
from the poet, as discussed in the first chapter). At other times, these cycles are
realized in changes that happen in time, as in White dew and then green overgrowth. From 1085 until its last use by He Zhu in 1096, on the other hand, fu is
more likely to relate to movement back and forth in space, usually east and west.

14 Hanyu shilxue, 82325. The fully regulated C 1 line we saw in this position in the previous
poem shows up in only twenty percent of the corpus he studied.
15 Poem 165, Springtime Jottings, 5.12545; 5.2a.
16 It occurs most in pentametrical poems, especially Ancient Verse, and usually in unregulated
linesnote that neither line in the 1083 regulated couplet just cited is regulated. In Regulated Verse,
these violations probably reflect the distress inherent in the content of the lines; in Ancient Verse
the rhythm may have a similar effect, but violations as such are not an issue.

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 The last couplet of a regulated octave is not supposed to be parallel semantically,

but He Zhus conclusion flirts with parallelism in lines 161-78, though it is not
apparent in our translation: What ending is there to the affairs of a lifetime, /
which needlessly make my mind go awry? In the original, both lines begin with
empty words (function words or modals: what and needlessly) and end
with number-noun combinations (hundred years and one heart). The numbers are not to be taken literally in either line. Hundred years is a common
kenning for the span of a human life. One heart is a bit more complicated. It
could mean a settled, unified mind: a unified mind eludes me. 17 Or one
could mean whole, implying that the speaker feels alienated from his entire inner
being. 18 The use of enjambment in this couplet and the fact that affairs and go
awry that do not correlate with each other ensure that we will not mistake this for
a middle couplet. Nevertheless, the striking correlations are there, and they
might be intended to highlight the overtones in one heart going contrary to
ones wishes. It is a pity that from this linguistic and cultural distance we have
difficulty hearing those overtones.
 Fanghui may be searching for a new way of exploring language through blurred
or double meanings. In these early poems it seems that after he has expertly
evoked a scene or a situation in the first half of the poem, he sets challenges for
himself in the second half to complicate the way words and their usages work
together. In the Tang Regulated Verse, these explorations of the limits of language
took place in the middle couplets, where the full power of parallel constructions
could be brought to play in bending the syntax of normal language. Perhaps our
poet is experimenting with alternative frameworks for such explorations.
XUZHOU
1084: IMITATION OF AN EXTENDED REGULATED VERSE
In the seventh month of Yuanfeng 7 (1084), Fanghui writes Imitating
Wen Feiqing. His headnote reveals that he is writing this as a proxy for Wang Gong,
who was part of the group when Fanghui wrote Lyric of the Song of the Wind Estrade
(Poem 005, translated in Chapter Two), also during 1084 but in an unspecified
month. This poem is one of only three pail or extended Regulated Verse that

17 See the Zhuangzi 34/13/15, 16. A.C. Graham (260) translates his unified heart; Watson (144)
renders the phrase his single mind.
18 A whole heart gone awry is an extreme situation. Another implication might be that of an
undivided, steadfast mind. Yanzi, when criticized for serving three lords over the years in the state
of Qi, responded: With one mind one can serve three
hundred lords; with three minds one cannot serve even one lord. ICS 4.29/39/17, 18. Alfred Forke:
Der Vorwurf scheint von Liang-tchiu Tch zu stammen, welcher erklrte, dass Yen-tse mehrere
Herzen haben msse. Yen-tse erwiderte, dass man mit einem Hersen hundert Frsten, mit drei
Herzen aber nicht einem einzigen dienen knne. Konfuzius hrte davon und sagte: Meine Kinder,
merkt euch das. Yen-tse konnte mit einem Herzen hundert Frsten dienen. Yen Ying,
Staatsmann und Philosoph, 124.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

195

Fanghui wrote, and it is the longest. As Paul Rouzer tells us, Long pail are
among the most difficult Tang poems to appreciate today. There were often
written as virtuoso showpiecesthe form demands that a poet maintain tonal
regulation and a single rhyme over dozens of lines. . . . Moreover, pail are also
structurally loose, despite their rigid metrical requirements: couplets often form a
chain of vaguely connected units extending indefinitely through the poets ability
to sustain a rhyme. 19
166

12

Dewy net, upon the crimson ridge-tiles;

A2
breezy blind, before the halcyon lattice.
B1
Quilts from the night fumed into lotus;
C1
mirror for the morn stroked into ripples.
D1
Moisture soaks the brush flecked with gold;
A1
perfume cleaves to floss striking powder.
B1
To pass the time, double-six pieces;
C1
to dispel resentment, ten-and-three strings.
D2
The parrotsolicitous words;
A2
sandalwoodsinuous smoke.
B1
Shark-people silk dried jade chopsticks;
C1
fish-form locks circumscribe her gold lotuses.
D1
The Round Fan requites Peach Leaf;
A2
raven silk replaces apricot writing-paper.
B1

19

Writing Anothers Dream, 14445.

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16

20

24

CHAPTER THREE

The vermillion gate is always dimly distant,

C2
his white horse already flying lightly.
D2
Impossible to hook the three-pearl tree;
A2
in vain he tosses the seven-jewel whip.
B1
The drinking winds down; someone must be waiting;
C1
the dream is shattered, for the karma is lacking.
D2
The faithful magpies go off with the new autumn;
A1
the lonely toad is full in the late night.
B1
Vain to say the place outside the walls
C1
is the Undying Ones within the Cavern.
D2

Notes:
166-7/ Double-six, shuang lu, is a board game played with dice. Whatever lu originally meant in this
term, Fanghui either thinks it means six or he is exploiting the fact that the character is the
fraud-proof form of six; lu matches the three in line 8. 20
166-8/ The zheng is a musical instrument with thirteen strings in the Tang and Song periods.
166-11/ Silk woven by shark people (See Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 1:392, ll. 28890n) is a familiar
image, as is jade chopsticks as an elegant kenning for the tears of a beautiful woman.
166-12/ Golden lotuses are dainty feet. 21 The fish-shaped locks of the palace appear to be locking
the woman in, though by implication they also lock others out.
166-13/ Wang Xianzhi wrote two love songs for his concubine, Peach Leaf, and she answered with
three poems built around a round fan. 22

20 Lu is read liu in modern Chinese when it means six, but in the Song its basic reading of luk3b
covered both six ( luk3b) and its regular meanings of dry ground, etc. For a table of
fraud-proof numbers, see Cohen, Introduction to Research in Chinese Source Materials, 338.
21 A younger contemporary of Wen Tingyun, Wu Rong (d. 903), juxtaposed jade chopsticks and golden lotuses in the second of three pai-l using the same rhymes:
Jade chopsticks beweep her makeup; / golden lotus renew with her steps. See QTS,
20:685.786869, . Wu seems to be going back to the original
context of the golden lotuses, which were affixed to the floor for a late fifth-century rulers consort
to walk on so that he could exlaim, a golden lotus in born with each step! See the Nan shi, 1:5.154.
22 For these poems, see Xu Ling, Yutai xinyong, 2:10.53637 and Anne Birrell, New Songs from a
Jade Terrace, 26667. The significance of the Round Fan derives from the story of a resentful Lady
Ban, who felt she had been put aside like a fan at the end of the hot season. For her poem, see Yutai

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

197

166-14/ Raven silk refers to silk material into which are woven black silk filaments to make
demarcations of columns for writing. Although most accounts say the black lines are woven in at
only the top and bottom, with vertical vermillion lines between them, perhaps the most famous
extant specimen uses black silk threads for all the lines. This is Mi Fus Shu su tie (1088). 23
The significance of this material replacing the apricot-colored stationery is unclear; perhaps the two
replace each other in succession as a woman and a man exchange letters. If the reader wonders how
raven can correspond to round in the previous line, part of the answer may lie in the fact that
the round fan is conventionally made of white silk. (Wen uses the phrase white round fan once.) 24
166-17/ The three-pearl tree is a mythological tree whose leaves were pearls (or three kinds of
pearls?); Tao Yuanming referred to it in Reading the Classic of Mountains and Seas, poem 7, as one of the
marvels that would appeal to the Queen Mother of the West. 25 Perhaps the man on the white horse
of line 16 would like to obtain the tree for the woman who has been the center of the poem up until
now. But see below for a different speculation.
166-18/ A seven-jewel riding whip is what the Jin emperor Sima Shao (r. 32325) gave an
innkeeper to bribe her to deceive the rebel forces who followed him in pursuit. 26 Perhaps in vain
he tosses indicates the mans lack of success despite his expenditure of effort and treasure.
166-20/ The karma that would unite the lovers does not exist.
166-21/ Since the next line mentions the toad that lives in the moon, these magpies must be the
ones who form a bridge across the Milky Way on the Seventh Night of the Seventh Month so the
stars known as the Oxherd and Weaving Maiden can have their annual conjugal visit. The seventh
month is the first month of autumn and the moon would be full on the fifteenth day of a lunar
month.
166-22/ Hou ye usually means the last half of the night, though in some of He Zhus poems it could
be read as tomorrow night. (He uses the phrase six times, more than any other Tang or Song
poet.)
166-24/ Caverns are Daoist heavens, or they stand for the heavens to which they lead. Because the
famous Peach Blossom Spring was accessed through a cavern or tunnel, Undying Ones within the
Cavern could also refer to the happy denizens of an idyllic paradise.

The first thing to emphasize about this imitation of Wen Tingyun is the degree to
which it avoids the diction of Wen Tingyun. Like He Zhu, Wen Tingyun is most
famous in literary history for his lyrics (ci), but Wens lyric diction is conspicuously
absent here. Fanghuis halcyon lattice (line 166-2) is never used by Wen, who
prefers lattices of blue/grey/green (qing ), nor does Wen ever mention
ridge-tiles (line 1) of any color. In one lyric, Wen has a lady waiting for her lover
to cense their quilt, 27 but Fanghuis line 166-3 is about something else entirely, I
think: it introduces last nights quilt only as an image for lotus leaves covering

xinyong 1:1.2425 and New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 43. Wen Tingyun apparently alludes to the Round
Fan in . See the SBBY edition of Wens poems: 5.1b; in QTS: 17.579.6728.
23 See Lothar Ledderose, Mi Fu and the Classical Tradition of Chinese Calligraphy, 44, 103, and Plate
47. More detail can be seen in Nakata Yjir, Shodo geijutsu 6, plates 96103.
24 . SBBY ed., 1.6b7a; QTS, 17:575.6696.
25 Tao Yuanming ji 4.136. The tree can also refer to a family of talented brothers, but I see no
support for such an interpretation in the context of the present poem.
26 See the Jin shu, 1:6.161 and Shishuo xinyu, 27.6 for versions of this story.
27 Wens lyric is (), no. 018 in Aoyamas concordance to the Huajian ji. (Most
words or phrases mentioned in our discussion can be found readily enough in this concordance and
specific lyrics will not be cited.)

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a pond. (The pond is the mirror that ripples when brushed, in the next line). In his
lyrics, Wen never uses the terms for lotus or ripple seen in this couplet,
though he does use handan for lotus in his poetry once, in a line that supports the
equivalence of mirror and pond in line166-4. 28 Wen refers to parrots (line
166-9) only once in a lyric (and only twice in his poems), preferring to let orioles
do the talking. He likes smoke, but mostly as a figure for misty willows and the like;
only once does Wens smoke refer to incense, and then it is a different type of
incense. 29 He mentions jade chopsticks (line 166-11) once, but three other poets
use this kenning in the lyric collection from which we take our data, so the term is
hardly a style marker. The same is true of vermillion gates.
 Comparisons with Wens shi diction are a bit more complicated. The concordance (in the Quan Tang shih suoyin series) from which we take the following data
does not distinguish between poems and lyrics; the approximately four hundred
poems attributed to Wen in the Quan Tang shi include fifty-nine lyrics. Thus, there
is some overlap with the data for lyrics we have just presented. With that caveat,
the concordance tells us that Wens favorite word is chun, springtime, and his
second favorite is hua, blossom. Neither is found in our Imitation.
 The following table shows that, with the exception of feng, breeze, wind, it
could be argued that Fanghui uses some words in his Imitation that are of salient
frequency in Wens corpus and comparatively less frequent in He Zhus own
corpus.
Table 2 Words in Poem 166 Typical of Wen Tingyun

Word

Meanings
wind, breeze

Occurrences in Wen
186

Hes line
166-2

Occurrences in He
293

gold, metal

159

166-12

46

incense, scent

104

166-6

23

smoke, mist

99

166-10

24

nephrite, jade

95

166-11

40

gate, door

77

166-15

74

dream

62

166-20

62

dew

59

166-1

22

blind, shade

40

166-2

16

The imagistic connotations of these words change radically in context: there is a

28 Wens line is Brilliant mirror, square tank, lotus autumn. ,

SBBY ed., 4.13b; QTS, 17:578.6723. Note that Fanghuis word for lotus, danhan, is the reverse of
the normal handan. All editions appear to agree on this wording, but I have found no other poet who
uses danhan. Both syllables end in the same tone and the same sound, so neither meter nor rhyme is
at issue. I think it is a simple scribal error that no one thought to correct.
29 (), no. 012 in Aoyamas concordance to the Huajian ji.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

199

big difference between a spring breeze and an autumn wind, between a vermilion
gate before a mansion and the brushwood gate that opens to the garden at home.
Still, we can draw some conclusions.
 On the one hand, this table shows that in his imitation of Wen Tingyun,
Fanghui used words that he was ordinarily less inclined to use than Wen.
Smoke/mist is much less likely to occur in a poem by He Zhu, for example, so
the fact that it occurs in this poem can reasonably be supposed to reflect some
awareness that Wen liked the word. Our notes to the poem, furthermore, have
already pointed out a few precedents in Wen. In particular we should point out
that the phrase Vain to talk of that heads line 166-23 also heads a line in Wen
Tingyun (in a pentametrical pail) and in no other Tang poet. 30 On the other hand,
comparisons with Wen Tingyuns lyrics and poems show that Fanghui did not do
what a less accomplished poet would do: base an imitation on lexicon first,
counting on the target poets diction to evoke the desired world and mood. Clearly,
Fanghui is beyond this. Furthermore, when there is an overlap in diction, it is not
for the purpose of creating Wens typical events and relationships. Wen never
juxtaposes idleness and resentment or mentions a thirteen-stringed instrument (lines 166-6 and 7); the silk woven by shark-people, the three times Wen
mentions it, is always being cut, not used to dry tears (line 166-11); Wen never
refers to golden lotuses, Peach Leaf, or apricot writing-paper (lines
166-1214). Although dreams are often broken (line 166-20) in Chinese poetry,
that doesnt happen in Wen Tingyun, nor does he mention the karma that should
bind lovers together.
 We may conclude that Fanghui had the subtlety to use Wens diction sparingly
while finding images and juxtapositions that would have analogous impact through
the bulk of the imitation.
 Let us turn to what I think may have been He Zhus model: a poem that Mou
Huaichuan offers as one of the most perplexing poems in the entirety of Chinese
classic poetry, and one of the most enchanting. The poem in question, as the title
tells us, is nearly twice as long as He Zhus: Twenty-two Rhymes of the Arched Door
. 31 Nevertheless, there are several reasons to single this poem out
as the model. Among Wens extended Regulated Verse, this is the only poem that,
like Fanghuis poem, exhibits semantic parallelism in all couplets, including the
opening and closing coupletsallowing for some looseness in the semantic fields
of the final couplet. (On the level of tonal structure, both poems share an absolute
fidelity to regulated lines in the same ABCD order; however, my impression is that

30 , SBBY ed. 6.7a.9 (line 187 of two hundred); QTS, 17:580.6734.1. Translated
by Mou Huaichuan as Dont say that in couplet 94 on p. 236 of Rediscovering Wen Tingyun. The
phrase also occurs at the end of a line in a long heptametrical poem by Sikong Tu (837908),
, QTS, 19:634.7282, but is otherwise unknown in Tang poetry.
31 SSBY edition, 6.16a18a; QTS, 17:580.6736; Rediscovering Wen Tingyun, 123137.

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Wen Tingyuns other extended Regulated Verses exhibit the same regularity.)
Moreover, it is the only one that is ostensibly about a deserted woman in luxurious
surroundings; the others are meditations on the lessons of history or are written in
the poets own voice to his friends. 32 Now, Mou Huaichuan reads Wens poem as
a veiled account of the poets relationship with the ill-fated heir presumptive, Li
Yong (82738). Whether or not Fanghui understood the poem the same way
is a question we might not be able to answer, even if we allowed ourselves a digression to explore the validity of Mous reading. The most we shall attempt here
is a search for thematic and structural parallels of the kind we discovered between
Bao Rongs Cold Night Song and He Zhus Imitation of Bao Rongs Cold Night Lament
in the chapter on Ancient Verse (Poem 092). Because the length and complexity
of Wen Tingyuns Twenty-Two Rhymes precludes its quotation here, we can only
refer the interested reader to Mous translation.
x Fanghuis Imitation begins with a dewy net left by spiders on crimson roof
tiles and a lattice; Wens begins with a pearl net and a lattice window. (Note
that pearl and crimson were both pronounced tsyuo3c, and of course the
pearl net is also a dewy spider web. The terms translated lattice are different in the originals.)
x Fanghuis second couplet is quite opaque syntactically; the same is true of
Wens lines 3 and 4, , which might be translated,
Candles revolve smoke [and] drop embers; / the blind crushes the moon [but]
admits yin. (Yin is shade, but here it seems to indicate the yin light of the
moonas opposed to the yang force of the sun.) An alternative that would
respect the normal caesura of the pentasyllabic line would be Candles revolve;
smoke drops embers; / the blind oppresses; the moon sends through its yin. 33
x Fanghuis third couplet mentions powder, as does Wens. Wen also juxtaposes
white and clear, which is a common trick for color parallelism: qing clear
is homophonous with qing green, grey, blue. Wens color-puns (which are
quite frequent in his works) can be seen as calling for some kind of indirect
reference to color in the imitation. Perhaps Fanghui saw gold and powder
(166-56) as implying juxtaposed colors, just as round fan would imply the
color white to match raven silk in lines 166-13 and 14. Similarly, Fanghuis
juxtaposition of double-(six) pieces and ten-and-three strings in lines 166-7
and 8 and his three-pear tree and seven-jewel whip in lines 166-17 and 18
could be seen as a response to Wens thousand autumns/ Seventh Night

32 See Rouzer, Writing Anothers Dream, 14449, Mou, Rediscovering, Hundred-Rhyme Poems, 5
et passim; Fifty-Rhyme Poem, 12 et passim.
33 This second translation is probably preferable, though ya, oppress, is usually followed by an
object in Chinese poetry. Mous translation is Into the candle-tray the wick-ash dropped scattered.
/ through lowered curtains moonlight filtered covertly in. Tray is probably wrong, since pan has
to be a verb to parallel ya (Mous lowered)unless this is a case of parallelism-by-pun.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

201

(lines 13 and 14), paired pillar/ single pole (lines 23 and 24) and lone
indignation / nine admonitions (lines 41 and 42).
x Lines 166-11 and 12 of Fanghuis Imitation focus abruptly on the physical features of a person; the same happens in lines 9 and 10 of Wens poem.
x Wen refers to an old ballad in line 15, as does Fanghui in line 166-13; both
couplets also involve colorsWhite Ramie and yellow gold in Wens case.
x Fanghuis line 166-16 suddenly expands our perspective to include a white
horse flying lightly, which we take to be a reference to the lover of the secluded woman; but the hooking of the three-pearl tree and the tossing of the
seven-jewel whip of the next couplet seem to suggest that a story more specific
is being told in coded language. That, of course, is precisely the mode of discourse that Mou Huaichuan sees throughout Wens perplexing poem. Lines
2930 in Wens poem seem to tell of a point at which worthy men were to be
selected for important positions, and the hooking of the three-pearl tree in
our poem may similarly allude to an attempt to secure talented men.
x In Fanghuis poem this is followed by the hope or expectation of return (lines
166-1920); in Wens by a retreat behind curtains (lines 3334). There are birds
and painted beasts in Wens next couplet and then the Milky Way and hills in
the couplet after that. Perhaps all of these correspond to the celestial magpies
and toad of Fanghuis penultimate couplet. 34
x Finally, Wens poem closes with an evident reference to his own flight to the
south: How can the traveler who has fled to the
south / still sing a song like the Sleeping Dragon? Zhuge Liang (dubbed the
Sleeping Dragon) sang a folk song as he plowed his fields before assisting in
the founding of Shu as one of the Three Kingdoms. Thus, we have an allusion
here whose significance is far from clear, just as Fanghuis possible allusion to
the Peach Blossom Spring paradise (see the note to line 166-24 on p. 197)
seems intentionally obscure.
In the end we must be impressed with the audacity of He Zhu in essaying the
imitation of such a difficult poem, and the skill with which he creates analogs for
the structures and situations in Wens poem, rather than relying on a superficial
scattering of Wen-like diction. Whether or not one agrees with Mou Huaichuans
intricate readings of Wen Tingyun, it is clear that in some lines of the poem in
question (particularly the closing couplet), the topic must be something other than
love between a man and a woman; or if it is, its treatment is unconventional,
private and particular in its details. It is unlikely that Fanghui is using his poem for

34 Mou (136) thinks the River in Wens poem might be the Wei River, but the five other references in Tang poems to the river dawning specify that it is the Star or Silver River, i.e., the Milky
Way. Admittedly, these examples include a Han Yu poem in which the Milky Way may be a trope
for a moat in the capital. See Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 2:681, n2; the poem is ; von Zach,
X.2. takes the Milchstrasse at face value.

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anything so serious or personal, especially since he is writing it for a companion in

Xuzhou who is not up to the task (no wonder!). His achievement rather is in
fashioning a simulacrum of Wen Tingyuns personal and coded expression.

1084: TWIN VIEWS FROM THE DELIGHTFUL! PAVILION

Among Fanghuis 1084 Xuzhou poems, we find a pair on the view from the
Delightful! Pavilion. They are not dated; perhaps this is because they treat the
same view at two different times of the day and may have been written on different occasions or as synthetic recollections of various outings to the site. The
title is Taking in the Morning and Evening Views at the Delightful!
Pavilion, Two Poems. 35 Like the 1084 Ancient Verse Written One Day After the First Si
Day Upon Climbing Delightful! Pavilion, these poems make no overt mention of Su Shi,
although in the second poem of the pair the foreign chairs on which Li and Su
sat reappear.
 These poems give us examples of ao lines, awkward lines, which are essentially non-regulated lines in a regulated environment. It is quite common, when
the first line of a couplet contains a violation, to insert a violation into the second
line at the same positionthis is generally called a recovery, jiu, though it
could just as well be termed a matching awkwardness. 36 The first two lines in
each of the following poems (and the second pair of lines in the second poem)
exhibit this awkwardness and recovery in the third syllables, the typical site
for violations in a pentasyllabic line. These violations are not a sign of carelessness;
this becomes clear when we see that Fanghui used exactly the same tone pattern
in the two poems, with the exception of the fourth lines. (The metrical identity
foregrounds the fact that the poems describe the same view at different times of
day.)
167

In the night I rise, joyful in my freedom;

(A3)
straightaway rush to the loft on the citywall.
(B6)
The first sunlight stirs the grain;
(C4)
longtime rain has obscured the isles.
D2

35
36

5.12545, 5.2b.
Qi Gong, Shi wen shengl lungao, 29.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

203

A water buffalo bears myna birds;

A1
thorn-elms suspend snakegourd.
(B2)
Suddenly Im ashamed before the true recluse;
C1
both I and the world are insubstantial to me.
D2

Notes:
167-6/ Trichosanthes kirilowii, usu. translated Chinese cucumber, is a vine whose fruit and roots are
used in medicine. 37
167-78/ The true recluse could be Su Shi, but he had already left his exile at Huangzhou at this
time. While it is fairly common to say that the self, shen and the world, the human world, shi,
are estranged or insubstantial, the terms Fanghui uses, objects and ego are a bit more philosophical in tenor.

The second poem of the pair:

168

Loughes of rain waters edge the towering parapet;

(A3)
I climb to overlook them in the westing rays.
(B6)
Mossy cloaks enwrap white feathers;
(C4)
pagoda tree shade suspends green bugs.
(D3)
By no means slight is the pleasure of the folding chairs;
A1
little is left of the merit in a round fan.
(B2)
I look as far as I can see, yet envy stirs:
C1
gently rocking, one fishermans sail.
D2

Notes:
168-5/ Folding chairs, literally chairs of the northern barbarians, take their significance from the
story of Yu Liang (289340) appearing one autumn evening on the Southern Tower in the city
where he was governor: Gentlemen, stay awhile. [My] pleasure in this spot is by no means slight. So

37 See Shen Liansheng, Colored Atlas of Compendium of Materia Medica, 153, and a web page by
Subhuti Dharmananda, http://www.itmonline.org/arts/tricho.htm (accessed 25 June 2004)

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saying, he sat down on a folding chair and chanted poems and joked with the company. 38 Allusions
to this are found among the major Tang poets.

The challenge Fanghui sets for himself here is to present a pair of poems on the
same site that somehow complement each other without repeating the same
structure or idea. He does several things to make the task more difficult. First, he
repeats words, and does so at identical positions in their respective lines. Ji, accumulated, translated longtime in line 167-4, reappears (not translated) in the
accumulated pools of rain waters that border the citywall in line 168-1. Xuan,
suspend, appears in the middle couplets of each poem in the context of things
hanging from trees. In each case, xuan is also the point of tonal violation, which
increases its prominence. Second, Fanghui uses the same overall structure in each
poem: setting the occasion (I went up on the citywall); describing the scene in
parallel couplets; and closing with a response to the experience. To be sure, this is
the standard structure for a Regulated Verse, but the need to vary the formula
increases when the poems are paired, as here.
 Let us see, then, how Fanghui meets this challenge. The morning poem begins
with an emotion (the speaker is joyful in his feeling of space and leisure), the
evening poem simply with the parapets towering over a watery landscape. The two
poems end with the same conventional yearning to retire from the world, but the
first poem expresses this through a more abstract mediation on the I and the
objects of the world, while the second poem does so by reference to the conventionally idyllic fisherman in the landscape below the pavilion.
 In the first poem, the first sunlight is withheld until line 167-3, where it can
enter into the complex relationships of meaning that we expect in the middle
couplets of a Regulated Verse. (I say withheld because in the second poem the
corresponding westing rays that help establish the time of day appear earlier.)
The first sunlight is the condition that creates the vivid impression that the
crops move; the longtime rain is the condition that has caused the isles to be
lost (line 167-4). Together, these two lines present a broad vision that will be
replaced by attention to smaller points in the landscape in the next couplet.
 Now, the second and third couplets of the morning poem appear to have the
identical grammatical structure: Noun PhraseVerbNoun. Ordinarily, this would
be a conspicuous fault. 39 However, a more careful reading shows that in the

38 Translation from Mather, New Account of Tales of the World, 14.24; emphasis mine. See also Jin
shu, 6:73.1924.
39 Hou Xiaoqiong, in her excellent Shaoling lfa tonglun, 113, cites these middle couplets from Du
Fus (Du shi xiangzhu, 2:7.586) as an example of such a fault:
However, the first two lines have two verbs each and
the second two lines only one each. The other example she cites, one that we partially quoted earlier,
is the magnificent ; this is much more
appropriate as an example of repeated structures. Yet the ambiguity in the first couplet is absent in
the second, and the paradoxes of the second couplet are absent in the first. Again, the poem is

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205

second couplet the verbs are causative: the sun makes the millet move and the rain
makes the islands disappear. 40 The third couplet, on the other hand, is straight
subjecttransitive verbobject. The verbs within each couplet play against each
other in different ways, too. The dynamic stir (dong) of line 167-3 is contrasted
with the quieter obscure (shi) of line 4; in the next couplet, it is the upward
bearing-on-the-back (fu) of the myna birds that balances the downward suspension (xuan) of the trichosanthes.
 In the evening poem, the attention to visual details within the larger landscape
comes earlier, in lines 168-3 and 4, Mossy cloaks enwrap white feathers; / pagoda
tree shade suspends green bugs. The distant view over the water from the pavilion
will be reserved for the closing couplet.
 At first glance, these details might seem rather unpleasant: water plants ensnaring birds, and trees dripping with spiders. One can, however, recognize two
allusions to lines by Du Fu in this couplet, allusions that not only make the lines
more appealing but also point to non-literal readings. First, while white feathers
can stand for birds, the expression also refers to fans made of white feathers, and
Du Fu exploited this fact to suggest that lotus flowers waving in the breeze resembled such a fan: River lotus wave white feathers. 41 Fanghui
must be depicting lotuses among the algae. The reference to the green bugs calls
to mind Du Fus couplet, Green bugs hang down
and touch the sun; / vermillion fruits fall and affix their seal in the mud. As a
description of spiders or insects visible against the setting sun, this would be a
striking simple image to emulate. However, as such it provides a poor match to the
image of substitution in Fanghuis previous line, in which white feathers turned
out to be, not birds, but lotus blossoms. In fact, we may begin to wonder whether
Du Fu himself meant bug literally, or whether it was a part of the tree itself,
correlating with the vermillion fruit in the next line. (The poem comes from a
set about cleaning up an orchard.) Ouyang Xiu helps resolve the issue with a

, Du shi xiangzhu, 5:23.2029. Owens translation (Anthology, 439) adds as I to line 4 but otherwise
leaves implicit these different relationships: Wisp of cloud, the sky shares such distance, / endless
night, the moon same as I in solitude. / Setting sun, the mind still has vigor; / autumn wind, sickness
almost cured. As Hou notes, the supposed fault has not prevented these from being famous lines
that have lasted a thousand ages.
40 Another way to understand the structure is to say that this is an inversion, in which the
action comes before the actor. I feel that inversions are often, if not always, explainable as a
discovery structure, which is familiar enough in modern Chinese. In such a structure, when a new
thing is perceived, the action of the thing is mentioned first. For example, Qian bian laile liangge xuesheng,
In front come (aspect marker) two (counter) student: Two students came up in front. In English
the introduction of a new player is signaled by the absence of a definite article (as above), with
sometimes the additional use of there as a pseudo-subject: There were two students approaching
in front. My explanation can still be applied to islands that are not perceived because they are under
water. This is still the discovery of a new situation (the absence of something known to have existed
in a certain place) rather than a comment on the islands.
41 , Du shi xiangzhu, 1:1.16; Yoshikawa, To Ho, 1:216.

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couplet in which green bug almost certainly is an image of substitution for small
flower buds or leaf-buds: Before the frost
the Rivers waters rub cyan copper; / behind the bank water-chestnut leaves raise
aloft green bugs. (The structure of Ouyangs comparison, a SVO construction in
which the Object metaphorically describes the appearance of the Subject, is
identical to Du Fus River lotus wave white feathers, quoted above.) Fanghuis
pagoda tree is a plant with green seed-pods that look like beetles on stiff wires or
hair-pins. (Green-bug hairpins are common in descriptions of lovely ladies and
their costumes). It seems clear that line 168-4 refers to these seed pods. The ingenuity of this couplet is impressive, and one does not have to necessarily recognize the echoes of Du Fu to appreciate it.42
 The third couplets in these two poems are every bit as ambitious as the second
couplets, perhaps more so. In the morning poem, the reader may wonder why the
poet chooses to mention buffalo and thorn-elms, myna birds and trichosanthes
vines. The myna is a common bird in China. Trichosanthes, however, is virtually
unknown in Chinese poetry of the Tang and Song. Perhaps Fanghui is consciously
extending Mei Yaochens program of including objects and creatures that had
hitherto been ignored by poets. In 1048 Mei Yaochen wrote a pentametrical
Regulated Verse about a pair of myna birds riding on an ox. 43 Now Fanghui will
add an unpoetic vine to the bird.
 As for the thorn-elm, a tree unknown in other Tang or Song poetry, the Chinese
name is literally mountain-pivot; the morpheme mountain, corresponds to the
water of water buffalo in line 167-5. (Water and mountain form a common compound in which natures binary structure is manifest, and they are the
general categories [that] classify the particularities of a given scene.) 44 This little
trick is enough to justify the first (and last?) walk-on part by the thorn-elm in a
Chinese poem.
 In the evening poem, the round fan is a bit of a problem. It inevitably brings to
mind stories and poems in which a discarded fan is a metaphor for the abandoned
lover, hardly an appropriate match for the gusto of the foreign chairs. I think we
can understand what Fanghui is doing if we put aside the habit of looking for
paired allusions that are in some way commensurate. An alternative strategy is to
look for a predecessor line that provides an association between the terms that
allows us to justify their co-appearance in this couplet. (Cf. honkadori in Japanese
poetics.) The line I propose is by Liu Yuxi: White feathers and

42 Du Fus poem is , Du shi xiangzhu, 4:20.1736. Ouyang Xius is

, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushhi waiji.3.364. For pictures of the pagoda tree (also called
scholar-tree), see http://www.canr.uconn.edu/plsci/mbrand/s/sopjap/sopjap1.html, accessed 15
January 2005.
43 , Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 2:18.470.
44 Stephen Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics, 93.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

207

folding chairs, within whistles and poem-chanting. 45 Although Fanghui uses a

different term for the fans, Lius line permits us to override the conventional sad
associations of the round fan. At the same time, Fanghui revises his predecessor:
he takes the chairs and transcends the feather fan because, in the cool of the
evening, there is little service left in a round fan.
 We have to applaud Fanghuis creativity in looking for ways to balance all the
elements of these two poems to make variations on the several themes he saw
entailed in the view from the Delightful! Pavilion. In addition, this pair of poems
is significant as another clue that Fanghui was reading Han Yu during his time in
Xuzhou, though it does not rise to the level of conclusive proof. Han Yus collection contains a pair of pentametrical Regulated Verses under the title Idle
Wanderings. These anticipate some characteristics of He Zhus Morning and Evening
Views at the Delightful! Pavilion, Two Poems: they carry words over from one poem to
the other; they have a similar structure; and they appear to have been written on
different occasions. 46 Unlike He Zhu, however, Han makes no attempt to follow
the same metrical patterns in the two poems.
 Two other candidates for inspiration are Xu Hun (b. 791?) and Wen
Tingyun. Xu has one pair of poems on a Brook Pavilion that repeat words and
describe different times of the day (in the first poem the moon comes out to escort
a monk home; the second begins with sleep but has only daytime scenes). Unlike
Han Yu, Xu Hun uses only regulated lines and regulated sequences of line types
(but he does not repeat the structure in both poems as He Zhu does). 47 Wen has
a pair of poems sharing diction; his poems are nearly identical in the progression
of line types (all but one line are fully regulated). 48
 Paired verses of all genres are common in Tang and Song poetry, and a separate
monograph could be written on all the possibilities that are opened up when one
chooses to compose poems in pairs. We have mentioned possible Tang predecessors to He Zhus poems, not to suggest that Fanghui imitated any one of them,
but to show that the poets we know he read had made some of the same choices.

RHYMED OPENING COUPLETS

The years 108385 represent the first peak in pentametrical Regulated Verse

Lius poem is , QTS, 11:361.4075.

See the comments in Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 2:10.731. Translation, von Zach, X.1112.
47 QTS, 16.529.6053. The first poem is B 1 D 1, A 2 B 1, C 1 D 2, A 2 B 1. Note that the first line
rhymes. The second is A 1 B 1, C 2 D 2, A 1 B 1, C 2 D 1.
48 , SBBY edition, 3.13a. The first poem is B 1 D 1, A 1 B 1, C 2 D 1, A 1 B 1. The
second poem is (B 2) D 1, A 1 B 1, C 1 D 1, A 1 B 1. Both poems rhyme the first line. Mou
Huaichuan sees an important coded allusion at the end of the first poem, which, if valid, would add
another feature distinguishing this pair from He Zhus project. See Rediscovering, 16.
45
46

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output (preserved) for He Zhu: seventeen poems. The second peak, twenty-one
poems, will come in 108890, when Fanghui is in Liyang. En route to Jiangxia in
109596, he will write six pentametrical Regulated Verses, then four after arriving
at Jiangxia in 109697; that is his third and last known peak of activity in the genre.
In these three peak periods, but especially at Xuzhou in 108385, Fanghui
shows an atypical interest in what we shall call a DB opening, that is, an opening
line of the D type followed by a line of the B type. We shall also refer to such a
poem as a DB poem. The D line, ending in a level tone, rhymes. It is unusual for
pentametrical poetry to rhyme the first line. Rhyme in the first line is more necessary in heptametrical poems because, I believe, there is more complexity within
the longer line, requiring a stronger punctuation to establish the line-unit at the
beginning of the poem. Regardless of how subtle and variable the relationships
among the parts of the pentasyllabic line may be, the standard 2 || 3 rhythm of the
syllables limits the number of elements one must juggle within a line.
 If, for whatever reason, a poet decides to rhyme the first line, either a DB or a
BD opening will do the job; whether the second syllable of the first line is deflected (D type) or level (B) would seem to matter little. Therefore, it comes as
something of a surprise to discover that in pentametrical Regulated Verse the BD
opening is unpopular with poets, including He Zhu. The key to the choice, as we
shall see, is that the opening structure actually determines the metric structure of
the poem as a whole.
The four possible opening structures are not evenly or randomly distributed
across the works of any poet, and different poets and different periods exhibit
different preferences. As the pie charts below show, Tang poets, as represented
by Wang Wei, Li Bo, Qian Qi (710?82?), Zhang Ji, and Han Yu, prefer the
unrhymed openings AB and CD). 49 Han Yu, with a relatively small corpus of pentametrical Regulated Verse, is most like He Zhu in devoting one fourth of that
corpus to poems with rhymed opening lines (DB and BD). However, like the other
Tang poets, his unrhymed openings are much more evenly split between AB and
CD structures.

49 These statistics are based on collections of poems that were readily available to me in a format
that segregated pentametrical Regulated Verse: the Kyoto University concordance to Wang Wei,
Tabei Fumios concordance to Qian Qi, Hiraoka Takeos concordance to Zhang Ji, Han Yu quanji
jiaozhu, Guo Xiangzheng ji, Huang Tingjian quanji, and Zhang Lei ji. My statistics for Li Bo come from
a paper presented in May 1997 at the Second International Conference on Tang and Song Poetry in
Xiangtan, Hunan, by Wai Kam-moon of Hong Kong Baptist University. What appears to be a
published version of the paper under a slightly different title is listed in the Bibliography. All the
Tang poets, with the exception of Li Bo and Han Yu, have been considered good poets in the genre
at issue. To eliminate one variable, I excluded extended Regulated Verse where they were interspersed with octaves, although the He Zhu statistics do include two pail. Note that, faced with such
a large universe of poems, I did not look beyond the opening lines for anomalies such as the extensive use of non-regulated lines or the ordering of regulated couplets in non-regulated sequences
(losing the adhesion).

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PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

He Zhu N =72

Wa ng We i N =103

BD

BD

4%

DB

Li Bo N =112

DB

7%

DB

14 %

16%

22%

BD
3%

AB

AB

40%

44%

AB

CD

63%

11%

CD

CD

39%

37%

Qian Qi N = 13 9

DB
6%

Han Yu N = 3 5

Zha ng J i N =128

BD

BD
DB

4%

BD

7%

11%

8%
DB
AB

CD

AB

35%

55%

AB

14 %

4 1%

47%
CD
38%
CD
34%

Fanghui, in contrast, uses CD openings far less often than AB forms. (In fact,
they are less common than even his rhymed DB openings until mid-1091; from
that point on, as CD structures rise to 22% of the remaining 23 poems in this
corpus, AB openings are still favored, at 65 %.) This point sets the pre-1091 He
Zhu apart from the Song poets analyzed here as well as from the Tang poets.
Guo Xiang zheng N = 19 5

Huang Ting jian N = 117

Zhang Lei N = 3 2 6

BD

BD

2%
DB BD
CD

1%

DB

6 % 1%

DB

2%

16 %

3%

CD

CD

30%

27%

AB
AB

66%

AB
69%

77%

 Guo Xiangzheng, Huang Tingjian, and Zhang Lei are like He Zhu in that they
greatly prefer AB openings over CD poems; however, they avoid rhymed DB and
BD openings even more than their Tang counterparts, and in this they part
company with He Zhu (and Han Yu).
If we count all of Fanghuis Xuzhou pentametrical Regulated Verses from 1083
through 1085, the numbers are: AB, ten poems; CD, two poems; and DB, five

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poems. The absence of BD poems does not surprise us; they are the least popular
option in all our poets and among He Zhus works appear only in 108991 (one
per year). What is remarkable, again, is the excess of DB poems over CD poems.
The fact that all five pentametrical Regulated Verses written in 1084 are AB poems
is also interesting. Though it is favored by all the poets listed above, Fanghui had
used this form only once previously, in the 1078 poem Accusing Myself (Poem 161).
To summarize, then: Fanghui was more prone to consider rhymed first lines
than some of his contemporaries and most Tang poets. What the statistics do not
tell us is why, or to what effect. Unfortunately, for all the helpful material that has
been published in recent decades about meter in Chinese poetry, almost nothing
is said about the aesthetic effects of metrical choices. To some extent, this is
natural: meter is only one of a host of factors that create poetic effects, and surely
it has different effects in different environments. Nevertheless, when we see
Fanghui markedly altering his metric predilections, we have to believe that he did
so consciously and for some reason.
 Let us offer the following speculations about Fanghuis penchant for AB and
DB poems. As mentioned above, the opening of a poem has consequences for the
sequence of line types. A poem that begins with a deflected tone in the second
syllable, whether the first line rhymes (D-type) or not (A-type), will continue with
line types BCDABCD. The D lines, lines 4 and 8, look like this (with the caesura
marked): . This is the only line type that ends with two level tones. I suggest
that, especially at the end of a poem, these two final syllables can be drawn out for
a more sonorous ending. In contrast, a poem whose second syllable is a level tone
must end with a B line. The last three syllables of the poem will then be somewhat
choppier than in a D line: .
 Perhaps equally significant is the fact that a B line has only one regulated form;
unlike the A, C, and D lines, changing the tone category of the first syllable will
cause the line to become unregulated. As a result, a poem that begins with a level
tone in the second syllable (B or C lines) can only end in one immutable sequence of
tones, the line we label B 1 on our diagrams of the poems. This may be one key to
the relative paucity of BD poems: as the only poem type that generates a poem with
three B lines (BDABCDAB), the BD opening is thus the most restrictive.
 The alternate type that opens with a rhyming line, the DB form, has three D
lines: DBCDABCD. Perhaps most poets preferred the non-rhyming openings
because they resulted in two lines of each type, a more balanced form:
ABCDABCD or CDABCDAB. If my theory that Fanghui, as a poet who loved
the music of language, favored the D-type line because it ended in two level tones
is correct, it may explain why his favorite form after the AB one was the DB form:
only it gave him three sonorous D-type lines.
 Perhaps the three lines ending in two even tones made it particularly well suited
for singing or chanting at a farewell party. This would explain why all but one of

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

211

He Zhus poems to see someone off use the DB opening. 50 Unfortunately, the
very little information we have about the singing of poems applies to heptametrical compositions. 51
 The two poems under the title Harmonizing with Someones
Two Poems on an Excursion to the White Cloud Villa use the DB opening. 52 The fact
that this pair of 1085 poems harmonizes with someone elses compositions
raises the question of whether Fanghuis rhyme structure, including the rhymed
first lines, owes anything to the original poems. 53 That is an unanswerable question. Harmonizing, by Song times, usually involved using the rhymes of the
original poem, but that could mean anything from simply using the same rhyme
category, to using the same rhyme words, to using the same rhyme words in the same
orderand even at the latter extreme, my observations have been that the harmonizing poet could still dispose of the potential rhyme in the first line in any way
he pleased. Without access to the original poem, we cannot tell how much influence it has on the form of the harmonizing poem.
 The headnote tells us the poems were dashed off with a running brush, but
the poems are by no means unimaginative. Having discussed the overall meter
above, we shall look now at other details of craftsmanship.
171

In the wilds on the plain: spring breeze.

D1
Climbing up to look, we share our intoxication.
B1
Overcast and clear, the season is still unsettled;
C2
present and past, what end is there to longings?
D1
The posture of the hills drops but rises again;
(A4)
the flow of the stream chokes, breaks through once more.
B1

50 The exception is Poem 229 (1097). The DB poems sending people off are 163, 164 (1083), the
two poems we are about to translate (1085), 175 (1085), 190 (1089), 197 (1090), and 230 (1098).
51 See Yang Xiaoai, Zhuo qiangzi chang haoshi.
52 5.12546; 5.3a. It is the headnote, not the title, that tells us this is a farewell poem. Fanghui and
his friends visited Zhang Zhonglian at his White Cloud Villa, which they had reached by boat after
going out one of the city gates; perhaps he had seen them back to the city and was returning to his
lodge.
53 The original poems were assembled out of lines from various ancient poets by a man from his
native place, Duan Xun on the equivalent of 26 February. Duan died suddenly about a fortnight later. It seems that in his grief Fanghui cannot bear to name Duan in the title.

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The hermit gentleman is now at his ease;

C1
to be envied, this wild extramundane goose.
D2

Notes:
171-7/ The phrase translated now at his ease denotes a feeling of satisfaction with ones life.
171-8/ The wild goose flying high in obscurity and safe from the hunter is often an image for the
person who has escaped the tribulations of society, in this case Zhang Zhonglian. Envy for the
goose is a conventional way to close a poemOuyang Xiu and Su Shi do it, but there are several
Tang precedents, also. 54

Semantic parallelism within the second couplet of this first poem is particularly
complex. Meteorological contrasts are correlated with the time words present
and past. We could explain that as a matter of internal parallelism. That is a
well-known practice in which the correlation between A and B in one line matches
the correlation between X and Y in the next line, but there is no semantic correlation between A and X or B and Y. In this case, overcast and clear are opposites,
as are present and past; overcast and present need have nothing else in
common. Certainly it is best to see season yet unsettled and longings what
end? as cases of internal parallelism. Note that rather than finding a negative verb
to match yet unsettled, Fanghui uses the rhetorical question what end? to
imply a negative (the question is a way of stating that there is no exhausting of
thoughts). Beyond the mechanics of parallelism, we must stress that lines 171-3
and 4 work together to create an evocative indeterminacy. Let us also note that the
alternation of cloudy and clear weather can take place only in time. On this level,
clear and cloudy weather have temporal significance to parallel present and
past in the next line and in fact it appears to be the changes in weather that
provoke the speaker to muse on the passing of the ages on a larger scale.
If the second couplet is built on contemplation of the temporal dimensions of
the scene, the third describes spatial movements. Naturally, movement requires
time; indeed, the words huan and fu, translated again and once more basically
indicate repetition in time. (On some level this is another expression of the cyclical
time we talked about earlier in this chapter, but I think that is very peripheral here.)
Note that the word in line 171-5 translated posture designates what we might
call a constant state of incipiency, while the matching flow of a stream in the
next line names an unchanging motion. Hills and streams are paradigmatic complementary opposites (the mountain-water clich is softened here by the use of a
more specific word, stream, for one of the terms), yet insofar as hills can seem

54 Ouyangs poem is , Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1: jushiji 13.99. It is a pentametrical

Regulated Verse in sixteen lines. In five poems by Su Shi, hong wild goose is the last word in the
poem. One of these ends with extramundane goose that the speaker envies, but the poems
ascription to Su Shi is uncertain: , SSSJ, 8:47.2523.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

213

to move and streams persist in the same course, each component of the scene
participates in the nature of the other.
One metrical detail: the single tonal violation, in line 171-5, produces a deflectedleveldeflected pattern that mimics the droprisedrop of the hills.
 The second poem of the pair expresses a conventional intention to join in the
idyllic life of the White Cloud Villa:
172

To be treasured, this Old Gent of the White Clouds:

D2
On the brook in front he moors a tented fishing boat.
B1
Tiller and woodcutter come with him down one path;
(C4)
he draws water and pounds grain like the neighbors on four sides.
D2
A weary officer, what have I to show for it in the end?
A1
my remaining life will be spent in this place.
B1
First Ill trouble him to plant more sorghum
C1
to keep our brew-cups from standing empty.
D2

Note:
172-78/ Sorghum is one grain fermented to make brew.

Perhaps because of the relatively straightforward semantic parallelism of the

second couplet, Fanghui makes no attempt to establish similar lexical correlations
in the last three syllables of lines 172-5 and 6, except on the level of meter. The
antithetical tonal pattern in those two lines is perfect.
 In this place (172-6) refers to Zhang Zhonglians White Cloud Villa, but I
think the phrase has special resonances. It reminds us of Tao Yuanmings famous
line In this (ci zhong) there is some true significance; / I want to expound it but
have lost the words. 55 Ouyang Xiu clearly alludes to Tao in the last couplet of a
heptametrical Regulated Verse: In this (ci
zhong) there is a flavor for which the words are lost; / but this ill traveler can still
accept one goblet. 56 The term translated flavor can overlap in meaning with

55 The conclusion of Taos Drinking Wine, number five, adapted from Stephen Owens translation in Anthology, 316.
56 ( 1071), Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1: Jushi ji 14.109. The antecedent for this is the scene
of chrysanthemums along a pathway and white gulls over a lake in the preceding couplet.

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Taos significance. Thus, in the third couplet of a Regulated Verse by Mei

Yaochen on a monks studio, the evocation of Tao Yuanming is similar:
Once one is awakened to the flavor of this (ci zhong); / the
myriad karmas are made equal, every one. Flavor can also be a gusto that
overlaps with pleasure. In this is linked with pleasure in the concluding
couplets of two of Meis Ancient Verses: You are
awakened to the pleasure in this (ci zhong), / and still view the fish on the Hao
River; and Just attend to the pleasure in this (ci
zhong); / whether [the court] uses you or not is tied to the times.57 While ci zhong
in this can be used without these connotations, I think Fanghuis line gains
desired overtones when we are aware of the phrases association with unnamable
meaning, flavor, and pleasure. Perhaps these overtones compensate for the weak
semantic parallelism in the third couplet.
 Chen Shizhong left Xuzhou in the sixth month of Yuanfeng 8 (1085), occasioning another DB poem, Seeing off Chen Chuandao for a
substitute post at Shuanggou. 58
175

You slow the oars; I think of you climbing to overlook.

D2
Idle clouds screen off the sun and make a heavy day.
B1
Green rushesthe Si River so vast;
(C4)
ancient treesthe Han Shrine so deep.
D2
You should be getting drunk on the Thing in the Cup;
A2
who hearkens to intoning by the marsh?
B1
In the precinct of meditation, a traveler nurses his illness;
(C6)
to part lightlyhow can he bear it?
D1

Notes:
175-3/ The Si River flows through Xuzhou.

57 The poems are , Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:14.230 (1044),

, 2:15.298 (1045), and , 2:18.445 (1048). For Zhuangzis excursion on the
Hao River, see Watsons translation, 18889 or Grahams, 123.
58 5.12547, 5.4a. Shuanggou may not have been very far from Xuzhou; I provisionally identify it
with the town by that name at the southeast corner of Xu Prefecture in Shandong West Circuit
under the Jin in the twelfth century. That town is no more than 40 km away by water.

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215

175-5/ The Thing in the Cup is brew. The term comes from Tao Yuanmings Reproving my Sons, in
Burton Watsons translation, If this is the luck Heaven sends me, / then pour me the thing in the
cup! 59
175-6/ The one intoning by the marsh is Qu Yuan. His model of loyalty and anguish is rejected
here in favor of Tao Yuanmings escape from care.
175-7/ Fanghui is probably lodging in a Buddhist temple to convalesce.

The tonal violation in line 175-3 is relatively trivial, but it calls our attention to an
apparent mismatch between the name of a river (Si) and the corresponding name
in the next line, which is the name of a dynasty (Han, in line 4). The seeming
discrepancy gets more interesting when we remember that there is a Han River,
the river that gives its name to the region where Liu Bang began the struggles that
would lead to the founding of the dynasty. Thus, when Fanghui refers to the
dynasty, he is using what in context is the secondary or inapplicable meaning of the
name to match the Si River in the previous line. This is a type of parallelism-by-pun, which we discuss in more detail below.
 The tonal violation line 175-7 is unexceptional and supports poetic closure (see
p. 193). Beyond purely formal considerations, however, the departure from meter
works with the rhetorical question in line 175-8 to manifest frustration and regret.
 Returning to the question of the DB format, we can also propose several things
in this poem that would have been lost or altered without it. The middle couplets
would come in a different order in the CD or BD format: instead of the CDAB
lines we see, ABCD would have been mandated. Assuming the poet liked the
couplets individually as he wrote them, he could have simply reversed their order.
However, that would have destroyed the overall progression of the poem from
scene to feeling, from imagistic language to direct address to Chen Shizhong. One
gets the impression that middle couplets are where the poets creativity is exercised most, and surely they are not discarded easily; to the extent that these lines in
this order achieved what Fanghui wanted, he had to use an AB or DB format.
 Another argument in favor of the AB or DB format is that these are the only
environments in which one can end with the D line. The expression ruo wei xin
how can [the traveler] bear it? and its much more common equivalent ruo wei qing
, require those final two level tones when they come at the end of a line.
These expressions always do come at the end of lines, but more importantly, they
have strong closural force at the end of a poem: seven of the twelve instances of
ruo wei qing in Tang poems come in the concluding line. 60 Although is difficult to

59

Mair, Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, 183.

The other five cases place the expression in the second linethe same is true of the single
Tang example of ruo wei xinso it can be used to set the mood in the opening couplet also. (A
closural device can be used elsewhere to different effect, but not all phrases can be moved to the end
of a poem and support closure.) In the Song, Wang Yucheng and Li Zhi use ruo wei qing in the last
line and Chao Yuezhi uses it in the second line. Lu You and Yang Wanli, both coming after He Zhu,
are the only poets I know of who deploy the expression in other positions as well.
60

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judge whether the ending of this poem is particularly musical or plaintive because of the final two level tones, we should note that wei xin or wei qing are read
as a single expression (ruo is the question word, how is it possible); therefore,
those two syllables could easily be prolonged in recitation to enhance the closure
and the feeling. 61
 We mentioned above that Fanghui does not limit himself to the middle couplets in exploring linguistic subtleties. Line 175-2 has a structure that we might
typically find in the middle couplets of Tang poetry: SUBJECTVERB
OBJECTVERB. In prose, the particle er would coordinate the verbs:
screening the sun, they make overcast. Without the particle, and particularly
when there is no habitual link between the two verbs, the concision of this
structure can be very effective; it seems to express something just beyond the
ability of language to encompass it. Perhaps the finest example is Du Fus magnificent heptametrical couplet Within the
River rushing waves encompass the sky [and] churn; / on the pass wind-blown clouds, touching
the earth, make shade. 62
Another thing to note about Fanghuis second line is that the phrase translated
screen off the sun is probably without direct precedent in poetry. It is not seen
in Tang poetry; in the Song, it occurs once in a poem, whose date I do not know,
by Zhang Lei. It does occur four times in lyrics, but only one of these lyrics, by
Yuan Jiang (100883), could have been written during or before He Zhus
lifetime. (The agent screening the sun in Yuans lyric is not clouds but a gauzy
curtain.) If we look for references to screening off the moon, however, we find
at least one interesting precedent: this couplet by Bo Juyi:
Dewy bamboo steals the shadows of the lamp; / smoky pines screen the
brightness of the moon. 63 It is possible that Fanghuis line 175-2 was written with
this couplet in mind. One reason for picking out Bo Juyis couplet as a likely
inspiration for Fanghuis line is that screening the moon is nearly as rare a
phrase as screening the sun; there are few other precedents for using this verb
with such celestial objects. Metrical conformity between Fanghuis line 2 and Bos
screening the moon line (line 6 in his poem)both are B1 linesmay have
contributed to the recollection of the precedent. There is more: the final word in
each of Bos lines can be a verb, so one could read the couplet Dewy bamboo
steals the lamp to cast its image; / smoky pines screen the moon and are brightened.
Ming (brightness/bright/brighten) is commonly a verb, but ying (image/cast an

61 See Zhang Xiang, Shi ci qu yuci huishi, 9697. Zhang asserts the existence of a slight pause
between ruo and what follows it, offering as an example the poem under discussion.
62 Stephen Owens translation, Between rivers margins the waves churn level with the sky, /
wind-driven clouds over passes cast shadows touching earth, captures the power of the couplet
without attempting the impossible task of reflecting the syntax. Anthology, 434. Du shi xiangzhu,
4:17.1484.
63 , QTS, 14:449.5070.

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217

image) is usually a noun, so such a reading of the first line seems a bit forced.
However, tension between two lines that seem at first glance to have the same
structure but whose corresponding words dont have exactly the same range of
usage is common in Tang poetry; it constitutes one of the points of fascination in
parallel couplets.
 Fanghuis line 175-2 and Bos line 6, identical in meter and sharing a rare use of
the verb screen off, also stand in a relationship of opposition. The obvious
oppositions are between moon and sun, and brightness and shade. This leads to
a more interesting observation about perception. Pines in the night grow bright
from moonlight filtering through their branches, but clouds over the sun do the
opposite, if they are more than diaphanous stratus. Clouds that cover the sun
darken relative to what is behind them. If Fanghui turned smoky pines screen the
moon [and] brighten into Idle clouds screen the sun [and] darken, he has
achieved a subtle antithetical revision of a line by one of the most commonly read
poets of his time. Perhaps this is a typical Song Dynasty response to the anxiety
of influence. But Jonathan Chaves words are also applicable here: Sung poets
were more concerned than any of their predecessors to find precisely the right language
for the accurate evocation of a particular phenomenon or event, so that it could
not possibly be confused with another one. 64 Although this is only a scene
Fanghui imagined someone else was seeing as he paused in his journey away from
Xuzhou, he found the right words to bring it to life.
 This mixed motivation that involves both exceeding a predecessor (even if the
precedent is only deep in ones memory and not consciously before one) and
capturing the particularity of a scene in words can arguably be found in an AB
poem from the eighth month of 1085: On the Road Returning from
Yun to Xu. (Yunzhou was about 200 km north-northwest of Xuzhou.)65
177

Eighth month: there is a fresh rain passing;

A1
moving clouds tease out the evening cool.
B1
Mountains and rivers, now bright now dark;
(C6)
millet and broomcorn millet, half green half yellow.
D1

64 Not the Way of Poetry, 199, emphasis in the original. As Chaves points out on p. 212 in
the same article, experiential and literary modes of inspiration can play complementary and
interpenetrating roles. His essay should be read in conjunction with my Can Latecomers Get
There First? in the same issue of C.L.E.A.R., where the focus is on the complexities of literary
modes of inspiration.
65 5.12547; 5.4b.

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Going west, what was it all about?

A2
returning east, it is not my homeland.
(B2)
Amid the dust and dirt, vast and unending,
C2
no road where sheep are not being lost.
D1

Note:
177-8/ The losing of sheep signifies, in at least two ancient parables, the slipping away of some truth
that would have enabled one to make sense of contradictions or find the secret to life. The mention
of roads suggests that we look first to the Liezi, in which the tale is told of a man who sends out
hordes of people to search for his lost sheep. The sheep is not found; its owner reports to his
neighbor, Yang Zhu, that there were too many forks in the road, so they did not know which to take.
Yang Zhu appears to find this depressing, but his disciples cannot get him to tell them why. Later,
a man who understands Yang Zhu explains: where there are divergences, one should return to the
point before the differences appear: go back to where they are the same, restore the missing and
find the lost. 66 Another tale occasionally alluded to by Song poets is found in the Zhuangzi: two
boys lose their sheep, one because he was studying, the other because he was playing a gamethe
point is that although we may value one pursuit over another, they are equally injurious to the Way. 67
Fanghui appears to generalize from these stories a general despair over ever finding his way in life;
the reference to roads is especially appropriate for a journey poem.

The tonal violations in line 177-3 alert us to the possibility that these seemingly
simple descriptions of a landscape might conceal more complexity. When we read
this line together with the next one, we might notice that ming (meing3a) and qing
(tsheing4) rhyme 68 and that hui (hwei; dark) and huang (ghwang; yellow) begin with
dorsal spirants (one aspirated, one voiced). Perhaps the pairs ming-hui and
qing-huang have some significance.
 These two lines portray the movement of dark and bright across the landscape
and the green and yellow of crops in different fields. The movement of dark and
bright is an embodiment of the cycles of change we have already noted as important to He Zhu. The different states of the crops signify a transitional point in
time (between summer and autumn, growth and harvest), a favorite place for He
Zhu to situate a poem.
 Beyond that, however, there are other reasons why Fanghui might want to
stress his observation of the half green, half yellow crops, reasons related to our

66 A. C. Graham, tr., The Book of Lieh-tz, 17576. The story is a double parable; I have related
only the part pertaining to the sheep.
67 A. C. Graham, Chuang Tz, 2012; Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, 1012.
68 The numbers in subscript suggest that these syllables are merely slant rhyme; Su Shis collection contains three poems in which they do appear to rhyme: (1077),
(1078), and one titleless poem: SSSJ, 3:15.720; 3:16.821; and 8:addendum.2784, respectively.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

219

speculations on the rewriting of the Bo Juyi line in the previous poem. Despite the
seeming botanical precision of the translation, I have not found any poem prior to
He Zhu that treated millet and broomcorn millet as anything but a single term
for millet or for crops in general. Thus, he would be truly unique if he were distinguishing between them and saying that one kind of millet is still green while the
other is yellow and ready for harvest. It is more likely that he is saying different
fields are at different stages of growth or, perhaps, that they appear now yellow,
now grey/green/dark (qing has all these meanings), as the scattered clouds pass
over and cast their shadows. Whatever he is observing, Fanghui is finding precise
and unprecedented language to describe it; poets almost never talk about the color
of millet and broomcorn millet.
 In the one case I have found where a poet does mention their color, he says that
north and south of the village through which he is passing these crops are yellow.
That case is a 1079 poem by Huang Tingjian, whose work Fanghui must have
been aware of at this time, if not earlier. The poem was written on a journey,
expressing homesickness and lamenting how long the forking roads arenote
that Huangs commentator is prompted to mention the Liezi parable of the lost
sheep cited in our note to Fanghuis line 177-8. 69 These coincidences open up the
possibility that Fanghui, in his journey, remembered this poem and wished either
to capture the difference in the view he saw or show off his more precise power
of observation.
 The third couplet, marked by the non-regulated line 177-6, presents an extraordinarily complex case of parallelism-by-pun. Going west and returning
east stand in obvious antithesis. In fact, the antithesis is so strong that it may have
seemed wise to complicate the parallelism of the last three syllables of the two
lines. A literal translation of these last syllables will help us see the difficulty of
finding how the words correlate: truly what matter / isnt old homeland.
Truly, insofar as it marks an affirmative judgment, is relatively easy to grasp as
corresponding to the negation, isnt. 70 More subtle is the match between he shi
(what matter, or why) and gu xiang (old homeland). Out of the hundreds of
instances of he shi in Tang and Song poetry, three or four (all Tang) occur in parallel couplets and may illuminate Fanghuis strategy.71

, Shangu shi zhu, CSJC, 2252:bie.A.1011.

One precedent would be this third couplet in a pentametrical Regulated Verse by Wen Tingyun: Things of the seasonto be sure, a fine festival; / the flowers of
the yearnot my old garden. , QTS, 17:581.6742. Xin to be sure in the first line is
more or less equivalent to Fanghuis zhen truly. (In the context of the next line it also functions as
a concessive particle.)
71 To get a manageable amount of data, I got a rough impression of which words typically fill the
slot before the phrase he shi (like zhen in He Zhus line) and then searched for strings of each of those
words plus he shi. This had the advantage of giving me mostly lines that were like Fanghuis line in
structure.
69
70

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 This third couplet in a banquet song by Liu Changqing is a good place

to start: Drunken utterly[I dont] know what
matter; / [your] grace is profound[I have] forgotten this body, paraphrasable as
It is of no consequence that I am drunk; / because of my hosts favor, I have
been freed from my worldly cares. 72 The correlation of what and this could
be based on three features of the words: 1) they are both function words (not
verbs or substantives); 2) both could, in different contexts, function alone as
pronouns; and 3) this could be the answer to what/which.
 Let us now look at another example, from Liu Zongyuan (773819). It
is again the third couplet in an octave: Deep intoning
[of poetry], whats it matter, anyway? / Silence is what I want, for certain. 73 The fact
that the interrogative pronoun he and the relative objective pronoun suo can both
be translated what is coincidental, but their shared general classification as
function words is the key. In this example, we should also point out that shi can,
in other contexts, be a verb (to serve). It is likely that this justifies its being used
to match the verb yu to want in the next line. In fact, it may explain why this word
frequently functions as a noun in its own line but correlates with verbs, even in
regulated poems. This, as we shall see, is parallelism-by-pun.
 With these precedents in mind, let us return to He Zhus juxtaposition of he shi
and gu xiang in Going west, truly what matter? / returning east, isnt old homeland. Gu means not only past, former, old, but also therefore, for this reason. Using that meaning (though it is irrelevant in the context of the phrase old
homeland) allows us to match empty word against empty word. This is what
I call parallelism-by-pun. 74
 Since xiang and shi are both nouns, no such adjustment would seem to be
necessary to justify their pairing in this poem. However, they dont really belong
to the same class of objects, unless one considers affairs and home to be
antithetical on a scale of contentment. It may be significant that the character xiang
(pronounced with a different tone) can represent the verb to face. As noted
above, shi also can be a verb, so these two characters share a potential versatility.
 Although I think Li Pin and Liu Zongyuans precedents by themselves could
have stimulated He Zhus creative elaboration of their strategies, the following
heptametrical couplet by Du Fu might have helped him develop his sense of
borrowed parallelism: . A somewhat literal

, QTS, 5:148.1507.
, QTS, 11:352.3947.
74 The phenomenon of parallelism-by-pun has long been recognized. For examples (including
but not limited to the common color-word puns), see Wang Li, Shici gel, 43 and Ye Jun et al.,
Zhongguo shixue, 24950. The practice is called jie dui in Chinese and involves either 1) a pun
based on sound or 2) a pun based on two meanings of a character (one of which is relevant in
context and the other of which correlates with the corresponding character in the other line of the
couplet, as in the examples we have just discussed).
72
73

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221

translation would run A lone craneI know not whydances; / a starving

crowseemingly about to face mecries; a freer version that captures the normal
grammar of the second line better would read A lone crane dances for reasons
unknown; / a starving crow seems to want to cry at me. 75 (For) what matter
and facing/at person both modify the verb that follows them (or, in English,
precedes them: the crane dances for a reason; the crow cries towards someone).
Moreover, these phrases both indicate that the birds may be interacting with the
speaker in some way, though he cannot read the signs of conscious intention they
seem to present to him. This overall similarity in the function of the phrases could
be enough to override any breakdown in grammatical parallelism. There is another
justification, however. The verb xiang to face is probably grammaticalized in Du
Fus line to function more like our prepositions toward or at, as in cries at me.
As such, it falls into the vague category of empty words and matches he.
 Grammaticalization is not relevant to He Zhus line, but there is undoubtedly
an etymological relationship between gu former and gu becausecf. gushi, a
precedent, a former case that gives a reason for acting a certain way in the presentjust as there is an etymological relationship between xiang to face in order
to cry at. Contemplation of such relationships between the two meanings of a
punning word, whether in Du Fus couplet or similar examples, could have provided a further impetus for He Zhu to experiment.
The marvelous thing about this kind of parallel couplet is that the language
makes perfect sense as it stands, but when you start demanding that it follow the
rules of parallelism, the component characters obligingly reveal that they could
run off in all directions of signification. Perhaps it is the mere fact that those
characters have that trait that justifies their pairing through parallelism.
 In the next pentasyllabic Regulated Verse in his collection, written in the same
eighth month of 1085, Fanghui uses the reduplicative youyou (translated vast and
unending in line 177-7 above) at the head of the last line. This requires that he
end the poem with a B linethe second syllable must be level in order to accommodate youyou, and of course the line must end in a level-tone rhyme. If he
wants to end the poem this way but does not want to rhyme the first line of the
poem, he must use a CD opening. This is would be unremarkable if he were not
so much less inclined to use the CD configuration than the other Tang and Song
poets surveyed above. Here it is, then, in his travel poem Leaving from Wang Village
Early; On the Road, Sent to Li Zhifu. 76
178

The cock crows, sending forth the footmen and drivers;

(C6)

, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:11.944.

5.12547; 5.4b. Li Zhifu is Li Hui, to whom Fanghui would later send his Expanding on the
Four Sorrows, Poem 012.
75
76

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driving our horses, we cross the bank in front.

D1
Getting their rain, people plow early;
A1
bordering the hills, the sun rises late.
B1
How can we talk about stopping to rest?
C1
out of reach, all hope that we may rendezvous.
D2
I depend on the waters coming from the west,
A1
vast and unending, to console my longings.
B1

Notes:
178-2/ Pi, like the English word bank, can mean either embankment or pond, but the few times
bank in front is used in Tang and Song poetry, water is explicitly or implicitly in the picture. This
may be a pond in front of the compound where Fanghui has spent the night.
178-5/ Stopping to rest can be taken literally in the context of the journey, or it can be understood
figuratively, in the sense of giving up striving or giving up ones post.
178-7/ This line must refer to one of the two canals that flow east from the capital. The Guangji
Canal runs eastward into Liangshan Marsh . That is the area from which Fanghui
was returning when he wrote On the Road Returning from Yun to Xu (Poem 177, above). The other canal
is the Bian, flowing by south of Xuzhou. I think the Bian is the most likely referent for this line
because it is named in the title of a heptametrical Regulated Verse Fanghui wrote for the same man
in the same month of 1085. It would seem that in the space of a single month Fanghui went down
from Yun to somewhere on the Bian (perhaps near the capital), said good-bye to Li Hui with the
heptametrical poem, and then sent the present poem back to him. 77

The first couplet starts the poem awkwardly with a lone level tone in the fourth
position of line 178-1 and no compensating violations in line 2; it as if the poet
hasnt gotten the kinks out as his party sets out in the early morning. The rest
of the poem is tonally correct all the way through.
 In the second couplet, Fanghui describes the early-morning view. Semantically,
the parallelism is a bit loose (only early and late belong to the same semantic
field) but not problematic. More interesting is the reversal in logical relationships:
getting rain is a cause for the peasants to plow early, but the suns still bordering the
hills is the result of its rising slowly. Discovering this difference in how the ele-

77 Although we will show in the next chapter that the majority of the poems that give us our
initial glimpse of an acquaintance of He Zhu are heptametrical Regulated Verses, there is no certain
way to know that the sequence of poems is as we have postulated. The heptametrical poem is Poem
255, Left in Parting from Li Zhifu on the Bian, 6.12562; 6.6b.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

223

ments of each line are related to each other is part of the pleasure of reading the
parallel couplets of Regulated Verse.
There is a seeming breakdown of parallelism in the last three syllables of lines
178-5 and 6, what further talking and distant, without hoping. The key to
reconciliation is that the two strings actually say the same thing: there is no use
talking about X, and there is no hope for Y. On the level of meaning, then, correlation
is maintained. Euphonious tonal regulation in the couplet also keeps us moving
along. Still, the seeming looseness of the lexical correspondences reflects the
speakers stress as he contemplates his predicaments vis--vis his career and his
distant friend, Li Hui.
 This stress receives the consolation of the canal waters flowing from the direction of Li Hui in the last couplet, the only two lines in the poem that lack a
staccato entering-tone syllablein fact, no syllable in the last line has even a final
consonant, making one suspect that the sound pattern has at least a subliminal
onomatopoeic effect. Insofar as these particular syllables come in a particular
tonal sequence comprising an AB couplet, the poet had to use a CD or BD
opening to put this sequence where he wanted it at the end of the poem. A BD
opening would have diluted the uniqueness of the conclusion slightly by adding
one more rhyme to the poem; this could be another reason why Fanghui overcame his aversion to the CD opening in this case.

1087: IN THE CAPITAL

Fanghui leaves only two pentametrical Regulated Verses from Yuanyou 1 (1086),
both written on the way from Xuzhou to the capital (one AB, one DB); he leaves
only three from 1087, all written in the capital (and all AB). All are solitary musings,
even one poem written to show to a companion (in Yongcheng en route).
One poem stands out because it is the only one of these five that does not use
the phrases gu yuan old garden [at home] or xiang xin mindfulness of
home; instead, the nostalgia is for a former sojourn in the capital. In the seventh
month of 1087, we are told in the headnote, Fanghui was visiting two of the
imperial parks every day because he was attached to the Directorate of Palace
Buildings and had to inspect construction projects there. We know from a heptametrical Regulated Verse dated 1075 (Poem 232) that when he had lived in the
capital as a young man eighteen to twenty years old he had enjoyed the romantic
lustration festival in one of the imperial parks. Now, frequenting the same landscape, he is overcome by a feeling of loss and writes Thinking Back
on Old Excursions at the Western City. 78

78

5.12548; 5.6a. For Fanghuis early residence in the capital, see Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren

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CHAPTER THREE

The western suburb, borough of a heavenly fount:

A2
as in a mist, I regain my old wanderings.
B1
Marquisette and gauzespink caltrop dawn;
C1
strings and pipesmyriad cicada autumn.
D1
Willows block the paths to the swings;
A1
duckweed bogs down the lustration barges.
B1
Speak no more of the flowery years of youth;
(C4)
who will halt for us the eastward flowing waters?
D1

Notes:
184-1/ Heavenly is often an epithet for things associated with the capital. The heavenly fount is
Jinming Lake , excavated in 978 and used for naval exercises. The emperor would observe
these at various times, so bridges and palaces were added over the years. 79
184-5/ Swings were used by upper class ladies for recreation.
184-6/ in this line must be read in a level tone; otherwise this could not be a B line and the poem
would not be fully regulated. A commentary to the Book of Changes makes it a borrowing for the
level-tone chen to sink. Another commentator, Lu Deming (556627), uses the word ai
(to block) in glossing chen; perhaps Fanghuis use of ai in the corresponding position of line 5 is a
hint that he was drawing on these glosses on the Changes. 80
184-8/ Flowing rivers represent the inexorable passage of time; they flow east because that is the
direction in which most rivers in China flow.

The nearly perfect regulation of this poem probably reflects the fact that it celebrates an imperial site, though it is a personal reflection, not an offering to the
court. The single unregulated line (line 184-7) is actually very traditional: of seven
instances of speak no more in Tang poetry, only one does not occur in the
penultimate line of the poem. The phrase produces a string of three deflected
tones at the end of the line: met buk dauQ (or met bouH dauQ). This is a strong
interruption to the flow of regulated lines. Resumption of regulated meter in line

He Zhu yanjiu, 4647.

79 Song shi, 1:4.58 notes the edict for excavating the lake; 2:17.326 records the cessation of
building or repairing bridges and palaces there on March 2 1088. This halt was called out of pity for
the workers in cold weather, so it might have been temporary. See Changbian, 12:408.8b (4199a).
80 See Lynn, Classic of Changes, 320, from which I take my translation of bog down, and Ruan
Yuan, Shisan jing zhushu, 1:42c and 101a.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

225

184-8 supports poetic closure. Beyond that, in the context of this poem, the sound
pattern adds force to the speakers resolution to not get mired down in the
thoughts or emotions that have threatened to overwhelm him.
 The middle couplets are suitably elegant, but powerful: the pink caltrop blossoms remind the poet of the fine clothing worn by women during outings at the
park, just the buzzing of cicadas recalls the music played there. The power lies in
the order of presentation: what is absent (the marquisette gauzes and musical
instruments) dissolves into what is present in their stead (flowers and singing
insects). The third couplet restates the theme of discontinuity: the paths to the
ladies swings are now blocked by overgrown willows, and the boats used during
the gay lustration festivals lie unused among the duckweed. Nostalgia requires the
creation of discontinuities.
The fuxi festival, translated as lustration in line 184-6, plays an important role
in Fanghuis lyrics; out of eleven uses of this term in Tang and Song lyrics, five
occur in his works; two out of twelve references to splashing skirts (jian qun
) in the same festival are in his lyrics. The fuxi ablutions were an occasion for
women to perform dances and for partygoers to float wine cups to each other on
little channels of water. This is the erotic heritage celebrated by He Zhu.81
 Whether the poet had been allowed to participate in the most exclusive gatherings at the park in the past is unknowable. We also cannot tell whether things
had really fallen into such disrepair in 1087. Undoubtedly the death of Shenzong
on 1 April 1085 had put an end to officially sponsored celebrations for a while;
perhaps it was this hiatus that had permitted the construction or restorations in
which Fanghui was involved.

108890: THE LIYANG AND JINLING AREA

Between the fourth month of 1088 and the twelfth month of 1090 (Yuanyou 3 to
5), as he was working with local militia in Hezhou on the west side of the Yangzi

81 See Wolfram Eberhard, Local Cultures, 3335, James Liu, The Poetry of Li Shyang-yin, 13839, and
Yao Peiqian, Leiye, 4.7b9a. The festival was supposed to take place on the third day of the third
month. Imperial visits to the parks, however, were by no means tied to this date. A perusal of the
Song shi Annals reveals that imperial visits to Jinming Lake took place most commonly in the fifth
and sixth monthsthe express purpose usually being to view naval exercises. Recorded
third-month imperial visits to the lake do not take place on the third day. We find one on the seventeenth in 983 and another on the twelfth in 991. After this, they are scheduled for even later in the
month, but at a consistent time. There is a visit on the twenty-sixth in 992; then imperial visits were
cancelled on the twenty-sixth of the third month in 1089, the twenty-seventh in 1090, and the
twenty-eighth in 1091. The last visit recorded in the Annals is on the 20th in 1097. (The visits exhibit
even less of a pattern on the solar calendar, the dates ranging from 19 April to 9 May. They are also
not tied to the day of the month whose cyclical designation ends in si, so there was no attempt to
restore the ancient schedule.)

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and keeping in touch with monks and other friends on the east side in Jinling,
Fanghui wrote twenty-one pentametrical Regulated Verses that are preserved in
his collection. This is comparable to the seventeen poems in this genre he kept
from his three years in Xuzhou. In both Hezhou and Xuzhou, the largest number
is kept from the final year of his stay: nine from 1085 (Xuzhou) and eleven from
1090 (Hezhou). This may reflect an increase in the number of friends with whom
he could exchange poems locally, or a more relaxed attitude toward his official
duties as he gained experienceand anticipated being reassigned after the customary three-year term.
 The first poem we have from Liyang establishes in the first couplet that the poet
is now in the south: it leads off with the marshland of Chu and the calid wind.
It is titled On Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village and was composed
twenty li west of the prefectural seat on the last day of the fourth month of
Yuanyou 3 (22 May 1088). 82
185

In a marshland of Chu, after a calid wind,

A1
groves and bottom-land, within the sunset rays.
B1
The boat of a fisherman works along the green bank;
C2
the routes of birds curve around a desolate hill.
D2
Too long have I neglected the pleasure in the cup;
A1
always do I steal leisure on my horse.
B1
Far, far away, the road to Whitegate;
(C6)
when will be the day I return with goosefoot staff?
D1

Notes:
185-1/ The south wind is calid (warm), according to a song composed by the sage-emperor Shun. 83
185-2/ I suspect that groves and bottom-land has a southern flavor to it. Gao, translated bottom-land here, occurs nine times in the Chu ci. The single lyric by He Zhu that uses the phrase

82 5.1254849; 5.6a. For the location of the village, see Chen Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 2:7.362. Chen
also quotes two other Song Dynasty poems on the temple at the village. Fanghui will write a heptametrical Quatrain there in the fifth month (perhaps a day or two after this poem; Poem 485). See
Liyang dianlu 2:8.453.
83 Kongzi jiayu, CSJC, 508:8.205.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

227

groves and bottom-land also mentions the Yangzi River (prompting Zhong Zhenzhen to date its
composition to this period in Liyang or later). 84 The phrase is rare in poetry. The only other poems
in which I find it are two works by Huang Tingjian; the fact that they were composed in 1083 in
Taihe, 360km south of the Yangzi River in Jiangnan West Circuit, supports my speculation that
groves and bottom-land evokes a southern landscape. 85
185-7/ Whitegate was an historical site about 75 km ESE of Xuzhou. The road to Whitegate went
by the retreat of Zhang Tianji, a friend of both He Zhu and Su Shi. 86
185-8/. The one poet who refers to returning with goosefoot staff (like He Zhu) is Liu Changqing,
mentioned above in connection with On the Road Returning from Yun to Xu. 87

On Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village begins with a parallel couplet. Marshland of

Chu may seem a poor correlation to groves and bottom-lands, but because the
proper noun Chu is also a common noun meaning thorny trees or thickets,
marshland of Chu in line 185-1 could be re-read as thorn-trees and marshland, a good parallel to groves and bottom-lands in line 2. Fanghui is still
enthralled by the way parallelism-by-pun can produce multiple readings of a line.
 Parallelism in the opening couplet has the potential danger of slowing the poem
down before it really gets started. Fanghui gets away with parallelism in these two
lines because each one is a temporal or locative phrase that creates the expectation
of a main clause after it. We must continue reading to find out what happens after
the wind and among the shining of the setting sun.
 A series of three parallel couplets that moves along so smoothly must be interrupted so the poem can end. Fanghui achieves this interruption in line 185-7.
The mild metrical violation there constitutes a braking on the formal level; it
also underscores the unexpectedness of He Zhus reference to Whitegate Road,
which belongs to another time and place in the poets life. One wonders whether
the average reader would have known where Whitegate Road was, other than far,
far away from Liyang. Given the fact that Su Shi had surely made Zhang Tianji
and the Whitegate Road that led to his retreat on Yunlong Hill famous, we should
have some confidence that Fanghuis reference would have been recognized. On
the other hand, is the audience for this poem the average reader? Though he
does not say so, we can guess that Fanghui sent a copy to Zhang Tianji; but the
poem presents itself first and foremost as the poets experience and thoughts
recorded for no one but himself (and us). He (and we who care about him) will

84

Dongshan ci, 32829.

, Shangu shi zhu, 2250:wai.13.299; and
2251:waibu2.4748. In both poems Huang clearly has in mind a passage in the Zhuangzi that speaks
of the pleasures of groves and bottom-lands; that does not mean he was unaware of the phrases
regional overtones (if our supposition is correct), and the fact remains that he never used it elsewhere.
86 See Su Shis (1077), SSSJ, 3:15.748, in which he tells us he is taking a
sedan chair along Whitegate Road to visit Zhang.
87 See his , QTS, 5:147.152728. Liu places this phrase in the middle of
a twelve-line poem, and in context it has none of the closural effect that Fanghui achieves.
85

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know about Whitegate Road.

 A sudden departure near the end of a poem risks misleading us into thinking the
poem might go on to other themes. If it has curtailed the forward motion of the
poem, it too must be contained. The following and final linewhen will be the
day I return with goosefoot staff?still refers to Zhangs faraway retreat, but it
uses reliable devices to signal closure: the word return, with its implication of
retirement, and the unanswerable but evocative question.
 Often the third couplet is where the poet introduces a little twist to the
progress of the poem, or where particularly interesting language is used. On
Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village does not follow that patternor rather, the effect
of the shift from the landscape to musings on the pleasure in the cup and stolen
leisure on my horse in the third couplet is muted significantly by the surprise
introduction of Whitegate Road into line 185-7. The third couplet of the next
poem from Hezhou (written in the northern end of the prefecture) is in exactly the
same meter as the third couplet in On Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village, but in its
overall context it has more prominence. The couplets Tang-style ambiguity of
syntax invites our careful appreciation.
 The poem is titled Inscribed on the Wall of a Peasants House in
Zhuge Vale. 88
186

By evening I cross Kongming Vale,

D2
And in a grove call on the old farmers.
B1
I walk, brunting a path of fallen leaves,
(C4)
and sit, hearing a bell across the River.
D2
The cottage in backa lampweaving still;
A1
the beck in fronta streamhulling away.
B1
No more interest in this errant service;
C2
Ill settle in seclusion here, if youll kindly allow it.
D2

88 5.12549, 5.6a. The headnote explains that the full name of the valley is Zhuge Liang Vale and
that it is eighty li north of Wujiang , opposite Stony Head, the landmark hill northwest of
Jinling. This poem is in Qian Zhongshus Song shi xuanzhu, 102 and is translated with extensive notes
by Kako Riichir in Ganlan 9:6166.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

229

Note:
186-1/ Kongming is the cognomen of Zhuge Liang, for whom the valley is named.

The third couplet is more complicated than it looks. One could see the lamp in
line 186-5 as the evidence that someone in the cottage is still working at the loom.
The corresponding water/ stream, however, is not evidence that rice is being
hulled. Perhaps we infer the presence of a stream in the gully from the sound of
a tilt-hammer hulling rice. The lamp in one line is visible evidence for weaving, just
as the pounding in the next line is evidence for water; but the corresponding terms
are in the reverse order. This is not without precedent. Consider Du Fus line
A wind rises: spring lanterns are in disarray; / the River
sings: night rain hangs down. 89 The rising wind is the cause of the lanterns disarray, but the sound coming from the river is the effect of the rain suspended from
above.
There are critical differences between Fanghuis couplet and Du Fus. Du Fu
names two actions in each line; we have to figure out the relationship between the
actions. 90 Fanghui names only one action per lineweaving or hulling; what we
have to figure out it the relationship between the action and the nounlamp or
water, respectivelythat seems associated with it. If we encountered Fanghuis
line 186-6 in isolation we would surely see the water as the agent of the action: the
water hulls [grain] by itself. We even have the precedent of this unambiguous line
by Bo Juyi: At the Cloud-tilt-hammer, no person; the water
pounds by itself. 91 Yet the lamp in Fanghuis line 186-5 cannot weave. Is the syntax
of the two lines irreconcilable?
 The solution, I think, is to see the lamp and the water as enabling means, with the
agents of the action implied: [By means of a] lamp, [a woman] is still weaving; /
[powered by] water, [a tilt-hammer] is pounding by itself. (The associations
between female labor and weaving and between tilt-hammers and pounding or
hulling are so strong that we are confident in supplying specific nouns as the
agents.)
 Note that our analysis does not stifle Bo Juyis precedent. Fanghui may think I
shall use his words in the same order but make them work differently, but Bos
words still whisper their alternative structure. This, though, is the way parallel lines
within a poem often work, and why this type of language always seems to express

, Du shi xiangzhu, 3:15.1266.

Admittedly, Du Fus couplet may contain a more complex scrambling of elements: perhaps it
is the wind in the first line that causes the River in the second line to make its sounds, and the rain
in the second line that destroys the lanterns in the first line. This is only a secondary level of meaning,
however. The couplet makes sense without such deep exploration.
91 , QTS, 13:440.4899. Bo explains in a note that Mt. Lu has a great deal of mica
and that a water-driven pestle is used to pound it. Cloud, then, comes from yunmu, cloud-mother,
or mica. Mica was pulverized for use in medicine. In 1094 Su Shi will take Bos line and shorten it
to five syllables by removing wu ren there are no persons. See his , SSSJ, 6:38.2063.
89
90

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something just beyond definition. When, in the context of a corresponding term

that has a different grammatical range of possibilities, a word is forced to function
in a new way, the tension between its contingent function and its normal usage
never disappears. The water that runs through the evening gloom of Zhuge Vale
is eternally pulled between the role of agency it had in the verbatim water pounds
by itself by Bo Juyi and the role of enabling means forced upon it here by the
corresponding placement of the lamp in line 186-5.
 Surely it is clear that this couplet could not have come in any other position in
the poem. If it and the second couplet were reversed, the quiet simplicity of I
walk, brunting a path would have seemed anticlimactic. Furthermore, any
metrical change within the couplet would necessitate a disastrous change in the
wording. Therefore, the poem could only have this sequence of lines: X, B, C, D,
A, B, C, D. The choice to rhyme the first line was probably driven by a desire to
use the name of the valley. That is not only appropriate for setting the scene; it
gives He Zhu the chance to use a word, hong vale, that almost never appears in
poetry. (It is likely that once he decided to use this name, the rhyme category was
derived from it.) The fun does not end there, however. The name Zhuge Vale
would force a non-regulated meter: (D6). Therefore, Fanghui
playfully renames the place Kongming Vale (see the note to line 186-1).
 The LiyangJinling period gives us two of the three BD pentametrical Regulated Verses in Fanghuis corpus. While it may seem a little perverse to give special
attention to a form our poet obviously didnt like, doing so gives us some insights
into the considerations that attended the selection of a form. One poem was
written for an otherwise obscure individual named Pan Xiaoben , who was
serving in the Guangnan Circuit in the remote south:
Climbing Bozi Hill in Wujiang and Thinking of Pan Jingren. 92 To judge by the last
line of the poem, Pan and Fanghui may have been from the same hometown in the
north, or, if not Gongcheng specifically, at least Weizhou, on the northern bank
of the Yellow River near the southern end of Hebei West Circuit.
192

Driving my chariot on Bozi Hill,

B1
I crane my neck to gaze southeast.
(D4)
The lone sconce wears cold sunlight;
(A4)

92 5.12550; 5.7b. Fanghui had seen Pan off from Jinling with a heptametrical Regulated Verse in
the third month of 1088 (see Poem 279, 6.12566; 6.12b), and he had sent a poem to him in the first
month of 1089 (Poem 189, 5.12549; 5.7a).

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

231

the Long River flows in a great wasteland.

(B2)
My old friend has crossed the Five Hauses;
(C3)
a far-faring goose tarries in the Three Xiang.
(D4)
Await the spring winds warmth
A1
and well return to that northland.
(B2)

Notes:
192-5/ The Five Hauses are part of the mountain divide that stretches across southern Jiangxi and
Hunan and northern Guangdong and Guangxi. One generally crosses one of these crests to pass
between the Middle Yangzi and Lingnan Basins.
192-6/ The Three Xiang are three areas in the middle and lower Xiang River drainage area in
southern Hunan, but the term also refers generally to the Xiang RiverDongting Lake region.

Earlier, we suggested that one reason to avoid the BD form was that it required
three B lines, the B line being the most restrictive single line type insofar as the
first syllable must be a specific tone (level). In this poem, however, Fanghui is not
cowed by three B lines; he simply violates the meter in two of them. In fact there
are only two lines in the entire poem that are regulated. However, all the violations
are in the middle syllable, after the caesura, and all the violations in the middle
couplets can be said to compensate for each other; they do not upset the overall
structure of the poem. I think the violations in the poem do have important
emotional effects and are well-considered. The strings of three level syllables in
lines 192-2 (gaze southeast) and 192-6 (tarries in the Three Xiang) are associated with anxious thoughts about a faraway friend. The string of three deflected
syllables in line 192-5 (crossed the Five Hauses) reflects the seriousness of
entering the malarial south. The lone level and deflected tones in lines 192-3 and
4, respectively, suggest a certain agitation. In the final line, I believe the placement
of the violation on the word huan return accentuates that word as the one of
greatest import: they must not despair, but hold onto the conviction that Pan will
return healthy and that they can both go home with the springtime breezes.
 The third couplet, My old friend has crossed the Five Hauses; / a far-faring
goose tarries in the Three Xiang, must be comparing Pan Xiaoben to a migrating
goose who will return north as sure as the seasons turn. Neither Pan nor Fanghui
is literally in the Xiang River area, but that region can be considered to represent
the general phenomenon of exile. 93 The commiseration and encouragement

93 For the regions unhappy fame as a region of exile, see A Millenium of XiaoXiang Laments
in Alfreda Murk, Poetry and Painting in Song China, 627.

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implied in the poem would not have been ambiguous to Pan, if this poem reached
him.
The other BD poem of the period originated in a journey to a temple with a
poet-monk whose poetry Su Shi would praise eleven years later. His religious
name was Daotong . Fanghui says that Daotong enjoyed making poems and
had been going about with him for a very long time . That Fanghui
would have a poetry groupie following him around seems odd only because of
his relatively humble status as an official; as a poet we cannot doubt that he would
attract a fellow lover of verse. If this Daotong is the Daotong to whom Su Shi
presented a poem in 1101, he was a fine poet. 94 This may explain the fastidiousness with which Fanghui made his lines regulated.
 The poem is Going to an Incense Grove [Buddhist Temple]
with Master Daotong, On Horseback. 95
195

Ice and frost: the climate of the solar node lags

B1
When it is early spring in Huai-Chu.
D1
Whitened grass: urgent is the bluster of the wind;
A1
yellowish clouds: dangling are the beams of the sun.
B1
Sound of birds thrown to an ancient sconce;
C1
strength of horse wearied on long slopes.
D2
I have that terror of Exhortations to the Official;
A2
overtaxing your lifeyou do that recklessly.
B1

Notes:
195-1/ The first lunar month of Yuanyou 5, when this poems was written, corresponds to 3 February3 March 1090. The solar node Fanghui refers to must therefore be yushui rain and water
(around 19 February). 96 Fanghui is probably saying, Here in Hezhou, we have ice and frost when
we should have rain and water, so the seasons are behind schedule.

See Sus , SSSJ, 7:45.2451 and Kong, Su Shi nianpu, 3:40.139293.

5.12550; 5.8a.
96 Lichun inception of spring falls in the first month of Yuanyou 5, too, but only a couple
of days away from New Years. It is unlikely that Fanghui would be away from his family then. See
the convenient chart in Cohen, Introduction to Research in Chinese Source Materials, 412, and the associated discussion of the importance of the twenty-four solar nodes as the only practical agricultural
calendar, on p. 415.
94
95

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

233

195-2/ Huai-Chu is the area around the juncture of the Huai River and the Grand Canal near Song
Chuzhou. This couplet must be contrasting the wintry weather in Liyang to the early spring
weather in Chuzhou (where the poet and Daotong had been together at some time previously?). 97
195-34/ The parallelism of wind-head (the force or blast of wind) and sun-legs (the rays of the
sun) is impossible to maintain in translation.
195-56/ Wang Anshi, writing about a spring on a mountain, describes its sound as being thrown
to a forest. 98 Earlier, Ma Dai (jinshi 844) referred to sound being thrown to the clouds. 99
These are the only linkages of this verb with sound that I have been able to find prior to He Zhu.
Either or both poems could have been known to our poet. A common meaning of tou would yield
[Amid] the sound of birds, [we] put up at a sconce for line 5, but syntactical parallelism with line
6 would be impossible.
195-7/ In 1037, Mei Yaochen wrote that the Exhortations to the Official terrified him (he uses the
same verb, wei) more than tigers. 100

If we understand lines 195-1 and 2 correctly (see notes), they make a clever
opening couplet, one that has the important function of marking the friendship
of the poet and Daotong: they share past knowledge of the spring weather in
Huai-Chu, and so they both understand how behind schedule the weather in
Hezhou is by comparison. This alone might justify the rare BD opening.
 Another justification is the preservation of the ABCD middle couplets in their
given order. (The use of a CD opening would have the same effect, but the
first-line rhyme that highlights the climate comparison would be lost.) Although
the second couplet is so striking that we might think it would work just as well as
a third coupletwhere we have often seen Fanghui place his most interesting
languageit needs to be where it is in order to set the scene, which really has not
been done yet. As the middle couplets stand, they give us a satisfying progression
from vastness down to the scale of man and beast, from the things seen in the
distance (grass and clouds) to things heard nearby and felt in the body (bird songs
and the weariness of horse).
 The third couplet is by no means something to pass over lightly, as our note to
lines 195-67 shows. In fact, the Wang Anshi couplet mentioned there may be
more than just a precedent for throwing sound; it could be the starting point for
an allusive twist by He Zhu. Wangs couplet is
Its lingering sound is thrown to the forest, on the verge of wind and rain;

97 The weather in the region of the Huai and Yellow Rivers was drier and warmer than usual
from the mid tenth century to the beginning of the twelfth century. See Qu Yilin, Huang Huai Hai
pinyuan lishi dili, 2836. I have no comparable data on the Liyang area.
98 See , Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 12.182. This poem was probably written around the time
of He Zhus birth, to judge by the fact that the Nine Wells of the title is in the western part of Shu
Prefecture , where Wang was vice-prefect then. See Shen Qinhan, Wang Jinggong shiwen Shenshi
zhu, 3839.
99 This quatrain is titled . QTS, 17:556.6453. Ma Dai was known as a master of the
pentametrical Regulated Verse.
100 , Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:7.100. Guanzhen can also be exhortations from
officials to the throne, but that meaning is not relevant to Meis poem or Fanghuis.

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/ its waning force rolls up the soil, like a runoff channel. The character used to
write the word roll up represents several different words whose pronunciations
(gwan3bx/gwanQ3a /kwanQ3by/kwanH3bx) are close to tired (gwanH3bx). The
correlation of throw and roll up in Wangs couplet might have suggested the
correlation of throw and tired in Hes. If Fanghui had Wangs poem in the
back of his mind, the reduction of a thundering waterfall and what seems to be
debris flow through a small gorge to bird twitters and a tired horse would have
been an insiders joke that increased the pleasure of the poem.
 The last couplet seems to chide Daotong for coming along on this journey
when he has no obligation to strain himself in service to the state. This gesture to
Daotong must have pleased the monk, though we might feel let down after the
three complex and expressive couplets that precede this one.
A farewell poem of the fourth month of the same Yuanyou 5 (1090) is much
more relaxed. Written at Wujiang for a man on his way upriver to Jiangxia, it omits
the usual laments over the poets career and his poverty. Despite the fact that
Fanghui will dread going to Jiangxia and its mint six years hence,
Seeing Zuo Yu off for Jiangxia as Commandant seems designed to cheer the traveler. 101
197

Bobbing lightly, a Greyquill Boat,

(D3)
Standing erect, Brown Crane Tower.
(B2)
The landscape there is truly noble and clean;
(C6)
the people call to mind a dashing elegance.
D1
Fine brew will dispel your longing for home;
A1
new poems will be inscribed on haunts of the past.
(B2)
If there is fish, I know you wont dine on it
C1
but make of it a courier for letters.
D1

Notes:
197-1/ The Greyquill Boat (a boat with carved and painted pelican designs on it) is associated with
Jiangxia through the story of the Lord of E (Jiangxia), who was riding in such a boat when he heard
his boatwoman singing a song in her native language of the southeast. Upon having it translated into

101

5.12551; 5.8b.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

235

the Chu language, he discovered that she had amorous feelings for him, which he thereupon reciprocated. 102
197-2/ The Yellow/Brown Crane Tower is still a famous landmarks in the city we know as Wuhan.
197-4/ The people are personages associated with the history and culture of Ezhou.
197-6/ The reference to old haunts suggests either that Zuo had been to Jiangxia before or that
new places for excursions will seem old and familiar after Zuo has been there for a time.
197-78/ The convention that fish can carry letters is an old poetic conceit. Line 7 may contain a
joking reference to the song of Feng Xuan, mentioned in our chapter on Songs: Long hylte, long
hylte, lets homeward hie, / Theres no chariot for me to ryde; / Theres no fish on which to dyne.

The Greyquill Boat shows both Fanghuis careful attention to the specifics of the
occasionZuo Yu is going to Jiangxiaand his impulse to be himself. The
Greyquill Boat is seen in Fanghuis poetry far more often than in other writers.
Greyquill Boat appears in two of He Zhus lyrics 103 and two of his poems (in
addition to the present one). One of these poems was written in Jiangxia, showing
again that Fanghui associates the allusion with Ezhou. 104 Other writers are not
always so fastidious (or perhaps some version of the Greyquill Boat had spread up
and down the Yangzi over the centuries); for example, a poem by Ouyang Xiu
refers to riding on a Greyquill in the Suzhou area (a long way downstream from
Jiangxia). 105
 The expression qingsa, translated noble and clean in line 197-3, is without
precedent in either poetry or lyric so far as I can determine; before this time it
appears only in prose, with the sense of to cleanse. Nevertheless, it is not a difficult or obscure term in the context, and it aptly matches the multivalent fengliu,
dashing elegance in line 4.
 The tonal violations in the first three lines and the loose parallelism in the
middle couplets contribute to the easy tone of the poem. Laxity in parallelism
compensates for the fact that the first couplet is semantically parallel; strict parallelism in all of the first three couplets could easily be an overload. Perhaps the
fact that four out of the five violations in the poem substitute a level tone for a
deflected tone also lightens the mood somehow.
Since in the Xuzhou period we raised the special problems of writing poems in

102 The story is imbedded in an exemplary tale of admonition in Liu Xiang, ed., Shuo yuan, CSJC,
527:11.10911. (In what strikes me as an unusual attempt at verisimilitude, the song is first quoted
in the original languageor at least a string that purports to mimic the language of the southeast.)
A nearly complete edition of the Shuo yuan might have been restored and available to He Zhu in
manuscript if he did not have a fragmentary copy in his library. See Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 444.
However, the story would also have been familiar through earlier poetic allusions, as in Han Hong
(eighth cent.), , QTS, 8:245.2757.
103 Yulianhuan and Jianzi Wan xisha (no. 11), Dongshan ci 3.33132 and 3.395.
104 The Jiangxia poem is the second of nine 1098 pentametrical Quatrains under the title
Variations on Bamboo-Branch Lyrics: Nine Poems, Poem 424. When the boat appeared in the second of
two 1086 works under the title Harmonizing with Du Zhongguans qing-character Poems: Two Poems, (Poem
085, 3.12525; 3.4a;), the need to use qing (green/grey) was more important than geographical
linkages.
105 , Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji 5.380.

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pairs (see pp. 204ff), we shall close our discussion of the Liyang period with the
following pair of poems, AB and CD in format:
Mooring the Boat at Dangli Port to Wait for the Wind for Several Days, during
which I Thought of my Friends and Companions in the City: Two Poems. Dangli Port is the
port for Liyangthe poets note locates the poem in Liyang.106
201

A single bark puts up at the ferry;

(A3)
angry waveshow can one board?
(B6)
The mornings wind is divined by the brew flag;
C2
nights cooking is begged from the fishers lamps.
D2
Ox Holm greets the new moon;
A2
the Qin-Huai I imagine forming ice.
B1
Old friends are in dreams of other nights;
C1
songs and music filled Jinling.
D1

Notes:
201-3/ Taverns were marked by a flag.
201-5/ Ox Holm is a rocky promontory on the opposite side of the river. Because the Yangzi is
relatively narrow between Liyang and Ox Holm, several armies crossed here at important junctures
in Chinese history, including the army that subdued the Southern Tang in the tenth century. But,
if there is a slight wind, the waves rise and it is impossible to proceed. 107 New moon in this line
refers to the emerging moon at the beginning of the lunar month.

This first poem is very much tied to the specifics of the situation: the tedium of
waiting for the chop to subside takes up the first half of the poem; then, in the
third couplet, Ox Holm on the opposite side of the river and the Qin-Huai River
fifty li downstream in Jinling lead his thoughts step-by-step to his past excursions
to Jinling with his friends.
 The second poem shows the poet turning inward. Now he speaks only of
parting, not of the crossing that links him to the future and to the past, as in the
first poem.

106 5.12551; 5.9b. Since Fanghui mentions choppy water in line 2 of the first poem, he must have
been waiting for an upstream wind to die down as much as for a favorable wind to push him down
to the Grand Canal.
107 Lu You, South China in the Twelfth Century, 7576; Ru Shu ji, 2.34

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

202

237

The sorrow of parting cannot be shaken off;

(C4)
putting down my brew, I climb up alone to overlook.
D2
The tide drops: the River is empty and vast;
A2
clouds in profusion: the year grows late and dim.
B1
A mournful owl watches over the fishers baulk;
(C6)
An angry dog bolts from the gods grove.
D2
All that meets my eyes adds to sadness and despair;
A1
Ill just do my intoning by the marshes.
B1

Notes:
202-5/ Chinese bird terminology is often inconsistent. The term Fanghui uses, chi, can designate
other birds, although none of them eats fish, as far as I know. There are piscivorous owls in East
Asia, so owl is surely the best we can do here.
202-6/ The gods grove is apparently a shrine. I have not found angry dogs in any other Chinese
poems.
202-7/ Qiduan, translated sadness and despair, is found in Tang poets only of the earlier years (Yu
Shinan [558638], Liu Yizhi [61387], Luo Binwang [62284], and Chen
Ziang [659700 or 661702]), not in the usual predecessors for He Zhu. Qin Guan uses
Fanghuis entire phrase, and in the same final position of the line: The soft
susurrus of tong tree tops adds to sadness and despair. 108

The owl and the dog are points of concentrated interest in the vast landscape
depicted in the second coupleta landscape with none of the destination points
we saw in the first poem. The owl and the dog seem to have no poetic significance, no inherited cultural import. The poet is surely reporting things he
observed as he climbed up to view the River, things that stuck in his mind and
carried a definite emotional meaning. The owl is mournful, but ready to kill; the
dog is angry and bursting violently out of the grove.
 The second poem ends not with songs and music filling Jinling, uniting
people in fellowship. Rather, Fanghui once again identifies himself with Qu Yuan,
intoning by the marshes, unheard and unheeded. There is a significant metrical
difference between the poems in this pair, also. The first poem uses the preferred

108 Qin Guans poem is , Huaihai ji, 9.8ab (36b). We cannot tell
whether Qins poem precedes He Zhus or not.

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AB opening; the second the shunned CD opening. We already know that

Fanghuis avoidance of CD openings is unusual; during the Liyang/Hezhou period his employment of this form drops to five percent. (His use of the AB
opening rises at the same time to sixty-six percent, versus fifty-nine percent in
Xuzhou.) We could imagine several reasons for choosing to make line 202-1 an
(unregulated) C line, . The three deflected tones after the caesura fit
a mood cannot be shaken off (and there are three more deflected tones heading
the next line); the poet wanted to highlight the sorrow of parting li3b ou3b and
climb to overlook teng1 lem3 (202-2) as the most essential elements of the
poems situation by isolating them with six deflected tones between them; and
only a line sequence of XDABCDAB will enable the poet to end the eighth line
with intoning by the marshes, and if the first line is not to rhyme (there seems
to be no good reason why it should), it will be a C line. Surely Fanghui was not
conscious of some of these reasons, and surely he had others. I propose them
simply as suggestions to explain what we might have felt if he had been able to
hear him chant his poem in eleventh-century Chinese.

THE CAPITAL
Fanghuis production of pentametrical Regulated Verses drops after he leaves
Liyang. He writes three in Jinling in the first month of Yuanyou 6 (1091), and then
we have no pentametrical regulated Verses until the ninth month, after his promotion to the civil side of the bureaucracy, when he writes one remarkable poem
in celebration. Then, on the emperors birthday in the last month of the year, he
writes a poem to a Wang Xiang back in Liyang. 109 For Yuanyou 7 (1092),
there are only two poems relevant to this chapter. We shall want to look at both,
since they are different from what we have seen so far: one ignores parallelism in
the third couplet; the other is a pail, or extended Regulated Verse. 110

109 There are several Song people named Wang Xiang, but not enough is known about them to
identify any of them as Fanghuis friend. Fanghui had addressed four pentametrical Regulated
Verses to this individual as he was leaving Liyang and Jinling the previous year, along with one
heptametrical Regulated Verse and a Song. The birthday of Zhezong was on the seventh of the
twelfth month, actually, but it was celebrated on the eighth as the Rising Dragon Festival ,
which is what Fanghui calls it. See James Hargett, A Chonrology of the Reigns and Reign-Periods,
28, for Zhezongs birthdate and the Song huiyao, Li 57.18 (2:1601a) for the establishment of this
festival in 1085, after the eight-year-old emperors accession.
110 Out of these seven poems, three have the AB structure, two have the DB structure, and the
other two are BD and CD.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

239

1091: CIVIL CLASSIFICATION

As we already know, Su Shi, Fan Bolu, and Li Qingchen supported He Zhus
promotion to the civil side of the bureaucracy around the eighth month. In the
ninth month, Fanghui wrote After Changing Official Classification:
Proffered to Acquaintances and Old Friends. 111
209

That year, needlessly I threw away my brush.

B1
On swordsmanship did I expound, spirit spanning the autumn.
D2
I arrogated to myself the physiognomy of Tiger Head;
(A3)
who would enfeoff me as Duke of Dragon Forehead?
(B2)
I somehow left the ranks of Kuai and the rest;
(C4)
brazenly joined the circles of poets.
(D4)
Wait a little, and Policy Advisor Gao
A1
will receive due merit and reputation in his late years.
B1

Notes:
209-1/ To throw away the writing brush is to free oneself from shuffling documents on the civil
side of government and serve ones country through military exploits. 112
209-2/ Expounding on swords often means to vigorously express ones wisdom on military
matters. See this line from a 1084 poem by Qin Guan: Discoursing on soldiers,
expounding on swords, he rushed about the lakes and seas. 113
209-3/ In the Ban Chao saga (alluded to in line 1), a physiognomist tells Ban that he has the chin
of a swallow and the head of a tiger. 114

111

5.12553; 5.11a. See Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ci ren He Zhu yanjiu, 50 and 61n.
The expression throw away the writing brush is usually traced to the biography of Ban
Chao (33103), Hou Han shu, 6:47.1571. Ban achieved great success against threats to Han
power from Central Asia.
113 , Huaihai ji, 6.4b (25a). As Nakata Yjir points out (Shin Ikai shibun nempo,
414), this poem may be by Canliao, but would still have been written on the same visit to Xus studio
with Su Shi in 1084.
114 Su Shi alludes to this in his 1076 poem , SSSJ, 3:14.682. A Southern Song
commentary on the line purports to quote the Hou Han shu biography referenced above, but the
present text of that work has tigers neck instead of tigers head. The main source for the Hou
Han shu, the Dongguan Han ji by Liu Zhen et al., has tigers head in the corresponding passage.
(CSJC, 3732:16.132.) However, this work was probably unavailable in its original complete state(s)
during the Song. (See Loewe, Early Chinese Texts, 472). Whatever the textual source of the allusion,
112

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209-4/ Dragon Forehead is a literal translation of Longe, a place whose 1,300 households formed
the fief awarded to Han Yue for his part in capturing Xiongnu leaders. 115
209-5/ Kuai and the rest: The Han period general Han Xin, as mentioned in our chapter on
Fanghuis Songs, was sometimes distrusted by Liu Bang. Shortly after he learned the truth of the
saying that When the cunning hares have died, the good dog is cooked . . . , he visited a mediocre
general named Fan Kuai and reflected ruefully that I am now the same rank as Kuai and the
rest. 116
209-7/ Gao Shi (700?765), famous for his frontier poetry, attained the office of policy
advisor the year before his death. 117 Fanghui is comparing himself to Gao.

This is not a humble poem. The first half of the poem covers the poets military
career, into which he entered somewhat recklessly (line 209-1), though he certainly
had strategies and vigor enough to impress the times (line 2). He compares himself
to two Han generals (lines 209-3 and 4), though he recognizes that, even if he
himself thinks he has capacity of a Ban Chao, that does not mean that anyone will
reward him as Han Yue was rewarded. Line 209-5 has him somehow or just for
a while leaving the undistinguished fellowship of military officers and joining the
poetsthe civil side of the bureaucracy. Finally, he anticipates that he will be in
attendance on the emperor himself as policy advisor, following in the footsteps of
the Tang frontier poet Gao Shi.
 Mutually compensating tonal violations in the middle couplets highlight the
paired allusions. These allusions are not common, but they do show up in several
contemporary poems. Tiger Head Ban Chao is mentioned twice before He
Zhus poem. In 1076, Su Shi avers that even Ban Chao is inferior to a friend of
Sus in Mizhou who has transferred from the civil side of the government to a
military office. 118 Zhang Lei, in a poem seeing a Liu Jisun (d. 1092) off to
Hangzhou around 1089, declares that although Liu is a military official, he has not
imitated Ban Chaos example in rejecting the civil arts, especially poetry. 119 After
Fanghuis poem, in late 1091 or early 1092, Zhang Lei brings up the allusion again
in a poem for the same Liu Jisun. This time, he does find Liu comparable to Ban
Chao insofar as Liu is headed out to command a border region. 120

the Song poets clearly knew the story with tigers head.
115 Watson, tr., Records of the Grand Historian, rev. ed., 2:167.
116 Burton Watson, tr., Records of the Grand Historian of China, 1:229.
117 Zhou Xunchu, ed., Tang shi da cidian, 391.
118 This poem is referenced in our note to line 209-3. Yamamoto notes that the transfer of the
Mr. Qiao mentioned in the title does not strictly follow the categories set out in the Song history; see
So Tba shi shu, 4:79. The treasury to which he was transferring was staffed by both civil and military
officials, and prefects could be military officials, too. See Gong Yanming, Song dai guanzhi cidian, 449
and 531. However, the allusion in Sus poem makes it clear that Qiao was moving to the military as
Ban Chao had. (Fanghuis earliest known rank, at age twenty, was a military classification: see Zhong
Zhenzhen, Bei Song ci ren He Zhu yanjiu, 47, and Gong Yanming, 591, sv youban dianzhi.)
119 , Zhang Lei ji 1:15.258. Liu Jisun was in Hangzhou when Su Shi arrived as
prefect in 1089, so I assume Zhang Lei had seen him off from the capital a little earlier in the year.
120 , Zhang Lei ji 1:14.244, line 5. We can date the poem approximately because
we know that Liu went from Hangzhou to Yingzhou (250 km SSE of the capital) to see Su Shi early

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

241

 The Marquis of Longe (Dragon Forehead) figures in a poem, possibly by Su

Shi, that could be ascribed to the third month of 1091. It may provide a precedent
for He Zhu, but questions of dating and authorship make it the least substantial
evidence for establishing our cluster of related poems. 121 Far more useful are Su
Shis allusions to the ranks of Kuai and the rest in a poem to Liu Jisun in the
twelfth month of 1091 and also in a poem in response to Liu that was probably
written a bit earlier. 122
 It should be emphasized that allusions to Han Xins crestfallen I am now the
same rank as Kuai and the rest in Song Dynasty poetry before He Zhu almost
always come in historical poems about Han Xin himself. 123 In Tang times, Fan
Kuai is mentioned in poetry, but not as a token of mediocrity. 124 The only
Northern Song reference to Ban Chao and his tiger head that we have not
mentioned is in a fragment of a poem attributed to Huang Tingjian and probably

in the eleventh month on his way to take up the position of prefect in Xizhou, the place mentioned
in Zhang Leis title. See Su Shi nianpu, 3:30.1009. We also know Zhang Lei was in the capital (see the
chronology in Zhang Lei ji 2:996); Liu must have passed through there later on his way northwest to
Xizhou. (Xizhou is fifty km east of the Yellow River in Hedong Circuit.)
121 The poem in question is one for a Cao Fu attributed to different authors and given titles.
In Su Shis collection, its title is (SSSJ, 8:47.2545; see line 3). The addressee of the
poem, Cao Fu, was with Su Shi at Deqing (halfway up the waterway from Hangzhou to
Huzhou) in the third month of 1091 as Su was making his way to the capital: see Su Shi nianpu,
3:30.96667. The content of the poem has nothing to do with the tea mentioned in the title;
however, that could simply indicate that the title is garbled or incomplete. (Su could have been using
the rhymes of a poem thanking Cao for tea to write a poem for another occasion.) The poem also
appears in the collection of Liu Ban (102389) as the second of a pair under the title
;see Pengcheng ji, CSJC, 1908:14.185. The odd thing about the pair of poems in
Lius collection is that they both use the same rhyme category but only some of the same rhyme
words, and not in the same order. Glancing through his other paired heptametrical Regulated Verse,
one finds no other pair of which this is true: the rhyme words either are exactly the same and in the
same order or are from different categories altogether. This suggests that Liu Ban did not write these
poems as a pair, or that one of them is by someone else. (His collection was essentially lost by the
eighteenth century; the work we cite today was reconstituted from other sources. See Zhu Shangshu,
Song ren bieji xulu, 1:38990.) When Cao Fu went to Fujian in 1088, many poems were written to see
him off; those we know about are mentioned in Su Shi nianpu, 2:27.83738. Thus, one possibility is
that this is a poem by Su Shi on that occasion or a poem by someone else on that occasion and then
mistakenly paired with Lius poem in his collection. A second possibility is that it is a poem Su Shi
wrote for Cao in 1091, using the rhyme category of Liu Bans poem. Either way, the poem predates
Fanghuis allusion. By the way, the third line in the poem by Su or Liu mentions odd numbers as
the cause for a failure to be enfoeffed as the Marquis of Longe. Fanghui will mention odd and even
numbers in his 1096 Sent to Zhao Mian, Defender of Hanyang, Poem 033.
122 , SSSJ, 6:34.1838 is the datable poem; see Su Shi nianpu,
3:30.1016. The other poem, , SSSJ, 6:34.1820, is placed among other poems written
on Lius visit to Su Shi in Yingzhou in the eleventh month, on which see Su Shi nianpu, 30.1009. If
it had been written on the outing in Deqing in the third month, for which Liu Jisun was present (Ibid.,
30.967), it would predate He Zhus use of the allusion in the ninth month, but we have no evidence
to compel revising the sequence of poems.
123 The single exception of which I am aware uses slightly different language and has nothing to
do with a military man. Wang Ling, who died in 1059, praises someone for not joining the ranks of
Kuai; that person is a ru, a Confucian. The poem is .
124 For a very different picture of Fan Kuai, see, Li Han, Meng Chiu, 6162.

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CHAPTER THREE

undatable. 125 Therefore, it is clear that in the small group of poems we have introduced here, something is stimulating a unique interest in the allusions Fanghui
uses in lines 209-3 and 5. Let us review their order:
1076
ca. 1089
1091, 9th month
1091, 10th month
1091, 12th month
late 1091 or early 1092

Ban Chao allusion

Ban Chao allusion
Ban Chao and Fan Kuai allusions
Fan Kuai allusion
Fan Kuai allusion
Ban Chao allusion

Su Shi
Zhang Lei to Liu Jisun
He Zhu
Su Shi to Liu Jisun
Su Shi to Liu Jisun
Zhang Lei to Liu Jisun

One reading of this sequence would give He Zhu a pivotal role in keeping the Ban
Chao Tiger Head allusion current and stimulating allusions to the mediocre Fan
Kuai. Given the fact that Zhang Lei is in the capital all this time and that Fanghui
is writing in the capital to celebrate his promotion with the support of Su Shi, it is
likely that his poem was read by Zhang and Su. An alternative explanation for this
clustering of allusions is that 1091 was a time when 1) an unusual number of
military personnel were being promoted to civilian posts, and 2) the military milieu
they were leaving was widely recognized to be populated by men of little or no
talent.
 The fact that all the poems mentioned (excepting the one of questionable authorship) are connected with Liu Jisun is significant, for in important ways Lius
career paralleled that of He Zhu. First, he came from a military family, though one
of rather more distinction. (His father, Liu Ping , had perished as a prisoner
of war in 1040 after a heroic defense of the northwestern frontier.) 126 Second, Liu
Jisun had literary talents. Su Shi came to appreciate these talents in Hangzhou,
where Liu was a vice commissioner in the Left Storehouse with a provisional
appointment as military director-in-chief and concurrently third general for the
Southeast. Su recommended that Liu, who was approaching sixty, be given a
high-level assignment. Even among civil officials, such a person would be hard
to find, writes Su in his petition. 127 This recommendation from Su Shi is the third
parallel with He Zhu. Whether or not the resulting appointment of Liu to the
position of prefect meant a transfer to the civil bureaucracy (in a border region, he
might well have maintained his military classification), both he and Fanghui possessed such cultural accomplishments that Su Shi felt compelled to petition for
their promotion out of mundane military assignments.
 In the end, we cannot tell without more evidence whether He Zhus After

125

QSS, 17:1027.11745.
See his biography in the Song shi, 30:325.10499504, and Sdaishi nempy, 102.
127 See Su Shis petitions, one (dated late 1090) for the promotion of Liu Jisun and the other
(dated 1092) for assistance to his widow, SSWJ, 3:31.900901 and 35.98889.
126

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

243

Changing Official Classification: Proffered to Acquaintances and Old Friends was read by
Zhang Lei and Su Shi and stimulated their recollections of Tiger Head Ban
Chao and the mediocre Fan Kuai. If military-civil comparisons and transfers were
simply a timely issue in late 1091, that would by itself be stimulus enough for this
cluster of allusions.
 By 1096, when Fanghui edited his poetry collection, he had not culled this
poem, although by that time he must have wondered whether the optimism expressed in it had been excessive. True, he was only forty-five sui in 1096; he could
still aspire to receive merit and reputation in the late years, as he says in line
209-8. More importantly, we underestimate our poet if we expect him to censor
himself: he intended his poetry collection to preserve all the complexity of his life
and evoke painful memories along with happy ones. He wrote, On other occasions when I open this book, I shall think back on relics of the past: I might fetch
a deep sigh, or give a smile, for [these poems] are still enough to provoke my
craziness. 128

1092: STRETCHING FORM

Moving on to Yuanyou 7 (1092), we find that whatever Fanghui was doing during
this year in the capital, he was not writing many poems he considered worth
keeping. He saved only two pentametrical Regulated Verses. Perhaps the formal
anomalies in these two poems appealed to him.
 The first poem, composed in the second month on 1092 and titled On Horseback
East of Broadford Gate , is striking for the absence of semantic parallelism in the middle couplets, even though it is in those very same lines that the
tonal patterns are most correct. (Broadford Gate is one of the portals from the
capital giving on to the Bian Canal.) 129
211

At the ford: a drum for the dropping of sails

(C6)
with approach of dusk still rolls its booming on.
D2
I wonder if it could be the mouth of the Qin-Huai:
A2

128 This passage is near the end of Fanghuis preface to his Qinghu yilao shiji. Quoted in Zhong
Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 51921.
129 5.12553; 5.11a. The second (starting from the southernmost) of five gates on the eastern side
of Bianjing was renamed Broadford in 1023 but in 1077 its original name of Passford was
restored. See the Song shi, 7:85.2102 and the Song huiyao, 8:Fangyu 1.2a (7319b). Our poem is evidence
that the Broadford name continued to be used.

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CHAPTER THREE

a single boat, a drunken dream.

B1
I cannot bear on the banks made by Sui
C1
the dust and dirt in a slash of wind.
D1
Pass my question along: is it really possible,
A2
that the shrike fly from the east?
(B6)

Notes:
211-1/ The dropping-sail-drum must be the drum that tells the hour at the time when boats are,
or are supposed to be, stopping for the night.
211-5/ The Grand Canal was constructed under Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty, hence the
reference to [canal] banks made by Sui. 130
211-6/ One slash, literally one whip, is used (especially in the lyric) as a measure word for
something long and narrow like a path, but more commonly for a springtime or dawn vista. I have
seen only one case in which one whip was used in association with wind: a line by Xu Zhongya
(922?) characterizing the strange language of the poet-monk Qiji (864943?):
One slash of wind and rain: 10,000 mountains fly. 131
211-8/ A folk-song in the New Songs from a Jade Terrace that treats the age-old theme of the deserted
woman begins, Eastward flies the shrike, westward flies the swallow. / Herdboy and Weaver never
meet. 132 Fanghui seems to be the only Northern Song poet to allude to this song, but it was used
by Tang poets in farewell poems. 133

Lines 211-3 and 5 hint at folding-pan parallelism, but this is not carried through
in lines 211-4 and 6. There are Tang examples of Regulated Verse (by Li Bo, Meng
Haoran, and Jiaoran) with no parallel lines. 134 I do not feel Fanghui had any

130 By 611, the emperor was able to travel by boat from Yangzhou in the south to the southern
outskirts of modern Beijing in the north. See Qu Yilin, Huang-Huai-Hai pingyuan lishi dili, 153.
131 , QTS, 22:762.8650. Bian, whip, can also refer to an iron chapping-stick with ribs or
even to bamboo rhizomes, so the nature of the metaphor embedded in the measure word is open
to speculation. I chose the word slash hoping that its meaning of an area that has been cut open
would preserve the visual and spatial dimensions of the words use in the lyric while at the same time
suggesting the cutting force of the wind, which might well be the sense that both Xu Zhongya and
Fanghui had in mind.
132 Anne Birrells translation, 230. Original text, Xu Ling, Yutai xinyong, 2:9.436.
133 A good example is the closing couplet of Cen Shens ( Cen Jiazhou shi,
SBBY ed., 2.1): I ask the commissioner, when are you
coming back? / Dont do a eastward flies the shrike, westward flies the swallow. Clearly, the shrike
and the swallow represent two people who never meet again.
134 Qi Gong, Shi wen shengl lungao, 56 cites Li Bos and . The latter is
in the Three Hundred Tang Poems as a Regulated Verse; the former is perfectly regulated tonally. Huo
Songlin (Jianlun jintishi gel de zheng yu bian, 63) cites, in addition to the latter Li Bo poem,
Mengs (Meng Haoran ji, SBBY ed, 3.2b) and (1.10, with a
slightly different title), and Jiaorans . Jiaorans poem, like Li Bos, is in the Three
Hundred Tang Poems as a Regulated Verse. The second Meng Haoran poem is classified as an Ancient

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

245

precedent in mind, however. He wants to give us the impression that he is driven

by spontaneous reactions to a complex experience that cannot be brought under
the control of formal patterning. That he chooses to write a tonally regulated
poem suggests that his agitated thoughts on horseback can be expressed only by
relying on the rhythm of a ready-made matrix, or that the classical calm of the
meter represents the emotional restraints he feels in the capital and against which
his feelings rebel. In any case, his aesthetic choice gives the poem a depth it might
not otherwise be able to claim.
 The anomaly of the enjambed third couplet is anticipated in the similar use of
continuous syntax in the first couplet, At the ford: a drum for the dropping of the
sails / with the approach of dusk still rolls its booming on. Such enjambment is
usually seen only in a closing couplet. There are other innovations. First, I have
not seen other cases where dropping sails characterizes drum. Second, the
onomatopoeic bung1b-dung1c of line 211-2 is unprecedented, so far as I know. The
reduplicatives bung1b- bung1b and dung1c-dung1c are common representations of
a booming sound, but Fanghui is the only poet who combines the two sounds into
a single rhyming compound.
 It may be that the choice of the CD opening was driven by these considerations.
A BD opening still would have allowed this onomatopoeic level-tone rhyming
compound to come at the end of the second line, but the rest of the opening
would have been radically altered. A rhyming first line could not have accommodated the deflected-tone word drum at the end of the line, a position that
enables it to be modified by dropping sails and serve as the subject for the verb
in line 211-2; in fact the presence of rhyme would surely have end-stopped the line,
preventing this experiment with first-couplet enjambment altogether.
 The last couplet, Pass my question along: is it really possible, / that the shrike
fly from the east? is also rather startling. That is, maybe the Eastward flies the
shrike song and the Tang farewell poems that allude to it are all wrong? Though
the poet is silent on whether he is on horseback at Broadford Gate to bid farewell
to someone or is simply witnessing other people sending off their friends, he is
really asking whether good-byes are inevitable. Sadly, however, the implied answer
is probably, Yes, this is the way it is: the shrike and the swallow never fly in the
same direction; the anguish of separation will always be with us.
 The other 1092 pentametrical Regulated Verse stretches an extra four lines.
Except for the mutually compensating tonal violations in the third position of the

Verse in the collection we cite and as a Regulated Verse by others such as Gao Buying, Tang Song shi
juyao, 44041. The problem stems from the fact that it is a half-Ancient half-Regulated poem: the
first half, (C5) (B2) (C1) (D4), has major faults of adhesion and tonal parallelism. The second half is
well within the norm for Regulated Verse: (A4) (B6) C2 D2. Now, Wang Li would not classify a
poem without at least one parallel couplet as a Regulated Verse. See Hanyu shil xue, 142. Since
Fanghui classified his poem for us, we can ignore Wang Lis stricter standard.

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first two lines, the poem is a perfectly regulated AB poem. The poem is
, Ill for a Long Time: Sent to Two or Three Relations and Friends, and it was
written in the capital in the eighth month: 135
212

12

Early on I was in the dark about nourishing life;

(A3)
countless toils have quelled my true authenticity.
(B6)
The power of the medicine supports my illness, it turns out;
C1
obsession with poetry makes me poor, sure enough.
D2
Always I bear the regrets of Browns winehouse;
A2
long have I neglected my white-haired relations.
B1
A single wallet?where can I get one?
C1
four walls!that cant be poverty!
D2
Below the lamp, tears on dusty tomes;
A2
before the breeze, spring in tomb grasses.
B1
If you forget to set out chicken and brew
C1
and your stomach hurts, dont scold me too much!
D2

Notes:
212-34/ power of the medicine and obsession with poetry: ling is always a verb (to be efficacious) when following medicine in Tang and Song poetry; on the other hand, the corresponding pi obsession in line 4 is always a noun when following poetry. I have chosen to
translate ling as power, but one could leave it as a verb and change obsession to a verb to match
it: My medicine works but only to support the illness, it turns out; / as for poetry, I am obsessed, and
it has made me poor, sure enough. Either choice suppresses the grammatical tension of correlating
words that are normally different parts of speech.
212-5/ The surname Huang means yellow or brown, and I have purposely used the English
surname Brown in the translation to reflect the correspondence with white in line 6. Huangs
wineshop was a haunt of Wang Rong (234305), Ji Kang (22362), and Ruan Ji. Decades

135

5.12553; 5.11b.

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after the latter two had died, Wang Rong passed by Huangs wineshop and remarked on how distant
those good old days seemed. 136 Presumably Fanghuis friends are separated by distance and time
rather than by death, but the allusion here still expresses his feeling of loss.
212-7/ The sense is that even a single wallet (in the sense of pouch) would be welcome. Dongfang
Shuo once amused the Han emperor by complaining that a salary of a single wallet of grain
and two-hundred forty cash was enough for the court dwarf to gorge himself on, but that on the
same salary he, Dongfang, was starving to death. 137
212-8/ Again, this line reverses the normal import of a common allusion. 138 Rather than complain
that he has only the four walls to shelter his family, Fanghui says that as long as he has the four walls
he isnt poor.
212-1112/ The wording here evokes a conversation that Cao Cao recalled in a 202 sacrificial prayer
to a widely respected man, Qiao Xuan, who had recognized his talent early on: I was favored with
this casual promise: After I pass on, if your road takes you by me and you do not make an offering
of a dipper of brew and a chicken, when your chariot goes three more paces and your stomach hurts,
dont blame me! Although it was a joke at the time, if we had not been so close, how could you have
spoken thus? 139

The purpose for extending a Regulated Verse beyond eight lines is to clear more
space for the display of parallel couplets, but those couplets do not come in a
random order in He Zhus poem. The references to medicine and obsessions in
the second couplet develop naturally from the concern in the opening couplet
over nourishing life and true authenticity. That medicine could produce
undesirable effects was well understood; that poetry and poverty were somehow
linked had been thoroughly discussed in the Northern Song; and obsession with
poetry, a late Tang affectation, resurfaced occasionally. 140 The third couplet
reaches out to the neglected relations and friends for whom the poem was written
and features a clever correlation of Huang (Brown/Yellow) and white;
however, this couplet is not strong enough to be the critical couplet in an
eight-line poem. That climax of wit comes in the next couplet, where a standard-length Regulated Verse would normally end: lines 212-7 and 8 give us the
delicious ironies that conventional marks of extreme poverty would, for He Zhu,
represent a step up in the world. What, then, of the next two couplets? The fifth
couplet uses unusual terms (dusty tomes and tomb grasses are rare expressions and are never used as modifiers, as they seem to be here), but the wit of the
previous two couplets disappears with the somber hint that the scholar weeping
over his books will soon be lying under the grasses of spring. This brings us back

136

Shishuo xinyu, 17.2.

Han shu, 9:65.2843. Burton Watson, Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China, 81.
138 As expected, this comes from another Han anecdote, this time about Sima Xiangru, who
eloped with his bride to Chengdu and lived with only the four walls around them. Shi ji, 9:117.3000;
Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian (rev. ed.), 2:261
139
From , Cao Cao
ji yizhu, 81.
140 Mei Yaochen wrote a poem in 1059 on being obsessed with poetry. , Mei Yaochen ji
biannian jiaozhu, 3:29.108586.
137

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to the health-threatening imbalances that underlie the first four lines of the poem.
Death, of course, implies closure. Better yet, though, the reference to grasses on
the poets tomb prepares us for the joke in the final couplet, which in turn justifies
the fact of his having brought up such an inauspicious subject. Fanghuis promise
to give his friends stomach aches if they forget to pay their respects at his grave is
an allusive expression of fondness for his friends and relations. As Cao Cao said
in 202, only a someone with whom one is very close could make such a threat.
 The extension of the poem to twelve lines naturally allows the poet to say what
has to be said. However, another way to look at this poem is to take note of the
couplet by couplet progression that we have described and recognize that the
shifts in tone and degrees of salience are perfectly orchestrated to fit the length of
the poemone could say that it is this rhetorical structure more than any abundance of content that dictated the expansion of the poem. (Simple abundance of
content can be dealt with by writing two or more poems.) We cannot reconstruct
the dialectic between content and form that led to this inner structure, of course.
What we can do is acknowledge that Fanghui did far more with this poem than
simply clear space to show off his skill at writing parallel couplets.

109394: LEAVING THE CAPITAL

We shall consider only three of the eight pentametrical Regulated Verses Fanghui
preserves between the eighth month of 1093, when he is about to leave for the
south, and 1096, when he arrives in Hanyang. As we know, he ended up staying
with relatives in Hailing in 1093, returning to the capital in 1095. The Hailing
period was one of peak activity in heptametrical Regulated Verse, but relatively
low productivity in the pentametrical form. Those pentametrical Regulated Verses
that Fanghui did keep from the 109396 period do not advance our appreciation
of his art a great deal over the poems we have already analyzed, in my opinion.
 However, there is one poem written shortly before He Zhus departure in 1093
that attracts me because it has the quirkiness of the poems we have just discussed.
In addition, we shall want to look at two of the four pentametrical Regulated
Verses that Fanghui writes to Mi Fu in 1093 and 1094.
 Between Ill for a Long Time: Sent to Two or Three Relations and Friends and the next
pentametrical Regulated Verse in the collection there is a one-year gap. Fanghui
evidently found little to say in the genre until he was about to leave the capital in
the eighth month of Yuanyou 8 (1093). The poem he leaves us bears the odd title
Autumn clothing; heard rain; got up at dawn; wrote at random. 141 One

141 5.12553; 5.11b. The eighth month corresponds in Yuanyou 8 to the days from 25 August to
23 September.

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249

could smooth this out to Wearing autumn clothing, I heard rainfall, whereupon
I got out of bed early and wrote this at random, but the oddity is in the combination of four topics and the regular 2-2-2-2 rhythm of the title. Any one of those
two-syllable units can be and has been used as a title by itself. However, I have
found no titles in Tang or Song poetry that use any of these four phrases, are eight
syllables long, and have this choppy rhythm. As to whether and why the poet was
wearing his autumn clothes in bed, as the title seems to suggest, let us merely note
that Fanghui (according to his headnote) was about to go eastward down from the
capital while still sick.
213

The homeland: my heart races north;

A1
a single boat: plans take me foolishly east.
B1
Chill arises from one whole night of rain;
(C4)
illness crosses two autumns of wind.
D2
Desolate, drearisome, leaves at hedges foot;
A1
solitary, loneful, insect at houses corner.
B1
What is he feeling, as he mourns the season
C2
and compares himself to this withered old man?
D1

Note
213-78/ There are ambiguities in the parsing of these lines. Line 7 could be either the thing
(creature) that mourns the season or mourning the things of the season. Line 8 could be just
represents himself to the withered old man (as Tao Yuanming, for example, wrote the Biography of
Mr. Five Willows to represent himself, zi kuang 142 ) or just (liao zi) compares (kuang) himself to
the withered old man.

If we work through this poem, we can see how once again Fanghui adds complexity and intriguing ambiguity to the expected structure of a Regulated Verse.
 The opening lines are seemingly parallel, emphasizing the contradiction between the poets desire to go north and his plan to go east. Heart, xin, also
means intention or mind-set, so it correlates with plan in line 213-2. (Su Shi
provides a precedent for doing this in a parallel line.) 143 The rest of the lines are

142
143

Song shu, 93.2286, and Tao Yuanming ji, 6.17576.

(1086), SSSJ, 5:27.1438, lines 5 and 6.

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more complicated in their correlations. The verb race connotes speed, while
man, interpreted foolishly here, also means slow, the opposite of speed. This
would be antithetical parallelism-by-pun. North and east appear at first glance
to correspond easily, but the latter, in the context of its line, can only be a verb, to
go east; north could also be a verbmy heart, galloping, goes northbut I
think it is best to see it as a complement to the verb and to see the correspondence
with east as another case of parallelism-by-pun.
 In the second couplet, Chill arises [from or in] one nights rain; / illness
crosses two autumns wind, we might point out that the syntax is not parallel, as
the brackets added here show. Imperfect parallelism in a second couplet to offset
real or apparent parallelism in the first couplet is not unprecedented. More interesting is the single tonal violation in the poem, which comes with the number
one (meaning whole here) in that line. The facts have forced Fanghui into a
conflict with one of the peculiarities of Chinese numbers: the only numbers that
carry a level tone are san three and qian thousand. This means that where contrasting tones are required in corresponding positions, only one of these two
numbers can correlate with another number. Thus, if Fanghui has been sick for
two (deflected tone) autumns, he would have to match this span of time with three
(even tone) days of rain or, if it rained one (deflected tone) whole night, he would
have to stretch his illness out to three (even tone) autumns! (For this reason, at least
one scholar has argued that three in Regulated Verse lines cannot always be
taken literally.) 144 Our poet refuses to bow to meter in line 213-3, but because the
resulting tonal violation comes in the third syllable, it is actually a minor one. Still,
the violation puts a desired stress on the numbers, for a rain that lasts a whole
night and an illness that stretches out to two autumns are worth special attention.
 In the third couplet, the rhyming compounds at the beginning of the lines are
conspicuous. Lak bak desolate, drearisome is used of people in obscurity and
poverty in three pre-Tang dynastic histories. In Tang Dynasty poetry, it is used
only twice. 145 In the Song Dynasty, all seven occurrences that I am aware of are
Northern Song. Fanghui accounts for two of these, his friend Zhang Lei for
three. 146 The corresponding ou ou solitary, loneful is somewhat more common

144

Matsuura Tomohisa, Feng huo lian san yue: guanyu shuci de shengdiao.
The Tang poets who use the phrase lak bak are Han Yu (, QTS,
22:791.8911, of crows) and Bo Juyi (, QTS, 13.448.5047, of calligraphy compared to flying clouds and rain).
146 In order, as best as I can determine: Ouyang Xiu, (1057), Ouyang Xiu
quanji, 2:jushi ji.6.44, used of a birds wings; Zhang Lei, , Zhang Lei ji 1:10.144, used
of crows, (1078), 1:23.413, used of clouds, and
, 1:26.468, used of himself; Su Zhe, (3 February 1104), Su Zhe ji, 3:Luancheng hou
ji.3.91920, used of himself;. Fanghuis other use of lak bak is in a 1087 heptametrical Quatrain,
Writing Again of Dwelling in the Capital in Late Spring and Feeling Stirred, no 481,
9.12593; 9.8a; it describes willow floss fallen in the shade of a wall.
145

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251

in Tang poetry (eight occurrences) and much more common in Northern Song
poetry (twenty-five uses). (Like lak bak, it is absent from the works of major
Southern Song poets.) Through an allusion to the Zhuangzi, 147 uses of ou ou often
refer to illness, and the fact that the Zhuangzi gave so much vocabulary to Chinese
literature may account for the slightly greater prevalence of the phrase. Because
these phrases are fairly rare and (for reasons we can only guess at) most appealing
to the sensibilities of Fanghuis contemporaries, they attract our notice. Then we
may enjoy the fact that their constituent morphemes (or, more accurately, the
words usually represented by the characters that represent the sounds of these two
rhyming binomials) contribute in appropriate ways to the meaning. Leaves fall
(lak) and moor (bak) themselves at the bottom of a hedge; an insect in the
corner of a room is hidden (ou) and sounds mournful (ou). Beyond that, we
may notice that the phonetic contrast between the staccato lak bak and ou ou is only
the beginning of the play of sound in this couplet. Every one of the deflected
tones in this couplet is an entering tone. Line 5, lak1 bak1 li3b ken1 yap3b, ends with
an abrupt final ~p, and the ~k finals of lak bak are resumed in line 6: ou3c ou3b uk1b
lok1b drung3b. The effectiveness of the imagery in this couplet is reinforced by the
complex interplay of sound, sense, and balance.
 Finally, though it is not related to these questions of meter and syntax, we
should note the highly unusual anthropomorphization of the mournful insect in
the final couplet.

MI FU
Mi Fu called on He Zhu in the same month of 1093 in the capital. This prompted
a lighthearted but flattering poem from He. We shall take space here only to
describe the witty comparison that takes up the first half of the poem. Playing on
the shared second syllable of the two place names, Fanghui finds Mi Fu as the
magistrate of nearby Yongqiu comparable to the magistrate of second-century
Taiqiu , Chen Shi. He notes that Chen Shi was acclaimed in his time for his
honesty and Mi Fu is known for his stylish elegance (fengliu). 148 Though these are
rather different qualities, I think that simply bringing the two wondrous magistrates of modern and ancient times (, line 214-1) together this way
was complimentary.

147 Two anecdotes (obviously variations on the same story) have a sage-emperor trying to give
the empire to a man who declines the offer because he has a deep-seated and worrisome illness
and knows enough to devote himself to getting well before spending time on ordering the world.
See Watson, 307; cf. Graham, 224.
148 Mi Fu was magistrate at Yongqiu from 1092 to 1094. He Zhus poem (no. 214) is
, 5.12554; 5.12a.

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 Two months later, Fanghui stopped to see Mi Fu in Yongqiu a day or two into
his journey from the capital down the Bian canal. He wrote a pair of poems as he
left. In the headnote to the two poems, he writes, Mi is broadly learned and
talented; he has written several tens of juan under the title Mountain Grove Collection. He is known to others only for his obsession with washing and his study
of calligraphy. He has an innocent madness and suffers many antagonisms. He
once sent up a document supporting my request for a shrine post. There was no
response and he left it at that. So I am needling him with these poems.149
 The two poems (CD and AB in form) are under the title Left
in Farewell to Mi of Yongqiu: Two Poems. 150
215

Bright lamp: talking all night through;

C2
rough and rugged terrain: getting it all off our chests.
D2
Its for water mania that Magistrate Liu is pushed out;
A1
for calligraphy fame, the Duke of Lu is besmirched.
B1
Jealousy and suspicion aggrieve the rat in the granary;
C1
pursuing the hot, they scorn the goose in the clouds.
D2
There is no lack of fine hills and waters;
A1
in the southeast two old men will come to rest.
B1

Notes:
215-2/ Rough and rugged terrain within the breastI use Richard Mathers translation from an
anecdote about Ruan Jiis frustration or unresolved feelings. 151 Huang Tingjian is the poet who

149
The Mountain Grove Collection did not survive
the fall of the Northern Song, but Mis works were later re-collected in two editions that have come
down to us; see Zhu Shangshu, Song ren bieji xulu 1:12.573. It seems that Fanghui did succeed in
becoming an inspector of the Northern Marchmount Shrine, though this entitled him to a temple
salary without requiring him to actually go to the shrine. See Gong Yanming , Song dai guanzhi cidian,
614, s.v. jian yue miao. (Su Shi would offer prayers at the Northern Marchmount Shrine in Dingzhou
in early 1094, when he was prefect there. See Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1141, 1144, and 1147. Dingzhou,
now Dingxian, is halfway between Shijiazhuang and Baoding, a few hours south of Beijing.)
150 5.12554; 5.12a12b.
151 See Shishuo xinyu, 23.51; Mather (2002 rev. ed.), 421. As written in Fanghuis poem, the expression usually refers to a rude house of piled up clods of earth or sod. However, the homophonous compound is clearly intended.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

253

uses this expression mostsix times.

215-3/ Liu Cheng (fifth century) was obsessed with cleaning up debris and weeds in the
district under his charge, but Fanghui seems to have confused him with a contemporary who was
an ablutomaniac. See below.
215-4/ The Duke of Lu is Yan Zhenqing (70985), one of the most famous and studied
calligraphers in Chinese history. As Amy McNair has pointed out, it is his reputation for loyalty and
bravery that caused his calligraphy to be made a model in the Northern Song. 152 This line asserts
that Yans character (like that of Mi Fu) is in effect diminished by the emphasis placed on his artistic
skill.
215-56/ This couplet appears to refer to a situation beyond our ken; the translation is tentative.
The Li Zhiding edition has wang forget in place of ji be jealous of in line 5, but adopting that
version does not clarify anything. I suggest that the rat in the granary is Fanghui, stealing his
salary from the public storehouse, and that the wild goose in the clouds is Mi Fu, a man of vision
and ambition.
215-8/ The southeast is presumably the Shanyin area to which Fanghui always longs to retire; the
two old men must be he and Mi Fu.

This poem is perfectly regulated, perhaps reflecting Mi Fus preference for

Regulated Verse. 153 The middle couplets, however, present difficulties. The allusion to Liu Cheng in line 215-3 is obscure (I know of no other poet who has made
this allusion) and apparently careless. Although he was cashiered for pushing the
people under his charge too hard in cleaning up the district, it was not Liu Cheng
who was compulsive about washing himself but the individual in whose biography
he is mentioned. 154
 The third couplet must allude to political or social barriers standing in the path
of He Zhu and Mi Fu. However, its precise reference is obscure to us, and there
are no discernable allusions or textual precedents that would suggest why the rat
should be aggrieved by jealousy and suspicion, or who it is that pursues the
hot. Mi Fu presumably had more context than we do for understanding these
lines.
 The second poem in the pair switches to the AB structure, but modified with
minor tonal violations in the A and B lines. This poem is somewhat less arcane in
its middle couplets. The supplied pronouns in the translation of lines 216-34
disguise the fact that we dont know whether the poet is referring to himself, to
Mi Fu, to both, or to first one and then the other; however, the allusions in the
third couplet are to well-known figures, so we have enough information to see

152 Mi Fu disparaged some aspects of Yans style but hailed him as both an upright official and
an exemplar of Daoist naturalism. See McNair, The Upright Brush, 8795.
153 In his Bao Jin yingguang ji (CSJC, v. 1932), I count fifty-one Ancient Verses and one hundred
five Regulated Verses.
154 See Nan shi, 6:71.1734. The phrase water obsession (the term used in Fanghuis headnote)
occurs a paragraph earlier in the Nan shi, applied to He Tongzhi (449503). Liu Cheng is
simply mentioned in Hes biography as another example of someone making cleanliness a fetish,
although in his case it was not bathing that became a mania, but forcing the people of the county to
clean up weeds in the roads and filth in the waterways. However, writes the historian, he was
extremely righteous and excellent in medical skill.

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how one allusion applies to Mi Fu and one to He Zhu.

216

Take care of yourself, Scion of Chu;

(A3)
in the mountain groves, where shall we meet?
(B2)
As officers, we must crave leave to retire;
C2
how could vulgar eyes ever tolerate us?
D2
Shuye is lazy but keeps on forging;
(A3)
Boluan is a menial and goes on pounding.
(B6)
How embarrassing that Im still a salaried recluse;
C2
you jus go an lord it over me!
D2

Notes
216-1/ Hao zhu take care of yourself was in Tang and Song times a polite farewell expressed by the
person leaving to the person staying.
216-5/ Shuye is the cognomen of Ji Kang. Ji Kang depicted himself as lazy and slovenly in a letter
breaking off his friendship with someone who wished to recommend him as his successor in a
government post. However, as Fanghui points out, Ji Kang actually worked hard forging iron at
home as a hobby. 155 Shuye probably stands for Mi Fu, who had Daoist interests.
216-6/ Boluan is Liang Hong (Later Han), who was bright and learned but pursued humble
occupations. Leaving the capital region, he went to the southeast (Wu) and worked pounding grain
for a man who soon recognized his moral worth by the extreme respect with which Liang was
treated by his wife, despite his low status. 156 Boluan probably stands for Fanghui, who is on his way
to the southeast from the capital.
216-7/ Salaried recluse refers here to a person who draws the salary of an official but does not
conscientiously pursue his duties.
216-8/ Er ru is an intimate second-person pronoun. Wu nong is a dialectical first-person pronoun of
the Wu area, the lower Yangzi delta. Both are known in earlier poetry. English, even before thou
fell out of use in ordinary speech, has long been poor in pronouns and uses other means to express
intimacy or assert hierarchical equality. The translation thus relies on an informal English verbal
expression to convey the tone of familiarity in the Chinese pronouns.

This is a more lighthearted poem. The tonal violations in the third syllables of line
216-1, 2, 5, and 6 not only suggest a relaxed attitude but also hint at the intonation

155 See Shishuo xinyu, 18.3 and 24.3 and the letter translated by James Robert Hightower in Cyril
Birch, Anthology of Chinese Literature, 1:16264.
156 Hou Han shu, 10:83.276568.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

255

curve of joke-telling. (Though a bit more numerous than what we see in most of
Fanghuis pentametrical Regulated Verse, the violations are of the most common
type and in each pair of lines the violations compensate for each other.) Scion
of Chu chides Mi Fu for inventing a Chu ancestry for himself. (See our note to
the 1091 Ancient Verse line 126-1112 in Chapter One.) Mountain groves
might be a sly allusion to the fact that Mis collected writings were titled
Mountain Grove Collected Works. (We dont know which came first, however,
the poem or the collection.) The Shuye and Boluan allusions are clever ways to
make fun of the poet and his friend while suggesting that they are on a level with
much-admired men of the past. These unregulated lines, then, are really the parts
of the poem that are most tailored to the particularities of the two friends.
 There are signs that Fanghui is developing a distinct vocabulary and style at this
point in his life. Perhaps this is because he is now in his forties and feels confident
in establishing a unique voice; perhaps he is reacting to contemporary poetry
heard in the capital rather than to the Tang models that stimulated him in Xuzhou;
or perhaps the twists of contemporary politics or his own career have worked in
subtle ways to push him toward new forms of expression. Lu yin salaried recluse
is not a particularly common expression in poetry, but outside of this poem,
Fanghui will use it in a Song and pentametrical Regulated Verse from 1096. 157 In
the first poem of this pair to Mi Fu, the word mei in line 215-4, translated besmirch, is similarly unusual, yet it appears in six other poems by He Zhu. With
the exception of one 1079 Ancient Verse (where we translated it befouled in
Poem 040, line3), all of He Zhus instances come in the 1090s: there are three
heptametrical Regulated Verses from 1093 and 1098, and two Songs from 1095
and 1098. 158 Diction is of interest in the next poem we shall examine, too.

157 The Song is Poem 033, partially translated earlier. In line 033-3, the term elder salaried recluse could be a proper noun. The Regulated Verse is Poem 225, Inscribed on the
Wall of the Official Quarters at Baoquan, 5.12556; 5.14b. In the relevant line, we could read Ill steal
my emolument and be a recluse or Ill stealthily be a salaried recluse. The ambiguity may be
intentional, as there are more significant puns in the poem, one playing on the poets name, which
means to smelt, the other on the fact that the mint is on the north side (yin) of a hill (shan) and so
the poet is pleased to be living in Shanyin, which, as we have noted, he considers a sort of ancestral home southeast of Hangzhou.
158 The heptametrical Regulated Verses are Presented to Zhang Zhicai (Poem 323, 1093;
7.12575; 7.9b); Climbing Yellow Crane Tower and Sent Also to the Pan Binlao
Brothers (Poem 550, 1098; 10.12605; Shiyi.16a); and Sent
to Magistrate Fang Lin and Defender Li Yuan of Wuchang and also as a Letter to the Two Pan Brothers of
Huanggang (Poem 551,1098;10.12605; shiyi.16b). The Songs are In Answer to Xu Jingliang
(Poem 028, 1095; 1.125056; 1.13a) and Song of the Southern Loft: Seeing
Prefect Shen of Wuchang off to Return to the Court (Poem 037, 1098, third month;1.12509; 1.18a). Mei does
appear in some other Tang poems with a different meaning.

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109698: ON TO JIANGXIA
GOING UPRIVER: DICTION FROM THE PAST
Fanghui saves only one pentametrical Regulated Verse from his journey back
from Hailing to the capital in early 1095 and none from his stay in the capital. His
output continues to be meager as he creeps south again late in 1095, in bad health
and destined for the mint at Jiangxia.
 Near Dangtu, about 60 km SW and upstream from Jinling, opposite Hezhou
and Liyang, Fanghui writes a poem that takes us back to the solitary musings we
are familiar with from earlier pentametrical Regulated Verses in his collection. It is
worth remembering that our poet still indulged in this kind of poem after the more
allusive works we have been looking at. The poem is Moving on the River:
Depicting the View. 159 It is dated the fourth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096).
223

Slanting rays invade sparse blinds;

A2
slight chill penetrates the tiny window.
B1
Green rushes still cleave to the isles;
(C4)
white birds repeatedly reach over the River.
D2
To let out feelings, Three Hundred Poems;
A1
simmering sorrow, one pair of sweeps.
B1
The forward boat must still be near:
(C4)
repeated drums are heard, boom, boom.
D2

Notes
223-3/ I assign yi (cleave to) a deflected tone in accordance with the meter, ignoring the difference
in meanings associated with the characters readings. 160
223-5/ Three Hundred Poems normally refers to the Classic of Poetry. The line echoes Du Fus
remark that nothing is better than poetry for letting out feelings (in the same phrase, qian xing). 161

159

5.12555; 5.13b.
For a list of characters that have more than one pronunciation but whose different pronunciations are commonly unhitched (in poetry) from their normal meaning distinctions, see
Wang Li, Hanyu shilxue, 13342. (Yi is not on this list.)
161 , Du shi xiangzhu, 2:10.803, line 6.
160

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

257

The verb dou, translated penetrates in line two, was discussed in our chapter on
Ancient Verse, where we noted that three out of four times Mei Yaochen used this
verb it was in a pentasyllabic line. Whether or not Mei provided a precedent for
He Zhu we could only speculate, but there is one more coincidence we can add to
the record: only one of Meis poems is a Regulated Verse, and it was written in
Jinling, through which Fanghui has just passed. The relevant couplet of Mei
Yaochens poem is In Jinling I meet a morning
snowfall: / tumbling it comes penetrating the clouds. 162 One possibility, then, is
that Fanghui saw, remembered, or reread this poem while passing by Jinling.
 Another possibility is that he was rereading his own poetry from the last time
he had been in the area. Dou appears in two 1088 poems from Yellow Leaf Hause
and Jinling. Our present poems White birds repeatedly reach over the River
could be a revival of white birds repeatedly flaring and vanishing in the 1088
poem Making an Excursion to the Estrade of Falling Blossoms in Jinling (line 102-12). As
far as I can tell, this particular vision of white birds in flight is unique to He Zhu.
 Going back to the third line, the phrase translated still cleave to the isles
presents, I believe, both a gloss on one Tang poet and a refusal to follow the
crowd in borrowing from another Tang poet. This requires explanation. First, Du
Fu is the only poet I know who uses yi zhu cleave to the isles:
A lone crane already cleaves to the isle; / withered lotuses just stand
against the sky. The word yuan already in the first line of the couplet may have
been somewhat problematic; there is a version of the line in which xian replaces
yuan. However, both wordings convey the sense that the crane has been standing by
the islet. 163 I believe that gu still in Fanghuis line has a similar force, making his
still cleave to the isles a paraphrase of Du Fu.
 Fanghuis use of gu here may owe something to Han Yus 823 line
the village gate will still (gu) be the same. 164 At the same time, Fanghuis line
keeps its distance from Hans. We should explain that the character yi in Han Yus
line is the same one that represents the word cleave to/cling to in Du Fu and
He Zhu, but in the compound yiran it means the same as before. Fanghui never
uses Han Yus gu yiran, but in 223-3 he uses the gu and the yi without the ranand
he is the only Song poet who does so, to my present knowledge. In never using gu
yiran is still the same (unique to Han Yu in Tang poetry by the way), Fanghui is
refusing to go along with no fewer than six other Northern Song poets who did
adopt the phrase: Wang Anshi, Su Shi, Su Zhe, Qin Guan, Chen Shidao, and
Zhang Lei. In using gu yi zhu still cleaves to the isle, which takes its rather unusual use of gu from Han Yu but substitutes zhu isle for the suffix ran, Fanghui is

, Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 2:23.709710.

, Du shi xiangzhu, 3:14.1177, lines 34.
164 , Han Yu quanji jiaozhu, 2:903. Cf. Von Zachs translation: . . . . wirst Du die Gegend
wo wir einst gewohnt haben vielleicht nlich wie frher finden. Von Zach, 15960.
162
163

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1) consciously constructing an alternative phrase and 2) using it to act as a paraphrase of Du Fus yuan yi zhu, still cleaves to the isle. 165 Whether he thought it
out in this manner is debatable, but I think he must have been aware of the lines
by Han Yu and Du Fu and he might have been aware that he was using Han Yus
gu to gloss the already in Du Fus line. The tonal violations in line 223-3 might
be his signal to us that something complex is going on beneath the surface.
The reader may have noticed that both of the couplets we have just discussed,
so precise in capturing the scene while so rich in echoes of earlier diction, are
parallel. I think there is a special purpose in making the first three couplets parallel
(and not complicating them with too many tonal violations or first-line rhyme, as
we saw in Seeing Zuo Yu off for Jiangxia as Commandant, Poem 197). The repeated
parallelism evokes the routine rhythm of travel on the river. The same effect is
achieved in a different way by the repetition of the nearly identical sequences of
A B (C) D line types; one could even imagine that the unregulated (C4) lines are
analogous to a noisy shipping of oars every evening, followed by the stable
mooring of the D2 pattern in lines 223-4 and 8.166

HANYANG: RESPONSE TO ASSAULTS ON HISTORY

Although seven of the eleven pentametrical Regulated Verses from 109698 have
AB openings, we shall be content to let the poem we have just discussed represent
that majority and turn now to two CD poems (out of the three written in this
period) and the sole DB poem in the set. (There are no BD poems after 1091.) The
first poem is actually an extended Regulated Verse, but its content is more notable
than its form.
 In our chapter on Ancient Verse, we discovered that in Jiangxia Fanghui expresses a new view of history as something that can be recovered, something that
must be rectified and passed on. This impulse shows itself already in the fifth
month of Shaosheng 3 (1096), after our poet arrives in Hanyang, opposite Jiangxia.
There he discovers that the lake Li Bo named Court Gentlemans Lake in 758 is
gone and the body of water that now bears the name is too small and in the wrong
place. We shall translate Fanghuis preface to his poem, which in turn quotes or
paraphrases part of the preface to Li Bos poem on the lake.

165 In a heptametrical Quatrain dated 1087 Fanghui had made a different substitution, resulting
in yet another meaning. He speaks of willow floss blowing in through the blinds and purposely (gu)
clinging to (yi) a person. See Harmonizing with Someones Pained by Spring, Poem 480, 9.12593;
9.8a. There is no relationship with Du Fus line here. Still, this comes after two of Su Shis gu yiran
poems, after all three of Wang Anshis poems, and after Qin Guans poem, which is
, Huaihai ji (SBCK), 10.3b, dated by Nakata Yjir to 1080. No other poet uses gu with yi ren
clings to someone, so Fanghui still may be refusing Han Yus gu yiran phrase.
166 This is why I exercised the option to make the third syllable in line 223-8 a deflected tone.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

259

I observe that the preface to Li Bos poem states, In the [first] year of the Qianyuan
Era I was exiled to Yelang. It happened that my old friend Secretarial Court Gentleman
Zhang Wei, who was on assignment to Mianzhou [Hanyang], Prefect Du of Mianyang,
and Magistrate Wang of Hanyang were having a drinking party at the South Lake of the
riverside city. Mr. Zhang looked around in all directions with an air of transcendence
and asked me to give [the lake] an auspicious name. And so I named it Court Gentlemans Lake. Assistant and literary man Cen Jing, who was at the banquet, thought
my words were on the mark. At present the so-called Court Gentlemans Lake is
situated north of the commandery wall and is hemmed in between two mountains; it is
a hundred paces or so across, unworthy of anyone looking around in all directions
with an air of transcendence. It is already plain that this is not the place. Moreover, the
people from the edge of the River south of the commandery brought a Tang period
map and pointed out that the Court Gentlemans Lake was next to them. It must be that
the Lake was merged with the River; a li or more from the wall are indistinct sandbars
and isles that have not yet been submerged, and these must be the former banks of the
Lake. In the fifth month of bingzi [109697] my boat stopped at Mianyang. I sought out
the elders left over from another era and only then obtained the details, upon which I
composed this poem to record them. 167
224

That year a wise prefect and magistrate

C2
took brew for an excursion south of Mian.
D2
A cool moon displayed the newly cleared skies;
A2
the bright lake glistened with pale autumn.
B1
The court gentleman was emissary to Xiakou;
(C4)
the immortal guest was prisoner in Yelang.
D1
Knees touching: green dragon boat;
A1
goblets continually: purple damask coat.
B1
High spirits scattered with the rain;
C2
relict traces remind us of carefree elegance.
D1

167 Fanghuis poem is titled simply Court Gentlemans Lake. 5.1255556; 5.14a. For Li
Bos poem and preface, one may see Zhan Ying, Li Bo quanji, 6:18.288488, or no Jitsunosuke, Ri
Taihaku shika zenkai, 97678.

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16

CHAPTER THREE

Fragrant grasses hide [pearl] slippers;

(A4)
watchet waves float white birds.
(B2)
The River swalloweda hundred acres gone;
(C4)
on stone was engravedone work remaining.
D2
It were well to have someone sink the stele,
A2
anticipating the sorrow of ridges and valleys.
(B2)

Notes:
224-4/ I posit a rising tone reading for han, the third character, to retain this line as a regulated B 1
type. 168 Autumn is pale because it is traditionally linked to the color white. 169 However, su pale
also means all along, in the past. This meaning correlates with newly in line 3. For another
example of parallelism-by-pun, see the note to line 224-11.
224-6/ The immortal guest is Li Bo, who encouraged the image of himself as an immortal temporarily banished from Heaven to earth. Yelang, in the rugged uplands of the southeastern Sichuan
Basin, is the place of exile to which he was en route.
224-7/ When peoples knees meet in poetry, it is not because their space is cramped but because
they are engaged in earnest and friendly conversation. The dragon boat has a hornless dragon chi
carved on the bow.
224-8/ In one of his poems, Li Bo trades a green damask coat for wine to keep the party going. 170
224-11/ I have kept the Chinese text as it is, but I am sure it is corrupt; the translation reflects my
hypothesis that qing green, blue, grey should be replaced by zhu pearl, a pun (well attested in
Tang poetry) on , red, crimson. Li Bo refers twice to pearly slippers of guests. Green/
blue/grey shoes have no such precedent and thus no resonance. 171 Qing already appears in the
poem, and in a Regulated Verse the repetition of a character is generally not preferred.

168 David Branner, Cuyun: a handbook of Chinese character readings, and Morohashi 7:17595 report the
rising tone based on the Guangyun rhyming dictionary of 1011. The Hanyu da cidian lists several
compounds in which han is supposed to mean reflect. I think the frequent use of the verb with
bodies of water reflecting the sky stems from a conceit that the water soaks or takes in (another
meaning of han) the sky or reflected image. I hope the translation glistens with pale autumn
suggests, however faintly, both the moisture and the reflection.
169 I borrow pale autumn from Stephen Owens translation of the sixth of Du Fus Autumn
Stirrings, Anthology 437.
170 . Zhan Ying, 6:21.33025; no Jitsunosuke, 66062.
171 Li Bos poems are and , Zhan Ying,
4:10.1713 and 12.1971; no Jitsunosuke, 1068 and 1070. Both poems are ascribed by no to 760,
when Li Bo was on his way back down the river after being pardoned before he reached Yelang. I
find eleven cases in Tang poetry in which pearl slippers is correlated with a phrase containing a
color word: green (l ) coins, blue (qing) lapel, white/plain (su) cart, yellow (huang) oriole,
black (dai) brows, red (hong) dust, and kingfisher (cui) quill-feathers, one case each; plus four
correlations each with white (bai) clouds, turban, clothes, and hair. Du Mu, Du Fu, Wen Tingyun,
Xu Hun, Luo Yin, Lu Guimeng, and Li Shangyin are represented, as well as less familiar poets.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

261

The last two couplets truly are a reversala defiance, evenof the muteness of
the historical record that we saw in the early Ancient Verse. First of all, the engraved text of Li Bos preface and poem (line 224-14) survives, even though the
lake is sinking into the Yangzi River. Secondly, the last couplet proposes an audacious way to make sure the text speaks to generations far in the future. It is quite
common to speak of ridges and valleys changing places across eons of time, or to
use this as an image for changes on a human scale; we saw one example in
Fanghuis 1080 Ancient Verse Inscribed on the Back of the Stele of the Prince of Lanling
(line 056-12). Such changes are disorienting; they cause sorrow. Therefore,
Fanghui, having discovered how much the landscape at Court Gentlemans Lake
has changed in only three centuries, decides that rather than wait for the stele to
sink out of sight as high ground becomes low, someone should throw it into the
water first. That way, during the same geological reversal that would otherwise
cause us to mourn its loss, the stele will resurface, to the delight of all!
There may be something more to this than a witty way to close the extended
series of parallel couplets. In brief, Fanghui may be commenting on the recent fate
of one or more steles inscribed with the calligraphy or words of Su Shior he may
be being prescient about those steles. (Song Dynasty commentators who were
fond of discovering predictive poems would have seized on this one.) The two
steles in question are 1) Su Zhes 1078 Rhapsody on the Yellow Tower, written in Su
Shis hand and once inscribed on a stele in Xuzhou, and 2) Su Shis
Stele for the Palace of Upper Purity and Stored-up Auspiciousness (ca. 1091). The former
was dropped into the moat at Xuzhou by a prefect who could not bear to destroy
it as ordered during the suppression of Su Shis writings. The text on the latter
stele was ground off and re-inscribed with a work by Cai Jing (10461126).
Whether Fanghui was reacting to one or both of these events or anticipating
them depends on their dates, which are problematic.
The Xuzhou stele was submerged for its own protection sometime in the period while Su Shi was exiled to the south, which would be from 1094 to 1100. (It
was recovered around 1125, used to make rubbings at immense profit, and then
destroyed in order to increase the value of the rubbings.) 172 If the Xuzhou incident
happened during the same proscription as the erasure of the Stele for the Palace of
Upper Purity and Stored-up Auspiciousness, knowing the date of the latter would help
us date the former. We do have a date for the imperial mandate to replace the
destroyed inscription with one to be composed by Cai Jing: Shaosheng
4/Intercalary2/22, or 7 April 1097. That tells us that the order to obliterate steles
associated with Su Shi was given earlier than the intercalary second month of 1097,

172 Lin Yutang, The Gay Genius, 18283, says the stele was dropped into the moat while Su was
in exile and recovered was about ten years later, which could not have been later than 1110. The
1125 date comes from Xu Du , Quesao bian (ca. 1130), CSJC, 2791:C.14748, quoted in
Tanoue Keiichi, Krfu kokuseki k, 26364.

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though it still does not provide an exact date. 173

 Theres more. The destruction of the stele in the Upper Clarity Stored-up
Auspiciousness Palace has been linked with two Quatrains that appeared during
the Shaosheng era (109498) and may or may not have been written by Su Shi.
The first Quatrain mentions a stele inscription by Han Yu that was obliterated and
replaced by one by someone elsethe poem points out that history remembers
only Han Yus work, not the replacement. The second concerns Li Bos exile to
Yelang despite the efforts of a friend to redeem him. 174 Both poems are clearly
relevant to both Su Shis exile and the survival of texts.
 Could it be that Fanghui also saw a parallel between Li Bos exile and that of Su
Shi? If the proscription was taking effect by the fifth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096),
when Fanghui was arriving in Hanyang, the final couplet of Court Gentlemans Lake
must obliquely refer to the contemporary hazards faced by steles that remained on
dry land. This may also explain the fervid interest in the writing of history that
Fanghui showed in the Ancient Verse of his HanyangEzhou years. If primary
texts are being destroyed, the historian must get to work.

109697: THIS IS NOT LI SHANGYIN

The next poem we shall look at is the second of a pair: Betaking
my Stirrings at Jiangxia: Two Poems. 175 Several things make this poem instructive. First,
like Taking in the Morning and Evening Views at the Delightful! Pavilion, Two Poems (see
pp. 202ff), the two poems in the set were not composed at the same time; in fact,
they were composed several months apart. This is probably often the case with
pairs or sets of poems, but other poets rarely tell us this. Fanghuis systematic
notation of the time and circumstance of each poem is unique. In any case, the
first poem was written in the twelfth month of Shaosheng 3 (i.e., sometime in the
period 18 December 109615 January 1097), the second poem in the fifth month
of Shaosheng 4.

173 Kong Fanli, in Su Shi nianpu, 3:36.124648, states that the order to destroy the inscription was
given on the twenty-second of the second month. However, his sourceZizhi tongjian changbian shibu
14:14.11a (4933a)is only the imperial mandate to replace Sus text with one composed and written
by Cai Jing. It sets the context for this order by noting that the obliteration has already been ordered.
For the text of Sus inscription, see SSWJ 2:17.5025. The inscription is in part an interesting
attempt to steer the court away from Daoist superstition to the roots of Daoism, which turn out to
be reconcilable with passages in the Changes and the Analects, and most definitely at odds with the
activist New Policies. I date the inscription ca. 1091 because the date mentioned in the inscription
is the date Su Shi received the order to compose it (Yuanyou 6/6/22); on the same day, he sent up
a request for information on the dates, financing, and other matters, detailed information that might
have been forthcoming in a matter of weeks, but that it could have taken months to produce. See
SSWJ 3:32.915. It would be interesting to know how efficiently such data was retrieved.
174 , SSSJ, 8:48.263031; see also the nianpu entry cited above.
175 5.12556; 5.15ab.

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263

 Second, the second couplet of the poem we shall translate makes use of yet
another kind of parallelism, one that might be called visual parallelism. This
involves correlating terms not by their semantic fields (plants with plants, verbs
with verbs, etc.) but by the semantic components of the characters. The two
characters translated oozy sump in line 227-3 have the water classifier; the
corresponding two in line 4 translated clear sunshine have the sun classifier.
There are less obvious correspondences later in the lines. Citywall (227-3) has
the earth classifier; tile, which is made from earth, is correlated with it in line 227-4.
The fifth characters are harder to link, unless the mouth on the lower right side
in the phonetic element of dian (toes the edge, line 3) matches the mouth
classifier of ming in the next line. This has the feel of Wang Anshis technique for
analyzing characters by treating all elements as semantically significant and ignoring the phonetic nature of writing. However, it is impossible to know whether
Fanghui had such a link in mind, or whether he simply ran out of visual links based
on classifiers.
 Finally, the poem is interesting for the descriptive passages in the first half and
the acceptance expressed in the second half:
227

Ponds and lakes press close on ward markets;

C2
the Jiang and Han join from north and west.
D2
Oozy sump: a nutgrass citywall toes the edge;
A2
clear sunshine: bamboo tiles make their sounds.
B1
A new text: I add another Houlet Rhapsody;
(C4)
unusual flavors: I connoisseur turtle soup.
D1
Why should I grieve that Ive fallen into obscurity?
A1
Ive betaken my self to government provisions.
B1

Notes:
227-2/ Jiang and Han vertical [then] horizontal. Li Bo has the similar line The
Heavenly Han vertical [then] horizontal, referring to the revolving of Milky Way with the passage
of the night. 176 Fanghui has simply changed Heavenly to Jiang (the Yangzi River); the phrase

176 , Zhan Ying, 4:13.222634; no Jistunosuke,

11151118, line 34.

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vertical-horizontal now refers to the meeting of the two major rivers at Hanyang-Jiangxia.
227-3/ Suocheng probably refers to a wall with nutgrass growing along the top; it appears to be
associated with the south. 177
227-4/ Su Shi mentions rooftiles made from bamboo on the low cabins of boat-people. Presumably
these are large bamboos that are split into thirds or halves and laid to form a pantile roof. 178 In our
poem they seem to be making a cracking sound as they heat up in the sun; ming is a general verb that
leaves us to imagine what the sound must be.
227-5/ Jia Yis Rhapsody of the Houlet is an exploration of an ideal acceptance of change and misfortune. See the note to line 002-19.
227-6/ Turtle soup must have been a local delicacy. Indeed, in the Zuo Tradition when a turtle is
presented to Duke Ling of Zheng, it comes from Chu. The duke is fond of unusual flavors. 179

We could take at face value Fanghuis relaxed acceptance of a steady salary and
local delicacies to compensate for life in what is essentially exile. However, since
we know he hates the mint at Ezhou, and since the first poem in the pair reveals
that he feels cut off from distant friends, perhaps he is not being straight with us.
We might, therefore, supply what is left unsaid: if our poet has reason to express
contentment with his lot, it is because he is better off than Su Shi and many of his
close associates, who are the targets of active persecution.
 One question we should ask is whether betaking my stirrings as a title indicates filiations from a pre-existing subgenre. We have to look mostly to the Tang
Dynasty for other poems betaking stirrings. This title came into use among
poets born after the mid-eighth century. Most of the titlesfifteen to sixare
used for pentametrical poems. Chao Yuezhi, the only other Northern Song poet
known by me to have used this title, also applies it to a pentasyllabic Ancient
Verse. 180 Both Fanghui and Chao Yuezhi are following a majority pentametrical
tradition, then.
 Beyond this, it is difficult to generalize about the tone and themes of the Tang
poems found with this phrase in the title. The poem that comes closest to
Fanghuis style is the one by Li Shangyin. 181

A petty functionary, usually ill, / I followed the one who understands

177 I dont think this weed is practical for thatching roofs, and one Tang poet speaks of a green
nutgrass cheng facing the mountains, indicating live grass. See Li Xianyong ,
, QTS, 19:645.7395, line 6. Zhang Ji, in a Song of the South , offers this line:
Clean nutgrass covers the cheng, bamboo forms houses. Zhang Ji shi ji, 1.11, line
7. I purposely leave cheng untranslated here because of the uncertainty over whether it means a town
or a wall around a town.
178 Pantile is used here in the sense of curved tiles laid with their concave sides up with the
junction of their edges then covered with curved tiles laid concave side downward. I own a bamboo
arm-rest (to support the arm for writing small characters) that appears to be a third of a bamboo
cane 10 cm in diameter. It seems to be roughly the width and contour of a serviceable roof tile. Su
Shis poem is SSSJ, 4:21.1124; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuan ji, 146.
179 Xuan 4; See Legge, 296, for translation.
180 , QSS, 21:1.1368889.
181 Li Shangyin shige jijie, 3:125455.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

265

me and ended up far away. / We chat cordially and I am honored as a guest; /

Days off follow plumbing for poems. / The trees are fine; often we move our
couches; / the clouds are unusual; never do we come downstairs; / It cant be
because there is no scenery; / but homesickness will happen.
 Ye Mengde, in his biography of He Zhu, quotes our poet as saying I drive Li
Shangyin and Wen Tingyun at my brushtip, giving them no rest as they run for
their lives! 182 If, in naming his two poems in Jiangxia Betaking Stirrings, Fanghui
was mindful of Li Shangyins precedent, he certainly was also aware of the distance
that separated them. Broader in the scope of his landscape, more interested in
recording the sights and sounds of his locale, and (for once) transcending his
poverty and his desire for home, Fanghui exceeded Li in many ways. The comparison of the two poems reminds us, too, that they lived in different societies. Li
Shangyins poem is clearly written to please the regional governor he served in the
Sichuan Basin from 851 to 855; 183 it makes sure to state that he was treated kindly
(lines 3 and 4 describe his days as spent in conversation and poetry writing, followed by days off!) and the scenery was all one could ask for, save that it was not
the scenery of home. Though the Song regime is undergoing its own turmoil in
1097, Fanghui is secure in the government provisions that come from a functional central bureaucracy; he is not dependent on the goodwill of a military
governor.

1098: FAREWELL TO A BUDDHIST MAGISTRATE

After 1091, Fanghui leaves us only two farewell poems in the pentametrical
Regulated Verse form. It happens that they are the last pentametrical Regulated
Verses we have from his hand. One was written in the third month of 1098 for a
man we are told (in the headnote) was young, of few desires, and a devout Buddhist. Thus, the themes of this poem are a little different and we shall use it to
close this chapter. The poem is titled Sending Off Magistrate Shen
Huan of Jintan. 184
230

Pure and plain, yet well informed

D1

182

Quoted in Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 52324.

Li Shangyin shige jijie, 5:208083.
184 5.12557; 5.15b. Jintan was in Runzhou, Liang Zhe Circuit. It is possible that the ling in the
title does not mean magistrate but is part of Shens name: Shen Linghuan. However, line seven
strongly suggests that, whatever his name, he is a magistrate. I have not been able to identify him by
either name; in the two other poems whose titles or headnotes mention Shen (547 and 548,
10.12604; shiyi.13b), Fanghui simply uses his cognomen, Xianyu ( cleverly constructed from the
two elements of Huan).
183

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On the far horizon I gain your friendship late.

B1
You invite me for the meal of an upsaka,
C2
and expound in detail the texts on pattra.
D2
The flavor of the world is bland as water;
A1
plans for life more scattered than clouds.
B1
Well just make a date for the county of blossoms
C1
to comfort us at this moment of parting.
D1

Notes:
230-2/ To be on the horizon is to be far from where one would like to be (home, the capital). The
rest of the line is a common way of saying one regrets he didnt get to know someone sooner.
230-3/ An upsaka is a male who observes various religious restrictions but lives at home as a
layman. Shen is offering He Zhu a vegetarian repast.
230-4/ The large leaves, or pattra, of the palmyra palm were used for writing sacred texts.
230-5/ The third syllable is given a level tone here to make the line regulated. Although the meaning
bland or thin normally carries the falling tone, the level tone reading is defined in one dictionary
as like the manner of water. 185
230-7/ Fanghui and Shen have agreed to meet in Jintan, where he will be magistrate. When Pan Yue
was magistrate of Heyang, he planted a great many flowering trees, so that Heyang became known
as the county of blossoms. Allusion to the county of blossoms thus became a flattering way to
refer to a magistrates district and, since Pan Yue was a handsome, talented writer known for his
capable administration, to infer that the magistrate was similarly gifted.

To send off people, Fanghui wrote nearly twice as many heptametrical Regulated
Verses (seventeen) as pentametrical (nine); as we shall see in the next chapter, the
heptametrical form was the preferred form for social exchange. Perhaps the diction of this poem tells us why Fanghui used the pentametrical meter for Shen
Huan: like the recipient, it is pure and plain, yet it shows the poet to be well
informed and an appreciative recipient of Shens Buddhist repast and exposition.
The perfectly regulated lines embody the calm of one to whom the flavor of the
world is bland as water. Still, there is that decorously regretful conclusion, the
D-line finish allowing the prolongation of lin fen, verge of parting.

185

Again, Morohashi is a better for historical readings than the Hanyu da cidian. See 7:17660.

PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

267

PLEASURES AND PRECEDENTS IN REGULATED VERSE

This, then, is the world of the pentametrical Regulated Verse: outwardly plain,
proceeding in a defined sequence of metrical patterns, but surprising us often with
the discovery of new connections between words, relations of sameness and
difference that might never occur to us if the words were not put into the matrix
of parallel lines.
To enumerate and explain these relations can be tedious, but I hope that the
reader will have taken the time to go back and reexamine the poems after reading
the explanations and speculations I have offered. Though semantic parallelism
seems to be a fairly simple concept, accomplished poets in the form tried to create
correlations that are not obvious. Much of the pleasure of Regulated Verse is
found in asking how these correlations work, and to find the answers we may have
to consider everything from puns to precedents to how we perceive the world.
Semantic parallelism will be old news to many readers, even some who read
Chinese poetry only in translation, since some translators do an excellent job of
reflecting this feature in their renditions. Less familiar to some will be the importance of meter. Asking whether there are metrical violations within lines and
which lines those are is an important first step toward attending to other layers of
meaning, whether that level be the overall degree of perfection appropriate to
the occasion or the audience, or the places where wit or strong emotion have
shaped the prosody. Similarly, considering why a poet might prefer to open his
poem with certain metrical patterns and what might cause him to go against his
personal preferences in those openings leads us directly to examine why the parts
of the poem are presented in a certain order and not in another. As we have seen,
some sequences of lines seem to be driven by an opening couplet that was perfect
for the occasion; others by the best sequence of content in the middle couplets;
and still others by the sound pattern the poet wanted to end on. There is great
potential for further research on the different preferences of Tang and Song poets
in AB, CD, DB, and BD openings.
We have always attempted to answer the implicit question, why did the poet
keep this poem when he discarded hundreds of others? At times, that is a hard
question to deal with, especially when Fanghuis pentametrical Regulated Verses
fail to speak to us because we dont understand the meaning or significance of the
concluding couplet. In some cases, it is clear you had to be there to get the
message; in other cases, I suppose, something else in the poem was too good to
throw away, so even if Fanghui himself could not get the ending right he preserved
the whole thing. Often this something else was the discovery of the right word to
capture a view or a feeling that no one else had been able to catchor occasionally
the discovery of the right view or feeling for a word that no one else had been able
to use or use as well. The same could be said of a poem in any of the genres

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covered in the present study, but the self-contained structure of pentametrical

Regulated Verse makes details of diction more likely to gain our attention.
We have seen one poem in this chapter that confirms the model of imitation
we have been developing. That, of course, is the imitation of Wen Tingyun (Poem
166). Fanghui does not tell us whether he was imitating a particular poem or what
it was, but we were able to show that his extended Regulated Verse progresses
through a series of images and levels of opacity that is analogous to at least one of
Wens poems. We were also able to show that Fanghui clearly did not build his
poem around Wens characteristic diction, as a lesser poet might. Whether the
same can be said of all his imitations is difficult to say at this point, and indeed this
will impossible to determine in cases where the imitated writers works have
largely disappeared by now.
Imitation is one kind of relationship with precedents, but several other kinds
have emerged in this chapter, though not because they are unique to pentametrical
Regulated Verse. We have suggested that Fanghui may have been aware of the
choices made by predecessor poets when they wrote, for example, pairs of poems.
Whether or not his awareness is provable, precedents help us appreciate what the
issues might have been. More intriguing, I think, are the cases in which Fanghui
seems to have transformed a distinctive bit of parallelism in an earlier poet and
made his own version of the same relationship.
Finally, pentametrical Regulated Verses are not hermetically sealed off from the
outside world. Naturally, they document friendships, such as Fanghuis relationship with Mi Fu. Of larger historical importance, we found that the precedent of
Li Bos stele and the Court Gentlemans Lake in Hanyang was relevant to the fate
of texts in the mid-1090s (see Poem 224, 1096). This is a concern we have noted
in other chapters. Just as research on contemporary poems by other authors may
uncover a shared anxiety over historiography at that juncture, it would be interesting to see whether the cluster of allusions to Ban Chao and Fan Kuai by He Zhu
and others in and around 1091 is related to a new permeability in the border
between the military and civil sides of the administration. (See again After Changing
Official Classification: Proffered to Acquaintances and Old Friends, Poem 209; 1091.)

CHAPTER FOUR

THE HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE OF HE ZHU, 10751098

One hundred sixty dated Recent Style Verse with Long Lines (jin ti shi chang ju
)are found in the sixth, seventh, and tenth juan of Fanghuis collected poems. 1 This constitutes about twenty-seven percent of his extant corpus,
making it his favorite genre. That percentage is very close to what we see in the
corpus of Li Zhiyi (1048after 1118), a friend with a slightly larger corpus. 2 In contrast, Huang Tingjians 1,878 poems only include three hundred
(sixteen percent) in this genre, and Guo Xiangzhengs 1,415 poems only thirteen
percent. Both of those poets preferred pentametrical Ancient Verses and heptametrical Quatrains.
ISSUES OF FORM
Rhymed first lines are typical for this genre. (We shall discuss the reason for this
later.) Thus, all but three of Fanghuis heptametrical Regulated Verses open with

1 The tenth juan in Quan Song shi is called the shiyi, collected remnants, in other editions. It is
not the first juan of the lost second half of He Zhus poetry collection, as suggested in Song ren bieji
xulu 1:581. Rather, it is a collection of three distinct types of heptametrical remnants.
First, there is a 1090 Song at the head of the section that might have been lost in the shuffle of
papers and discovered too late to add to juan 1.
More critical for the present chapter are the fifty-seven heptametrical Regulated Verses that
come next. They cover the period from 1094 to 1098. Since juan 7 stops in 1093, these poems are
clearly a third juan of Regulated Verses that was lost and recovered. (It would have been the original juan 8, juan 8 would have been juan 9, and juan 9 would have been juan 10.) Note that juan 6 and
7 contain fifty Regulated Verses each, so this group of fifty-seven in the shiyi is the right size for an
independent juan.
Finally, the shiyi contains twenty heptametrical Quatrains dated from 1088 (ninth month) to
1095. They perfectly fill a gap in juan 9, which breaks off in the ninth month of 1088 and resumes
in 1096, between which there are no poems. There are exactly five poems after the resumption in
juan 9: I speculate that one sheet of paper had five poems on it and that the twenty recovered
poems in the shiyi were on four pieces of paper. This was near the end of the collection and therefore more exposed to physical damage; in fact, since Fanghui finished his editing and wrote his
preface in 1096, these four pages might have been the very last pages until more poems were
added in 1097 and 1098, after which the lost hou ji (later collection) was begun. Sometime between
the writing of the preface and the addition of the last five heptametrical Quatrains, the last four
pages were mislaid.
2 Li Zhiyis corpus is 699 poems. The two met in the capital in 1093see the heptametrical
Regulated Verse Presented to Li Zhiyi, Poem 322, 7.12575; 7.9band in 1102 the two of
them and Guo Xiangzheng wrote lyrics together in Dangtu. See Wang Mengyin, He Zhu
nianpu, 101.

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DB or BD couplets. The distribution of these two openings is roughly equal,

though one or the other may predominate in a given year.
This overall balance of DB and BD poems contrasts with He Zhus pentametrical Regulated Verse, where BD poems were conspicuously avoided. It
may be recalled that starting with a B line in a pentametrical Regulated Verse
requires the poet to use two more B lines in the poem and that the B lines are
the most restrictive insofar as there is only a single regulated matrix: B1,
. The disadvantage of starting with the B line is greatly reduced in heptametrical verse. This is because the heptasyllabic line allows for two regulated B
lines: B1, , and B4, .
Heptasyllabic B lines still offer fewer regulated options than the other line
types (whose regulated configurations double to four each). Perhaps for that
reason, BD poems are more likely to start with an unregulated line. Twenty-one
out of the seventy-six BD poems start with an unregulated (B) line, whereas
only eight out of the seventy-two DB poems start with an unregulated (D) line.
(In general, a reasonably regulated opening will be followed by lines that are for
the most part also regulated, and in the proper order.)
Two of the criteria for Regulated Verse are the degree to which the lines of a
poem are regulated, and the degree to which the line types are in the sequence
allowed in Regulated Verse. It appears that heptametrical verse has more latitude
than pentametrical verse in both criteria before a poem is considered to have
crossed the line into Ancient Verse. Even when they consist of largely unregulated lines in atypical order, they are considered regulated as long as certain
other criteria are met. We shall return to this point at the end of this section. Let
us first review the canonical orders.
For poems whose second syllable is a level tone and whose first line rhymes, the
order is DBCDABCD. For poems whose second syllable is a deflected tone and
whose first line rhymes, the order is BDABCDAB. Heptametrical Regulated
Verses that do not rhyme the first lines should have the pattern ABCDABCD or
CDABCDAB.

Nineteen of Fanghuis Recent Style Verse with Long Lines depart from the
canonical regulated sequence of line types. In chronological order, they are as
follows:
Table 3

Anomalous Regulated Verses

Year

No

Type

Detail

Occasion

1084
1085
1085
1089
1089

246
256
258
288
292

ABAB
XBXB
BB
ABAB
ABABAB

(D)(B)(C)(D)(A)(B)(A)(B)
(D)(B)(A) B C D A B
(B)(B) (C) D A (B) C D
D B C D (A)(B)(A)(B)
A B A (B) A B C D

Spring feelings
Answering friend in jest
Inviting A and showing to B
On horseback
Missing friends

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

271

Year

No

Type

Detail

Occasion

1090
1090
1090
1090
1091
1092
1092
1094
1094
1096
1096
1096
1096
1097

295
303
306
311
315
316
321
504
507
517
524
526
537
544

ABABAB
ABABAB
ABAB
ABAB
DDABABAB
DD
DD
DD
XDXDXD
DDAXAXAX
ABAB
ABAB
DD
DD

(B)(D)(A)(B)(A)(B)(A)(B)
(B) D (A)(B)(A)(B)(A)(B)
(A)(B)(C) D (A)(B)A(B)
B D (A)(B) A B C D
(D)(D) (A)(B)(A)(B)(A)(B)
(D)(D) A (B) C D A (B)
(D)(D)(A)(B)(C)(D)(A)(B)
(D)(D)(A)(B)(C)(D)(A)(B)
(B) D (A)(D)(C)(D) A B
(D)(D) (A)(B)(A)(D)(A)(B)
D B (C)(D)(A)(B)(A)(B)
D (B)(C)(D)(A)(B)(A)(B)
(D) D (C)(D)(A)(B)(C)(D)
(D)(D)(A)(B)(C)(D)(A)(B)

Farewell visit to friend

On moored boat
Farewell visit to friend
On moored boat, missing friends
Presentation at banquet
Missing friends
(could be 1093) Sent to friend
Happy over rain
Inscription in lodging
On willow trees
Moored boat, missing, sending
On moored boat
Inscribed after a text
Sent to friend

It will be noticed that these anomalous Regulated Verses either start with a pair
of identical line types or contain at least two couplets in which either the odd- or
the even-numbered lines are of the same type. (Most commonly this results in at
least one pair of contiguous AB couplets.) Two poems (315 and 517) meet both
criteria. We must emphasize that Fanghuis heptametrical Regulated Verses are
not unique in including poems with these features, although to my knowledge
these variations in the genre have not been studied as such. The importance of
these poems for us lies in the fact that their noticeable departure from canonical
form challenges us to come up with an explanation.
A blanket rationale that has governed all our remarks on meter in this study is
that violations of prosodic rules have a rhetorical function insofar as they emphasize something that is being said or implied in the poem. Fanghuis BB and
DD openings, as well as the even rarer AB openings, must have had an immediate impact on the poems audience. ABAB sequences later in the poem are both
more subtle and more complicated. One way of looking at them is to say they
start with a tone change in a single syllable. If the second syllable in the C line of
an ABCD sequence is changed from level to deflected, the line becomes an A
line; because an A line must be followed by a B line, there is then pressure for
the resultant ABAD sequence to become an ABAB sequence. It only takes one
crucial change of tone in the right place to trigger this chain of violation and
adjustment. Still, the fact that the violation and adjustment had taken place
could not have escaped the notice of the experienced reader of Regulated Verse.
Whenever we see these anomalies (and thanks to Qi Gongs notation system, we
can see them more easily), we must find something in the content or the context
of the poem to account for them.

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It may seem peculiar for poems that partially or wholly violate the rules of
tonal parallelism and couplet adhesion to be classified as regulated verse. Let
us remember that these poems are always heptametrical octaves; moreover, they
always rhyme in the level tone, and only in the even-numbered lines (with the
first-line option). After reading a few of the poems in this chapter, the reader is
invited to turn back to our discussion of two eight-line Songs from 1090 (Poem
013, My Boat Makes a Stop in Jinling: Sent to Clerk Wang Xiang, of Whom I Am
Thinking, in Liyang, and the untranslated Poem 015, Mooring My Boat in the QinHuai, I Call on Shiqi Yu in the Snow) to see how unmistakable the division between Ancient and Regulated poems is in He Zhus corpus.

SITUATIONS IN WHICH THE HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE WAS USED

In contrast to Ancient Verses and Songs, heptametrical Regulated Verses are
never written by He Zhu in the context of a group poetry session (or as an explicit imitation of a predecessor). On the other hand, for most poets, Fanghui
included, this is the form of choice for social purposes: as a poem to be sent to
someone (thirty-two poems), to be composed when seeing off someone (seventeen poems), to be left behind when leaving someone (seven poems), and so on.
This general impression of the functions of the genre is reinforced if we take
note of a cross-section of poems that I shall characterize as first poems. If
one keeps track of the people for whom Fanghui wrote his poems, it becomes
apparent that often it is a heptametrical Regulated Verse that started the poetic
relationship. There are about forty-five people for whom the first poem preserved is a heptametrical Regulated Verse. In contrast, only eight people unequivocally make their first appearance in He Zhus works through pentametrical Regulated Verses. While twenty or so Songs introduce us to a new person,
this happens almost exclusively in the 1090s, whereas first poem heptametrical Regulated Verses are distributed fairly evenly across time. Quatrains are insignificant as first poems.
The heptametrical Regulated Verse seems to have had the balance of preordained form and flexibility that made it relatively easy to write, whether for
social purposes or private observations. We have already adumbrated some extremes of flexibility that we shall find. To get a feel for the other factors, such as
ordinary first-line rhyme and the dynamics of the heptasyllabic line, let us consider the poems themselves.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

273

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE IN THE NORTH, BEFORE XUZHOU

1075: FIRST-LINE RHYME
In any given year from 1075 through 1081, Fanghui wrote no more than two
heptametrical Regulated Verses that he later felt compelled to preserve. The earliest one was written in Lincheng: On the First Si Day,
Thinking of Excursions at Jinming Lake. 3 The date referred to in the title is probably
equivalent to 22 March 1075. (For centuries the festival had been fixed on the
third day of the third month, regardless of whether the cyclical designation of
that date ended in si or not. For example, the First Si Holiday in 1071, which
very well could be the festival at Jinming Lake that Fanghui recalls in this poem,
took place on the day wuzi. 4 The cyclical designation for the day this poem was
probably writtenXining 8/3/3is yiwei.) I translate the first six lines as if they
are a reminiscence, but they could just as well be the poets imagination of what
his friends are enjoying this day in the capital.
232

D2

In the Western City, slight rain:

overnight dust dissolved.

B4

Spring waters ample and broad

slapped the painted bridges.

(C14)

They gathered kingfisher plumes on islands,

as white duckweed bloomed;

D4

and wafted fragrances in palaces,

as purple clouds soared.

(A8)

Colorful boatsthe day growing late

damask and gauzes were drunk;

(B4)

Oiled tentsthe breeze fine

silks and pipes were shrill.

C4

Knights errant and companions

must be thinking of me;

D1

the finest pleasure in the whole year,

and I prove false to this morn.

Notes:
232-3/ When Du Fu looked back on days of prosperity in the Tang capital, he recalled girls collecting kingfisher plumes. 5

6.12558; 6.1a.
Changbian, 7:221.2b (2337a). The wuzi is the third day of the third month in Xining 4 (4 April
1071). Serious policy debates are recorded for that date, so the court itself probably adjourned to
the parks only later in the day.
5 See the last of his eight Autumn Stirrings; Owen, Anthology, 438.
4

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232-6/ In Tang times, tents made of oilcloth were set up to shelter the dandies if a shower threatened their spring outing. 6 Breeze correlates with day in line 5 because ri means both day
and sun; the latter is a meteorological phenomenon qualified to match breeze. 7
232-8/ Cf. Luo Ye (831?96?)s line lamenting that he cannot go home to Sichuan in time to
enjoy the blossoms: spring colors [that cap] the whole year, [and I] prove false to
my time to return. 8

The first line of this poem rhymes, which is typical of heptametrical poems, as
we have already mentioned. Why is the norm different from pentametrical poetry, where first lines are usually unrhymed? Can two more syllables in a line
make such a difference?
First-line rhyme in heptametrical poetry is sometimes explained by the origins
of the form in popular two-line ditties and in songs whose every line was
rhymed; I myself have suggested that the repetition of rhyme in the popular,
oral tradition facilitated memorization. 9 Such origins, however, do not account
for the persistence and domination of first-line rhyme all through the development of heptametrical verse as a legitimate, written medium for serious poets.
Nor do they explain why poets ignored the alternative model presented by pentametrical verse, which had been for centuries the only real poetry.
The key, I believe, is that the heptasyllabic line is structurally more complex
than the pentasyllabic line. Stronger devices are therefore necessary to establish
the overall structure. By immediately producing the rhyme whose anticipation
will then pull the auditor forward through the composition, the poet counterbalances the weight of the individual lines. In saying the seven-syllable string is
structurally more complex, I by no means intend to imply that it is of greater
aesthetic value or requires more of the audience. The converse is probably true,
in general: reading the pentasyllabic line is sometimes compared to Zen meditation, for its implications often reveal themselves only after one has had time to
turn the line over in the mind for a while.
The disruptive complexity of the heptasyllabic line comes rather from the
division of the line into three parts instead of two. Let us use the poem just
translated to make a comparison. In the 1087 pentametrical Regulated Verse on
Jinming Lake, Thinking Back on Old Excursions at the Western City (Poem 184), we
had this line: Damask and gauzes || pink caltrop dawn. The two
segments of the line are not simple in themselves: the clothing implies something else (beautiful women of wealth), and we probably dont know all the
connotations of pink caltrop at dawn, though certainly a lovely water scene is

6 See Zhong Zhenzhens note to the lyric by He Zhu in Dongshan ci, 28. The oil comes
from the Chinese tallow tree; see the Hanyu da cidian, s.v. qingyou mu .
7 There is a similar juxtaposition of days and months (sun and moon) with frost and snow
in a poem attributed to Su Shi in some collections, , SSSJ, 8:49.2719.
8 , QTS, 19:654.7521.
9 See my City of Lotuses, 18081.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

275

imaginable. The relationship between the two parts, the first two syllables and
the last three syllables, is not simple, either. In this case it is a juxtaposition of
objects (or the people implied by the objects) and their context; because the relationship is not explicit, the process of reading engages us in the reconstruction
of the relationship between the two parts and the meaning or emotion generated
by that relationship. However, the point is that no matter how rich in implications the constituent strings in the line are, no matter how ambiguous their relationship, there is nothing else in the pentasyllabic line to distract from that single
juxtaposition. There are additional relationships with adjoining lines (in fact, one
looks to the other line in the couplet for a completion or complication of the
pentasyllabic lines theme), but within the single semantic unit of that line, there
are only the first two syllables, the pause, and the last three syllables.
Compare line 232-5: Colorful boats | the day growing
late || damask and gauzes were drunk. Either colorful boats or the day
growing late could be eliminated to create a pentasyllabic line, but it is significant that the resulting lines would be less interesting, except in correlation with a
good matching line. What gives this line its energy is the fact that the colorful
boats and the day growing late constitute two strings that already generate some
meaning between them: there is a place, there is a time, and the juxtaposition of
the two implies contiguity. On another level there are objects and there is process, and so we have the static and the dynamic forming a mutual context. In
recitation, these pairs of syllables can be drawn out somewhat, with a slight
pause between them, and then followed by a stronger caesura before the last
three syllables. Those last three syllables are held in suspense and thus gain a
kind of prominence independent of what has gone before. (An equally strong
pause in a pentametrical line would give the impression that the reader had lost
his place or forgotten what comes next. The focus of suspense is the matching
line in the couplet, instead.)
Our present poem may serve as a partial exemplar of the possibilities that are
held in suspension by the strong caesura. The final three syllables can announce
the result of something in the first four (line 232-1: West city | slight rain ||
overnight dust dissolved); they can complete a sentence begun at the beginning of
the line but interrupted by an additional thought (line 2: Spring waters | ample
and broad || slap painted bridges); they can add a new action (line 3: [They]
gather kingfisher | [on] islands || white duckweed blooms); they can describe an
event whose context was established by the first four syllables (line 5: Colorful
boats | day late || damask gauze drunk); they can complete a sentence that,
unlike line 2, is not interrupted but flows across the whole line (line 7: Knights
errant | companions || must think of me); or they can express an ironic reversal
(line 8: whole year | fine pleasure || [yet I] betray this morning).
Only some of these dynamics are different in kind from those of the typical

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pentasyllabic line, the interruption observed in line 232-2 being perhaps the
best example. Nevertheless, there are always more rhythmic units that need to
be parsed in order for the heptasyllabic line to be understood. The function of
the early introduction of rhyme, we conclude, is to establish a strong punctuation to frame this complexity in the first two lines.
Note that once that higher-level coherence is established, the poem can then
afford to let the parallelism of the middle couplets take over the job of providing cohesion above the level of the rhythmic units within the line; rhyme is
pared back to the even-numbered lines. (Because tight semantic and tonal patterning is less evident or less predictable in heptametrical Songs, more frequent
rhymes are needed in that genre to compensate.)

1077, 1079: ORDER IN LANDSCAPE, ORDER IN COUPLETS

In our chapter on pentametrical Ancient Verse, we saw that rural scenes interested He Zhu in his early years. The following heptametrical poem from Xining
10 (1077), Rain Clears: Taking in the View in the Western Suburb,
similarly finds its theme in a peaceful farm scene. 10
234

D2

Within the city, sick of rain,

I passed the Clear and Mild.

B1

By chance I go out to the western suburbs,

where the rustic sense is great.

C1

Silkworm mats: seizing on clear weather,

they begin to pluck for cocoons;

D1

Wheat yards: after such dampness,

they are about to sprout moths.

A3

Devising nests, yellow birds

call from deep trees;

B1

leading calves, grey buffalo

drink from the evening river.

C4

An old gardener thinking of someone

remains and bides so long

D1

Changing my clothes and buying brew,

Ill pay him a visit.

Notes:
234-1/ Clear and Mild was a term for the fourth month. This poem was written in the fifth

10 Poem 234, 6.12558; 6.1b. Composed in Zhao Commandary, modern Zhaoxian, forty-some
km northeast of Lincheng and an equal distance southeast of modern Shijiazhuang.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

277

month.
234-3/ Silkworms ready to spin their cocoons are plucked from the feeding trays and placed on
openwork mats or other frameworks.
234-4/ Reference here is to a courtyard or open patch of ground where grain is dried.

In our chapter on pentametrical Regulated Verse we speculated that one reason

to chose a certain sequence of opening line types was to control the sequence of
the middle couplets. The same principle applies to heptametrical Regulated
Verse. Since, for example, Fanghui evidently liked lines 234-5 and 6 (A and B
type lines as he worded them) and wanted them to be the third couplet, he had
to use a DB opening. With a BD opening those two lines would have to be the
second couplet. To see why that option was not chosen, let us see what the effect of reversing the middle couplets would be. (For our purposes, we can ignore the metrical problem this creates for the final couplet.)
*

B1

By chance I go out to the western suburbs,

where the rustic sense is great.

D2

Within the city, sick of rain,

I passed the Clear and Mild.

A3

Devising nests, yellow birds

call from deep trees;

B1

leading calves, grey buffalo

drink from the evening river.

C1

Silkworm mats: seizing on clear weather,

they begin to pluck for cocoons;

D1

wheat yards: after such dampness,

they are about to sprout moths.

C4

An old gardener thinking of someone

remains and bides so long

D1

Changing my clothes and buying brew,

Ill pay him a visit.

The basic problem with the rearranged lines is lack of logical progression. If we
focus only on the middle couplets, we note that the silkworm frames and drying
yards in lines *-56 suggest hard work and daylight, but hard work and daylight
have been foreclosed by moving the references to birds settling in for the night
and oxen drinking from the evening river further forward in the poem.
Fanghuis original placement of the third couplet not only avoids that problem
but, perhaps more importantly, also takes us momentarily away from the
workaday world to the natural rhythms of the orioles and the oxen: when we
return to the old gardener and the speaker in the final couplet, that quiet
mood imbues the scene with idyllic peace and prepares us for closure.

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The preface of a poem written after Fanghui had moved 150 km south to the
Chief Manufactory in Cizhou reveals an editorial policy of our poet that separates him from most of his more famous contemporaries. Here is the preface to
Harmonizing with a Poem Sent to Me from Director Zheng. 11
Zheng is a native of Lincheng. His name is Yuan; his cognomen is Linji. He attained ranking as a Presented Scholar and rose to be director of the Bureau of Operations. As he approached seventy, he resigned from his duties and dwelt near the
Zhi River [that flows by Lincheng]. He termed himself The Retired Old Man of
the Zhi River. By nature he was addicted to poetry, which he did not give up
even as he grew old. He and I exchanged several tens of poems, up to a hundred
or so. Having come to Fuyang, I still receive poems from him, with which I harmonize and answer. In my poems, I never select those that use the rhymes of others; if I record this one alone, it is just because I want to see [mention of] this gentleman in my collection. Yuanfeng era, yiwei year, Double Yang [Yuanfeng 2/9/9;
6 October 1079].

This note presents us with a problem. We know that Fanghui harmonizes

often, in all forms except pentametrical Regulated Verse. The term appears in
twenty-two titles. If we were to believe this note, we would have to understand
all those other titles as harking back to an earlier and broader meaning of harmonize, indicating that the poems simply follow the original compositions
theme or mood. However, after the ninth century, harmonizing almost always
refers to matters of rhyme. 12 Moreover, Fanghui himself sometimes tells us
what word has been used to set the rhyme when he is harmonizing. We need
to reconcile what Fanghui does with what he says in this note.
The key is that in the titles or prefaces of his poems Fanghui never uses the
phrase ci yun, following the rhymes of. That phrase indicates using for ones
rhymes the characters that come in the rhyme positions in the original poem.
When he says he never keeps poems that use other peoples rhymes, Fanghui
must be referring to that practice. That does not rule out merely using the same
rhyme category as an original poem, and perhaps even some of the characters.
The exceptional thing in the present poem seems to be that he did use all the
rhyme-characters of Director Zhengs poem, maybe even in the same order.
It is fascinating that our poet simply discards his following-the-rhyme poems when such works make up such a large proportion of most of his contemporaries collected poems. The meanings of rhyme charactersthe words or
morphemes they representchange in different contexts, and the skillful poet
will try to give a different meaning every time the character is used. For example, feng might mean breeze in the original poem and air/style in the answering
poem; or dong might mean east of in one poem, to go east in the next, and the

11
12

Poem 237, 6.12559; 6.2a.

Ye Jun, Zhongguo shixue, 16566.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

279

direction east in a third poem. There is no reason to think Fanghui was incapable
of playing this linguistic game; we have noted the sophistication of his borrowed parallelism, or parallelism by pun, which exploits the same features of
the Chinese language and orthography. My interpretation of his refusal to save
anything he wrote following someone elses rhymes is that they did not and
could not express what his ear told him was right. If he were a composer,
perhaps he would happily accept an assignment to compose in a certain key, and
he might even be willing to start from a stipulated chord or two. But if he were
forced to put his changes in a certain place or repeat a theme at pre-determined
intervals, it was no longer his poem. He had to go where the music led him, not
where some outside framework dictated.
The poem that follows that preface, quiet and competent, is like the majority
of He Zhus early heptametrical Regulated Verses insofar as it is a gesture of
friendship as well as a statement of self-definition. Seven of the ten pre-Xuzhou
heptametrical Regulated Verses are presented to or sent to friends; the rest are
solitary musings like the first two poems we translated.
237

(B3)

The traveler, in all times,

has yearned for his old home.

D2

Sumen is fallen into desolation

beside the white clouds.

A4

My dreams follow the nighttime moon,

break off before the bell;

B2

poems enter the autumn wind,

turn sere in concert with the grass.

C3

Holding the tabula, buffing my buskins

wandering service wearies me;

D4

putting out goblets, waving the chowry

the old pleasures last longer.

A1

The old man of Zhi River

must be thinking of me;

B1

and so he leans on a balustrade,

facing the setting sun.

Notes:
237-2/ Sumen, as we have seen, represents Fanghuis home district near the mountain by that
name. White clouds are emblematic of retreat from the world. Sumen was associated with white
clouds in at least one other poem. (After all, it had been the retreat of Sun Deng in the third century.) Chao Buzhi begins one quatrain with this line: [You] live close to
Sumen; there are white clouds. 13

13

, QSS, 19:18.12867.

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CHAPTER FOUR

237-3/ Reference is to the dawn bell.

237-5/ The word translated buffing is wrong in both source texts but is correct in the Cao
Anthology. It should be Morohashi vol. 5 character 13404. (Hanyu da cidian 5:519 s.v. lian gives a
better definition. For reasons of technical expediency, we substitute a character that is sometimes
a variant form of the correct one.) The acts of holding a narrow wooden or bamboo tablet as a
backing for note-paper and brushing ones boots off represent rushing about in attendance on
superior officials.

For us, I think, it is the second couplet that stands out for its imagery and language. Dreams following the moon and poems entering the autumn wind have
the literal impossibility and emotional truth that make for strongly evocative
poetry. We recognize that dreams ending before dawn are bound to disappoint;
a fresh notion is that poems can share the withering of autumn grasses. Actually,
whether the poems wither with the grasses (following the dreamsbreak off
parsing of line 237-3) or whether the grasses wither with the poems (following
what I think would be normal syntax) is ambiguous. The ambiguity and use of
gong (with) remind us of Du Fus A slip of cloud, the sky in
concert distant. 14 However, line 237-4 is not a pale echo of Du Fus line (as I
think some other Northern Song lines by Wang Anshi and Ouyang Xiu are); the
way Fanghuis ambiguity works to contain both poems and grasses in shared
autumnal dryness shows that he thoroughly understood what Du Fu was doing
and was able to transfer it to a different situation and new imagery. In addition,
he added additional grammatical ambiguity in the first four words of the line
poem enter autumn wind: enter can, in such poetic lines, mean admit, so
either poems enter the wind or autumn winds enter the poem. As with the poetry and the grasses, or Du Fus cloud, sky, and observer, both possibilities are
forever in play, and the emotional meaning is abstracted from the unknowable
true real-world situation.

108286: XUZHOU
CELEBRATION OF PLACE AND COMPLEXITY
If Ancient Verse was the appropriate medium for Fanghui to record his visits to
the ancient cities of Ye or Handan, heptametrical Regulated Verse joins the
toolkit for celebrating Xuzhou.
The famous sites of Xuzhou for He Zhu are those associated with Tang and
Song literati. (There is a Han presence, too, in places and stories connected with
Liu Bang and Xiang Yu.) The layers of Tang-Song accretions are exemplified by
the first Xuzhou heptametrical Regulated Verse we have from our poet, written

14

, Du shi xiangzhu, 5:23.2029; translation in Owens Anthology, 439.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

281

in the ninth month of Yuanfeng 5 (1082), about a month after he arrived. It

celebrates the Releasing the Cranes Pavilion that we know already from Going on
an Excursion to the Hill Dwelling of Mr. Zhang at Yunlong [Hill], an Ancient Verse
(Poem 065). The stele with a thirty-character inscription by Su Shi that was
mentioned in the headnote to that poem provides the starting point for this
poem. Although he had been in Xuzhou only a few weeks, Fanghui had apparently gazed up at it. Zhang Tianjis retreat was just a little south of Xuzhou, the
Delightful! Pavilion was on the southeast corner of the city wall, and just east of
that was the site of the Yangchun Pavilion at which Xue Neng had written a
heptametrical Regulated Verse in the ninth century. 15 As in Going on an Excursion,
Fanghui seems compelled to declare that the present moment exceeds the past;
in this case, Xue Neng wasted his effort on a pavilion that cannot match the
Pavilion for Releasing Cranes. The title is Inscribed on the
Pavilion for Releasing Cranes of Mr. Zhang of Pengcheng. 16
242

(B4)

I once saw your households

stele in the pavilion;

D4

gazing eastward in breeze and moonlight

stirred my thoughts of quiet sadness.

A4

Before, I had not divined to build

it seemed to wait for me;

B4

today, I climb to overlook

I hadnt hoped for this.

C2

Ten thousand acres of white clouds:

where the mountains leave a gap;

D1

one whole courtyard of yellow leaves:

when the rain comes.

A2

Xuchang must be bearing a load of

resentment in the Many-folded Springs;

(B4)

that day, at Yangchun,

he wrote a poem in vain.

Notes:
242-2/ Su Shi uses xian si with the sense of quiet sadness in a song of mourning. 17 Fanghuis
feelings arise from the fact that the author of the text on the stele is now in exile in Huangzhou.
242-3/ This line must refer to Fanghui, since Zhang Tianji had already moved to the hill back in

15 , QTS, 17:559.6486. Fanghui mentions in his headnote that this

poem appears in Xues collection. This suggests that Fanghui owned or had access to Xue Nengs
collected works.
16 6.12560; 6.3b. Pengcheng is Xuzhou.
17 (1079), SSSJ, 3:14.696. I follow the interpretation of Yamamoto Kazuyoshi in
Ogawa and Yamamoto, So Tba shish, 4:13942.

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1078, after a flood had half-submerged his house from fall to spring. The implication seems to be
that our poet feels the stele is inviting him to do the conventional divination to select a spot and
construct a residence nearby.
242-5/ Su Shis inscription tells us that Zhang releases his cranes towards a gap in the mountains
around Xuzhou.
242-7/ Xue Neng assembled his writings as the Xuchang Collection, named for the region in
which he was a military commissioner. Calling a person by a place in which he holds an administrative office is a common practice. The Many-folded Springs are the realm of the dead.

Fanghui is working on making his language more complex in ways that we came
to expect in his pentametrical Regulated Verses. In the second couplet, he
makes a counterintuitive correlation between xiang, an adverb that indicates its
verb has an unspecified but inferable object (waits [for me]), and bu, a negative.
The rationale might be that 1) both words must precede verbs (we could also
say xiang is taking up a slot that could be occupied by a negative) and 2) the two
phrases are antithetical insofar as wait for me is an action that seemingly occurred and hope for is an action that did not occur.
In the third couplet, locative and temporal phrases (mountain gap place; rain
come time) are displaced to the ends of the lines. (Since such phrases are moveable in English, the translation cannot duplicate the effect of this inversion,
though the colons in our rendition try to hint at it). Moreover, there are no
verbs, only noun phrases: clouds || place; / leaves || time. These
devices create a paratactic isolation of the imagery.
Neither of these phenomena is revolutionary. There are over a dozen couplets in the poems of Su Shi in which xiang and bu are parallel. Su Shi and Wang
Wei place time and place at the ends of lines, too. (Su and Wang make them
the objects of verbs, though, which entails complexities that Fanghui avoids.)
Fanghui is not trying to be outrageous, but he is developing the techniques of
detail that exploit the possibilities in parallel lines. 18
On the ninth day of the ninth month, Fanghui climbed a small hill to one of
Xuzhous famous spots, the Horse-Sporting Estrade. On that same day centu-

18 My count of xiang and bu in corresponding positions within Su Shis couplets excludes final
couplets and one or two other cases in which the xiang and the bu are the only two terms that seem
to correlate. Wang Weis famous Walk and reach the place where
waters end; / sit and watch the time when the clouds arise () is equaled by Su Shis
After the snow I come alone to where we planted willows; /
amid the bamboo I will return to the time we picked tea. In neither case do the verbs and objects
in the second lines match up normally. You cannot literally watch a time, nor can you return to a
time. Thus, Ikkan Chikk (143089) translates Su Shis second line into Japanese that
may be retranslated, Among the bamboo, where we picked tea together in a former year, the
season is gradually coming. The poem is (1083). See Shikajikkai, 12:119 and SSSJ,
4:22.1181. Note that Sus first line nicely joins time (after) and space (where); the second joins
space (amid) and time. Wang Li asserts that shi time is one of a few words commonly used at
the end of lines for the sake of rhyme without adding anything to the poem. See Hanyu shilxue,
28586. It seems to me, however, that the words use in a temporal clause at the end of a unit of
meaning does have an effect, if only to emphasize parataxis, as in He Zhus poem.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

283

ries before (24 October 418), Emperor Wu of the Liu-Song Dynasty had held a
great banquet there after expanding his borders to include Xuzhou. (Emperor
Wu was also known in legend for shooting a supernatural snake when he was
young; this story figures in line 243-4.) 19 Su Shi had written a pair of heptametrical Regulated Verses on an outing to Horse-Sporting Estrade and the place appears incidentally in three of his other poems. 20 Fanghuis poem,
Climbing Horse-Sporting Estrade on the Ninth, makes no discernable acknowledgement of Sus precedent. He is interested in the wider sweep of time, perhaps in a bid to generalize the sadness one feels on the Double Ninth when he
climbs to a high place and misses the family members who are not there. 21
243

D2

The seasons prospect from that past time:

this same hill and river.

B1

A tired traveler climbs to overlook,

alone and in a daze.

C2

Horse-Sporting Estrade has gone wild,

the years have run their course;

D1

the snake-shooting lord has left,

the story has come down in vain.

A1

Of yellow flowers half are old

after the clean frost;

B1

a white bird alone is flying

in front of the setting rays.

C2

Having nothing to do with greatness and decline,

water below the citywall

D1

steadfastly floats a fishing bateau

into the Huai River sky.

The second couplet is where Fanghui acknowledges the specificity of the site,
and he does so in a manner that is far from perfunctory. Lines 243-3 and 4 create interest because they override the default 2 | 2 || 3 rhythm of the heptasyllabic line. Horse-sporting Estrade (hiH maQ dei) and snake-shooting lord
(zyaH zya kung) are three-syllable units: 3 | 1 || 3. This tension between form
and sense enables Horse-Sporting Estrade and snake-shooting lord to leap

19 See Wen xuan 21 for Xie Lingyuns poem at the banquet in 418. The Estrade reportedly had
been built by Xiang Yu for displays of horsemanship. See Li Jifu (758814), Yuanhe junxian tuzhi,
CSJC, 3086:9.243. On shooting the snake, see Liu Jingshu, Yiyuan, CSJC (1991 ed.), 2723:4.7980.
20 See (1078); (1077);
(1078), and (1092), SSSJ, 3:17.887; 15.751; 16.833;
and 6:35.1904, respectively.
21 6.12560; 6.3b.

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CHAPTER FOUR

out boldly at the head of their lines. Still, the lines retain the basic 4 || 3 structure
of the heptasyllabic line. In 1084, Fanghui will produce a far more drastic couplet in which three-syllable proper names in the middle of the lines override the
major caesura: 2 | 5. 22
248

A1

Songs fade awaySwallow

Tower moon;

(B18)

spirit is brokenPhoenix
Plain bell.

Notes:
248-5/ Swallow Tower is where for ten years a ninth-century woman named Panpan lived alone
after her lover died. 23
248-6/ Phoenix Plain is where the eleventh-century Panpan was buried. 24c`

The third couplet of Climbing Horse-Sporting Estrade on the Ninth brings up the play
between space and time that we noted in lines 242-56. The poet exploits the
fact that after and before can be either spatial or temporal: Of yellow
flowers half are old after the clean frost; / a white bird alone is flying in front of
the setting rays. This correlation of time and space adds interest but remains
well within the bounds of common practice.
Lines 243-78 strike me as me as more innovative. To show the unusual
length of the modifiers in line 7, we can re-translate the line: The water that is
below the wall and does not participate in the rise and fall [of human institutions], /
floats a fishing boat safely downstream to the Huai. Enjambment itself is not
unusual in this position, but here we have a single noun phrase filling all of the
first line, and it is a long line. When Wang Li gives examples of enjambment in
Hanyu shil xue, all his couplets are pentametrical. The two closest to our couplet
in structure are Wang Weis The former ensign [under which they] marched west / from here will face Heyuan and Bo Juyis

22 Harmonizing with Mr. Wang of Pengchengs Mourning the Singer Panpan, 6.12561; 6.5a.
23 See Bo Juyis three quatrains and preface on the topic, QTS, 13:438.486970.
24 This according to Fanghuis headnote, which adds that Phoenix Plain is also called South
Estrade. South Estrade is the site of a temple south of the city mentioned in some of Fanghuis
other poems and in a poem by Chen Shidao (, Houshan shi zhu bujian, 2:575). Ogawa and Yamamoto identify this place with the Horse-Sporting Estrade (So Tba shish 4:290, 342, 347). The
Horse-Sporting Estrade was also south of city and Fanghui mentions a temple at the foot of it in
the headnote to another 1083 poem, Poem 071, Flying Goose Pavilion, 2:12519; 2.15a.
However, neither here nor anywhere else does Fanghui connect South Estrade with the HorseSporting Estrade, so I think their identification is questionable. There is a Phoenix Mountain a
kilometer or two further south of the supposed Horse-Sporting Estrade, forming the backdrop to
a memorial to the soldiers who fell in the fierce Huaihai Campaign against the Nationalists at the
end of 1948. Perhaps the elevated but relatively flat part of that memorial, where a large museum
and outdoor galleries of steles are situated, could be the Phoenix Plain/South Estrade. In a city
that has been ravaged by floods and wars so often, it is difficult to know today how many historical sites actually are where they should be; place-names dont always stay in one place.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

285

The traveler who sleeps little and sorrows much / rises in the
middle of the night to gaze toward home. 25 The modifiers (italicized) are complex but they are more compressed than He Zhus modifiers. We note that
Wang Li did not offer heptametrical examples of enjambment. They are rare in
the Tang (from which period he takes most of his data), perhaps because a sentence that is syntactically fairly simple seems flabby if it is stretched over fourteen syllables of classical Chinese. If, for example, I rewrite Bo Juyis couplet as
/ The traveler on the River who sleeps little
and sorrows much / rises in the middle of the night to gaze to home across the
mountains, the noun phrase in the first line is not bad, but the second line is
too wordy. It can be improved somewhat by creating more separation between
the verbs, complicating the action, as it were: in the middle
of the night he paces the moonlight, regretting he left his home. This tells us
too much about the traveler, too many things that should be implied and that
were implied in Bos pentasyllabic original. One solution to this problem is to
tighten the last line by using a pivot construction, which is precisely what
Fanghui does: floats a bateau [that] enters the Huai River sky. Another is to
make the enjambed sentence an embedded sentence, as Lu You will do in the
Southern Song: Dont wonder that the
traveler on the Fuchun River / never tired of his fishing ledge all his life. 26
Does this mean that Fanghui and other Song poets were better than Tang poets
at enjambment in heptasyllabic lines? Given the relatively late adoption of heptametrical poetry as a vehicle for serious (or at least elite) poetry, the question is
not as ridiculous as it might appear at first sight. Nevertheless, my own knowledge is too limited to verify, let alone explain, systematic differences in enjambment in the Tang and Song. Let us for now take note of He Zhus skill for its
own sake and move on.

PRECEDENTS TO BE OVERTURNED OR CELEBRATED

Although we have pointed out several places where Fanghui seems to have rewritten a predecessors language, one thing we dont see a great deal of in
Fanghui is the antithetical revision of a predecessors ideas, often called fan an
, overturning the case in Chinese. Presented to Li Chengfu on
the Ninth, has four overturned cases. 27

25

Wang Lis examples are on p. 281.

The second half of a Quatrain, .
27 6.12560; 6.4a. Written 22 October 1083. Li Chengfu is Li Zhaoqi , whose cognomen
is given in the Song shi (31:347.10998) as Chengji . Fanghui gives his names in the headnote to
Poem 071, Flying Goose Pavilion, 2:12519; 2.15a. Since Fanghui consistently uses Chengfu,
26

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244

CHAPTER FOUR

D2

In the city, fog and rain:

the dawn is dim and murky.

B1

Suddenly we lose, atop the citywall,

the hundred-foot pavilion.

C1

Having funI truly know

that is not what I do;

D1

bitter intoningsI still have

you to listen to them.

A4

Its never been right that white hair

should spare the newly ennobled;

B1

but let the yellow flowers

laugh at he who alone is sober.

C4

Another day you will come for our

a chicken-and-millet date;

D1

The Taihangs always enwrap

my old garden, green.

Notes:
244-7/ Chicken and broomcorn millet were conventionally the meal a recluse would prepare for
guests.
244-8/ The Taihang Mountains run through Fanghuis home district.

The first precedent that Fanghui overturns is a statement by Liu Yuxi that
Having fun is truly my thing; / looking for fragrant
[plants] I am alone in the vanguard. 28 Fanghui asserts the direct opposite in line
244-3: having fun is not my thing. A possible second precedent to be overturned in line 244-4 is a concluding line by Jia Dao (779843):
Bitter intonings: who is happy to hear them? 29 Fanghuis answer to that
rhetorical question is: I have a friend, Li Zhaoqi, who listens to the poems I
write with such suffering.
The third and fourth precedents lead to revisions that are more nuanced and
more apt to be recognized as revisions. Du Mu claimed that white hair is the
only impartial thing in the world because it comes to the elite just as to everyone
else. On the contrary, says Fanghui in line 244-5, the elite have unfairly been
spared the stress that brings white hair. By calling them newly ennobled, he is
making it clear that his target is the New Policies faction that has seized power.
(Su Shi and Qin Guan refuted Du Mu in a different way, pointing out that op-

Chengji is probably a later cognomen.

28 This couplet is one of Lius contributions to a linked-verse session: , QTS,
22.790.8900.
29 , QTS, 17:572.6638.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

287

ponents of the New Policies faction had more than their share of white hair.) 30
Line 244-6 matches the correction of Du Mu by rejecting Bo Juyi. Pretending
to ridicule Qu Yuan for being sober alone in a drunken world, Bo opened a
poem by asserting, [For being] sober alonesince ancient times they have
laughed at Divine Balance. Since Bo Juyis poem is about his home brew, his
mockery of sobriety need not be taken seriously, but Fanghui, who identifies
with Qu Yuans sobriety, can play against Bos line and claim he doesnt care
let them laugh! His laughing yellow flowers might come from the Double
Ninth poem in which Li Bo wrote that Yellow flowers laugh at the routed official, probably hinting at a comparison between himself and Qu Yuan as exiles. 31 Fanghui exceeds Li Bo not only in sobriety (Li claims to be both drinking
and drunk) but also in explicitly averring that it is fine to be laughed at. (Perhaps
it is even an honor, for it shows one has not joined the muddy world of the
newly ennobled.)
The aggressiveness of Fanghuis wishing white hair on the new elite and
brushing off those who would scorn him for his sobriety in a drunken milieu is
matched by the bravado of inserting four overturned cases into one poem. It
seems that if he is going to overturn cases as conspicuously as his contemporaries are wont to do, he will do it with extra panache.
Up until late Yuanfeng 6 (1083), all poems that make explicit reference to Su
Shi are Ancient Verses written at structures in Xuzhou made famous by him.
The first and only heptametrical Regulated Verse Fanghui writes at Xuzhou in
open celebration of the great man is an inscription to be displayed with Sus poetry. In the tenth month of 1083, Fanghui writes in its headnote, a runner
from Xuzhou returned from the capital with an erroneous report that Su of
Huangzhou had been recalled to court. At the temple at South Estrade there
were several poems [Su Shi] had inscribed before. First I engraved them in
stone, then I wrote this at the left [i.e., the end]. This is
Inscribed after the Engraved Poems of Su of Meishan at the South Estrade
Temple in Pengcheng. 32
245

D2

How many times has the autumn wind

turned the river rushes old?

B1

The Tripod Stream and Brow Peak

are on the other side of dreams.

30 For references, see my Can Latecomers Get There First? 18182. That article also cites
Chen Shidao (in 1086) saying the high and the mighty invariably have white hair (from their cares).
This is a different approach to rebutting Du Mu and directly contradicts He Zhu.
31 Li Bos line is ;the poem is , QTS, 5:179.1832, Zhan Ying, Li Bo
quanji, 6:18.293234. Bo Juyis line is ; the poem is , QTS,
14:449.5066. Bo uses one of Qu Yuans names, often translated Divine Balance.
32 6.12560; 6.4a. Meishan was Su Shis native place.

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C4

Descending at a run, he erred in transmitting

the summons to the Proclamation Chamber;

D1

ascending to appear, who will submit

the words of Sir Fantasy?

A1

At East Slope elaphures

share the three paths;

B4

In the Western Wicket-door phoenixes

claim a single branch.

C4

Alone there is a rustic monk

shunning all vulgar opinion:

D1

In halcyon marble he newly incises

poems inscribed of old.

Notes:
245-1/ Qu Yuan mentions river rush in the Li Sao; Su Shi once alluded to that traveler in Chu . .
. singing of the river rush in the autumn wind. 33
245-2/ Tripod Stream is the Si River that flows by Xuzhou; to my knowledge this is not a common name for it, but Su Shi himself refers in two poems to the legend that nine tripods were sunk
into the river there in ancient times. 34 Brow Peak translates the characters in the name Meishan.
245-3/ Descend designates movement away from the capital. Jia Yi was summoned from exile
in Changsha to the Proclamation Chamber for an audience with the emperor in ca. 172 BCE. Su
Shi will allude to this in 1084, when he is actually recalled from Huangzhou. 35
245-4/ The talented rhapsody writer Sima Xiangru came to the attention of Emperor Wu because
of his composition Sir Fantasy. Su Shi once alluded to this, too. 36
245-5/ Su Shi spoke of elaphures often (seventeen times in his poems), usually as a figure for his
own shy nature. In one 1070 poem, he says he is a dweller in the mountains who has long been
side-by-side with these shy deer, a situation similar to the one Fanghui asserts here. 37 The three
paths, as we have seen, are a kenning for the hermitage.
245-6/ The Western Wicket-door is a common kenning for the Secretariat. The phoenixes represent the powerful elite jockeying for position. Su Shi uses these birds in five poems; in view of
Fanghuis couplet, we should note that in 1097, Su Shi will say that he has been next to the phoenixes at court, but it is time for him to return to the wilderness with his elaphure mien. 38

Perhaps the choice of genre for this inscription has something to do with a need

(1064), SSSJ, 1:5.208, line 10.

(1061), SSSJ, 1:3.99, line 51, Fuller, Road to East Slope, 99104, and
Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 915; and ( 1071), SSSJ, 2:7.310, line 29.
35 , SSSJ, 4:24.1261, line 17. This is not a rare allusion.
36 See Burton Watson, Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty (rev. ed.), 2:259 and 26061.
Su Shis poem is (1079), SSSJ, 3:19.962, line 48.
37 , SSSJ, 5:28.1499, lines 1112. This is placed with the 1087 poems,
but Kong Fanli has demonstrated that should be ascribed to 1070. See his Gudian wenxue lunji,
2023.
38 , SSSJ, 6:36.1935. Sus pairing of elaphures
and phoenixes is also placed in the third couplet of a heptametrical Regulated Verse.
33
34

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

289

to either follow the form of Sus poems or differentiate the inscription from the
poems; we cannot tell, but we can note that Fanghuis skillful use of allusions
and diction from Su Shis poetry makes this a model colophon for its purpose.
The poem encapsulates Sus life as a balance, tension, or alternation between the
highest honors and the humblest obscurity. Surely a Regulated Verse with its
parallelism and metrical equilibrium is best to embody these qualities, and perhaps the longer heptasyllabic line accommodates the quotations and allusions
better.
By placing Tripod Stream on a level with Brow Peak (Meishan) as an object
of Sus supposed nostalgia (line 245-2), Fanghui makes Xuzhou a second
home presumed to be in the dreams of the exile. Most likely, this reflects the
feeling of the local people that there was a special bond between them and Su
Shi.

ANOMALOUS FORM
Four months later, in his third year at Xuzhou, Fanghui gives the first of our
nineteen anomalous poems. It is titled simply Spring Feelings. 39
246

(D14)

An eastern wind blows the snow,

cloudy then clear again.

(B30)

The westing sun glitters and fades:

brightness amid the trees.

(C14)

Clothing the water, mossy robes

gradually fill with green;

(D27)

facing the Yang, bamboo whips

begin to send out shoots.

(A13)

Provisions for the official fill me up

the brew is not enough;

(B30)

nature in spring has intent

people lack feeling.

(A7)

I send a letter racing to confess

to the heroes of the Five Tumuli;

(B3)

a sweaty tabula and dusky buskins

have been half my life now.

Notes:
246-2/ Ranran has a host of meanings, including to gradually fade away and to glitter as light does
on the water.

39

6.1256061; 6.4b. Dated the second month of Yuanfeng 7 (1084).

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246-34/ Mossy cloak is algae. Whip can refer to rhizomes of bamboo. The Yang is the sun,
prime exemplar of the Yang force.
246-6/ The poet ascribes intention, will, or significance to the objects (wu) of spring that he observes, but finds the people around him lacking in feeling.
246-7/ The most prestigious neighborhoods in the Tang capital were around five of the Han emperors tombs. 40
246-8/ This line reminds us of the tabula and buskin collocation in Harmonizing with a Poem Sent to
Me from Director Zheng (Poem 237, p. 279). 41

Not a single line in this poem is regulated. The second half of the poem is an
impossible sequence in Regulated Verse: ABAB lines. Despite all this, the poem
does not give the impression of being heptasyllabic Ancient Verse misclassified
as Regulated Verse. Semantic parallelism in the middle couplets is skillful and
includes within-line antithesis (fill/not enough; has intent/lack feeling). Tonally,
all of the violations in the last three syllables of the lines are compensated for:
in lines 246-3 and 7 by in lines 4 and 8; in line 1 by
three level tones in line 2; and three deflected tones by three level tones in lines
5 and 6. All of these are common twists and compensations, and we shall
not routinely point them out in this study. 42
One other rule that is violated, though the rule is by no means a rigid one,
holds that the non-rhyming lines should not all end in the same tone. In this
poem, all non-rhyming lines end in entering tones, either ~k or ~p. Perhaps
Fanghui gets away with this by framing these non-rhyming line endings in words
with nasal endings (~n, ~m, and ~ng), which one could see as the antithesis of
abrupt entering tones. Luk (green) in line 3 is preceded by two ~n syllables and
further balanced by three ~ng and two ~n syllables in the next line; pet tsuk (not
enough) in line 5 is balanced by nyen muo dzeing (people lack feeling) in line 6; and
ghap (knight-errant, hero) in line 7 is balanced by six nasal endings in the last
line. Using the same principle, the salient string of nasal endings in line 246-2
(nyam nyam lem kan meing), helps to release the tension in the choppy rhythm of
tshywi swat em buk dzeing (blow snow cloudy again clear) in line 1.
In sum, the many violations in this poem most emphatically do not indicate
any intention to make the poem ancient or spontaneous. Balance is everywhere. Why, then, end with AB lines? Let me propose a structural consideration. The poem, despite all the twists and compensations, is a normal DBCDAB
up until the final couplet, which should be CD. That suggests that Fanghui
wanted to set the final couplet off from the rest of the poem. It is evident that
the last couplet introduces memory into a poem that has heretofore been about

40

See Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 110, note to line 8 of lyric on 108.
The 1906 Li Zhiding edition has bamboo slip instead of tabula. Sweated slips as a
kenning for documents (referring to the process of curing them by heat) seems out of place in this
poem, however. We follow QSS (and the Cao Anthology).
42 See Qi Gong, Shiwen shengl lungao, 3132.
41

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

291

the present scene and current ennui. I think, however, the violation of form requires a stronger justification. That justification is found in the emotions we may
surmise to have been aroused by the dimension of memory. Note that the first
time the reader or auditor realizes that the order of line types will be violated is
when the second syllable in line 246-7 turns out to be a level-tone syllable. The
single syllable that derails the poem thematically and tonally is shu, letter: I send
a letter racing to confess to the heroes of the Five Tumuli. It is at this point
that the poet turns to address, as it were, the heretofore-unannounced audience
for the poem, the dashing, aristocratic men with whom he shared dreams of
heroic greatness when they were young. The letter contains his apology for
selling out and becoming a bureaucrat. By seemingly losing control of meter
here, the poet suggests, without using emotive language, the disappointment and
self-disgust he feels.
A year and a half later, in the ninth month of Yuanfeng 8 (1085), it is the first
couplet that is severed from the poem. The line-type pattern, with the loss of
adhesion underlined, is DBABCDAB. Given that the line order would be perfectly regulated if the DB opening were a BD opening, and given the humorous
nature of the poem, I think the formal irregularity is not too radical and is easily
justified by the content. The poem is Answering Chen Chuandao. 43 In
his headnote, Fanghui explains that Chen Shizhong is always calling him Director He, punning on jian, which means both industrial prefecture (as in
Baofeng jian) and director (as in the high post held by Fanghuis spiritual forbear from the southern branch of the family, He Zhizhang). The poem is written to tease Chen back.
256

(D6)

My familys Jizhen
mounted to the Great Peng;

(B17)

And I for the sake of a trifling peck

came to Baofeng.

A3

You, sir! Always with the appellation

Director do you address me;

B1

I laugh that the name is the same,

the reality is not.

C3

Goblets of brew: we gaze toward each other

under the moon of this night;

D2

sliced perch: again I have betrayed

the breeze of an entire autumn.

43

6.12562; 6.7a. Chuandao is Chen Shizhong.

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CHAPTER FOUR

A2

Wait a bit for the marriages

to be rushed to completion,

B1

and I can buy a single boat

to go down to Zhedong.

Notes:
256-1/ Jizhen is He Zhizhang. The Great Peng (probably through reference to Penglai, one of the
isles of the undying in the eastern sea) was an informal name for the Palace Library in Song
times. 44 He Zhizhang was the director of the Palace Library in the second quarter of the eighth
century.
256-2/ Baofeng, again, is the mint in Xuzhou. The trifling peck is He Zhus pitiful salary.
256-5/ The poet and Chen Shizhong gaze toward each other from afar because Chen is still a few
weeks away from quitting his position collecting brew taxes in Shuanggou. 45
256-6/ Zhang Han served in Loyang in 301 but with the approach of autumn decided he
would much rather be at home in the Suzhou area eating sliced perch and other local delicacies.
He left forthwith. 46
256-7/ The marriages of his children (two boys, two girls) must have been a few years off still,
since our poet is only thirty-four sui at this time. We know from the poem on her death that his
daughter Shengzhang was married in 1091 or 1092.
256-8/ Zhedong would be the Shaoxing area, where He Zhizhang retired shortly before his death
in 744.

Lines 256-1 and 2 are tonally very awkward; more importantly, they are tonally
identical except for the second syllables. The similarity frames the contrast between He Zhizhang and He Zhu, especially the difference between climbing to
the Great Peng and coming to Baofeng. With this joke out of the way, the
poet starts the poem. That is, after line 256-2, which is a B line, instead of
continuing in the normal way with a CDBDAB sequence, he switches to the
ABCDAB sequence. In form, the DB opening thus stands apart from the poem.
The banter does not disappear yet, however, but continues in the second couplet. There, we find that line 256-3 is prosy and line 256-4 does not even pretend to be semantically parallel with it. On the other hand, insofar as the second
couplet is tonally regulated and parallel, a pattern that continues for the rest of
the poem, it forms a transition back into the world of Regulated Verse.
If Fanghui had wanted to sustain the directorship paradox through the en-

44

Gong Yanming, Song dai guanzhi cidian, 239.

The pentametrical Regulated Verse Seeing off Chen Chuandao for a substitute post at Shuanggou
(Poem 175) was written about three months earlier. The headnote to Poem 260, Inscription for Yuanming Studio, from the tenth month, tells us that Chen had built a studio in Shuanggou
and then resigned his position as soon as Fanghui named the studio for him. (He must have been
inspired by the Tao Yuanming model). We dont know whether he abandoned his studio and
returned to Xuzhou. If, as I think, Shuanggou was no more than 40 km away, Chen had not really
left his home district. The present poem could have been written when Chen was visiting Xuzhou,
but xiang wang implies some distance between the two.
46 Shishuo xinyu, 7.10. Allusions to Zhang Hans return for the sake of his regional delicacies
are common.
45

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

293

tire poem, he might not have chosen to write a Regulated Verse to respond to
Chen Shizhong. An Ouyang Xiu or a Su Shi might have looked at such a paradox from several angles, using the freedom from parallelism available in an Ancient Verse form to fully indulge their genius for dissecting an issue at length
according to the natural and seemingly spontaneous contours of discursive
thought. Fanghui has chosen rather to frame the teasing and the response within
the context of friendship: this is your little joke, and I respond with a laughing
protest; we look toward each other from afar, we understand the absurdity of
being away from home; and let me tell you what I plan to do once I have taken
care of my family obligations. The return to semantic balance and order in the
third couplet, together with the euphonic tonal regulation of couplets two
through four, gives the proper tone. This is not a demonstration of intellectual
adroitness; it is a poem of fellowship.
A similar technique of beginning a poem with a joke that defies regulated
form gives us Fanghuis only BB opening. Written in the same autumn month
of 1085, the poem is titled Inviting Kou Yuanbi;
Shown also to Recluse Zhang of the White Cloud Villa. The hermit, Zhang Zhonglian,
we have already met in connection with some pentametrical Regulated Verses.
Kou Yuanbi, whose name was Changzhao, is at the Jingshan Sconce at Fuli
, about seventy km south of Xuzhou and near the Eupatorium Bottoms Garden at Lingbi. 47
The poem begins with a direct quotation from the song of Feng Xuan: Long
hylt, long hylt, lets homeward hie, / Theres no chariot for me to ryde; /
Theres no fish on which to dyne.
258

(B22)

Long hylte, long hylte,

lets homeward hie;

(B29)

Ten mouths, I imagine, are sick of

Huainan fish.

(C15)

Wandering as an officer is not for the goal

of a stomach barely satisfied;

D2

in this floating life, Ill pose the question,

what is happiness?

A2

In the end Im without a fine guest

brew in fine goblets;

47 6.12563; 6.7b. For Kous whereabouts, see the headnotes to Poem 82,
Seeing Off Kou Yuanbi and Wang Wenju, 3.12524, dated the eighth month of 1085, and Poem 257,
Missing and Sent to Kou Yuanbi, dated the ninth month and appearing just before the
poem we are about to translate. Although I have not found mention of Jingshan Sconce, Fuli will
be the site of an ignominious defeat of the Song forces in 1163; see Song shi, 33:371.11530,
34:383.11804, etc.

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(B17)

and rely on having the ancients

books in yellow scrolls.

C2

I, too, in the dust and grit,

a fellow in suffering,

D1

like you always am abashed

at the recluse in White Clouds.

Notes:
258-2/ Ten mouths appears to be a conventional reference to dependents in a household; in
this case, it must be Kou Changzhaos family. Kou is in the Huainan area.
258-6/ It is commonplace to speak of the sages and worthies of the past being accessible through
yellow scrolls. 48 Yellow is parallel to qing fine, pure in a common correlation by pun.

The BB opening is calculated to emphasize the phrases lets homeward hie

and Huainan fish, and highlight the fact that Fanghui is using the rhymes of
Feng Xuans original song (the exclamatory hu and yu, fish). It is the metrical
equivalent of a knowing wink and a nudge with the elbow.
After the parodic quotation from Feng Xuan in the first couplet, the second
couplet continues the humor by the liberal use of prose particles: er yi [full] and
thats all and he ru [happiness] what like. Unfortunately, Fanghui is reaching
so hard for effect here that the sense of the lines and even their very parsing are
open to debate.
More experiments with prose and sound come in the last Xuzhou heptametrical Regulated Verse we shall consider, Left as a Farewell to
Zhang White Clouds Moufu. This poem was written in the first month of Yuanyou 1 (1086), when Fanghui was leaving Xuzhou for the capital and saying
goodbye to Zhang Zhonglian, whose White Cloud Villa he and his friends were
so fond of visiting. 49
262

D4

Three years in a government office

colder than ice.

B1

Gates of the powerful that will burn your hand

Ive never been up to it.

C4

Luckily, with the White Cloud

recluse,

D1

if we didnt talk about yellow scrolls

we went to visit monks.

48 An early instance of this can be seen in the biography of Chu Tao (fl. late third cent.),
where he is quoted as saying, The sages and worthies are completely there for you in the yellow
scrolls; if you choose not to avail yourselves of these, where else would you look? Jin shu,
8:92.2381. Juice made from the bark of the amur cork tree was used for treating paper to discourage pests that would consume it. This accounts for the yellow color.
49 1256364; 6.8b.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

A3

Sighing, soughing, the slatted blind

wind bursts through bamboo;

B1

rough and rude the cups and plates

snow spatters on the lamp.

(C15)

Through dust and dirt I float and drift,

going pointlessly far away;

D2

295

fish from Wu and geese from Yan

will both be unreliable.

Notes:
262-2/ Saying that the rich and powerful could burn you if you touched them was common in the
Tang. Du Fu voiced this notion, so it was not forgotten. Ouyang Xiu refers to being burnt on the
hand by the vermilion gates of the rich; in 1103 Huang Tingjian will use Fanghuis phrase Gates
of the powerful that will burn your hand to open a heptametrical Regulated Verse. 50

As in the last two poems we have discussed, the second couplet stands out for
its prosy language. It exhibits continuous syntax across the boundaries of the
caesura in line 262-3 (because of the connective particle zhi) and enjambment
between the two lines (insofar as the verbs for the implied subject I in line 3
come in line 4). Line 262-4 also strikes me as colloquial in its construction: If
we dont do X, we do Y is a common way of saying in modern Chinese that
we are always doing either X or Y. 51
Passing over the vivid and wintry third couplet, let us look at the last line.
From pre-Tang times on down it has been conventional in poetry to expect fish
and geese to carry letters, but why make such an old fashioned allusion here
especially if they are impossible to depend on? I think it was pure sound play
that suggested fish from Wu and geese from Yan, a phrase that in Chinese
luxuriates in shared initials and finals: nguo1 nguo3b anH4 nganH2a. The phrase
Yan geese is not too rare in poetry, but Wu fish appears just once in the
Tang. In that case, the sentiment and sound are quite similar:
No news from Wu fish or geese over the Hawses. This line luxuriates in the
ng sound in a somewhat different manner: Nguo1 nguo3b leingQ3b nganH2a (Wu
fish Hawses geese); the initial ng of the fourth word is attracted to the final ng
of the preceding word. It is difficult to know whether Fanghui was improving
on the Tang line or came up with the sound pattern by himself. 52 Either way, I

50 See Du Fus , Du shi xiangzhu, 1:2.156, line 25. Ouyangs poem is ,

Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:Jushi ji.9.6263. Huangs poem is , CSJC, 2251:waijibu.3.5960.
51 I am unable to find this or any analogous construction in Su Shi, though he can be prosey.
Without the capability to search for non-adjacent characters in the same line in other databases, I
cannot at this time efficiently look for this construction in other poets.
52 The poet, Han Cong (jinshi 824) is included in the thirteenth-century Tang shi ji shi; in
fact, this poem, , is the first one quoted in the section devoted to him. Although he is
obscure to us, he may very well have been known to He Zhu. See Ji Yougong, Tang shi ji shi,
2:58.883.

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suggest that line 262-8 revives old clichs largely for the sake of a striking sound
pattern.
1086: YONGCHENG
PLAYING WITH THE RHYTHM OF THE LINE
On his way to the capital in early 1086, Fanghui stopped in Yongcheng , on
the Bian Canal about 250 km southeast of his goal. This layover of a couple of
weeks produced one pentametrical Regulated Verse, two heptametrical Quatrains, and six heptametrical Regulated Verses. Every one of these poems has an
explicit social function. The fact that Fanghui broke his journey here and wrote
so many poems, sometimes at the request of local people, might be explained by
the fact that in the summer of 1083 he had passed through Yongcheng going to
his home district of Weizhou on the north bank of the Yellow River, and again
on the route back to Xuzhou. 53 He must have made friends here. Perhaps, also,
other travelers had carried his poetic reputation in Xuzhou along this same
route.
The function of these poems confirms what critics have said about the heptametrical Regulated Verse: because of its flowing rhythm and the balance of its
parallel couplets, it is a good medium for the exchange of poems on social occasions, yet because it is relatively easy to write, it carries the danger of facile sentiments and tired diction. 54 Surely it was this danger that had made Fanghui
work so hard in Xuzhou to complicate the meter and the parallelism of his heptametrical Regulated Verse. We see signs of continuing efforts in the second
couplet of the poem he writes for Zhou Jianzhong , a man he had sent
off (with a heptametrical Regulated Verse) in the seventh month of 1085 for
Huangxian . Huangxian, where Zhou was to be assistant magistrate, is in
Dengzhou on the northern side of the Shandong peninsula. One wonders why
Zhou was taking so long to get there. In the headnote to the present poem,
Fanghui tells us that Zhou is going to go by sea. When Su Shi served in Dengzhou briefly as prefect in late 1085, he also went around the peninsula by boat,
but it took less than a month. 55 It may be that Zhou was dawdling, hoping for a

53 Our evidence for this is the poets notes to four heptametrical quatrains from the fifth
month in Yongcheng, the fifth month in Weizhou itself (a pair of Willow-Branch songs), and the
sixth month in Yongcheng on the way back. See Poems 461464, starting with
Inscribed on the Bamboo Studio at Chengtian Temple, 9.12591; 9.5ab. The purpose of the trip home is
unknown.
54 See Matsuura Tomohisa, Chgoku koten shi ni okeru shikei to hygen kin, 15.
55 See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:24.68889. Lin Yutang specifically states (257) that Su went
around the penninsula, and in a short essay Su does mention going to Wendeng, which is the area
at the end of the penninsula. (See SSWJ, 5:67.21089, .) However, Wendeng could
simply be a poetic reference to Dengzhou (of which it is a part), and I wonder if it would not have
been safer to go down the river valley that runs north from Mizhou (we know he went through

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

297

better assignment; or perhaps he had been ill.

Here is the poem, At Yongcheng I Ran Into Zhou
Yuantong, [who] Repeatedly Sought a Poem: Presented in Parting. 56
264

B1

Bobbing lightly, flowing duckweed:

tumbleweed tossing and rolling:

D1

By chance theyre off to north or south,

by chance they meet.

A2

One goblet of by-the-TongjiBridge brew;

B1

two nights of beyond-the-LinsuiStation bell.

C3

Go! Wind and waves

it were well to take cautiously;

D4

return! Dust and dirt

will not accept you.

A4

Establish your merit early

then know enough to withdraw;

B1

study farming: some other year,

call on the old peasant.

Notes:
264-3/ Tongji (Linking and Succoring) was the seventh century canal whose section east of
Kaifeng was to become the Bian Canal. 57
264-4/ The Sui River was just a few kilometers east of Yongcheng, flowing parallel to the Bian
Canal. The name seems to be written both with and without the water radical.
264-6/ The line could mean that Zhou and the dusty, dirty world will not accept each other.
264-8/ I suspect that Fanghui is the old peasant inviting Zhou to call on him after he has retired
to farm.

The second couplet consists of two long noun phrases. Proper nouns are already in tension with the strong caesurae that seek to split themTongji ||
Bridge and Linsui || Post-stationbut since the words by and beyond
(which come after their objects in Chinese) are tightly bound to the words preceding them, the three-syllable place names actually expand to four-syllable locative phrases. The result is a syntactic parsing of 2 |4 |1 superimposed on a nor-

Mizhou) into the Bohai and go along the north shore east to Dengzhou. For Zhou Jianzhong, on
the other hand, from Yongcheng it would make sense to go down the canal to Chuzhou and cut
east 75 km to the coast.
56 Poem 264, 6.12564; 6.9a. Zhous father Zhou Wei was eminent enough to warrant a biography in the Song shi, 29:304.1005556. He was a decisive official who would execute a corrupt
clerk or troublesome bandits without hesitation.
57 Zou Yilin, Huang-Huai-Hai pingyuan lishi dili, 153.

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mal 2 |2 || 3 rhythm. Those four-syllable phrases (naming the place where the
brew is consumed and from which the bell sound originates) are conspicuously
odd as modifiers, too. The effect is similar to one bag of inside-YankeeStadium popcorn, which says that the popcorn is intrinsically defined by where
it is purchased or consumed. To normalize both the grammar and the rhythm,
we could rewrite line 264-3, for example, to read By the
Tongji Bridge, one goblet of brew. This would be an unregulated C line instead
of the A line required after line 2 (a D line), but that is beside the point here. I
dont think tonal restrictions were what Fanghui had in mind when he arranged
the elements of the line. What he wanted, within this perfectly regulated poem,
was to confound our expectations and show his skill. There is also a desirable
semantic effect: by putting the locative phrases next to the nouns, he suggests
that the brew cannot be separated from the Tongji Bridge and the bell is unique
to the Linsui post-station. Fanghui is creating nostalgia for the place where he
and his friend have met again.
The structure of these lines has one partial precedent in Su Shis line
Who is moved by the next-to-Bridge-No.-Five waters, / reflecting alone Taizhous old Zheng Qian? 58 The effect of the 2 | 4 | 1
syntactic parsing in the first line of the couplet is somewhat muted because of
the enjambment of the two lines, but it is at least comparable to Fanghuis lines
264-34. Sus poem was written in 1083, three years before At Yongcheng I Ran
into Zhou Yuantong. There is no way of knowing whether Fanghui consciously
intended to best it. Nevertheless, a comparison with this precedent shows that
by using the structure in a parallel middle couplet and getting rid of verbs,
Fanghui did make an even more spectacular conflict between rhythm and meaning.
Another poem shows Fanghuis skill at a conceit often used by Su Shi and
Huang Tingjian, namely, using outstanding persons of the past as substitutes for
the people for whom the poem is written. They are substitutes because the
tenor, the person in the present, is not mentioned explicitly, only the vehicle, the person to whom he is being compared. The title of the poem reveals
that the poet and three other people are involved:
Mooring at Yongcheng Together with Bi Shao, I Invite Li Shen and His Brother. 59 In
line 267-5 of this poem, Xi Kang and Ruan Ji stand in for He Zhu and Bi Shao
because Xi Kang admired Ruan Ji and the two became fast friends. 60 In line
267-6, Lu Ji and Lu Yun are the vehicle because they were talented brothers, and
the poem is written partly for Li Shen and his brother. (In 1087, Su Shi will use

, SSSJ, 4:22.118081, lines 7 and 8.

6.12564; 6.9b.
60 Hsi Kang went to visit Juan Ji with a present of wine and his zither under his arm.
They thereupon became good friends. Donald Holzmans translation, Poetry and Politics, 80.
58
59

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

299

the same Lu brothers in a heptametrical Regulated Verse to refer to himself and

his brother, Su Zhe. 61) Perhaps the fact that Lu Ji and Lu Yun served together at
the Jin court in Loyang in the late third century suggests Fanghuis polite hope
that Li Shen and his brother will enjoy similar success.
267

D1

Filling the city, willow trees

are in yellow profusion.

B1

From so many places swings

emerge from low enclosures.

(C15)

Receiving rain, the flow of the canal

has lost its limpid shoalness

D1

wreathed with clouds, the aspect of spring

is suddenly cold then warm.

A3

Always have Xi and Ruan

been fond of the zither and drink;

B1

so much the better to have Ji and Yun,

fine brothers elder and second.

(C14)

Just feet away, the fordage pavilion

faces the hall of abstinence;

D1

if with goosefoot staff I come to call,

dont refuse the intrusion.

Note:
267-7/ The hall of abstinence is where officials retire for a period of purification. It can be an
elevated expression for the dwelling of an official. 62 Feet away is not always used literally, and
closeness is a relative thing; Fanghui may be saying that the distance between the pavilion at the
ford in Yongcheng where they will part now is not so very far from Bi Shaos residence in the
capital, where the poet will call upon Bi in the near future.

Keeping our focus on the third couplet, I want to suggest that line 267-6 uses
rhyme in what we might call a gestural way, a momentary glance in the direction
of the Li brothers. This is the only line that ends with a ~wen sound: kwen, second brother. Lines 1, 2, 4, and 8 end with words in the ngwan rhyme group:
kan, ghwan, hwan, and ban respectively. Kwen is in the ghwen group. Now, there
is no question that these different sounds were close enough that they were considered valid rhymes. Su Shi uses kwen six times in rhyming positions, and in
each case there are ngwan group rhymes in the poem. On the other hand, those
poems by Su are sixteen to forty lines in length, and whatever difference there

, SSSJ, 5:29.154950.
Huang Tingjian refers to Su Shis residence as a hall of abstinence in a 1079 poem:
. See Huang Baohua, Huang Tingjian xuanji, 6068, n. 23.
61
62

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was in the vowels probably attracted little attention, especially when the alternation between rhyme groups happens more than once and in no discernable pattern. Fanghuis poem is only eight lines in length. That gives the single change in
soundthe single half-rhyme, if you willmore prominence. I would argue
that this is the prosodic equivalent of a glance and a slight bow toward the two
brothers to reinforce the special pleasure in their presence that is stated by the
words of the line. It shows the finely tuned ear of the poet.

THE CAPITAL
ZHAO LINGZHI, ZHAO LINGSHUAI
Let us turn from matters of form to politics. In our chapter on Ancient Verse,
we mentioned the 1089 persecution of Cai Que based on a distorted interpretation of a set of ten of poems he had written in Anzhou. The only place Fanghui
mentions Cai Que in his extant writings is in the headnote to a poem he wrote
in the capital on 22 January 1087 (Yuanyou 1/12/15). The occasion is the departure of Zhao Lingzhi to Chenzhou, where Cai is prefect. (Cai Que had been
vice director of the right and de facto ruler of the country from 108285,
roughly coinciding with He Zhus service at the Baofeng mint in Xuzhou. Cai
was then mildly punished by being sent out to be prefect of the area where he
probably grew up: Chenzhou, less than 150 km south of the capital on the Cai
Canal. He lasted there from early 1086 until the following year, which means
Zhao Lingzhi would serve under Cai in Chenzhou for only a few months.) 63
The title of the poem is Sending off Zhao Lingzhi for a Post in Chenzhou; Sent also as a Letter to Zhou Wenqing. Zhou Wenqing is
Fanghuis brother-in-law; nothing else is known about him, so the significance
of sharing this poem with him can only be surmised. 64
271

D2

Vermilion robes, pale face:

grandson of the Gracious Prince,

B1

Fare thee well to Huaiyang

to serve the Minster Lord

63 See Hugh R. Clark, An Inquiry into the Xianyou Cai, 8387, for a capsule biography of
Cai Que. On 18 March 1086, Su Shi asked the court why it was taking so long to approve Cais
request to withdraw; on 19 March, Cai was assigned to Chenzhou. See Changbian, 11:368.1a5b
(3752b54b). See also the Song shi, 39:471.13700. Sima Guang was made vice director of the left in
his place. See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:25.709.
64 Poem 271, 6.12565; 6.10b. Fanghuis other poems to Zhou Wenqing (whose name is Hang
) come from 1077 and late 1081.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

D1

Youve already released your little boat

to go down from the southern
cove;
and now you grasp a goblet of brew,
drunk in the now westerly glow.

(A5)

Blue clouds plans from

this journey begin;

(B4)

the bright moon appreciations from

tonight will be separate.

C2

I would rely on a short letter

but cant craft it soon enough;

D1

I just send word of failure and success,

to report to my friends.

(C14)

301

Notes:
271-1/ Zhao Lingzhi was the fifth-generation grandson of a Gracious Prince, Zhao Dezhao
. Zhao Dezhao (d. 979) was the second son of Taizong (the founder of the dynasty), by a consort who was made an empress posthumously, in 962. This consort, who lived 92958, was the
oldest daughter of He Zhus sixth-generation grandfather. 65 Thus, Zhao Lingzhi and He Zhu are
related, but Zhao is of royal blood.
271-2/ Huaiyang Commandery is an alternate name for Chenzhou. The Minister Lord is Cai Que.
Fanghui takes care to mention in his headnote that Cai is prefect at Chenzhou.
271-3/ Southern cove is a kenning for a place of parting.
271-5/ Blue clouds are a kenning for lofty position. As such, they represent the career advancement that the poet foresees for Zhao under Cai Que.
271-6/ Hereafter, Zhao and Fanghui will appreciate or cherish the moon from different locales.
271-7/ I take He Zhu to be the subject of the verbs in this line, though in the absence of pronouns other interpretations might be possible. In the one other poem in which Fanghui uses the
phrase ni zhang, want to rely on it is clear that he is the subject of the sentence. 66
271-8/ The last phrase could also mean tell the news. Failure and success might refer to the
poets failure and Zhaos success.

If Fanghui thought Cai Que was the villain history has made him out to be, he is
too polite to say so. He probably expected Cai Que to make a comeback and
Zhao Lingzhi to benefit from his association with Cai. Certainly he does not
foresee that Cai will be transferred to ever more distant posts, never to return to
power. Nor does he know that Zhao Lingzhi will in the future be a part of Su
Shis circle. He will know these things a few years hence, when he is editing his

65 See the Song shi, 244.8676 and Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 15. Chaffee,
Branches of Heaven, makes Zhao Defang the eldest son (AA in his notation), probably because the
eldest son (Dexiu ) died young.
66 He wants to rely on flying clouds to send word to Chen Shizhong. Poem 465, a heptametrical Quatrain from Xuzhou, 1085: Dividing Rhymes at a Banquet: Sent to
Chen Chuandao, 9.12591; 9.5b.

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poetry collection. 67 At that time, evidently, he does not think this poem should
be repressed as an embarrassment to himself or Zhao, for he does not excise it.
(Or perhaps he too enamored with the third couplets anomalous syntactic
rhythm3 || 1 | 2 | 1to get rid of it. 68) In fact, Fanghui will himself call on Cai
Jing (Cai Ques third cousin, 10471126) with Mi Fu in late 1100, probably
in Sizhou on the Bian Canal. (On that occasion, our poet literally runs off with
two freshly-written enormous characters by Cai Jingdone to demonstrate to
an obnoxious local man that there was no trickery behind making them so
largeand has them engraved at a local temple.) 69
 The foregoing does not lead to the conclusion that Fanghui had joined the
New Policies faction. Nor does it necessarily mean he was a hopeless sycophant.
Rather, in the context of his continued good relations with the people in the
orbit of Su Shi, I would like to think that Fanghui, like Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, was not ready to play the game of all-out defamation and persecutive politics that were to prove so ruinous to the Northern Song. To the extent that we
can understand his thinking on the basis of admittedly limited evidence, Fanghui
affords a glimpse of a more complicated and nuanced world than is visible
through the filter of the Southern Song recollections of Yuanyou period politics.
Those recollections are certainly colored by the fact that Cai Jing dominated the
government in the critical years from 1102 to 1126, when the Northern Song
court under Huizong grew so weak that Jurchen armies were able to sweep over
North China and hold it for the next hundred years. Fine discriminations between the young Cai Jing and the mature Cai Jing or between him and Cai Que
were of little interest to later historians who had to explain this cataclysm. To
understand Fanghuis expectations for Zhao Lingzhis future in association with
Cai Que, however, we must both acknowledge his inability to see decades into
the future and respect his determination to preserve the poetic record of his
knowledge and feelings even after the passage of time had given him new perspectives when he edited his collection in the mid 1090s.
 In 1087, Fanghui received a gift of ink from Zhao Lingzhis brother, Lingshuai. His response gives us a chance to see a how an object and a gift are
treated in Regulated Verse, especially in comparison with Fanghuis late 1090
Song-with-ink to Yang Shi. The 1087 poem is Requiting a Gift

67 Su and Zhao become very close in Yingzhou in 1091. See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu,
3:30.99798.
68 He Zhu is almost the only poet I know who places zi from in the fourth position of a heptasyllabic line. There is, however, a precedent for his placement of the synonym cong in the same
position of line 271-6: Liu Gui (jinshi 851), , third line of
, QTS, 17:566.655960. Du Fu and other poets use zi ci in the second and third positions of a
pentasyllabic line occasionally, creating a similar tension with the major caesura.
69 Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 6364.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

303

of Ink from Lingshuai of the Imperial House. 70 Like the previous poem, it mentions a
member of the Cai family and also exhibits an interesting parsing in the third
couplet.
273

D1

Musk-scented soot in new lozenges:

pearly-grey and solid,

B4

Who could ever say the art of Xi

has not been handed down?

C2

Truly it is for ones study

a treasure rare in any age;

D1

ever more one sees that royalty

are wiser than other people.

(A6)

Adjutant Caiwhen he got old

loved the flying white;

(B18)

Halberdier Yangwhen he was poor

was caught up in drafting the Dark.

C4

Your estimable affect calls for

obsidian in repayment;

D1

these ten cakes will serve

to abet my wildness.

Notes:
273-2/ Mr. Xi is the master ink maker Li Tinggui of the Southern Tang, alluded to in the Song for
Yang Shi; his original surname was Xi.
273-5/ Cai Xiang (101267) is one of the four master calligraphers of the Song Dynasty and an
ally of Ouyang Xiu and other reformers in the early 1040s. He is often referred to in poetry as
Adjutant. Su Shi wrote a colophon on Cais flying white calligraphy (in which the brush is dry
enough and fast enough to leave white spaces within a stroke). 71
273-6/ Reference here is to Yang Xiong and his Great Mystery, on which he labored without any
thought of getting ahead in the political world.
273-7/ In Ode 64 of the Classic of Poetry we find the locus classicus for obsidian: Throw me a
plum / and Ill repay you with obsidian. / Though not a worthy repayment, / long may you find
pleasure in it. 72

70 6.1256566; 6.11a. For Lingshuais position on the genealogical chart, see Song shi,
18.218.6058. He is the eldest of three brothers; Lingzhi, on p. 6063, is the youngest.
71 See Hugh R. Clark, An Inquiry into the Xianyou Cai, 7883, and Amy McNair, The
Sung Calligrapher Tsai Hsiang. His contemporary, Mei Yaochen, referred to him as Adjutant
in, for example, (1052), Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu,
2:22.594. For Sus colophon, see SSWJ, 5:69.2181.
72 Tr. Jeffrey Riegel in Victor Mair, ed., Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, 157.
Obsidian may not be the best translation for a term that Han Yu used as an image for snow in
tree branches and some early Song poets used for pink flowers. The terms precise meaning (if it
ever had one) is lost, and it might be best glossed as something like a general term for a lovely
gem, especially functioning in poetry as a conventional repayment for a gift. For the poems by
Han Yu and early Song poets, and the Shuowen definition as crimson nephrite, see Yuan Wen,

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CHAPTER FOUR

273-8/ Dian, wild or upside-down was an epithet of the eight-century calligrapher Zhang Xu
, who wrote crazy draft-style when he was drunk. 73

We said above that Fanghuis apparent enthusiasm for Zhao Lingzhis appointment under Cao Que did not mean he was a hopeless sycophant. Perhaps we
need to reconsider that judgment in view of line 273-4! I see no way to read sarcasm into ever more one sees that royalty are wiser than other people. The
reference to Cai Ques older cousin Cai Xiang in line 273-5 is innocuous, however, for the reform movement Cai Xiang supported in his generation was seen
as a positive thing, though it was a precursor for the more extreme and controversial changes of He Zhus time.
 The third couplet offers Flying white and drafting Dark as clever counterparts, but what is most interesting about the third couplet is the 3 | 1 || 3 cadence. The surnames Cai and Yang with their two-syllable titles override the
weak caesura or first beat of the lines; the single syllables old and poor
are thus isolated before the strong caesura. (We discussed a similar parsing in
lines 243-3 and 4.) Treating old and poor as temporal clauses in the translationeven with the dashessoftens the cadence deceptively.
 There are several reasons for this poem on ink to be a heptametrical Regulated Verse rather than a Song. This poem acknowledges a gift from someone
else, someone who is a member of the imperial family. Fanghui must be politely
deferent. He praises the ink and the giver, and gives some (poetic) estimate of
what an equally valuable return gift would be. He can afford to claim to be a bit
wild in line 273-8, but it is the wildness of a calligrapher, sanctified by allusion,
not the wildness of a malcontent. If he deploys those odd rhythms in the third
couplet to foreground two of his allusions, the displays of his erudition and his
prosodic daring are both circumscribed. The exuberance of the Boliang Song
for Yang Shi, with its overwhelming recitation of the lore of ink, would have
been out of place. In fact, since Fanghui is giving the ink to his old office-mate,
and especially if the ink was as special as it seems to have been, the fun and energy of the Song could have been intended to lighten the tone of the gift-giving
act; this act represents friendship, not the bestowal of a favor on a dependant.

108891: THROUGH JINLING TO LIYANG AND BACK

WANG ANSHI
Having taken notice of Fanghuis level of comfort with a friend working under

Wengyou xianping, CSJC, 286:3.2324 and a different version (from the Siku quanshu edition) quoted
in Zhonghua dadian, 1:527b.
73 See Chang and Miller, Four Thousand Years of Chinese Calligraphy, 258261.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

305

Cai Que, we cannot pass over his poem on the estate of the late Wang Anshi,
whom Cai had served before Wang retired to Jinling:
Laying Over in Jinling, I Visit the Old Relics of Wang Jinggong. 74 This poem was written in the third month of Yuanyou 3 (1088), almost exactly two years after
Wangs death, as Fanghui was on his way to Liyang in Hezhou.
275

B1

Late I moor my little boat,

insist on asking about the ford.

D2

Unchanged, the seasons prospect:

I miss the journeyer.

(A5)

The moon over River and hills shines on

a Six Dynasties dream;

(B4)

a breeze through peach and apricot blows on

three months of spring.

C4

His cottage pillows on the road

below Xies Knoll;

D4

for his poetry we look in the dust

on the wall of Xiao Temple.

A2

What need to have, with goblets of brew,

a lifelong understanding?

B4

long I gaze to the Western Province:

tears fill my kerchief.

Notes:
275-1/ Asking about the ford can mean to seek learning, or to ask about the general situation.
On the surface here it means simply to ask directions. 75
275-2/ The journeyer is taken to be Wang Anshi, who was not a native of Jinling. However, the
term Fanghui uses generally implies travel not taken for pleasure and seems misapplied to Wang,
who chose to settle here in retirement. The unchanging objects of the season bring longings to [me],
the journeyer would make better sense, but I am unable to substantiate such an unusual causative
use of si.
275-5/ There are two Xies Knolls in the area. The 1261 gazetteer for Jinling tells us that the one
mentioned in this poem is within the grounds of the Banshan Temple (Wang Anshis former residence) and was once called Kangle Precinct. Xie Xuan ( 34388) was enfoeffed as Duke of
Kangle, a title that was carried down as far as his grandson, Xie Lingyun. The other Xies Knoll
was one climbed by Xie An ( 32085, Xie Xuans uncle) and Wang Xizhi. 76

74

6.12566; 6.11b.
The closest parallel I can find to the use of yi here is in Su Shis opening line to
( 1082), SSSJ, 4:21.113: . The Shikajikkai, 10:210 and 212, translates yi as
hitori, alone or hitoeni, stubbornly. On the assumption that the word is not a mere filler, I use
insist on to convey its possible meaning.
76 Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang zhi, 17.53b54a (158283). The granting of the title to Xie
Xuan is recorded in the Jin shu, 1:9.235. The other knoll is at the site of the Wu Kingdom Yecheng
, which a map in Zhou Yinghes gazetteer shows to be on the west side of the thirteenth75

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275-6/ There is an Emperor Xiao Temple southeast of the thirteenth-century Jinling. Xiao is the
surname of the Liang Dynasty that ruled from Jinling in the first half of the sixth century. Wang
Anshi mentions the temple in one heptametrical Quatrain and one heptametrical Regulated
Verse. 77
275-8/ The Western Province Gate was on the west side of Jinling. . When Xie An learned that he
was scheduled to be carried through the gate on a palanquin, he recalled a prophetic dream and
knew that he would not recover from his illness.

The closing lines explicitly mourn the loss of Wang Anshi. There did not have
to be any understanding reached between He Zhu and Wang over drink (or an
understanding that they would rendezvous for drinks in the future, to adopt
another possible reading of line 275-7). Fanghui still mourns him as a great man
who might have recognized his talents. The tears shed in line 275-8 allude to
those shed here seven centuries earlier by Yang Tan . Yang, whose fine
qualities Xie An had cherished, knew about Xies dread of the Western Province
Gate and after his death refused to travel the road to Western Province City.
One day, nevertheless, Yang somehow ended up at Western Province Gate after
getting drunk at Stony Head. When his companions told him where he was, he
beat on the gate with his riding crop, recited a couplet by Cao Zhi on death,
wept bitterly, and left. 78 Fanghuis feelings for the late Wang Anshi are analogous to Yangs, even though he and Wang had never met.
 Clearly, Fanghui, like Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, and other leading figures of
their generation, did not blame Wang Anshi for the viciousness of the neo-New
Policies factions that had followed him to power.

FIRST POEMS
In the HezhouJinling area, we begin to get a relatively large volume of poems,
large enough to substantiate our thesis that the first poems Fanghui writes for a

century city; see 5.3 (1376). Li Bo wrote a poem on climbing Yecheng and gazing northwest toward the Knoll: , Zhan Ying, 6:19.299099; no Jitsunosuke, Ri Haku
shika zenkai, 83740. One of Wang Anshis poems, , is clearly about the one near Yecheng.
See Liu Naichang, Wang Anshi shiwen biannian xuanshi, 157. (This poem reminds us of Fanghuis
inability to pry the secrets of history out of the farmers on the North China Plain: Wang asks the
woodsmen if this is Xies Knoll, but they dont know; he asks the herdboys, but they dont even
answer.) The other two poems are about the Xie Knoll within the grounds of Wangs house. The
humor in one of them turns on sharing ground and name with Xie An. (Xie Ans cognomen,
Anshi, is the same as Wangs name.) See Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 28.317 and Shimizu Shigeru, 
Anseki, 5354.
77 See Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang Zhi, 46.12b (2078). Other names of the temple are Deer
Park Temple and Dharma Light Temple . Wang Anshi wrote poems on both
Xies Knolls: and ;Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 17.554 and 34.372,
respectively.
78 See the Jin shu, 7:79.207677. Fu Xinian et al., Chinese Architecture, 67, has a plan of the Eastern Jin Jinling and its environs. Our Western Province is no. 42 on the plan.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

307

new acquaintance will tend to be heptametrical Regulated Verses, to be followed

up later perhaps by poems in other forms.
 The first poems we have for Master He of the Qingliang Temple on the outskirts of Jinling are a pair of heptametrical Regulated Verses, dated the third
month of 1088. 79 They are under the title In answer to
Sun Xiu and also Sent as a Letter to Master He of Qingliang Temple. The headnote tells
us that Fanghui met Sun Xiu at the temple. Sun, a poet (shijia liu ), gave
He Zhu two compositions, to which these poems are the reply. We shall translate the second, which is the more interesting one for what I take to be an admonition about style in politics.
277

B1

A native from north of the Wei roams

east of the waters of Chu.

He discusses the Odes, explains the Documents,

(D11)
by chance he mingles here.

The gates of your homeland on this day

(A5)
how far away?

brew of spring and melancholy

(B18)
compete in heaviness.

Just avoid, for the oxs cloak,

(C14)
shaming yourself in front of wife and children;

and dont use the goat curds

D1
to shock us southerners.

To pity the young gentleman we rely on

A3
kya who fills the sky;

surely he wouldnt imitate the Yangzhou

B1
bell that rings after meals.

Notes:
277-1/ According to He Zhus headnote, Sun Xiu is from Qishan , which is indeed ten km
or so north of the Wei River in the eastern corner of Qinfeng Circuit. The Chu waters would be
the Yangzi; and Jinling is east of the River, which flows northeast here.
277-2/ Presumably, the reference is to the classics, the Classic of Poetry and the Book of Documents.
277-5/ The oxs cloak is a rude mat such as one might throw over livestock to keep them warm.
The allusion here is to Wang Zhang of the first century BCE When Wang was a poor student in the capital, he got sick and wrapped himself in such a mat because he had no quilt. When
he wept in self-pity, his wife berated him for being so lacking in resolution. Later, when he was in
office and prepared to express his opinion on a matter, his wife warned him not to overreach his
station, but he ignored her advice. As a result, he was thrown into prison, where he died, and his

79 6.12566; 6.12a. The Song On Horseback in Donghua, Cherishing Master He of Qingliang Temple and
Sending Him This, (Poem 011), comes later in their relationship, the tenth month of 1089. Between
the third month of 1088 and that Song will come three other heptametrical Regulated Verses and
three pentametrical Quatrains.

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wife and children were bound and later sent away. 80

277-6/ Goat curd would be a northern food not at all appealing to southern tastes. 81
277-7/ The first three words of this line are taken from the biography of Han Xin. Before he
became a great general who aided in the founding of the Han Dynasty, he lived in such poverty
that he was fed for several weeks by an old woman who took pity on the young gentleman. 82
The last three words in the line are based on Daoans amusing self introduction, kya Daoan,
who fills the skies. We cited this lore in connection with a 1089 Song for Master He, On Horseback in Donghua (see the note to line 011-14). kya (Syeik in Song Dynasty Chinese) is the surname adopted by monks when they leave lay life. It comes from the name of the Buddhas clan.
277-8/ Fanghui alludes to the Tang story of a man who stayed in a monastery in Yangzhou because he was orphaned and poor. The monks got tired of his freeloading and would eat up all the
food before they rang the bell to announce meals. 83

Fanghui indicates that Sun Xiu is a poor scholar living at the Qingliang Temple.
Lines 277-5, 7, and 8 all involve allusions to men who started out poor and then
went on to respectable careers; this makes for an appropriately encouraging
message. The last couplet is particularly clever in its combination of allusions to
urge Master He to take good care of Sun.
 This is a highly allusive poem that on first reading seems somewhat overwrought. In particular, the third couplet suffers from trying to do too many
things at once. Lines 277-5 and 6 cleverly match ox cloak and goat curd,
but what does the ox-cloak admonition mean, and what does it have to do with
the cultural differences between north and south? The clue to this couplet lies, I
think, in a line Su Shi wrote in prison in 1079 and in the very fact that he wrote
it in prison: After I die, for the ox cloak I shall be ashamed
before my old wife. 84 Sus meaning is that he should have been more prudent
in his criticism of the administration; he should have remembered his humble
beginnings. Perhaps Fanghui is advising Sun Xiu to exercise similar caution.
What, then, does that have to do with goat curds? I suggest that he may be ignoring the fact that he himself is a northerner (after all, he sees his real roots in
the south, as his allusions to He Zhizhang tell us) and warning Sun Xiu that as a
northerner he had better watch his step. We must remember that Su Shi was at
this time plagued with attacks from northern conservatives determined to undo
all the reforms of the New Policies faction. Fanghuis warning Sun Xiu not to
shock us southerners should be read in the context of an administrative memorial Su Shi submitted in the same third month of 1088 as this poem was writ-

80

See the Han shu, 10:76.323839.

There has to be an allusion here to match the one in line 5, and one could point to the
Shishuo xinyu 2.26, where Wang Ji challenges Lu Ji to name some southern dishes to equal goat
curd. However, even if one does not recognize the allusion, common knowledge about southerners scorn for milk products or the animals on which northerners depend for food would make
the line intelligible.
82 See Watsons translation in Records of the Grand Historian of China, 1:208.
83 See Wang Dingbao, Tang zhiyan (mid-tenth century), CSJC, 2739:7.61.
84 , SSSJ, 3:19.999, line 6; Fuller, Road to East Slope, 247.
81

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

309

ten. Su is asking for an assignment outside the capital or at a lower level of

prominence because he is weary of the attacks on him by members of the censorate. All the people he names as slanderers, save one, are from the north: Zhu
Guangting is from Yanshi , not far to the east of Loyang; Wang
Yansou is from Qingping , northeast of Daming Superior Prefecture; Han Chuan is from Shaanzhou , less than 100 km east of the
great eastward bend of the Yellow River; and Zhao Tingzhi , the worst
of the lot, is from Mizhou , in eastern Shandong. Among the people Su Shi
mentions, only Jia Yi is from the south: Wuwei , the military prefecture just west of Hezhou, to which Fanghui is headed. 85 From lines 277-56 we
may extrapolate that Sun Xiu was opinionated and recklessly outspoken, perhaps against Su Shi; Fanghui admonishes him against regionalism or extreme
factionalism with language that is diplomatically allusive and humorous, yet
pointed. Whether it is for Sun Xius sake or for the sake of the polity, these divisions must be ameliorated.
 Perhaps not incidentally, the tonal violation in line 277-5, which we have
noted as very common in the seventh line of a poem, is especially rare in the
fifth line of a Regulated Verse. 86 Having such a violation here calls attention to
the couplet as possibly of special significance. I think it also alerts us to the quotation in line 5 that causes the violation. While Fanghui keeps the position of
ox cloak shame in his line the same as in Sus; he changes old wife to wife
and children because he cannot end a non-rhyming line with a level tone. The
result is the tonal violation. Note that, although I find twenty-three references to
the ox cloak in Song poetry, none but Su Shis and He Zhus entails the wifes
warning. This supports the hypothesis that Fanghuis meaning is related to Sus
situation and precedent.
 The following poem is serious in a different way, if we take it literally; at the
same time, it gleefully violates the general rule that repetition of words is to be
avoided in Regulated Verse. Again, it is sent across to Qingliang Temple, where
there was a White Cloud Hut: Crossing Yellow Leaf
Hause: Thinking of and Sent to the Master of the White Cloud Hut at Qingliang (ninth

85 See Sus , SSWJ, 2:28.81617, and Ronald Egan, Word, Image,

and Deed, 98101. The native places of the figures named are taken from Chang Bide, Songren
zhuanji ziliao suoyin.
86 See the Song Dynasty examples in Wang Li, Hanyu shilxue, 1037. The lines he cites are all
C-type lines and, as in He Zhus poems, there seems to be no attempt to compensate with a tonal
violation in the next line. The same line ending can occur in unregulated A lines, of
course. Just looking at the poems translated so far in this chapter, we discover, however, that
every such A-type line is followed by a compensating violation in a B-type line, as is indeed the
case in lines 277-3 and 4 of the present poem. This compensation may be why Wang Li does not
consider such couplets to be a special metrical pattern.

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month of 1088). 87
283

(B18)

Atop Yellow Leaf Hause,

yellow leaves fly.

D1

Next to White Cloud Hut,

white clouds come home.

A2

These leaves follow a wandering lad

and lose each other in the end;

B4

those clouds befriend the meditating elder

and find their refuge.

(C6)

Let me untie from around my waist

the sword that can sever a horse;

D1

and seek out on the River

the ledge from which to angle for fish.

A1

Ill burn incense and sweep the ground

below the paired grove,

B1

wishing to redeem this present lifes

many kinds of error.

Notes:
283-5/ A sword sharp enough to cut a horse in two is one that a hero uses to punish evil-doers.
Zhu Yun in the first century BCE said he wanted to use such a weapon to cut down the
worthless ministers of the emperor. As a learned and yet ferocious man who found it impossible
to rise to the position he deserved at a court filled with jealousy and intrigue, Zhu must have
seemed a kindred spirit to He Zhu. 88
283-6/ Reference to fishing from a rocky projection over a river evokes the story of Yan Guang
, who changed his name and fished in a marsh after his best friend became the Guangwu
Emperor (r. 2557). The idea was to avoid being dragged into the world of politics. 89
283-7/ Paired grove is an abbreviation of grove of the Paired Trees as a kenning for a Buddhist retreat. See line 139-8 of the 1094 Ancient Verse Inscribed on the Cloud-Roosting Hut at Kaiyuan
Temple in Hailing.

Like the previous poem, this one is relaxed and expansive, while the tonal violations direct our attention to details that might have rich implications. The yellow
leaves flying on Yellow Leaf Hause in line 283-1 surely represent the instability
of the world of the rootless militia supervisor. Note that the contrast with the
solidity and security of the monastery is emphasized by making that first couplet

87 7.12568; 7.1a. Wang Anshi wrote a heptametrical Quatrain for this building and a pentametrical Regulated Verse for a Master Ran of the White Cloud: Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 28.317 (
) and 15.210 (). Fanghui never gives us the name of the master of the White
Cloud Hut to whom he is sending this poem.
88 See Burton Watson, Courtier and Commoner in Ancient China, 116.
89 Hou Han shu, 10:83.2763. See Huang Tingjians () (1071), Shangu shi
zhu, CSJC, 2248:7.157 for a specific linkage of Yan Guang and the fishing ledge.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

311

semantically parallel and carrying the comparison over into the second couplet.
Line 283-5s sword that can sever a horse may carry the righteous implications
suggested in the note to that line, but we must also remember that during his
tenure in Hezhou, Fanghuis job was bandit suppression. Is he renouncing an
ambition to punish evil ministers at court, or he is he tired of directing the militia against smugglers and desperate peasants? In view of the expression of repentance that closes the poem, perhaps it is the latter. That sense of redeeming
ones many errors resonates with the hope Fanghui expresses about six months
later that he will change his very nature for the better by taking up residence in
the south (see lines 108-1920 in the Ancient Verse In the morning I climbed Cypress
Hill and gazed back toward Jinling).

ABAB SEQUENCES
Spring Feelings in 1084 was our first example of an ABAB sequence (Poem 246,
p. 289). All lines in the poem were unregulated, and the ABAB lines constituted
the last half of the poem. The seventh month of 1089 gives us another example,
but in this case, 1) only the ABAB lines are unregulated, and 2) the poem is the
first of a pair in which the second poem is perfectly regulated. The title is
Two poems Written on Horseback Going to and from a District
East of Wujiang. 90 We shall translate only one couplet from the first in the pair,
confining ourselves to a few words about why the ABAB pattern might have
been used to close the poem. The poems line sequence is D4 B1 C4 D1 (A8)
(B18) (A5) (B18). The third couplet violations, (A8) (B18), are fairly innocuous:
a at the end of line 288-5 is balanced by a ending in line 6. If
the fourth couplet were a CD sequence (as in the second poem), the third couplet violation would attract minimal attention. The key to the violations in the
fourth couplet is surely in the content. The violations are indicated in the translation by italicizing the corresponding words:
288
8

(A5)

In human life every single thing

goes not as you wish;

(B18)

all day I fix my mind on going home

what day will I go home?

The experienced listener expects line 288-7 to be a C line, adhering this couplet to the previous one with a deflected second syllable. When that syllable
turns out to have a level tone, everything changes. The A line here is out of se-

90 Poems 288 and 289, 7.12569; 7.2b. Wujiang is downstream from Liyang, a little less than
half way back to the Jinling area.

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quence; we find ourselves in the midst of an outcry that bursts the boundaries
of the poem. The feeling is expressed both in the unexpected sequence of line
types and by the words in the wrong tones: things do not go as they should; I
brood over going home; when will I go home? The repetition of words reinforces
this intensity: thing-thing (every single thing) is all-inclusive; all day and
what day echo each other in tone as well as meaning (); go
home comes at the strong caesura and again at the end of the line.
 In the ninth month of 1089, Fanghui writes the first of only two heptametrical Regulated Verses that start with an AB sequence. The reason why the second
couplet is also AB will be readily understood from the content of the poem and
the contrast Fanghui wishes to highlight. The title is Yearning
for My Old Haunts in the Capital on the Ninth. 91
292

A4

In past years, on the ninth,

where I climbed to overlook:

B1

hoisting my brew where the King of Liang

once blew his flute on the estrade.

A1

This year, on the ninth,

where I climb to overlook:

(B4)

along the River the yellow flowers

have not even opened.

A4

A whole river of setting sun

follows the tide and descends;

B1

ten thousand miles a west wind

escorts the geese and comes.

C4

Things of the season are startling

one is even older now;

D1

inclinations to serve, plans to go home

both seem far away!

Notes:
292-2/ In the fourth century BCE, King Hui of Wei moved his capital to what is Kaifeng in He
Zhus time. Because the city was called Great Liang, he became known as King Hui of Liang. 92
292-4/ The yellow flowers are chrysanthemums. In the south, one must wait longer in the fall for
the days to shorten enough to trigger their blossoming.

The first half of this poem has been given over to the ABAB pattern to frame
the that was then; this is now comparison. In order to convey the full force of

91 7.12570; 7.3a. Haunts you could also mean companions. The poem is written at the
same Stone-Gravel Sconce as were the Songs on the three birds in the third month of
1088. However, I have not identified the fort beyond the fact that it is in Liyang.
92 See Ouyang Min, attr., Yudi guangji (early eleventh-century), CSJC, 3104:5.47.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

313

the contrast, the locative phrases that form lines 292-1 and 3 are nearly identical.
Each is a non-rhyming A line followed properly by a B line, and thus we have
the ABAB pattern. The only remaining question is why Fanghui does not follow
these first four lines with a CDAB sequence, since a B line would normally be
followed by a C line. There are several considerations. Surely he wanted to set
off the unusual structure of the first half of the poem; the second couplet had to
stand with the first couplet, not be dragged into its expected role as one of the
two middle couplets. Moreover, by making line 292-5 an A line, effectively
restarting the poem, Fanghui achieves a more dramatic shift of vision to the
vast landscape before him in the third couplet. Finally, there is that evocative
line that ends the poem, inclinations to serve, plans to go homeboth seem
far away! The season and the vast landscape before the poet overwhelm not
only his interest in his job but even the plans he should be making to return
home! To make this somewhat unusual statement and to end the poem with the
words both seem far away! in the tone pattern , Fanghui needed a D
line in that position. This alone dictated an ABCD sequence for the second half
of the poem.
 In the first month of 1090, Fanghui went by boat a short distance down the
Yangzi from Liyang to a place called Red Embankment; there (or in Liyang?) he
wrote a poem for someone named Cao Jie. This is a first poem; it is also our
first example of a poem that, after a BD opening, consists of ABABAB lines.
Title: From Liyang I Floated on the River to Red Embankment; I Called on Cao Jie to Say Farewell. 93
295

(B7)

I call upon my old friend,

not waiting to be invited.

(D6)

The watchet River is called broad,

but it barely admits my batelle.

A1

I left the city at the fifth point;

the chilly watch seemed urgent.

(B17)

I touched shore at two staffs;

the clear-sky sun was high.

(A14)

Since we parted, letters

its just because Im lazy;

(B21)

now that I am old, horse and saddle

how can I bear the effort?

93 7.12570; 7.3b. According to Chen Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 1:5.269, Red Embankment, fifteen
tricents (li) or five miles northeast of Liyang, was built to check the ravages of the waves from the
Yangzi and was named for the color of the earth of which it was made.

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CHAPTER FOUR

A3
(B17)

Next year on the Huai

well be hand in hand again,
tipsy as we stroll the Crouching Rainbow
thousand-yard bridge.

Notes:
295-2/ To say the Yangzi is barely broad enough to allow passage for his little boat is probably to
signify his spirit is expansive enough to fill the landscape. A couplet from a heptametrical Quatrain by Yan Shu (9911055) may be considered the model:
That day with drunken eyes we leaned on the empty vastness; / the Three Rivers and
Seven Marshes would barely admit our batelle. 94
295-3/ Just as our medieval hour was divided into five points, the five watches (geng) of the Chinese night were each divided into five dian, here translated points. Fanghui probably left Liyang
at the fifth and last point of the fifth watch, when the morning light comes forth and the myriad doors open. 95 The watches were announced by drums, the points by bells. These sounds
seemed urgent to our poet in the chilly February dawn.
295-4/ In the works of Su Shi and other poets, when the sun is three bamboo staff-lengths into
the sky it is late morning: fog has burned off, one is sobering up, and so forth. Liu Yong measures
a red sun at two staff-lengths when he sees it through sleepy eyes on the tips of blossomed
branches. 96 The sun at two staffs can also be setting, but given the proximity of Red Embankment
to Liyang, Fanghui is surely arriving at midmorning.
295-8/ I have not been able to identify this bridge. In discussing a pentametrical Regulated Verse,
we speculated that Fanghui and the monk Daotong had spent time together in Chuzhou, which is
on the Huai River. Perhaps Cao Jie had also known He Zhu there, and perhaps Chuzhou had an
arching bridge over the Huai or the Grand Canal.

First, let us note that Fanghuis opening sequence of BDAB is perfectly normal
and would ordinarily lead to an AB final couplet. We have metrical violations in
the first couplet, but they make sense. Old friend in 295-1 emphasizes
Fanghuis regard for Cao Jie; the next line uses a string of level tones to highlight the grand bravado in the assertion that the Yangzi is too narrow for the
speakers boat. Thus, the only truly anomalous sequence in Fanghuis poem is
the third couplet. Rather than floating smoothly into the expected CD sequence,
he repeats the AB structure as if forgetting that he just gave us an AB couplet.
Then he resumes with AB lines in the fourth couplet as if nothing had happened. What is going on in lines 295-5 and 6?
 The key is that this is the point in the poem where Fanghui is obviously feeling guilty for neglecting his friend. His syntax verges on the inarticulate. We
really dont know whether he has been too lazy to write letters or has relied on
letters because he has been too lazy to visit; we only have letters and because
Im lazy. The excuse is offered in three consecutive deflected tones, like a
growl. In line 295-6, we get only some mumbling about saddles and horses and

94
95
96

, QSS, 3:1(171).1941.
See the Song shi, 5:70.1591.
Quan Song ci, 1:16.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

315

then how can I bear the effort? This comes in three plaintive and equally
regulation-violating level tones. (Fanghui is pleading old age, but after all, at
thirty-nine the case is hard to make.)
 In the context of both the joy of reunion and the apologies, a poem of
smoothly competent regulated lines is not what is wanted. A careful reading suggests that a parallel argument can be made for the following poem, which has
the same sequence of line-types. The work was written on the winter solstice (in
1090, that would be about the end of the eleventh month), as Fanghui was leaving Liyang. He was moored in the harbor for the city, where he would have to
wait several days for a favorable wind to cross to Jinling. There seems to be no
particular audience: the title is simply Written While Moored at
Dangli Harbor. 97
303

(B3)

Please tell me, at the end of the stream,

is the tide-way shallow or deep?

D1

The sheet of sail hangs always:

my northward-homing heart.

(A6)

The nighttime wind blew snow,

even more fierce with dawn;

(B17)

the midday sun breaks through clouds,

overcast returns with the cold.

(A3)

Peregrine duties in Jiang and Huai

are by no means over;

(B4)

fellow adventurers in capitals east and west

why should I look them up now?

(A5)

When shall I sit in a steady spot

filled with simple fare,

(B3)

drumming my belly at Eastfen

with a farmers song?

Notes:
303-56/ Jiang and Huai refers to the area between these two rivers. In Fanghuis mind this
must include the Hezhou region, and it is certainly the area through which he passed to come
down here and that he will traverse again on his way to the capital. The phrase translated capitals
east and west is literally capital and Luo. Loyang was the Eastern Capital when the Tang capital
was in Changan and the Western capital when the Song capital was in Kaifeng. Since we have no
knowledge of He Zhu ever visiting Loyang, this phrase doesnt refer literally to two cities but
rather to the Song capital where he and his associates in roaming enjoyed their youth.
303-8/ Eastfen is the name of a place in the home district of Tang poet Wang Ji (590644),
where he retired to farm after an undistinguished career. (In one of his poems, After Eating, he

97 7.1257172; 7.5b. Chen Tinggui says the harbor is twelve li south of the Qing prefectural
seat; Fanghui says it is two li east of the county seat. See Liyang dianlu, 1:5.254.

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speaks of drumming his belly.) It is in the north, near where the Fen River meets the Yellow
River, so this is an apt allusion for a poet with a northward-homing heart. 98

The second line is an excellent example of ambiguity: Sheet sail | always hangs
|| north-return-heart is obviously not meant to be taken literally. A suspended
heart denotes anxiousness, 99 but what is the relationship between the sail and
the sheet? Is it that the mood to return north is somehow provoked by the sail,
or is the sail always hoisted because the speakers heart is always poised to return
home? These and perhaps other possibilities are held in suspension, so that what
is felt prevails over the narration of what happens. Our inability to pin a definite,
real world transitive relationship what seem to be Subject, Verb, and Object is in
the very best tradition of Tang poetic craftsmanship.
 Turning again to the sequence of line types, why is the third couplet AB instead of CD? Fanghui may be trying to match the effectiveness of the chaotic
third couplet in his poem for Cao Jie at the beginning of the year, breaking with
form to show his resentment. Perhaps the two terms Jiang-Huai and Jing-Luo
are of special significance, for it is the second syllables of each that creates the
loss of adhesion with the preceding and following couplets. As we mentioned in
Chapter 2, the Jiang-Huai region was associated with famine and unrest; it was
also vital to north-south transport. Jing-Luo, standing for the capital, represents
a more elegant life and a period in the poets life when heroic bluster about defending the nation did not involve actual violence against outlaws within the
nation. Is it these place names and the conflicting emotions they called up that
overwhelmed the expected metrical progression?
 There is a second possibility. I wondered whether I could make line 303-6 a C
line and line 303-5 a D line, reverse them, and restore the canonical sequence.
Making a C line was easy: I substituted the non-rhyming for and I had a
perfectly regulated C line. But rewriting line the end of 303-5 to rhyme in this
poem proved to be beyond my ability. I wanted to preserve the two level tones
required at the end of a regulated D line ( became __ ), but even if
I had been willing to fall short of that standard, I found this rhyme group simply
too limiting. In this poem, at least, one might be justified in arguing that the
ABAB sequence resulted from the impossibility of saying what the third couplet
says in any other way within the restrictions of rhyme.
 ABAB sequences can support emotions other than embarrassment and resentment. The second of Fanghuis two poems that open with an AB sequence
comes a few days later in Jinling. Instead of the ABCDABCD sequence that this
rare opening leads us to expect, we get ABCDABAB; in traditional terms, the

98 Wangs poem, , is in QTS, 2:37.485. . Su Shi paired an allusion to Eastfen and Wang Ji
with one to Slanting Creek and Tao Yuanming. Sus poem is (1095), SSSJ,
7:39.2106, lines 1112.
99 See Chen Shidao, , QSS, 19:1115.12668, line 2.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

317

last couplet does not adhere to the third couplet. These two couplets focus on
the fact that Fanghui has called on Wang Zhuo and found him out, as the title
tells us: Calling on Wang Xiansou of Jinling and Not Meeting Him: Left for him in Parting. 100
306

(A5)

A song formed of five sighs,

the spelter for hire;

(B25)

medicine with no second price,

the old gent whose ox was seized.

(C15)

Decadent, how can [the world] recognize

an aristocratic scion?

D2

pure and poor, [you] quite possess

the air of the ancients.

(A13)

Youve just gone up to the tombs,

crossing the Mian;

(B3)

I happen to ride my boat,

putting up in Shan.

A3

Things out of kilter, we missed each other

again I turn my head

(B7)

take care of yourself, ocean gull,

forget the barrier goose.

Notes:
306-1/ In a 1093 pentametrical Regulated Verse, Fanghui will compare himself to Liang Hong of
the Later Han Dynasty, a man of integrity and education who nevertheless hired himself out to
spelt grain (see the note to line 216-6). Liang Hong earlier had passed the capital (at Loyang then)
and sung the Song of Five Sighs, in which he decried the state of the country and the exhaustion of
the people. (There are five lines in the song, each ending with yi, a moan or a sigh.) 101
306-2/ This allusion is to another Later Han figure, Han Kang . Although he came from a
prominent family, he sold medicinal herbs in the streets of Changan for thirty years. When a girl
who was angry because he refused to bargain (no second price) revealed that she knew who he
was, he hid away in the mountains. An envoy from the emperor forced Han to come out for an
audience. Because he left in the early morning in his own rude cart before the envoy, he was taken
for a peasant by a station head who was under orders to repair roads and bridges for Hans passage. The station head ordered his ox seized for the repair work, but Han unhitched it and gave it
to him freely. (The envoy caught up and was dissuaded from punishing the official, but before the
party reached the capital, Han Kang absconded again and lived to old age in hiding.) 102
306-5/ One anecdote about the recluse Pang Degong involves his crossing the Mian River to visit
some grave-mounds and thus being absent when a visitor comes to his house. 103

100

7.12572; 7.6a.
Again, see the Hou Han shu, 83.276667. See also Alan J. Berkowitz, Patterns of Disengagement, 10610.
102 Hou Han shu, 83.26771. See also Alan J. Berkowitz, Patterns of Disengagement, 117.
103 See the note to the beginning of Pang Degongs biography in the Hou Han shu, 83.2777,
101

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306-6/ If the previous line is an elegant way of saying Wang Zhuo is not home, this line draws on
a more familiar allusion to say Fanghui has come on an impulse. The allusion is to the snowy night
visit of Wang Huizhi to Dai Kui in Shan; Wang Huizhi rode on an impulse; He Zhu rides on a
boat to avoid triteness, but since we know Wang traveled by boat, the implication is that He Zhu
also went on impulse, which is why Wang Zhuo did not know he was coming.104
306-8/ Both high-flying wild geese and wary gulls are associated with aloofness from the world
and its machinations. Fanghui must be the wild goose here, migrating north (a bit early). 105

From the start, this poem challenges the reader, though Wang Zhuo must have
found it quite entertaining. It begins with a quiz, as it were. We are given two
prompts per line in the form of noun phrases: Song with five sighs; one who
spelts for hire. Medicine with a fixed price; old gent with the confiscated ox.
We might realize, if we are quick, that each pair of phrases refers to one person
and that each allusionwell, given the situation, we must assume that each allusion applies to one of the two parties to this poem, He Zhu or Wang Zhuo. We
already know that a few years hence Fanghui will compare himself to Liang
Hong (see note to line 306-1) as he is leaving the capital to go southeast. We
also know enough about Fanghuis ancestry to suppose he is the unappreciated
aristocratic scion. (The term translated decadent in line 306-3 generally refers to a crumbling world, but might describe the poet himself in humble circumstances.) If lines 306-1 and 3 apply to He Zhu, do lines 306-2 and 4 refer to
Wang Zhuo, then? Line 306-4 is obviously a compliment to Wang: you quite
possess the air of the ancients. Line 306-2 is more of a challenge. Though it
would be an honor to be compared to Han Kang, it takes some thought to realize that the basis of the comparison here is that Han Kang was constantly disappearingfirst when he realized his identity was not a secret in the streets of
the capital, then after the ox confiscation incident. Wang Zhuo, not at home
when Fanghui calls, seems to have done the same. Now we can see the elegance
of the first couplet: Fanghui remains within human society and therefore comparable to Liang Hong as a toiling menial, a dropout in full view; Wang Zhuo
has simply disappeared, just as Han did.
 The third couplet adds the twist that we expect in this position, but the twist
is actually a merciful moment of clarity. Pronouns appearwe are not caught
off guard when the order of reference is reversed: first you, then meand
the allusions pertain to the specific occasion of the poem. The very rare allusion
to Pang Degong crossing the Mian to visit tombs is helpfully balanced with the
common allusion to Wang Huizhis snowy night impulsive visit to Dai Kui.
 The last line of the poem is unusual insofar as two birds with similar associa-

quoting from the Xiangyang ji.

104 Shishuo xinyu, 23.47.
105 The two birds are rarely juxtaposed. An exception is Wang Yuchengs couplet
In the end you must cast off affairs of the human world; / loftily pursue the wild extramundane goose and tame the ocean gull. , QSS, 2:12(70).792.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

319

tions (aloofness from the world) are juxtaposed as vehicles for two different
tenors. The fact that the migration of geese is more obvious than that of gulls
seems to inspire Fanghui to equate himself to the northward-faring goose, while
Wang Zhuo is the gull. But why should the gull forget the goose? That must
be Song Dynasty humor.
 The gnarly cadences of the six unregulated lines in this poem have the desirable effects of 1) blurring the potential monotony of having three semantically
parallel couplets; 2) creating the impression that the poem was improvised by
the poet when he discovered Wang was away; and 3) making the rarer allusions
seem as if they have been tamed for poetry for the first time. The most noticeable tonal violations in the poem are the strings of five deflected tones in
lines 306-2 and 5, precisely where the most unusual allusions appear.
 We still have to explain the fact that Fanghuis poem ends with an ABAB
sequence. I tentatively suggest that the substitution of the AB conclusion for the
expected CD lines is the embodiment of things out of kilter (line 306-7); it
may also be related to the unusual use of the gull and goose in line 306-8, a private joke that could not be accommodated in a D line.

109091: ABSENCE IN JINLING

In the poem about not finding Wang Zhuo at home there is a note of disappointment that is entirely appropriate to the situation. However, a sense that
something is missing, that the reality of the world is a fragile thing, can be felt in
other poems from this trip through Jinling back toward the capital, too, as mentioned in earlier chapters. I get this sense from the following poem, but before
attempting to articulate this impression, we need to consider a tantalizing mystery of pronunciation.
 The mystery involves the reading of the character at the end of the first line.
If we read it by its normal, attested pronunciation, this poem has the only CD
opening in all of Fanghuis heptametrical Regulated Verse. If not, it has a BD
opening, utterly unremarkable in the same corpus of texts. The poem is
Inscribed on the Pagoda of Changgan Temple in Jinling, composed in the
twelfth month of Yuanyou 5 (109091) as an inscription for a temple in the
Changgan district south of Jinling: 106
307

(C7)

In the southern realms Changgan,

an ancient Buddhist temple:

106 7.12572; 7.6b. On the temple, whose contemporary name was Tianxi Temple see
Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang zhi, 46.10a12b (207778).

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the stupas lovebird tiles,

D4
in cyan diversely disposed;

I want to revive the poetry on the Three Galleries,

A2
a place of lofty climb,

but find no return to the time when Six Dynasties

(B18)
were in compleat flourish.

At the corner of the eaves, in westerly wind

(C15)
the starry Dipper hangs;

within the shade of the wall, in chilly rain

D4
foxes call.

Ashes of the kalpa in the end will turn

A2
the world of humankind;

may the stone-lined pit and metal casket

B1
protect and keep [this temple] well.

Notes:
307-2/ The lovebird tiles are pairs of tiles.
307-3/ The Three Galleries were built in 584 to house the consorts of the Later Chen emperor in
luxury. (The Chen was the last of the Six Dynasties that made Jinling their capital.) They were
several tens of zhang high; a zhang at that time was nearly three meters. 107 I do not know what
poetry (work) on this site Fanghui wishes to revive. Other poems I know of that speak of
climbing at this site are referring to the pagoda here, not the Three Galleries.
307-7/ This line could be translated in the past tense to reflect the fact that ashes of burned buildings are sometimes said to be the ashes left over from the destruction of the last fire kalpa of destruction; Fanghui may have seen ruins in the temple precinct. But line 8 suggests the poet is anticipating future cataclysm.
307-8/ Relics would be buried in metal caskets protected by stone boxes. 108

If line 307-1 rhymed, it would be a regulated B4 line and we would have an ordinary BD opening. Did our poet really make this his sole CD opening, and if
so, why? We cannot answer this question with certainty, but there is fascinating
evidence that readings we would have to consider fabricated were used in
contemporary poetry.
 Si (zi, temple) cannot rhyme in a Regulated Verse because it is not a level
tone word and there is no alternative reading with a level tone. However, it is
the phonetic element in the graphs for two of the rhyme words, shi (dzyi, time,
line 307-4) and chi (dri, maintain, line 307-8). In fact, if we look at any reconstruction of the Ancient Chinese of Classic of Poetry vintage, these three words
were at one time homophones. Now, down to He Zhus time and for several
centuries afterwards, scholars had been perplexed by the fact that words in an-

107

Nan shi, 2:12.347.

See the note after line 50 of Su Shis 1071 poem on the Sweet Dew Temple in Runzhou
, SSSJ, 2:7.313.
108

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

321

cient texts that obviously were considered to rhyme by the authors of those
texts didnt rhyme anymore. Some scholars had proposed pronunciations that
would reconcile this discrepancy, and in Song times these proposals were
widely accepted. In contrast to the careful work of Qing Dynasty scholars, the
incoherence of these reconciled rhyme tables seems born of desperation
rather than philology. Nevertheless, Zhu Xi and other great scholars accepted
them for reading ancient texts.
 More to the point, these readings actually show up occasionally in poems
written in the Song. I have found two cases in Su Shi. Su Shi uses nan/nam
as a rhyme word at least thirteen times. Twelve times it rhymes with other ~am
words. In one single case, though, he startles us by rhyming it with words whose
final is ~em. That nan/nam should be read to rhyme with xin/sem had been
proposed in the sixth century and was repeated by Wu Yu ( d. 1154) in the
early Southern Song. The fact that Sus poem is inspired by overhearing a
neighbor child reciting the classics makes us wonder if this is a sly joke about
the use of reconciled pronunciations for reading ancient texts! 109
 The second case relates directly to our poem because si (ziH3d, temple) appears to be a rhyme word (in the second line of a pentametrical, six-line poem).
However, it does not rhyme with the level-tone words in our poem but with
ju/kuoH3c in line 4 and qu/khuoH3b in line 6. 110 This is bizarre. One wonders
if there was a dialectical pronunciation that permitted this, or whether only lines
4 and 6 were supposed to rhyme, which would also be strange and is unsupported by any of Su Shis other six-line poems.
 Not knowing what to make of this case, and unable to find for si (ziH3d,
temple) any precedent in a classical text reconciliation of the sort that exists
for nan/nam, I am almost ready to concede that this is Fanghuis only CD
opening. We could point to the fact that the distinction between si/zi and the
rhymes in lines 307-2, 4, 6, and 8 involves only the tonal aspect of the finals and
note that it was possible in the Song to rhyme across tone boundaries, especially
in the lyric. However, I still have not found a case even in the lyric where si does
not rhyme with departing-tone words. In the end, this is another topic for continued research.
 Let us return to the feeling of loss or estrangement that I mentioned. Defining and justifying this impression are not simple. Frustration and absence are
already familiar themes in He Zhu and, as we said, expectation and disappointment are the essence of the Wang Zhuo poem by the very nature of the occa-

109 The poem is ( 1098), SSSJ, 7.42.2312. See Ye Jun et al.,

Zhongguo shixue, 2023, for the history of this phenomenon, and Wu Yus Yunbu, CSJC, 1235:1.29
for the reiteration of the sixth-century reading.
110 Su Shis poem is (1072), SSSJ, 2:8.380. For Shouquan's original poem, see Li E and Ma Yueguan, Song shi jishi, 91.37ab.

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sion. Perhaps what separates the Wang Zhuo poem from the archetypal situations of distance from friends, the hardships of travel, and longing for home is
the fact that both parties to the situation are rootless, even ephemeral in a certain way. This is not a standard official-visits-recluse-and-finds-him-absent
poem, in which at least the surroundings of the hermitage offer a stable correlative to the character of the recluse and a moment of peace for the official.
Fanghui himself is on the margins of society (as Liang Hong), he comes and
goes on an impulse (like Wang Huizhi), and he is a wild goose to be forgotten;
but Wang Zhuo is the elusive Han Kang and Pang Degong, and he is as flighty
as a gull. There is no sense of place in this poem, only of things being out of
kilter. In some measure, this is reminiscent of the proposition that North of
the River and South of the River might become meaningless distinctions, from
the Song My Boat Makes a Stop in Jinling (013), which was written in the same
month, perhaps within a day or two.
 In the Changgan Temple poem there is obviously a sense of place, but what
kind of place? One wonders why Fanghui even visited such a run-down temple.
He might have spent the nighthe was there long enough for the clear sky to
give way to rainbut the temple is not experienced as lodging. Instead, it is a
place where revival of the past through the writing of poetry is proposed but
then rejected as impossible, because this is not the age/season/time of the Six
Dynasties at their height (line 307-4). 111 The Songs and Ancient Verses of the
1070s in the Handan area were different. In them, the vicissitudes of history had
obliterated the past or its texts so completely as to leave nothing but ruined terraces or empty space accented with the dot of a plowing ox or a raft. Changgan
Temple is a place that may survive (or has survived) the destruction of kalpa
fires. It is a place where roof-tiles are diversely disposed overhead, not halfburied under foot, and walls still stand. And yet there is that cold constellation
hanging at the eaves and the howling or barking of the foxes in the shadows of
the walls. These and the very contemplation of the kalpas of destruction suggest
that the world around the temple, the world in which the poet lives, is very insubstantial, indeed. This goes beyond the conventional discovery that the
prosperous and cultured Six Dynasties have disappeared.
 The first heptametrical Regulated Verse we have from Yuanyou 6 (109192)
offers some of the same impressions. This poem is titled
Inscribed on the Jar Mote Studio of the Tianqing Observatory in Jinling. Tianqing Obser-

111 Temples did function as hotels in traditional China, but knowing that it was the Qingliang
Temple that hosted He Zhu on this sojourn in Jinling, at least part of the time, is not guesswork.
See the title to a pentametrical Regulated Verse written on the last day of the year:
Putting up at Qingliang Temple. (Poem 204, 5.12552; 5.10a.) In that poem, Fanghui lets his horse take
him out of Stony Enciente Gate with no destination in mind; he shows the same disorientation as
we see in the heptametrical poems we are considering here.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

323

vatories were established throughout the empire by decree on 13 November

1009, signaling the spreading appeal of the Daoist religion. 112 Jar Mote is another name for Purple Gold Mountain near Jinling.
308

B4

Rose-mist structures and cloudy portals

are not closed off.

D4

Where ridge-tiles and eaves open

you can see the human world.

A4

Broken walls and an abandoned well

lead to the Eastern Lodge;

B1

a white pagoda and green pines

face the Northern Mountain.

C4

Last night the Cassia Girl

fled away to the moon;

D4

after autumn the mushroom canopies

went home riding the wind.

A2

In the True Texts of the Nephrite Void

the voice of the school remains,

B1

when they ripen againthe golden peaches

Id like to pick one.

Notes:
308-3/ Reference is probably to the luxurious lodge and its gardens built by one of the favorites
of Sima Daozi (364402) of the Jin court. 113
308-4/ Northern Mountain is yet another name for Zhongshan, or Purple Gold Mountain.
308-56/ The story of Change, who steals the elixir of immortality and flees to the moon (where
a cassia tree grows) will be familiar to most readers. The mushroom canopies must be on the
carriages of various deities who are returning to Heaven. 114 (See also the discussion following.)
308-7/ The Nephrite (or Jade) Void appears to be an aspect of the realm of Jade Clarity, on
the verge of the empyrean. At least one Tang poem has a Daoist figure locking himself up in the
Nephrite Void to write a document of Purple Tenuity by night. 115 As for voice of the school,

112 Poem 308, 7.12572; 7.6b. On the Tianqing observatories, see Li Tao, Changbian, 3:72.13b
(700a). The suggestion was made and adopted that these observatories could be established where
Daoist observatories already existed rather than built new ones on government-owned parcels,
and indeed there may have been some tenth century Daoist buildings on the site, East and West
Palaces of Purple Tenuity. The place was completely destroyed with the fall of the Northern Song.
See Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang zhi, 45.1a3a (2065a66a). (Observatories are Daoist temples
or monasteries, not astronomical observatories.)
113 See the Jin shu, 6:64.1734.
114 The cassia in the moon appears in poetry no earlier than the late fifth century, and the
identity of the tree is no more certain botanically in that legend than it is in any other context. See
Martin Kern, Zum Topos Zimtbaum in der chinesischen Literature, esp. 10735. A sylphs chariot
that carried a nine-petal mushroom canopy appears in Zhang Hengs Western Metropolis Rhapsody;
see Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 1:233, ll. 72022.
115 The quotation is from Edward Schafer, Wu Yuns Cantos on Pacing the Void, 407. The

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CHAPTER FOUR

I have found no case where jia sheng does not refer to the reputation of a family. The poem, its title,
and its headnote do not mention any individual who might be carrying on a family Daoist tradition, however, encouraging us to interpret the phrase as voice of the [Daoist] school. But see
also our discussion below.
308-8/ Golden peaches imported from Central Asia naturally came to be associated with the
peaches of immortality of the Queen Mother of the West, and it is to those peaches that Fanghui
alludes. 116

In some ways, this poem is about access, not absence. The grounds of the observatory are not closed off; the voice of the school remains; and the poet
hopes to be permitted to pick a peach of immortality someday. However, from
within the grounds there are constant points of leakage. One can see the
mundane world through gaps in the buildings. Broken walls and an abandoned
well link to the Eastern Lodge (or to the site where it used to stand?), and the
pagoda and pines face outward, toward the Northern Mountain. Most strikingly,
the immortals have all quit the arearecently, too: last night and during the past
autumn. There is an insubstantiality about it all.
 A notable difference from the Changgan Temple poem of the previous
month is that this is a perfectly regulated poem. Of course, the poet finds ways
to work changes within the perfection. A rather tame example is the internal
parallelism in lines 308-3 and 4 (broken is to abandoned as white is to
green). More intriguing is the relationship between E (translated Girl) in
line 308-5 and the corresponding syllable in line 6, gai (canopy). Both of these
can be surnames, though they are rare surnames. E obviously stands for Change
here, so we can just see it as a name. Gai is a bit of a stretch, for as a surname
this character is read He. This is therefore not parallelism by pun in the usual
sense of two words with the same pronunciation, but parallelism by graphic
pun, like correlating silver polish with Black English (which tries to force
the reading silver Polish on the corresponding term). The surname He is not
irrelevant to a Daoist observatory, by the way. There was a Mr. He who was an
expert in Daoist texts in early Han times; moreover, Su Shi commemorated this
Mr. He by the construction of a hall in the mid 1070s. Unfortunately, I know of
no association between mushrooms and Mr. He to match the association of the
moon-cassia and Change, so if Fanghui really did intend us to see a hidden
He as a correlate to E, that might have been as far as he wanted to go. 117
Another possibility is that this poem expresses regret over the fact that Wang

Tang poem mentioned is by Cao Tang (ninth cent.), one of his ninety-eight , QTS,
19:641.7351; first line: .
116 The actual Sogdian golden peaches may never have been grown outside the imperial gardens of the seventh century. See Schafer, Golden Peaches of Samarkand, 11718. On the peaches of
the Queen Mother of the West, see Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise, 11617.
117 See Su Shis , SSWJ, 2:11.34647. This commemorative essay is clearly an attack
on the activist New Policies.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

325

Anshi is no longer alive. Wangs transcription of a text that had been recovered
from the grave of the prominent Daoist master Tao Hongjing (452536)
was engraved in stone at the Tianqing Observatory. 118 I dont see any unmistakable hint in this poem that Fanghui saw the inscription or that the canopies of
the immortals or North Mountain are to be associated here with Wang Anshi,
but further research on contemporary poets may uncover a coded reference.
An interesting heptametrical Regulated Verse with ABAB middle couplets
was written downstream from Jinling, at Changlu:
Mooring in the Evening at Changlu and Thinking of Friends in Jinling and Liyang. 119
311

B4

From the Rhino Shining Pavilion,

two oars raced on.

D1

At the Phoenix Perching Estrade,

a sheet of sail unfurled.

(A1)

Dragon coiling, tiger crouching

from that I will be far!

(B4)

Ox Holm and Chicken Pannier

where are they now?

A3

For no reason, saddle and horse;

a three-year tour of duty.

B1

so full of meaning, water-lily and perch;

some other day arriving.

C1

A goblet of brew, old friends

who is waiting for me?

D1

inevitable, that on this windy night

I tarry still.

Notes:
311-1/ Wen Qiao (288329) once held a burning rhinoceros horn over the Yangzi River,
making visible strange creatures riding in carts and wearing crimson clothing. This event took
place at Ox Holm, opposite Liyang (see Poem 201, line 5). 120 Assuming the pavilion marks the
spot, this means Fanghui is remembering his departure from the Jinling area, not talking about a
pavilion at Changlu.
311-2/ The Estrade must be the Fenghuang Estrade north of Jinling.

118 Huang Tingjian will later praise Wangs holograph in , Huang

Tingjian quanji, 2:64748.
119 7.12573; 7.7a. The poem is dated the twelfth month of the previous year, but both its position in the collection and Changlus position between Jinling and the Grand Canal indicate a
Yuanyou 6/1091 date, probably the second month. Lu You reports eighty years later that the area
is prosperous and the site of a flourishing temple. See Chang and Smythe, South China in the Twelfth
Century, 67.
120 See the Jin shu, 6:67.1795.

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311-3/ The topography of the Jinling area has been likened to a dragon coiling and tiger crouching. 121
311-4/ Chicken Pannier is a steep rock peak west of Liyang. 122
311-8/ The gu in this line does not duplicate the gu (old; from before) in line 7 because they
have a different meaning. Guying means something like of course or it is natural that one
should 123

The first four lines are a tour de force of place-names from both Jinling and Liyang. That creates quite a bit of forward momentum. Moreover, as in Calling on
Wang Xiansou of Jinling (Poem 306), the first couplet is semantically parallel, so
we have a three-couplet string of parallel lines. This may be one reason the poet
does not continue the poem with the expected CDAB sequence. He needs to
diffuse the momentum, and he does so dramatically. The break between the
second and third couplets is especially strong because all the even-numbered
syllables, not just the critical second syllable, are tonally opposite in lines 311-4
and 5: , .
 Breaking the line-type sequence of Mooring in the Evening at Changlu in the
middle is perfectly understandable as a means of setting off the flurry of placenames in the first two couplets and distracting us from the imbalance of having
three consecutive parallel couplets. I want to raise another consideration, however. Note that lines 311-5 and 6 place yi different/another in correlation with
a number: for no reason, saddle and horse: a three-year tour of duty; / so full of
meaning, water-lily and perch, some other day arriving. Du Fu does the same in
the fifth and sixth lines of a heptametrical poem: For ten years army horses
have darkened the southern realm; / in a different land a visiting stranger grows
old in an isolated city. 124 Note also that, like He Zhus poem, Du Fus has
rhymed first lines and ABAB middle couplets. Although it must be admitted
that six of He Zhus lines are fully regulated, whereas only Du Fus last line is, it
is possible that Fanghuis recollection of Du Fus poem had some influence on
his choices in the present work.

121

See the Song shu, 34:395.12054.

See Cheng Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 1:3.127 and Fanghuis Poem 110, 3.12531; 3.12b. Chicken
Pannier was also one of the seventy-two lucky places in Song Daoism. See Cheng Minsheng,
Songdai diyu wenhua, 286. Fanghuis poem simply mentions a shrine to the old woman whose
chicken pannier became the peak.
123 See Zhang Xiang, Shi ci qu yuci huishi, 480. Gu ying had strong closural force for Su Shi; out
of twenty-five poems in which he uses the phrase, it leads off the last line in ten, all heptametrical
Quatrains and octaves. (The phrase seemed to work best in those forms, for whatever reason.
Only four of the poems in which Su uses the phrase are not heptametrical Quatrains or octaves.)
He Zhu uses the phrase just this single time.
124 Du Fu: , Du shi xiangzhu, 4:18.1599. Du Fu says this is a Wu form poem, but no
one knows what that is. My discussion of the Wu form is omitted here for reasons of space; in any
case, I have concluded that Fanghui did not try to imitate this form.
122

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

327

1091: TWO CLEVER SOCIAL POEMS IN THE CAPITAL

During his interlude in the capital after Liyang, Fanghui leaves twice as many
heptametrical Regulated Verses as pentametrical: eleven versus six. They are
mostly social poems: three are sent to friends; three are presented to people; two
are farewell poems, and so forth.
 Two poems from the fourth month of Yuanyou 6 (1091) show He Zhu being
clever for a man named Qian Dexun. The first contains an allusion to another
person named Fanghui. The second appears to rhyme the fifth line, which
should be impossible in Regulated Verse.
 Before getting into the poems, we need to clarify the identity of the person
named by his cognomen in the titles of the poems: Qian Dexun. We are told in
the headnote to a pair of Ancient Verses dated three months later that Qians
name is Shi . He lives next door to He Zhu in the capital. 125 That should tell
us all we need to know. The problem is that the cognomen Dexun was also used
by Qian Yu (10501121). Would two men whose names are graphically so
similar (indicating they might be cousins, if not brothers) use the same cognomen? Qian Yu will be a very powerful censor ten years hence, so powerful that
in 1102 he leads a movement that results in the removal of the Yuanyou Empresss title and her relegation to a Daoist nunnery. 126 We might hypothesize
that Fanghui regretted his association with this Qian Yu and altered the name,
changing Yu to Shi. We could also posit simple error/emmendation by others in
textual transmission.
There is one side-benefit in accepting that Fanghuis Qian Dexun really is
Qian Shi. We can reasonably solve the mystery of the identity of a friend of
Huang Tingjian known only as Qian Dexun. Huang follows the rhymes of a
Qian Dexun in one poem (dated 1101) and mentions a Dexun or Qian Dexun
in two letters. 127 Since neither Qian Shi nor Qian Yu appears in Huangs works,

125 Poems 129130, , 4.1253536; 4.4b5a. An edict permitting Qian Shis

retirement appears in the Quan Song wen, 37:1621.597. Qian retired from a military rank, vicecommissioner of the Imperial Larder, which tells us only that the edict was written before this
rank was renamed in 1112.
126 See Song shi 2:19.365 and Bi Yuan, Xu Zizhi tongjian, 2:88.110. History has seen Qian Yus
role in this movement as part of Cai Jings machinations to purge his opponents. See Jia Yuying,
Song dai jiancha zhidu, 193. The empress was reinstated in 1127 so a declaration in her name could
be issued, asking the prince who was to become the first Southern Song ruler (temple name Gaozong) to assume the throne. His father (the retired emperor Huizong), his older brother Qinzong,
and his mother had all been captured by the Jurchen; as the wife of Huizongs deceased older
brother Zhezong, the Yuanyou Empress was the only person with the authority to deal with the
crisis. (There was later a brief revolt by generals who felt she should have ruled as regent while the
three year old legitimate heir presumptive grew up.) See Teraji Jun, Nan S shoki seijishi kenky, 55
56 and 81. See also Song shi, 24.441, 447, 462.
127 The poem is , Huang Tingjian quanji, 3:1473; the letters are in
ibid., 4:2184 and 2186.

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we hitherto have had no basis on which to identify Dexun with either one of
these menwe could only say that Qian Yu is the least likely candidate because
of his politics. Now that He Zhus notations have brought to light the existence
of Qian Shi, a poet with the cognomen Dexun, it is reasonable to postulate that
this is the man Huang Tingjian knew.
Now we may turn to a strange poem of self-presentation,
Harmonizing with Qian Dexuns Writing my Feelings: 128
314

D3

Ay me, the world and

I have grown apart.

B1

The years and months press on,

Ive betrayed my stalwart plans.

C1

The Crazy Strangerreally hard

[he was] concurrently outer director;

D2

Fanghuisome success
[he] surpassed the common slave .

(A5)

In my breast, rough and rugged terrain

but how much do I have?

(B3)

On the diaphragm, a local inspector

this is not what I need.

C4

Straight away Ill buy one boat

and return to self satisfaction:

D1

Five-Cloud Stream adjoins

the lake of my family.

Notes:
314-3/ He Zhizhang, as noted earlier, was a supervisor or director in the Tang Palace Library. He
called himself Crazy Stranger from Siming. 129 (Siming is the name of a mountain near Mirror
Lake in Yuezhou.)
314-4/ Fanghui was the cognomen of Chi Yin (31384). When someone asked Wang
Xizhi how Chi Yins slave, who knew something about literature and had ideas on every subject,
compared with Chi, the reply was that the slave was a petty man who could not be successfully
compared with Chi Yin. The questioner concluded that the slave was unremarkable after all. 130 In
other words, Chi Yin/Fanghui represented a pretty low standard.
314-5/ Rough and rugged terrain within the breast is frustration or unresolved feelings. The
rhetorical question probably means Fanghui has no rough and rugged terrain. The only other
time Fanghui uses the last three words in this line, the object of the verb have also precedes the
phrase: Old and sick, what feelings [or gusto] do I have? 131

128

7.1257374; 7.8a.
Jiu Tang shu, 15:190B.5034.
130 See Shi shuo xinyu, 9.29. Translation quoted from Mather (2002), 275.
131 Line 7 of Poem 330, dated the twelfth month of 1093, Mooring at Evening
at Hot Pepper Bay in Guangling (7.12576; 7.11a). We should be open to the possibility of an alternate
129

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

329

314-6/ This line may indicate that our poet is giving up drinking. In the fourth century, a certain
expert cleverly termed inferior brew local inspector of Pingyuan. Pingyuan Commandery included a county named Ge, which is homophonous with ge diaphragm. (The two words can be
written with the same character.) His point was that bad brew stayed on or above the diaphragmin Ge. 132
314-8/ Five Cloud Stream is another name for Ruoye Stream in Yuezhou, Liangzhe Circuit. 133 The lake to which Fanghui refers is Mirror Lake, his goal for retirement and connection
with the He Zhizhang heritage.

The second couplet is difficult even to parse, but I believe it means our Crazy
Stranger has found the other Crazy Stranger (He Zhizhang) very hard to emulate because he was an important official, while our Fanghui has in a small way
been able to emulate the other Fanghui (Chi Yin) insofar as he is better than a
common slave.
There is an ancient recluse by the name of Fanghui, and it is generally assumed that our poets mother had that recluse in name when she bestowed the
cognomen Fanghui on the young He Zhu. That recluse had skills for preserving
life, so it would be an auspicious by-name. 134 On the other hand, of the many
people who have shared the name Fanghui down to He Zhus time, Chi Yin is
particularly appropriate for our poet to evoke (even if his mother would not
have considered Chi a model for her son). Not only was Chi Yin as enamored of
the Yuezhou area as He Zhu, he succeeded in spending many years there both
as an administrator and as a retired resident. (This was well known; in three poems Su Shi alludes to Chi Yin that capacity. 135) Thus, even as he seems to denigrate himself by saying he has barely come up to Chi Yins level (superior to
no more than a slave), our poet may also be expressing the hope that he will
emulate Chi Yin in making his way to the Yuezhou area.
The rest of the poem seems to bear this out. Fanghui is optimistic. He has no
rough and rugged terrain in his breast and so he does not need to drink cheap
brew to drown his sorrows; he is going to Five-Cloud Stream.
It seems to me that Qian Shi might have needed He Zhus help in interpreting those middle couplets. The second poem would have required help just to

reading, something like In my breast, full of rough and rugged terrain, what [center of gravity] do
I have? (None! Nevertheless, rather than drinking away my frustrations [line 314-6], I need to connect with my roots in Shanyin [lines 314-78].) This would be supported by Du Fus line
What does my inch-square heart have? which, in its context, indicates a loss of confidence
and equilibrium as the poet fears for bad news in wartime. See Yoshikawa Kjir, To Ho, 2:114,
note to line 28 of .
132 See Shi shuo xinyu, 20.9
133 See Du Mu, Fanchuan shi ji zhu, 273, commentary to line 1 of .
134 We dont really know who bestowed this name, but He Zhu had lost his father by the time
he was old enough to receive a cognomen. See Zhong Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 41
42 and Hou Han shu, 4:39.1311.
135 (1087), SSSJ, 5:28.1492; (1088),
5:30.1589; and (1092), 6:36.1928.

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read aloud correctly; Fanghui may have taken advantage of the fact that this
poem was to be presented at a banquet where he could personally explain how
to pronounce a very common character in line 315-5.
The final word in line 315-5 is gui (level tone: to return). Everything about
the meaning and the context of gui in this poem (including the fact that it is part
of a direct quotation from Ode 36 of the Classic of Poetry) tells us that it must be
read gui and mean returnexcept for the fact that it picks up the rhyme of the
poem. In the fifth line, Regulated Verse permits no rhyme. Now, it happens that
this character can also be read kui (departing tone) when it is a variant graph for
two different words meaning to be chagrinned, or to give to. Keeping in mind
that we cannot know for sure what the poets game is here, we shall provisionally read the character as kui and translate it to be chagrinned. Here, then, is
Presented to Qian Duxun at a Banquet. 136
315

(D15)

Jujube flowers lush and luxuriant,

the mulberry leaves swell.

(D27)

Aging silkworms get up to sleep,

fledgling sparrows fly.

(A5)

My neighbor to the south buys brew

and enjoins us to have fun;

(B17)

the stranger from Yue throws down his books

and sings, O reduced!

(A20)

O reduced, O impaired,
why not be chagrinned;

(B18)

tomorrow you will know

today was wrong.

(A8)

By the old stream, the willows

I planted with my own hand

B4

have long joined with the autumn wind

to sweep my fishing ledge.

Notes:
315-4/ I use Legges reduced but in the next line add the synonym impaired. In Ode 36 of
the Classic of Poetry, this phrase expresses despair in reference to the weakened state of the nation.
Over the ages it seems to simply evoke a general feeling of hopelessness; Fanghui is surely not

136 7.12574; 7.8a. It has been suggested to me that this poem could be the equivalent of two
Quatrains, which would make the fifth line the first line of the second Quatrain. In that event, a
rhyme there would be unremarkable. However, if that line rhymed, the quatrain would have a
DBAB line sequence, which is rare or nonexistent in Fanghuis heptametrical Quatrains. Moreover, neither half of the poem seems to me able to stand on its own. A second possibility to consider is that this poem was meant to be sung to a lyric tune such as Rui zhegu , which was
often used to sing heptametrical Regulated Verses. However, I have found no case in which the
fifth line rhymed in a lyric to this matrix.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

331

predicting the fall of the dynasty.

315-6/ Tao Yuanming, in his rhapsody Return Home, said that now he knows today (when he
comes home) is right and yesterday (when he took office) was wrong.
315-7/ It is common, especially among Song poets, to refer nostalgically to the growth of trees or
bamboo one planted with ones own hand before leaving home. In line 315-4, Fanghui pretends
to be from Yue (like He Zhizhang); now he pretends to have planted willows by a stream there,
perhaps Five Cloud Stream (see note to 314-8).

As for the ABABAB configuration in the last six lines of the poem, the decision
to override the expectation of a CD third couplet is easily explained by the bravado of the mispronounced quotation from the Book of Poetry and the altered
quotation from Tao Yuanming in lines 315-5 and 6, respectively. The quotations
are so easily recognized and their manipulation so blatant that we are likely to
overlook the lack of semantic parallelism in this couplet. The poem in general is
a tipsy, exuberant song that lurches from couplet to couplet until it settles
peacefully into the final line, the only regulated line in the poem, looking forward to the fishing spot that awaits He Zhu in the south.

109394: HAILING AMBIGUITIES

As we know already, Fanghui set off in the tenth month of Yuanyou 8 (1093
94) for this fishing spot in the south but never arrived. The ostensible reason for
going instead to Hailing to stay with relatives was a forecast of difficulty crossing the Yangzi, yet the following poem speaks of his desire to move to the
southeast as having faded. This is unexpected. Dated the twelfth month of the
year, the poem is titled Living on the Boat in Gaoyou and Watching
the Snow. 137
326

D2

On heavens edge at years end,

the traveler has no joy;

B1

With hand cupped over the nose I softly hum

The Road is Hard.

C3

The watery course in the Three Regions of Chu

vast surgent waves;

D1

my dreamed return to the Five Tumuli

bleak and blinding snow.

A2

Garden of the Hare: give me bamboo strips;

my heart is still hale;

137 Poem 326, 7.1257576; 7.10b. Gaoyou is sixty km NW of Hailing, on the Grand Canal
over halfway down from Chuzhou to Yangzhou.

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B1

Round of the Shan: to pole my boat

the impulse is long spent.

C2

My sick bones are lame and lagging

and brew is still forbidden;

D2

in straw fishers cloak double sewn,

I await the spring, cold.

Notes:
326-2/ Owing to a nasal condition, Xie An chanted poetry with a sound that others could emulate
only by cupping the hand over the nose. 138 Intoning low with the hand cupped over the nose
became a kenning for reciting poetry. The Road is Hard is an old ballad.
326-3/ In poetry the Three Chus vaguely designates the middle and lower Yangzi regions.
326-4/ The Five Tumuli are the capital. See the note to line 246-7 on p. 290.
326-5/ In the pleasure park called Hare Garden, the King of Liang (r. 16844 BCE) handed bamboo strips (for writing) to Sima Xiangru and bade him compose a rhapsody on snow. 139
326-6/ Once more, the allusion is to the snowy night visit of Wang Huizhi to Dai Kui in Shan,
riding on an impulse. 140 Round of the Shan does not figure in that allusion in any other text
that I know of. It must be a local expression; Lu You, who lived in Shanyin, uses it thirty-four
times. Other than that, Yang Wanli uses it once and Fanghui twice.
326-7/ It is likely that Fanghui has given up drinking because of his illness. 141

The third couplet is hard to interpret. On one hand, it may not tell He Zhus
real feelings, since its main business is surely to take up the snow theme in a
skillful pair of allusions in which snow is implied but never mentioned explicitly.
On the other hand, line 326-3 has spoken of vast surgent waves lying before
him and line 326-4 of his dream of returning to the capital. If Fanghuis impulse is spent, he may have already decided not to continue on to Yuezhou; if
he is willing to write a composition about snow on bamboo slips, then he
hopes for a prestigious appointment at court. The next poem we shall discuss
reinforces our sense that Fanghui really may be thinking that this is a time of
opportunity, not retirement.
This comes in the second month of 1094 (that is, Yuanyou 9, renamed
Shaosheng 1 later in the year). The context of the poem is that a Zeng Chen has
just been released to return from Tongchuan , a remote town in the
northeastern part of the Sichuan Basin. Zeng had once been a district defender

138

See the notes to Shishuo xinyu, 6.29 and Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 6 (note 4) and 298

300.
139 This fictional event is described in the Rhapsody on Snow, a prosopopoeia by Xie Huilian
(40733). Translated in Knechtges, Wen xuan, 3:2031.
140 Shishuo xinyu, 23.47.
141 Other hypotheses would include a prohibition on officials drinking wine for a period of
time after the death of the Empress Gao in the ninth month or a prohibition on brewing to ensure adequate grain stocks for food. However, I have found no edict decreeing a mourning prohibition and prohibitions to preserve grain were rare in Song times because of increased agricultural
production. See Li Huarui, Song dai jiu di shengchan he zhengque, 1078.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

333

in Gongcheng which is in Fanghuis native district of Weizhou. Although

Fanghui had heard of him, they had never met. Why Zengs route takes him to
Hailing is not mentioned, nor are we told why he had been exiled to Tongchuan
in the first placed. He could have been guilty of a legal infraction. His release
could have come as part of a general amnesty. Or, since we know that prominent members of the former reform movement were now being recalled to positions of power, his exile and recall might have been tied to the shifting fortunes of the reformers and the conservatives. This murky background deepens
the mystery of the last couplet of Requiting and Parting from Zeng
Chen. 142
496

D3

In years past your chamber was nearhand;

alas its owner was remote,

B1

Days too few we here forgather

our days apart will be prolonged.

C3

I can only entrust my homeward heart

to a goose from north of the sky;

D1

and you might ride your rising impulse

to a raft beside the Dipper.

A1

Thunder alarms the bright daylight:

dragons and snakes arise.

B4

wind roils the green springtime:

plants and trees blossom.

(C15)
D1

Who thinks of him one,

solitary and haggard;
how is it possible in an age of peace
to sing Embracing Sand?

Notes:
496-34/ The pronouns added in the translation are quite certain for line 3, less so for line 4.
Stories that are told about people riding rafts on long journeys that take them into the sky evoke
thoughts of distant travel in general, rising to the realm of the Undying, or becoming a high official. 143
496-8/ Embracing Sand is said to be the song that Qu Yuan sang before he drowned himself in
despair. 144

The first half of the poem derives from the situation we have been given in the
headnote: the two men were once a days journey or less apart but never saw
each other, now they have met, and now they say goodbye. Fanghui is thinking
of his home district in the north (line 496-3); perhaps that is where Zeng is go-

142
143
144

10.12595; shiyi 3a.

See Edward Schafer, Pacing the Void, 26369.
David Hawkes, Songs of the South, 16972.

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CHAPTER FOUR

ing (toward the Dipper), or perhaps line 496-4 anticipates that he will rise to the
empyreal court in Kaifeng.
One could read political symbolism into the third couplet, particularly if we
knew Zeng Chen was in favor of the new regime consolidating its power in the
capital. Snakes and dragons usually stand for energetic, sinuous forms (as in
vines, twisted pine trunks, or calligraphic lines) or for creatures who are not
usually seen but can be stirred into action by thunder or righteousness. 145 Lines
496-56 could describe the changing weather of mid-spring or the rise and
flourishing of new political forces; if the latter, the ambiguity of reference might
be intentional.
The final couplet is unambiguously concerned with the question of participation in the political world, though the identity of him one is not clear. Even
the effect of using this dialectical pronoun is unknown. (For the translation I
have settled on a sixteenth-century English construction that is still found in
some Caribbean and American dialects, he one.) The pronoun is employed by
He Zhu additionally in one other Hailing poem and by Huang Tingjian in one
1087 poem; it is not used in Tang poetry. Although in prose it is generally applied to a person who is disliked, I do not think that is the connotation here, for
it must refer to either Fanghui or Zeng Chen. If it is Fanghui himself, he is in
his familiar guise of Qu Yuan, solitary and worn out. However, in the first of
two heptametrical Quatrains written after this poem, our poet refers to Zeng as
a sao person (a term for poet derived from Qu Yuans being the first major
poet whose identity is known and from his authorship of Li sao, Encountering
Sorrow). If Zeng is thus also comparable to Qu Yuan, the last line makes sense as
both admonition and encouragement to him. Thus, the answers to the twin rhetorical questions in lines 496-78 are: no one pays attention to the haggard and
self-pitying outsider (so you should not play that role); and you are not entitled,
in this era of supposed peace, to play the role of the loyal minister who commits
suicide because the ruler is deaf to his wise counsel. After all, you have been
released from your exile. Continue on your way back to the center of society.
Lest we give the mistaken impression that all the Hailing poems are this difficult, let us take a quick glance at Joyful over Rain at Hailing, written on
the last day of the fourth month. In 1094 there was an intercalary fourth month
that would start the next day, which explains the first line: 146
504

(D7)

The intersection of the fourth months

of an intercalary year:

See Du Fus , Du shi xiangzhu, 1:5.343.

10.12597; shiyi 5a. The intercalary months were inserted every few years to keep the lunar
calendar from departing too far from the seasons (which are tied to the solar cycle).
145
146

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

(D5)

Parched sky and cloud-hue

ever so dernful and drear.

(A5)

A fresh wind rolls up the ground

and turns the dusty world;

(B17)

white rain penetrates the grove

and tumbles ocean waves.

(D27)

By far it surpasses the vigor

of a peasant boy on the treadwheel;
somewhat it eases the labor
of this sick man waving his fan.

(A5)

I must, when it clears, straightaway buy

one fishing batteau,

(B3)

pre-imagining that Thorter Dykes

is half a pole-length deep.

(C15)

335

Notes:
504-4/ Hailing was only about sixty km from the ocean in He Zhus time.
504-8/ Thorter translates heng, athwart/transverse. Thorter Dykes is a place name in the Scottish Borders region, and there seem to have been a great many places in China named Hengtang
including one in Suzhou that figures in Fanghuis most famous lyric. 147

There are a number of things to enjoy in this poem. The prosy first line is one;
the prose particle zhi is almost never used in the fifth position of a heptasyllabic
line, especially in a Regulated Verse, because it cannot allow a caesura to stand
between it and the preceding syllable; in line 508-1, it turns the last five syllables
into one indivisible noun phrase: Intercalary year | fourth months zhi intersection. The third couplet, the way it expresses the notions that the rain delivers water better than a tread-wheel and that the fresh wind cools better than a
fan, is another delight.
This poem also revels in what we might call a systematic flouting of the rules.
Every line is unregulated, but in all but two cases it is only the syllable after the
major caesura, the fifth syllable, that has the wrong tone. The result is that the
first two lines end in three level tones and every other line ends in equally jarring
strings of level-deflected-level or deflected-level-deflected tones. One could say
that these strings compensate for each other in couplets two through four (cf. p.

147 See Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 154, which dates the lyric to 1101. As I pointed out in
Experiential Patterns, 29395, there are places with this name near Nanjing and Wujiangand
of course Hailing, tooalthough one never knows for sure whether Hengtang is a proper noun
or a common noun. My study was done too early to take advantage of Zhongs prodigious scholarship on He Zhu, so some of the solutions I suggested to problems in Hes chronology are in
need of further revision. For translations of the lyric, see Experiential Patterns 10910 and Renditions 5 (Autumn 1975), 106.

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CHAPTER FOUR

290), but what is the overall effect of this jerky rhythm at the end of those lines?
Tentatively, we might suggest that it mimics a countrified awkwardness that the
poet might have thought fit the atmosphere of Hailing. An alternative explanation would simply stress the technical fun he is having with his consistency in
rule-breaking; he will do much the same thing in a rare twelve-line Regulated
Verse (Poem 530) in 1096.
In this poem, we dont see the hints of ambivalence about retirement that we
thought we could detect in the last two poems we discussed. One thing that has
changed since the second month is that Su Shi is being ordered south into exile.
Although Fanghui shows no acknowledgement of this development until the
fifth month (see below), it is likely that he was aware of the shifting balance of
power that was leading to it. 148 Four Poems Inscribed on the Lodging in Hailing, is dated the intercalary fourth month, when the exile order was put
into effect. 149 We shall translate the second and fourth poems to get a sense of
the poet poised on the verge of unanticipated changeswhich at this time appear not to include return to a welcoming situation in the capital.
507

(B3)

Approaching dampness, at hedges foot

sing the tettix;

D3

Facing brightness, in rooms corner

webs the spider.

(A13)

Yellow hollyhocks and purple amaranth

rainburst forth and burgeon;

(D6)

striped mosquitoes and white ants

windare flushed and routed.

(C6)

Tossing and turning, still I resent

that summer nights are endless;

(D28)

lame and lagging, how can I bear

that spring illness lingers?

148 I would like to posit that Fanghui was getting news from Dingzhou, where Su Shi had been
prefect since the tenth month of 1093, because Li Zhiyi had followed him there (see Kong Fanli,
Su Shi nianpu, 3:32.1122 and 112930). Fanghui knew Li; he had presented a poem to him in the
capital in the second month of 1093: Poem 322, , 7.12575; 7.9b. The fact that Fanghuis
fifth-month poem Written on Hearing that Suhas been Exiled to be Prefect of Yingzhou avers that our
poet heard the news of the exile long after it should have been common knowledge suggests that
he was trying to protect a secret channel of information. If Fanghui were getting news from faraway Dingzhou, the poem on the rain in Hailing we just translated might allude to the fact that on
the sixteenth of the fourth month of 1094, Su, Li, and others had prayed from rain at the Northern Marchmount Temple. Unfortunately, we dont know what day of the month Fanghuis poem
was written. Without more evidence, we must be content to take things at face value.
149 Poems 5069, 10.1259798; Shiyi 5b6a. I follow the QSS edition for the second character
of Poem 507.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

(A5)

Sadness in anticipation, still in

the mood of former years:

(B3)

two eyes full of capital dust,

yearning for Mirror Lake.

337

Note:
507-7/ Diao mood can also refer to an assignment or transfer. That would fit here: Fanghui
has a bad feeling that he will end up again in a mint or chasing smugglers. However, it would not
fit the only other use of former year diao that I know of, which appears in one of Fanghuis
1097 poems on tea sent to him from Huang Tingjian (see p. 365, line 542-7).

Capital dust and the Yuezhou area (line 507-8) are the poles of He Zhus consciousness: he loathes the former and yearns for the latter. Presently in Hailing,
he is almost at the midpoint between those poles, but they still define his
thoughts. He speaks as if the dust of the capital were still in his two eyes
perhaps he has not rid himself of nostalgia for the power and the youthful
hopes the capital represents. What is odd is the feeling of foreboding he has
(line 507-7). When he refers to it as an old, familiar feeling, we get the idea that
he must know he will return soon to his career. The relatives in Hailing will not
put him up forever.
While the rest of the poem seems to consist of simple descriptions of life in
the Hailing lodgings, there are matters of craft that cannot be ignored. The sequence of line types in this poem is unique in the set; where the other three poems have a normal BDABCDAB progression, this poem is BDADCDAB. The
second syllable of the fourth line is the critical one in breaking the adhesion
with the following couplet and the tonal parallelism with line 507-3. The offending word is mosquito; if it were a deflected tone word, this would be a B line
and the sequence would be canonical. I think this tells us that mosquitoes and
termites were the scourges Fanghui most wanted flushed and routed by the
wind. Their placement in the poem does not hint at any symbolic meaning
certainly mosquitoes dont have to stand for something else to be hateful. 150
This couplet yields still more richness. The phrase translated burst forth and
burgeon in line 507-3 is written with two characters that normally represent
very common surnames, Zhang and Wang. So unusual is this binomial that poets or editors sometimes add a note to tell the reader the characters must be
read differently (with departing tones), but of course in context they dont make
sense as names, anyway. The term is used by He Zhu, Su Shunqin (earlier), and

150 In theory, we could make line 507-4 a B line by simply reversing the order of the insects.
White ants striped mosquitoeswindare flushed and routed yields not only the needed B line
but also a tone pattern that is the perfect antithesis of line 3: . Such lines exist
Qi Gong cites one by Li Bo for this matrix (B9). Nevertheless, a string of five level tones is not the
simple antithesis of five deflected tones. Level tones are pretty similar, even if divided into yin and
yang level tones, whereas five deflected tones in a row can comprise any combination of three
different tones (rising, departing, and entering) for more variety.

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CHAPTER FOUR

Su Shi (later), one time each; Su Zhe uses it three times, once correlated with a
rhyming compound in the next line, as in this poem. 151 There are Tang precedents in Han Yu, Liu Yuxi, and Yuan Zhen (one each). The phrase presented
difficulties that must have seemed distracting in poetry. Perhaps a single deployment of the phrase showed ones erudite wit, but more frequent use would
quickly wear thin.
So much is going on in this couplet that I think one reason for the tonal violations in the next coupletespecially the string of level-tone syllables in line
507-6is to balance the wildness of the second couplet. In addition, that string
of level-tone syllables, though the effect is moderated by the caesuras that break
it into segments, can be heard as the lame and lagging poets long and doleful
cry.
The fourth poem in the set starts with longing for home but finds contentment in Hailing.
509

(B4)

A thousand miles to my family garden:

where is it, alas!

D4

Perched on a journey, I still am happy

to claim a place in ponds and terraces.

(A6)

My brew is not the retainer:

a whole year weve been apart;

(B8)

the breeze is my old friend:

all day it comes to me.

(C15)

Yellow birds warble forth,

the purple mulberries ripen;

D3

white gulls splash and leap

green duckweed parts.

A1

Knowing this old guy must have

thrown away his machinations

B4

they leave him one to go home

only when the gusto is gone.

Note:
509-3/ The retainer is fine brew, the opposite of the local inspector. (See the note to line to
line 314-6, page 329.)

Fanghui is a thousand miles from home, yet he occupies/lays claim to pleasant ponds and terraces on the estate of relatives in Hailing and does so joyfully. The breeze is treated as an old friend. Nature is not indifferent or hos-

151 See Su Zhes heptametrical Regulated Verse , Su Zhe ji, 1:263. Zeng Zaozhuang, Su
Zhe nianpu, 102, places the poem in 1085.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

339

tile. The birds are part of a colorful and peaceful early summer scene, their activities painted vividly by the alliterative man3by-man2a (warble forth) and
dzramQ2a-dzrok2 (splash and leap). 152 The unity of the scene is embodied in the
way the gulls in line 509-6 continue to be present in the last couplet. Tradition
ascribes to gulls the ability to tell when a human approaches with harmful intent.
The gulls know that this old guy (the poet) is not a schemer, and they allow
him one (see p. 334) to come and go on his impulse.
Apparently, the material needs of Fanghui and his family were being taken
care of by the Hailing relatives. (One wonders, from the hint in this and previous poems, whether he has been recovering from an addiction to alcohol, or
perhaps from illnesses caused by overindulgence.) Some of his comparative
tranquility can also be ascribed to his being outside the world of the bureaucrat.
Ostensibly, it is not until the fifth month of 1094 that Fanghui hears that Su
Shi has been assigned to Yingzhou , in Guangnan East Circuit (modern
Yingde, about 120 km north of Guangzhou/Canton). The transfer of Su Shi,
who had been in the northern border prefecture of Dingzhou, was first ordered
on the eleventh of the fourth month. (Zhao Lingzhi, whom He Zhu had seen
off to Chenzhou about eight and a half years previously, was fined at the same
time for having associated with Su.) Sus rank was further reduced on the thirteenth. The order relieving Su of his Dingzhou post and exiling him to Yingzhou was issued on the third day of the intercalary fourth month. Su Shi made
his way south and entered Huainan East Circuit around the beginning of the
fifth month. In Sizhou, he met his follower Du Yu , who had invited He
Zhu to stop there in the eleventh month of 1093, just at the time our poet decided to make Hailing his destination instead of crossing the Yangzi. Still in the
fifth month, Su Shi passed through Gaoyou and Yangzhou. If Fanghui had not
heard the news from Du Yu, the exile would have been general knowledge in
the area by that time. 153
Here is Written on Hearing that Su of Meishan has been
Exiled to be Prefect of Yingzhou. 154
510

B1

Atop the hause as you climb to overlook,

Chu and Yue divide.

D4

Open your lapel; it is first of all a joy

to gain the southern warmth.

152 The subscript numerals show that the syllables in man-man, though belonging to the same
rhyme-group, have different rhymes. See explanation in Branner.
153 For Su Shis demotion, exile, and progress to Yangzhou, see Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu,
3:33.114355. See also He Zhus pentametrical Ancient Verse Requiting and Parting
from Du Yu of Xuyi, Poem 137, 4.12537; 4.8a, and the headnote thereto. Xuyi is Sizhou.
154 Poem 510, 10.12598; shiyi.6a.

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CHAPTER FOUR

(A8)

The houlet on the edge of your mat

dare not demand a rhapsody!

(B18)

the crocodiles in the stream

will know enough to fear your entreaty.

(C14)

Brew will wash away the yellow straw

miasma seasons rain;

D3

a whistle will drive forth Cyan Veiling

Caverns clouds.

A3

A lofty talentwhat need to borrow

the aid of mountains and rivers?

B1

youll never imitate the niggling, nagging

song of the five gentlemen.

Notes:
510-1/ Yue is the area of the Guangnan East and West Circuits, also known as South of the
Hauses (Lingnan).
510-3/ For the houlet that appeared on the mat of the exiled Jia Yi, see note to line 002-19.
510-4/ In 819, Han Yu was exiled to Chaozhou, on the southeast coast. There he wrote an entreaty to the crocodiles of the area, threatening them with death if they did not leave. (History
notes that they left.) 155
510-5/ Yellow straw miasma is the noxious vapor that rises South of the Hauses in the fall,
when grasses have turned to yellow straw. Su Shi himself uses this term in two poems, including
one to Master He of Qingliang Temple that will be written on the ninth day of the following
month. 156
510-6/ The Cyan Veiling Cavern is near Yingzhou. Su Shi will write a poem on it about four
months later. 157
510-7/ It was said of Zhang Yue (667731) that after he lived in Yuezhou ( on Lake
Dongting, SW of Ezhou and up the Yangzi) in 715 during a series of exile assignments, his writing
improved due to the aid of the mountains and rivers. 158
510-8/ Yan Yanzhi (384456), a close friend of Tao Yuanming, was exiled to Yongjia
on the southeastern coast in 434. Resentful, he wrote a set of five poems in praise of Ruan Ji,
Xi Kang, and three other members of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove to express his anger.
Su Shi alludes to this in poems of 1087 and 1091. 159

155 See David Pollard, The Chinese Essay, 3335, for a translation and Charles Hartman, Han Y
and the Search for Unity, 9193, for reasons to doubt Pollards assumption that this is a burlesque.
156 An earlier use is in (1076); the 1094 poem is
. See SSSJ, 3:4.682 and 6:37.2032, respectively, and Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 1159.
Beata Grant, Mount Lu Revisited, 179, translates the poem but ascribes it without discussion to 1101
and omits the first line.
157 , SSSJ, 6:38.2061; Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1173. The translation Cyan Veiling I take from
Paul Kroll, Dharma Bell and Dhrai Pillar, 23 and 24. This in turn refers us to Bokenkamps article
on Taoism and Literature: The Pi-lo Question.
158 See the Xin Tang shu, 14:125.4410.
159 Song shu, 73.1893. For the songs, see Ding Fubao, Quan Han Sanguo Jin Nanbeichao shi,
2:78688. Sus poems: , SSSJ, 5:29.1528, line 31; and
, 6:34.1799, last two lines.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

341

Fanghui leads off with the magnificence of the journey: Su Shi will stand on the
divide between one vast southern realm and another where, fresh from the
chilly north, he can open his lapel to the calid wind, a warm southern wind
that can connote prosperity and sagely order. Next, our poet rolls out an impressive series of allusions to exiles of the pastsignificantly, none of whom
perished in the periods of banishment that he references. Su Shi will not have to
transcend the fears that Jia Yis owl brought him and he will emulate Han Yus
extension of imperial authority to the beasts of areas formerly outside the pale
of Chinese civilization; imbibing will protect him from disease and he will use a
Daoist whistle to control the clouds; as a writer, he is far beyond needing
Zhang Yues landscape to improve his work, and as a person he is above using a
niggling, naggling song like Yan Yanzhis to castigate the slanderers who have
engineered his exile.
I think it is in keeping with the brave tone of the poem that it should be heptametrical rather than pentametrical. The reader may try an interesting experiment to see why. The first two syllables can be omitted from the first four lines
to make them pentasyllabic. In translation, As you climb to overlook, Chu and
Yue divide. / It is first of all a joy to gain the southern warmth. / The houlet
dare not demand a rhapsody! / the crocodiles will know enough to fear your
entreaty. So far, it is an acceptable poem, dignified in its restraint. However,
nothing can be eliminated from the following four lines without serious damage
to both meaning and meter. The fifth and sixth syllables could be removed from
lines 510-5 and 6 with perhaps minor loss of clarity, but the sequence of line
types would become invalid. The long SVO constructions that take up the entire
lines in this couplet are, in addition, an important gesture of courage and defiance in the face of a life-threatening exile. Compacted to five syllables, they
would lose much of their impact. Line 510-7 would be unintelligible if pared
back to five syllables; line 510-8 would, again, lose its elocutionary force without
the niggling, nagging, and there is nothing else to prune.

109596: FROM THE CAPITAL TO JIANGXIA

ANOTHER EXILE
If Fanghui truly believed Prefect Zhou Bin would become an influential official
at court, as he seemed to think when he saw him off from Hailing the month
after the preceding poem (see Poem 026), he must have been disappointed
when he arrived in the capital in Shaosheng 2 (1095) and discovered that Zhou
was going to Poyang as prefect. Poyang was the seat of Raozhou , on the

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eastern side of Pengli Lake (Poyang Lake) in Jiangnan East Circuit.

(This must have been a punishment of sorts, but it seems not to have satisfied
Zhous enemies. The next we hear of him, in 1099, he is prefect of Jizhou ,
300 km to the south in Jiangnan West Circuit. Whether he served the normal
three-year tenure in Poyang and had just arrived in Jizhou or whether, like Su
Shi, he received a more distant post even before he had begun the original assignment, we cannot know. We do know that in the second month of 1099 he
will petition to have his name cleared and will be removed from his position in
Jizhou.) 160 Thus, one year after bidding Zhou Bin farewell in Hailing, Fanghui
had the occasion to write Seeing Off Zhou Kaizu Going out as
Prefect of Poyang. 161
515

B4

Three feet of capital dust,

amid the pomp and parade.

D1

Theres almost no place free

to put a fresh breeze.

A3

Perch and wild rice:

youve been away for years;

B4

your nigrous canopy and crimson raves

in only one day go east.

C2

The common eyesforce a distinction

between dark and whitesremain;

D2

fragrant gobletsere I was aware

of sage or worthyare empty.

A1

Poyang will not stint on

the aid of mountains and rivers;

B4

high spirits tee-totally

belong to Master Xie.

Notes:
515-2/ Or: to stand and wait for a fresh breeze.
515-3/ Wild rice is included with the sliced perch and water-lily soup as one of the local delicacies
at home that enticed Zhang Han out of the capital just in time to avoid being killed along with the
prince he served in 302. 162
515-4/ A chariot with a black canopy and red side-panels conventionally represents a prefect or
similar regional official. One day indicates the imminence of Zhous departure. He will go east
from the capital down the Bian Canal before making his way south, then west up the Yangzi.

160 See Changbian, 14:513.6a (5205a) and Su Shi nianpu, 2:24.699, which I think confuses the
date on which this and other cases are discussed with the date of the case itself.
161 10.12599; Shiyi 7b.
162 Shishuo xinyu, 7.10.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

343

515-5/ This line seems to say that the vulgar eyes (who cannot judge the worth of Zhou Bin, for
example) will always be with us, and it is no use trying to differentiate between friendly (those who
show the darks of their eyes) and hostile (those who show the whites of their eyes). 163
515-6/ Clear brew is the sage and cloudy brew is the worthy. 164
515-7/ Weve seen the allusion to Zhang Yues improved writing due to the aid of the mountains
and rivers in the poem on Su Shis exile just translated. Su didnt need any help; Zhou can take
comfort in knowing he will get help.
515-8/ Mister Xie is probably Xie Huilian (40733). See discussion below. The word
translated tee-totally is a fairly rare word, foreign in origin, meaning altogether.

This poem is nicely regulated in form, perhaps reflecting Zhous senior status.
The docile submission to meter conceals other complexities, however, especially
in the second half of the poem. The last line promises a conventional allusion to
either Xie An the cultured recluse, Xie Lingyun the landscape poet, or a Xie associated with Poyang, but it turns out that no such allusion or association exists.
The single link I have found between anyone named Xie and Poyang is a heptametrical Regulated Verse written by Fanghui himself later in 1095. Fanghuis
work is a banquet poem to see off two people, one a judge going home from
Jiangxia to Poyang. The crucial line, which must be addressed to the judge,
states that Xie Huilian should tarry a while. Now, Xie Huilian was not a native
of Poyang, nor is he known to have visited there during his short life, so there
seems little reason to mention him in either poem. However, he did suffer a
setback in his career when he addressed poetry to one of his male lovers during
a period of mourning. If the judge in that later poem and Zhou Bin in this one
are being compared to Xie Huilian, could it be because they are homosexuals? 165
If there is a reference to homosexuality here, line 515-5s reference to trying
to distinguish friendly and unfriendly eyes may relate not to the shifting and expedient political alliances of the time but to the need to be on guard against
those who might attack a person for his sexual orientation. 166 The interrupted

163 The notion of displaying ones dark pupils to like-minded people and white eyes to vulgar
intruders is a familiar one, coming from an anecdote about Ruan Ji. See Holzman, Poetry and Politics, 80.
164 See the Sanguo zhi, Wei shu, 3:27.739.
165 Xie Huilian did write a ballad called Song of Yuzhang, and Yuzhang was a neigboring
commandery, but a ballads title does not necessarily have anything to do with its content, let
alone the life of the poet. See Ding Fubao, Quan Han Sanguo Jin Nanbei chao shi, 2:835. Since both
the Tang and the Song histories list a five-juan collection of Xies works in their bibliographical
monographs, while only seventeen prose works and thirty-some poems by him are extant today,
Fanghui may have had a much more complete picture of Xie Lingyuns life and poetry than we
do. For a biographical sketch in English, see Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 3:39293. Fanghuis poem is
no. 552, Written at a Banquet on the Second Day of the Second Month, 10.12605; Shiyi
17a. (The headnote tells us that Fanghui lost this poem but got it back in November 1100 when
he met some others who had been at the party five years earlier.)
166 Qin Guan has a poem in which he compares Zhou Bin to Yuan Zhen and Lu Yu of the
Tang. Yuan had many romantic interests, but I dont know if they extended beyond women. Lu
Yu was an odd and solitary man: Xin Tang shu, 196.5611. Qins poem is .

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syntax that engages us linguistically and the pairing of the line with an innocuous
reference to drinking the farewell cups (515-6) camouflage Fanghuis message,
but not so completely as to obscure it.

1096: UP THE YANGZI

We turn now to a pair of poems on the willow trees planted along the Qin-Huai
Stream in Jinling; it is the fourth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096), and Fanghui is
on his way up the Yangzi to the mint in Jiangxia. 167 None of the lines in the first
poem is regulated; the second poem, in contrast, is a canonical DBCDABCD
with an unremarkable violation of meter only in the penultimate line. First poem
first:
517

(D26)

The two tides of the Qin-Huai

go west and then go east.

(D8)

The willows bordering the Huai

are sweet with calid breeze.

(A28)

Sending off spring, white blossoms

in spreading profusion go;

(B21)

avoiding the sun, yellow birds

all a-twitter-tweet.

(A21)

Tao of Pengze gives many

tired-of-office sighs;

(B4)

Huan of Langye is now

a worn-by-sickness old man.

(A16)

This body shall again

see robust days;

(B17)

I shall repair to this green shade,

in which my tented fishing boat will lie.

Notes:
517-2/ This is the Qin-Huai; The name of the dynasty during which a portion of the Huai stream
was dug out as a canal normally prefaces the name of the river but is dropped here.
517-5/ Tao of Pengze is Tao Yuanming, who once served as magistrate of Pengze. His famous
self-portrait is titled A Biography of Mr. Five Willows, the persona deriving his name from the
willows planted in front of his house. 168
517-6/ Huan of Langye is Huan Wen (31273). He planted willows in Langye while serving
there as governor in 341. When he passed by in 369 on an expedition to recover Chinese territory
from foreign occupation, he wept copiously because the large girth of the willows showed how

167
168

Two Poems on the Government Willows on the Qinhuai, 10.12599; Shiyi.8a8b.

For one translation, see Owen, Anthology, 31415.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

345

much of his life had passed in the interim. 169

The third couplet of the poem presents us with several puzzles. One puzzle
arises from the fact that tired-of-office sighs and worn-by-sickness old man
dont apply very well to Tao Yuanming or Huan Wen. I think the solution might
be to understand the couplet this way: Like Tao Yuanming, I am surrounded
by willows, but unlike Tao, who retired when he grew weary of office, I am still
in service. Like Huan Wen, I am moved by how much the willows have grown
since last I saw them, but unlike him I am old and sick. Note that the 3|1 || 3
rhythm sets us up at the major caesura for these reversals. Tao Pengze|many ||
tired office sighs; / Huan Langye|today || worn sick gent. The strategy is one
used by comedians: one starts a sentence innocuously, pauses (perhaps with a
quick glance at the audience), and finishes rapidly with a surprise ending. We
might also note that the words on which we pause, many and now, are the
same tone, a violation that adds to their prominence.
(The reader may wonder how many and now correlate semantically.
First, both words can be seen as showing a change of state: more than before,
too many; no longer as before, but now. Secondly, since duo many also has
the meaning of usually, it could be seen as temporal in nature; today is of
course intrinsically temporal. Thus, usually as a secondary meaning gives us
another case of parallelism-by-pun.) 170
The fact that the third couplet should be a CD couplet serves to increase its
prominence. If line 517-5 had a deflected tone in the second syllable, it would
be a C line and the poem would have a normal sequence of line types (after the
DD opening): ABCDAB. Unfortunately, all readings of peng are level tones, so
the line must be an A line. That forces us, if we wish to preserve minimal tonal
parallelism within the third couplet, to give lang in Langye a deflected tone
(which the character can have in other contexts), converting a (D28) line (
) into a (B4) line (). The resultant AB couplet
lacks adherence with the neighboring couplets, but this helps call attention to its
unusual semantic rhythm and clever comparisons between the poet and Tao
Yuanming and Huan Wen.
This is another poem rich in twisted and compensatory meters (cf. p. 290).
Most metrical violations appear to have an identifiable rationale. In the second
line of the poem, willow stands out as having the sole deflected tone. Willow is the stated topic of the poem, of course. Having begun the poem with
the tides instead of the stated topic, perhaps Fanghui felt obligated to compensate by giving this word prominence in line 517-2. In the second couplet, in

169

See the Shishuo xinyu, 2.55.

Su Shi correlates duo with wei not yet in (1097) and with jiu former/old in , both in the second couplet of a heptametrical Regulated
Verse. SSSJ, 7:41.2267 and 8:48.2611. The latter is one of Sus poems to Zhou Bin in the 1080s.
170

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CHAPTER FOUR

spreading confusion go (khuoH mak mak, line 517-3) and all a-twitter tweet
(dei tshung tshung, line 517-4) should be impermissible as strings of three identical tones, but each balances the other. (The willows, by the way, are still present in those lines through their white flowers and the yellow birds. The association may be conventional, it may be an example of Chinese honkadori such as we
proposed in the previous chapter, or it may be a vague convention supported by
a half-remembered predecessor poem. 171 ) As for the string of five deflected
tones in line 517-7, this embodies the speakers obstinate adherence to the
proposition that he will be healthy again someday.
From many perspectives, the third couplet is the star of the poem. The rest
of the poem, however, is a worthy setting for this multifaceted jewel. We must
remember that by this time willows were loaded with clichs: their misty looks,
various comparisons to feminine beauty, associations with farewells, and so
forth. So far, Fanghui has avoided these.
Let us see how Fanghui matches this poem with the second of the pair.
518

D2

Westward I came carrying my illness

one small boat.

B1

Jianyes mountains and rivers

Ive failed to make a superlative outing.

C1

The willow trees, after sleep,

are feeling good about themselves;

D4

my rush-woven sail, about to be hoisted,

demurs to leave.

A1

The long withes seem to dance

the roundel of the stream in front;

B1

curled leaves are ready to perform

the sorrow of leaving the barriers.

(C14)
D1

I see in my mind the great people

of the old Southern Courts;
Enviable are they for this
style of dashing elegance.

Notes:
518-2/ Jianye is another of Jinlings several names.
518-3/ The sleeping of the willows may refer to their wands (withes in our translation) hang-

171 As a predecessor poem (honka), I propose the Breaking Willow Branches ascribed to
several Tang poets, among them Shen Quanqi (656715), which uses white flowers and
yellow birds in correlated positions. See Guo Maoqian, Yuefu shiji, 2:22.33031, or the QTS,
1:18.189. There may be other candidates; the more there are, the more conventional the association.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

347

ing low, or, more likely, to their catkins while covered by the bud scale. 172
518-56/ Stream in Front and Going Beyond the Barriers are ballad titles, the former specifically for dances. 173

The opening couplet sets the situation and the closing couplet offers the expected glance back in time to the Southern Courts that made Jinling their capital. Fanghuis sickness and resulting betrayal of the scenery are what we expect from him; the last line uses language that seems a bit colloquial but is well
attested in poetry of the Tang and Song. The interesting lines are in the middle
couplets.
The second couplet is charming in the images of transference by which the
willows feel good and the sail dawdles. This same technique is carried into the
third couplet, where it becomes more complicated. Because qu (roundel) can
be either a bend in a river or a song, willow wands can dance in the wind at
the bend of a river, or they can be imagined to dance to the tune named
Stream in Front. Leaves can fly/flip in the breeze, but the verb also means
to perform, as in perform Going Beyond the Barriers. Thus, in both lines
the verbs have one meaning before the strong caesura but take on another
meaning in the context of the last three syllables.
These are not merely clever puns. Going beyond the barriers implies parting, leaving the familiarleaving, indeed, civilization itself. As Fanghuis boat
moves to the bend of the stream in front, he is leaving his familiar Jinling for the
unknown and decidedly less cultured Jiangxia. 174
 The effect of having one poem that exuberantly ignores meter and one that
includes only one minor metrical violation is one of completeness: when it
comes to the willows along the Qin-Huai, all poetic possibilities within the genre
have been covered. The situation is slightly different with the next two poems in
the collection, still from the fourth month of 1096. The first poem is to harmonize with and bid farewell to Master He of the Qingliang Temple, who (the
headnote tells us) has built a Western Hut and invited He Zhu to spend his old
age there. The second is written to bid farewell again to Master He, who has
actually wept to see He Zhu going up to Jiangxia when he is still sick. Fanghui
leaves an old portrait of himself to make the karmic tie to the Western Hut.
We shall not translate these poems, but merely note that, while both poems follow the canonical sequence of line types (DBCDABCD and BDABCDAB), the

172 Ouyang Xiu has willows sleeping all day keeping the silkworms of Wu company; see
Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:Jushiwaiji.6.384, . Su Shis famous lyric on the willow (to Shuilongyin,
) speaks of charming eyes opening and closing again, most likely a reference to the emerging catkins.
173 Guo Maoqian, Yuefu shiji, 2:45.65758.
174 The entire circuit was backward and the few schools it had were elsewhere than Jiangxia.
Though humble Hanyang had a school, it was washed away by the Yangzi at some point and not
rebuilt until 1190. See Cheng Minsheng, Songdai diyu wenhua, 199200.

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former is replete with unregulated lines and the latter is almost completely metrical. The first poem is not quite as extreme as the first willow poem (there are
no strings of deflected tones beyond four syllables or of level tones beyond
three syllables). Nevertheless, it strikes one that Fanghui wanted to show off his
daring in the first poem but was so moved in the second poem by the affection
of the monk that he curtailed his bravado. 175
 Further up the River, still in the fourth month of 1096, Fanghui continues to
write metrically awkward poems, including Mooring the Boat in
Gushu Creek. 176
526

D4

The tide comes to Gushu,

half a pole deeper.

(B22)

Our sail drops at creeks mouth;

the masts are like a forest.

(C6)

At Mister Xies Green Mountain

the old well is lost;

(D6)

of Master Huans white ramie,

no echo is left.

(A5)

For a fine outing Id put on my clogs

but betray a climb to the view;

(B30)

worn and sick I sprawl on my pillow

and moan instead.

(A8)

In this place, with a couple of acres

I could finish out my affairs;

(B18)

in melancholy for ten years

Ive held to this idea.

Notes:
526-3/ Lu You visited the site of Xie Tiaos residence on Green Mountain in 1170. Well by
synecdoche stands for the residence. 177
526-4/ Huan Wen visited a mountain east of Dangtu with singing girls in the fourth century and
made merry with the singing of White Ramie ballads. (The mountain was henceforth named
White Ramie Mountain). 178
526-7/ Finish out my affairs probably means spend the rest of my days.
526-8/ Ten years may allude to Zhang Shizhi of the second century B.C.E. He gave up
and decided to withdraw from service after holding the same insignificant position for ten years

Poems 519 and 520, and , 10.12599600; Shiyi.8b.

10.12601; Shiyi.10a. Gushu Creek leads to Dangtu , south of Liyang and upstream on
the east side of the River.
177 Chang and Smythe, South China in the Twelfth Century, 8586.
178 Lu You mentions only that Huan Wens tomb is near Dangtu (86), but Wang Anshi has a
poem on the mountain. See Linchuan xiansheng wenji, 12.182. See also Li Bos ,
Zhan Ying, 4:11.178492; no Jitsunosuke, 7036.
175

176

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

349

without promotion. Cf. the couplet Ten years with no

adjustment, poor and mean; / a hundred days of frequent demotion, following the vagaries of
fortune, by Luo Binwang. 179

Aside from the familiar plenitude of unregulated lines, we are confronted with
an AB concluding couplet where there should be a CD couplet. More peculiar is
the fact that parallelism in the third couplet is lax by the usual standards of lexical and syntactic correlations. Let us start with that.
 Overall, there is a basic correlation of structure in lines 526-5 and 6: Purpose
| (V-O) || what speaker is not doing; / Reason | (V-O) || what speaker is doing.
The logical relationships differ (one puts on clogs in order to have a fine outing
but sprawls on the pillow because he is worn and sick), but this incongruity is familiar in parallel lines and attending to it yields one of the pleasures of reading
Regulated Verse. The more difficult dissimilarities come in the first and last
parts of the two lines. Fine outing and worn and sick, for example, correlate
only as notional opposites, not as syntactically similar phrases. Fu betray and
fang (just now) are parallel only in the sense that the first marks what the
speaker is not doing (climbing) and the second marks what he is doing (moaning).
 Perhaps it is in compensation for this that the last couplet shows stronger
parallelism than usual, on a level commonly seen in a strong opening couplet.
The phrases two acres || finish my affairs and ten years || hold this
mindset semantically correlate very well. (Two and ten are not opposite
tonally, however, which slightly mutes the effect of their correlation.)
 There is precedent for this in a heptametrical Regulated Verse by Du Fu:
Inscribed on the Bureau Wall. 180 Parallelism in Dus third couplet is quite
weak, but the fourth couplet compensates by exhibiting more parallelism than is
normal for closing lines:
*

(A6)

A decrepit scholar, worn and slow,

besmirching the matricular book.

(B29)

retire to eat? I hesitate,

going against my heart.

(C6)

To the royal robe never have I given

a single words mending;

(D7)

appreciating my worth, Im ashamed to equate to

paired billets of southern gold.

Notes:
5/ The phrase translated matricular book was a security list of the names of persons permitted

179 Zhangs threat to retire triggered a recommendation and promotion. See Shiji, 9:102.2751.
Luos poem is titled , QTS, 3:77.83537.
180 See Du shi xiangzhu, 2:6.44143.

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to enter, posted at the entrance to government offices. Du Fu is saying humbly that he does not
belong on it.
6/ Retire to eat here probably means to resign.
7/ A single word was sufficient to register praise or blame in the histories; though he has the office of reminder (shiyi ), however, Du Fu has never caught any errors or omissions.

This time, the corresponding numbers (single and pair) are tonally opposite.
There is also a loose sort of correlation between grammatical relationships in the
last five characters of lines 7 and 8: modifier-verb || number [ ] object.
 One hesitates to press the comparison of the poems by Du Fu and He Zhu
too far, but there is reason to think our poet may have had this poem fresh in
his mind about this time. The phrase paired [billets of] southern gold is used
only eight times in Tang poetry and only one other time (to my knowledge) in
Song poetryin a 1096 poem by He Zhu that we shall translate below (line
530-6). (The phrase also occurs in Zhang Hengs Four Sorrows, which figured
indirectly in one of Fanghuis 1090 songs, Poem 012). We shall see other hints
that Fanghui is refreshing his recollection of Du Fu in these years, so it is not
unreasonable to suppose that some of the formal challenges he set for himself,
such as nearly doing away with parallelism in the third couplet, were inspired by
examples from the Tang master.
 The last heptametrical Regulated Verse we have from the journey up to Hanyang shows our poet in fine spirits for a change, even forgetting [the cares of
having a] form.
529

8
Notes:

B4

The posture of the River goes south and east;

abruptly it breaks and turns.

D3

Two mountains confront each other soaring;

the moorings of the earth are stretched.

A1

A crashing wind splits off stones,

bellowing thunder down;

B1

stampeding waves slap the boat,

rolling up snow as they come.

C3

Picking lice, the Princes

at first eye me askance;

D1

full of fish, the Black Ghosts

merely flab their wings.

A2

How can the hearts of others know

this pleasure of forgetting form?

B1

I whistle and lean on the mast

alone, delightful!

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

351

529-2/ Fanghuis headnote tells us that Lesser Lone Mountain, where he is stopping, and Slapping
Waves Shelf face each other. According to Lu You, When one sees [Lesser Lone Mountain]
from several tens of li away, with the cyan peak sheering up alone and striving into the clouds, it is
already beyond comparison with other mountains, but the closer one comes the more impressive
it is. Moorings of the earth might also be translated the corners of the earth (where it is tied
down); the sense of the line is that the earth seems to expand as one looks at the river and the
rocks jutting up. 181
529-3/ Princes are a species of small primate. 182 Fanghuis headnote tells us there are many
monkeys on the rock.
529-6/ Fanghuis headnote tells us there are many cormorants on the rock, and he uses a Sichuan
dialect word for them in the poem.
529-7/ Others (wu, objects) must refer to the monkeys and cormorants.

The title of this poem is Mooring Late at Lesser Lone Mountain. 183
The first half of the poem strives to equal the magnificence of the place. The
stretching or opening of the moorings of earth (line 529-2) seems to be an
original idea in poetry. Certainly the second couplet is a powerful one, too,
though the inversion of the local place name Slapping Waves Shelf in the phrase
waves slap (line 529-4) may strike some as too clever. The third couplet
changes the tone and teases the reader with odd names for monkeys and cormorants. The attitude of the animals is comical and the wording clever, even visually: note the eye and feather components of the characters for the binomials at
the ends of lines 529-5 and 6. All this is done within a perfectly regulated meter;
in a way, the inconspicuousness of the prosody allows us to focus on the precision with which Fanghui has depicted the sights at Lesser Lone Mountain.

109698: HANYANG AND JIANGXIA

Fanghui had a few important correspondents in poetry during this last period
covered by our study, most notably the Zhou brothers and the Pan brothers,
whom we have already met in earlier chapters. There are also significant heptametrical Regulated Verses showing how in touch Fanghui was with Huang Tingjian and other major exiles. Two extended heptametrical Regulated Verses of
twelve lines show He Zhus continuing spirit of experimentation.

181 In contrast, when it is hot and circulation is blocked, the moorings of the earth are
narrow. See Han Wo, , QTS, 20:681.7803. For the Lu You passage, see Ru Shu ji 50
or, for a different translation, Chang and Smythe, South China in the Twelfth Century, 97.
182 Liu Zongyuan wrote a parable about factions at the Tang court called Despising the Princes. See Liu Hedong ji, 1:18.32223.
183 10.12601; Shiyi.10b.

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AN EXTENDED REGULATED VERSE

The first of these twelve-line poems happens to be the earliest heptametrical
Regulated Verse we have after Fanghuis arrival in Hanyang. (He had been writing other types of poems there for about three months.) Titled
On Receiving a Letter from Zhou Yuanweng on the Road to Qichun, it is written
for Zhou Shou in the eighth month. 184 (It was back in the fifth month that
Zhou Shou and Zhou Tao had asked He Zhu to provide an inscription for the
studio of their late father, Zhou Dunyi.) As the title indicates, Zhou is now en
route to Qichun, seat of Qi Prefecture in Huainan West Circuit (and east of
Huangzhou).
530

(D6)

Hanging thickly, vermilion jujubes,

a grove east of the wall:

I open the window, take down the bench,

(D6)
and in the shadow of the wall I stay.

With goosefoot staff, to pay me heed,

(A6)
I relied on this fine man.

We leaned on the armrest, forgetting words;

4

(B3)
he understood my heart.

Happy accordance late in life: for the first time I met

(C14)
one Eastern Outlands.

poems pure and lofty: often I tossed back

(D6)
paired southern gold.

Our officiary selves, for rice

(A5)
go south and north;

on the roads of the world, lost sheep

8

(B3)
the same then and now.

Dream Marsh grass withers

C4
the lone post-station far;

Dongtings rain enters

(D7)
the watchet River deep.

Missing you, with what can I

(A7)
congratulate your lofty demeanor?

12
A cassia tree, autumns wind,
(B3)
intoning on a jade zither.

Notes:
530-2/ One who entertains few guests keeps a bench hanging on the wall and takes it down only

184

Poem 530, 10.12601; Shiyi.11a.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

353

for a particularly cherished friend. 185

530-3/ The phrase translated this [fine] man is an archaic one from the Classic of Poetry occasionally revived in later poetry. It generally implies admiration or affection.
530-4/ Leaning on the armrest (or writing table) implies being lost in contemplation. 186
530-5/ Eastern Outlands, is a name, the cognomen of the Tang poet Meng Jiao. Meng was a
good friend of Han Yu and was an exacting poet, so in the present poem he must represent Zhou
Shou as friend and poet.
530-6/ Paired southern gold is one of the gifts to be given in requital to a gift from the fair
one in Zhang Hengs Four Sorrows. Fanghui probably means to say that only such a gift
would be a worthy response to Zhous letter and poems.
530-8/ See the note to line 8 of On the Road Returning from Yun to Xu, Poem 177.
530-910/ Cloud-Dream Marsh covered a vast area west of Jiangxia in ancient times. Dongting
Lake is a major lake 170 km southwest up the Yangzi.

Extended heptametrical Regulated Verses are rare. Du Fu seems to have been

the first to write one; Bo Juyi and Yuan Zhen also produced a few. Owing to
the fact that these are long and enormous works, the difficulty in creating them
is extreme; if the authors talent is not up to it, he is likely to end up with repeated characters, expedient rhymes, or problems with the thread of
thought. 187 Fanghui announces at the beginning that he is not cowed by these
dangers: he repeats the word wall in the first couplet. In fact, he audaciously
repeats the exact same meter in lines 530-1 and 2. (In other DD openings, he
comes close to this, but usually the first two lines differ by at least one syllable.
See for example Poem 315, Presented to Qian Duxun at a Banquet; and Poem 504,
Joyful Over Rain at Hailing.) Fanghui also decides that the heptametrical extended
form, unlike its pentametrical equivalent, will not be a test of how many regulated couplets one can write: he makes eleven of his twelve lines unregulated,
and he is not fastidious about semantic parallelism, either. His tonal violations
are startlingly systematic, as if he is subjecting himself to a substitute challenge.
In every line with a tonal violation, only the fifth syllable has the wrong tone.
(Line 530-4 could be , but the third word is frequently read
with a level tone in poetry, and I do so here for the sake of the consistent pattern.) The bravado inherent in the extended Regulated Verse, then, is simply
restated in terms of being consistent in ones violations and sustaining the consistency beyond the length of the normal Regulated Verse.
 It would be hard to point out a couplet that could be eliminated to tighten the
poem. The first half of the poem treats of the friendship Fanghui and Zhou
Shou enjoyed before Zhou went downriver. The time frame of the first couplet
seems intentionally ambiguous; if Fanghui takes down the bench now, it cer-

185

See the notes to Shishuo xinyu, 1.1, or Hou Han shu, 6:53.1745 and 8:66.2159.
Lost in contemplation is in fact how Michael Fuller translates it in The Road to East Slope,
23435, line 3 of Su Shis (SSSJ, 3:16.845; 1078).
187 Ye Jun et. al, Zhongguo shixue, 112.
186

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tainly reminds him of the times he welcomed Zhou Shou to his lodging between
the fifth and seventh months of 1096. The second couplet states their closeness
directly; the third allusively compares their friendship with that of the poets Han
Yu and Meng Jiao and their exchange of poems with the exchange of gifts between Zhang Hengs two parties.
 The next two couplets give us a transition to the concluding couplet, though
they are a little opaque. Because perpetual itinerancy for the sake of salary is a
favorite complaint of He Zhu, we might render line 530-7 as My officiary self
for rice goes south and north. but surely Zhou Shou is included in this situation. He is the one who left Hanyang in the seventh month to go upriver; now
he is downriver, east of Huangzhou. Line 530-8, literally world road, lose
sheep, no ancient [or] present, is surely more abstract. In light of the apparent
allusion to Yang Zhus distress over peoples inability to trace roads back to
where they have not yet split so that the lost sheep can be found, this line must
mean that Zhou and Fanghui are adrift in a world of divergences, caught in a
universal and timeless crisis of the loss of meaning.
 The next couplets references to Cloud-Dream Marsh and Lake Dongting
interrupt these thoughts with apparently straight scenic description. Strictly
speaking, the marsh and lake, lying to the southwest and west of Hanyang, are
not visible to our poet; they are simply evoked to represent the atmosphere of
the northern portion of the Middle Yangzi region, Jinghu North Circuit. Zhou
Shou is quite some way to the east, but since he is still on the edge of this low
and watery basin, the mood Fanghui is evoking with his withering grass and
gloomy rain must also be imagined to envelop his friend. In any case, this shift
to the evocation of scene gives the return to the theme of friendship in the following couplet the force of poetic closure.
 The last couplet Missing you, with what can I congratulate your lofty demeanor? / A cassia tree, autumns wind, intoning on a jade zitheris worth
exploring briefly. If, as its usual application would suggest, the word congratulate means that Zhou Shou is having a birthday, Fanghui makes an effort to
avoid the triteness of extending congratulations on his lofty years. Instead, he
congratulates him on his yun, his resonance, his demeanor. The reference to
the nephrite-inlaid qin (floor zither) is interesting in a different way. A line by
Du Fu raises the possibility that this line actually refers to the writing of poetry.
Du Fus West Gallery (first of two poems) contains the line
New poems: I draw near the jade zither, the idea being that the zither
is the poets companion as he composes, perhaps chanting them as he plucks a
few notes. 188 Fanghuis use of the verb intone, which usually has poetry as
its object, would fit this reading of Du Fus line. If Fanghui is borrowing that

188

See Du shi xiangzhu, 4:17.147374.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

355

idea from Du Fu, it is one more clue that he might have been rereading the masters poetry.

EQUANIMITY IN JIANGXIA
The notion that any phenomenon has no ancient [or] present (line 530-8) is
indirectly contradicted in a set of three poems from the following month.
Fanghui asserts that he is content in the present place and the present time. By
this time he has crossed the Yangzi to Jiangxia; the set is titled
Three Autumn Musings at Jiangxia. 189
535

B4

Men and objects creep on,

pressed by the gradual waning of the light.

The autumn wind over ten thousand miles,

(D6)
comes as on a schedule.

The hidden insects chirr, chirr;

(A5)
What are they saying, anyway?

itinerant swallows all in a rush;

(B10)
where will they go, then?

In Luo they intone softly;

C2
I just cup hand over nose;

at the Western Hills the air is lively,

D2
and I prop up my jaw.

How could I wield brush and ink

A4
to lament falling into obscurity?

send word to the Three Wards:

B1
that was then.

Notes:
535-5/ Xie Ans unique voice for intoning poetry was alluded to in line 326-2 on p. 332). Xie was
chanting in the manner of the scholars of Luo[yang].
535-6/ This alludes to Wang Huizhi making a comment about the weather as a way of putting off
a discussion of his official duties. 190
535-8/ The Lord of the Three Wards was Qu Yuan. That was then, literally, that was one
time, is an abbreviation of the assertion that That was one time; this is one time, an argument
sometimes made against using a precedent to settle a policy question. Such a statement is rare in

189

Poems 53436, 10.12603; Shiyi.12a12b.

Shishuo xinyu, 24.13. It can also be read as a threat to retire if pressed to perform those duties efficiently. See Mathers note to the episode.
190

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poetry. 191

Given that Fanghui is usually so quick to identify with Qu Yuan, the fact that
the last couplet states a refusal to emulate him is quite startling. In fact, the entire poem is filled with refusals. (We begin to sense that something might be
different when the autumn wind comes as on schedule in line 535-2, as if
there is some consolation in its regularity.) The poet declines to hear any dolorous messages in the chirring of the crickets and pretends not to know (or care?)
where the swallows will go. He is content to write poetry as best he can in his
own way, not worrying that he doesnt have quite the capital intonation (line
535-5). (Notice that starting from this line, he settles into the confident ease of
tonal regulation.) Hell find excuses not to discuss his duties or his performance
with his superiors (line 535-6). Thus, it is entirely consistent of him to send
word to Qu Yuan saying, I am not going to lament my fate by writing in the
dolorous poetic tradition you started; I live in my own time.
 In keeping with this notion, the third couplet of the third poem insists that
only the present exists and, even more startlingly, the present place is as good as
home.
536

D3

How could this self of mine still

be tied to going west and east,

B4

Roaming about on rivers and lakes,

companion to the barrier geese?

C2

Bend the smoke holebut I dont aim to be

a three-beaker guest.

D4

straighten the hookwhat envy have I

for the six-turtle gent?

(A7)

The leftover traces of a thousand years:

only this day;

(B17)

my old garden ten thousand miles away,

as if here.

C4

A supernumerary, I perchance escape

people keeping track.

D1

I should not be intoning and whistling

so it hinders public business.

Notes:
536-3/ Paraphrase: Although I give good advice, I dont aim to be rewarded in a way that exposes me to danger. There is an ancient parable about the wisdom of listening to advice to bend

191 See, for example, Dongfang Shuos use of the full phrase in the Hanshu, 9:65.2864. In poetry, only Fanghuis slightly younger contemporary Li Zhi used the expression. Lis undated poem
titled , QSS, 20:1203.13616, may or may not have preceded Hes.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

357

a straight chimney and move firewood away from it before a fire breaks out (as opposed to feeling
proud about rewarding those who come to the rescue after the house catches fire.) For an early
reference to three beakers, see the Zuo Tradition, Xuan 2. In that story, a retainers men rush him
out of danger after learning that he is about to be murdered by the followers of the man who has
invited him to dine and drink. They use a maxim about drinking as an excuse to cut short the
drinking party: three beakers of brew are the most one can drink without losing a sense of propriety, so its time to go! 192
536-4/ Overlapping paraphrases: Even if I hope that my advice will be sought, I dont want to
be so successful that I am punished, and Since I am using a straight hook, I obviously dont
want to catch turtles and be punished. The elderly L Shang was fishing in the Wei River
when King Wen of Zhou discovered him and took him in as his teacher. At least by Tang times, it
was said that L had been using a straight hook, because his aim was not to catch fish. The reference to the six-turtle gent comes from the Liezi: a giant hooked six of the fifteen turtles that God
had caused to hold up the islands of the immortals in the eastern sea so they would be stable.
Again, there is a price to be paid for success: God is angry that two of the five islands drift off to
the north and sink, so he gradually reduces the size of the kingdom where the giant lives and
shrinks its people. 193
536-8/ This line might mean It is not right that I should be seen as hindering public business because I compose poems all the time.

The second couplet is the most densely allusive in this poem, each line containing two literary allusions. Perhaps the poet is expressing frustration with his assignment at the mint: we might go so far as to speculate that he has tried to give
good advice but has been accused of angling for favors. Now, not wanting to be
the target of murderers, he has no ambition to achieve the kind of success that
would anger someone powerful.
 The third couplet is startling in its own way. It asserts that history only exists
in this moment and that the poets old home is equivalent to this place. This
means that the poet cannot be emotionally pulled by things far away. The fourth
couplet, though the second line seems a bit awkward (see note, above), appears
to mean that he cannot be pushed by pressures close at hand. Taken together,
these two poems represent an emotional centeredness, contentment with the
here-and-now, that Su Shi was achieving in his own way. 194
 The colloquial phrase translated this place connotes fondness for a location. It was first used by He Zhu in the first of the four poems inscribed on his

192 For one version of the chimney parable, see the Han shu, 9:68.2958. For a translation of the
Zuo Tradition, Xuan 2, see Legge, 290.
193 The L Shang story is in the Shi ji, 32.147778. For an example of the association of L
with the straight hook, See Luo Yin, , QTS, 19:665.7623. For the turtle story, see
A. C. Graham, The Book of Lieh-tz, 9798.
194 Cf. Ronald Egans reflections on Sus poems of the time: [W]e can almost hear the poet
prepping himself, preparing to utter one of his famous claims that he is, after all, a native of this
place, that he has never so enjoyed a trip, that in fact he has discovered a Penglai. In much of Su
Shis exile poetry, hints of resentment and assertions of contentment appear side by side. They
may be understood as two aspects of the same determination not to allow the spirit to be
crushed. Word, Image, and Deed, 257.

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lodging in Hailing in 1094 (Poem 506, not translated in this study). Next, in his
poem at Gushu Creek, Fanghui had said, In this place, with a couple of acres I
could finish out my affairs. (See line 526-7.) It will be used again in 1097, referring to books as places in which one can find the ancients. 195 Now, this phrase is
used a couple of times by Su Shi and by Hanshan (a shadowy Tang figure whose
works, though widely translated, are now thought to have been composed by
several hands into the Song Dynasty). It is not used in Tang poetry, and it is
seldom used in the Southern Song. The one person who seems especially fond
of it is Huang Tingjian. This poem may constitute an early piece of evidence
that Huang and Fanghui were in contact. We might see the density of allusion in
lines 536-3 and 4 as further evidence, since Huang is especially fond of using
fragments of disparate and unrelated allusions to force us to intuit meanings
beyond the text. Since Huang Tingjian will send some tea to He Zhu in 1097, it
is by no means unreasonable to suppose some communication between them in
1096.

QIN GUAN, L DAFANG, SU SHI, HUANG TINGJIAN

In the tenth month of Shaosheng 3 (1096), Qin Guan passed down the Mian
River on his way into exile in Chenzhou , at the bottom of Jinghu South
Circuit. Although Qin did not come to the south bank of the Yangzi so he could
visit He Zhu, our poet was aware that he was passing through and sent him the
following poem, titled Sent in Farewell to Qin Shaoyou. 196
538

D1

North of the Mian, on the lake,

you tarry a little;

B4

Perhaps you are, from a former time,

the Banished Immortal Li.

C1

If youre drifting off to Yelang,

youve done only half the route.

D1

straightaway come back to Jiangxia

to enjoy your fittest years.

A2

Him self with

talent is burdened;

B4

officer of thilk, my
destiny is to age.

195 Poem 545, Pan Binlao Used a Long Poem to Ask to Borrow One of My Books; I Gave Him a Copy, 10.12604; Shiyi.15a.
196 Poem 538, 10.12603; Shiyi.13a.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

359

C2

Ill wait for you to return,

then I too shall quit.

D4

Before the spring wind Ill make arrangements

for two fishing boats.

Notes:
538-12/ See our discussion of the pentametrical Regulated Verse Court Gentlemans Lake in the
previous chapter. The Banished Immortal is Li Bo, who passed through on his way to exile in
Yelang.
538-3/ Qin Guan was still at least 600 km away from Chenzhou, nearly as far Yelang (assuming an
impossible more-or-less direct route for both).
538-4/ Dangnian can mean either years of fitness and vigor or that [past] year. If the latter meaning were intended, the invitation would be to recreate the enjoyment of Li Bos visit. 197 Fanghui is
45 sui in 1096; Qin Guan is three years older.
538-56/ Two dialectical demonstrative pronouns are used here, neither unknown in earlier poetry, but definitely not standard classical Chinese. Ge nong (him self, line 5) reappears in two of
Fanghuis heptametrical Regulated Verses and two of his lyrics. Fanghui jokingly calls himself an
officer of thilk (line 6) because adu thilk by itself and adu wu thilk thing are euphemisms for
cash, and Fanghui is supervisor of a mint where cash is made. 198

The third couplet is remarkable not only for its use of non-standard pronouns
but also for the 3|4 parsing of the lines, overriding the normal 4|3 rhythm. But
the most noteworthy thing about this poem is that it was written at all. Again
Fanghui has chosen to declare his friendship with a man whom powerful people
in the government hope will die in exile or on the long journey to exile. As
Zhong Zhenzhen has pointed out, Fanghui did not write poems about these
people when they were in high places; he wrote about them when the prudent
thing would be to disavow even knowing them. 199 This is testament to his feisty
independence and evidence that he had found again the derring-do spirit he
claims to have had in his youth.
 We mentioned that Fanghui delayed his poem on Su Shis exile to Yingzhou

197 The only precedent I have found for the line is in Li Hes poem , in which I
think the poet refers to the King of Liang enjoying his youth. See Chen Hongzhi, Li changji geshi
jiaoshi, 4:29496.
198 For ge nong, see Poem 316 (1092), At Shangyuan in the Year Renshen I am thinking about Old Companions in Jinling, 7.12574; 7.8a, and Poem 546 (1097),
Shown to Wang Bi, 10.12604; Shiyi.15a. For the lyrics, see Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 4748 (n. 2)
and 22730 (n. 14). For adu wu, see the Shishuo xinyu, 10.9. My translation uses an archaic/dialectical word meaning this.
199 Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 8285. Fanghuis policy of not keeping poems written to the
rhymes of others may have resulted in the destruction of poems exchanged with or written in
response to Su Shi or Huang Tingjian when they were in high positions. We might still hope for
evidence in Su or Huangs collections of such exchanges, but there is none. If Huangs famous
quatrain to He (praising him as a lyricist) was answered, we have no record of it. It is ascribed to
1103 when Huang was in the Jiangxia area, still being persecuted. ( See Hu Sheng, Huang Tingjian
nianpu xinbian, 396.) Any reply from He Zhu would have been lost with the rest of his later collection.

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until Su was passing through the vicinity of Hailing. We dont know if the delay
can be blamed on Fanghuis not getting the news until then, but in the fourth
month of 1097 Fanghui is almost immediately aware that Sus exile has been
changed to Danzhou on the island of Hainan, and he reacts quickly. Pan Dalin
had heard the news and had written a set of poems expressing his thoughts for
Su. Fanghui chimes in with two of his own:
Pan Binlao took out ten-some poems; all had thoughts of Su of Danzhou, so I
wrote two poems. 200
539

D2

Smoke of human habitation, sparse then gone:

Ghost-Gate Pass.

B1

Point the way now to Danzhou,

in the empty vastness.

C1

In the margin between the third month and the fourth,

heaven leaking rain.

D2

at the end of land east and south,

water floating mountains.

A3

wistful and uncertain in spring grasses,

the wagtails on the plain are lost;

B1

vaguely visualized in autumn wind,

the crane-caroche returns.

C3

[He] looks back and envies you at Heyang,

wise father and sons:

D1

Snowy Hall was your companion

for a decade of leisure.

Notes:
539-1/ There is a Ghost-Gate Pass north of the peninsula down which Su Shi would travel to
cross to Hainan. Few Chinese who ventured south of it returned alive. Su Shis route from Tengzhou through Rongzhou almost certainly took him through that pass. 201
539-5/ Wagtail [on the] plain stems from Ode 164 of the Classic of Poetry and symbolizes brotherly affection because of the content of the song. Su Shi and his brother would meet up the following month and travel down to the point of embarkation together. When Fanghui wrote this
poem he could already anticipate the pain of separation the two brothers, who were so close,
would feel. 202

200 10.12602; Shiyi.13a and 13b. In the sixth month of Shaosheng 1 (1094), before Su Shi
reached Yingzhou (or even Jinling), his exile had been changed to Huizhou, slightly more distant.
See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:33.1158.
201 On the perils of the area, see Jiu Tang shu, 5:41.1743. I suspect that Su Shi took this route
rather than going the shorter distance along the coast because it was a more established travel
route for Han people and perhaps avoided territory controlled by pirates or unfriendly ethnic
groups. On the basis of such considerations, Fanghui could have predicted that Su would go
through Ghost Gate Pass weeks before he actually did so.
202 Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:36.126871.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

361

539-6/ The crane caroche returning to Heaven is probably a euphemistic reference to the death
of L Dafang (102797) the sixteenth of the month. (The word translated vaguely visualized can also refer to the sound and image of the deceased.) In the recent wave of persecutions, L Dafang had been exiled to a prefecture northeast of Huizhou but died en route even
before he made it over the mountains from southern Jiangnan West Circuit. 203
539-78/ Pan Dalin and his father and brother were not from Heyang but from the Fujian area.
Here, they are likened to Pan Yue (once a magistrate at Heyang), who wrote a Rhapsody on Living in
Idleness about his retirement in 29597. 204 They had lived in Huangzhou since about the time of Su
Shis exile there; when he left Huangzhou in 1084, he gave the Snow Hall that he had built early in
1082 over to them as a residence. 205

This poem is remarkable in several ways. As noted above, it openly sympathizes

with Su Shi at a time when it must have been dangerous to do so; but it also
notes the death of the former vice director of the Secretariat, L Dafang, in
some ways even a more prominent victim of the purges. The poem also tells us
how fast news spread from where events happened, rather than depending on
official or unofficial channels centered on the capital. The transfer of Su Shi
beyond the land, as Fanghui puts it, could have been leaked from the capital
to reach Jiangxia about the same time Su himself got the bad news from the prefect of Huizhou on the seventeenth. 206 However, L died in a remote river valley on the north side of the Lingnan Range only one day earlier. Assuming my
conjecture that line 539-6 refers to Ls death is correct, even if government
messengers left at high speed for the capital on the sixteenth to report this
event, it would seem that there would be barely enough time before the end of
the month in which the poem was written for the news to be disseminated out
again from the capital by normal channels. 207 For He Zhu to allude to Ls
death in the fourth month, he must have gotten information directly from the
south; thus, there is no reason why the shocking news about Su Shi could not
have come the same way.
 It should be pointed out that the subject of line 539-7, [He] looks back and
envies you at Heyang, wise father and sons, is not specified. I think it is Su Shi:
he looks back with envy on Pan Dalin and his father and brother for being able
to enjoy his Snow Hall for over ten years of leisure. Even if it is Fanghui himself who looks back in envy, the implied point does not change. The man who

203 See the Song shi, 340.10844 and Aoyama et al., Sdaishi nempy, 164. Lin Yutang, The Gay
Genius, passim, has a number of anecdotes involving L Dafang and Su Shi when L was at the
highest levels of government.
204 Tr. David Knechtges, Wen Xuan, 3:14557. The comparison to Pan Yue was also made by
Su Shi in 1083, in a lyric to the matrix Dielianhua (). However, it is not clear
which brother (or an uncle) is meant. See Xue Ruisheng, Dongpo ci biannian jianzheng, 4049.
205 See Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 2:21.53133 and 23.602.
206 Kong Fanli, Su Shi nianpu, 3:36.1261.
207 The fastest speed for document delivery, proposed in 1091 for the transmission of amnesties, was five hundred li per day. See Changbian, 13:457.3b (4621a) and (for the same text), the Song
huiyao, 8:191.Fangyu 10.25 (7486a).

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built Snow Hall has risen to the upper levels of government and then fallen victim to even greater persecution; it is the friends who have been looking after the
building for him since 1084 who have been the lucky ones.
 The second poem of the pair is one syllable short of being as perfectly regulated as the first poem. It concentrates on Su Shi and his absence from both
Huangzhou and his original home in Sichuan. What interests me most about
this poem is line 540-7:
540
8

A2

You shouldnt expand on

the Record of Exhaustion and Sorrow;

B1

realizing that a whole lifetime

is just such exhaustion.

Notes:
540-7/ Li Deyu (787850), a powerful official and poet, was exiled to Chaozhou on the
southeast coast. Before he died, he penned a collection of writings called Record of Exhaustion and
Sorrow, in which he severely castigated his enemies. 208
540-8/ The words zuo and di in this line have so many meanings that the translation of this line
must remain tentative. 209

Fanghui comes close to writing Su Shi off in the first poem: whether it is L
Dafangs death that is indicated in line 539-6 or that of someone else, it is not a
good omen for Su Shis future. In rejecting the precedent of Li Deyus rancor,
however, the second poem implies that Su can avoid dying in exile as Li did.
After all (to suggest an interpretation of line 540-8), if you know life is poverty/exhaustion/defeat, you cannot be defeated by it. 210 The cosmic cynic will
live.
 This admonition to Su Shi not to be writing things that attack his opponents
comes a little late. The same is true of youll never imitate the niggling, nagging
song of the five gentlemen of 1094 (line 510-8), whether intended as praise
for Sus equanimity or as a recommendation to keep silent. By the 1090s Sus
enemies were twisting anything he had ever done or said in order to discredit
him. Neither conciliatory gestures nor silence would have saved the day. In any
case, line 540-7 reminds us of a famous remark that Huang Tingjian made about

208

See the Jiu Tang shu, 172.4473 and 174.5528.

An alternative rendering of the last three words would be: those who sit are poor. Zuodi
in the discourses of the Southern Song philosopher Zhu Xi means ones who sit. This is the only
place I have seen these words used together, however; I dont think this use of di as a nominalizing suffix is attested in poetry. Since such a reading does not produce any breakthrough in interpreting Fanghuis line, there is no point in adopting it.
210 The only other poetic reference to Lis Record of Exhaustion and Sorrow of which I am aware
is in a heptametrical Quatrain by Chao Buzhi. Chao says that when the autumn rains were interminable, Li would have been better off taking a nap than writing his Record. This flippant attitude
works in that genre better than it would work in a Regulated Verse, I think. See the second of five
poems, , QSS, 19:1139.12878.
209

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

363

this time. Huang had gone up the Yangzi to exile in the Sichuan Basin the year
before Fanghui left the capital for Jiangxia, and in 1097 he was still in Qianzhou
, in the mountain valleys south of the Yangzi. His wifes nephew, Hong
Chu , had written a letter to which Huang responded, in part, Before the
Shaosheng era [began in 1094], I didnt know the tools for writing, so when I
take out my old writings and read them they are laughable. After the Shaosheng
era [began], I started to understand writing, but I am already old, sick, and lazy,
and cannot put brush to paper. You should work hard at writing, to erase my
shame! Although [your essay] Scolding the Dog is bold and unusual, it would
be all right if you had not written it. [Su] Dongpos writings are the marvel of
the world, but their shortcoming is that they are prone to scolding. By all means,
do not follow in his ruts. 211 Whether this advice was to be taken at face value
or was a bitter comment on censorship in the Shaosheng period, it shows that
Su Shis greatest admirers could recognize his frankness as a liability. Fanghui
might be voicing the same recognition in his poem of the fourth month of 1098.
 The best evidence that Fanghui was in the loop concerning news of Huang
Tingjian is two poems under the long title
There Was a Monk Who Came from the Gorges. He was
Carrying Tea Processed by the Hand of Huang of Qiangzhou and Could Tell of His Activities. With Pan Binlao I Wrote Two Poems. 212 The title is followed by an informative
headnote: The people of Huangs native place had collected over ten jin of silver
(one jin averaged 633 grams in the Song) to send to Huang; they entrusted it to a
young man. In the end, it was hidden and not sent. Whether this means the
young man absconded with the silver or the donors lost their nerve is not clear.
Fanghui says that his line about the yellow dog (541-5) is a reference to this, and
it is likely (though not certain) that the line places the responsibility on the messenger.
541

D1

Before weve heard from the Eastern Library

that the memorial document is finished,

B4

Suddenly we see him off to the southwest

on a ten-thousand mile journey.

(C14)

Guilt by associationwhat connection

with Commandant Li?

D1

restoring the lostwe still await

Master Chu.

A3

Your heart left hanging: Yellow Dog

sunk the budget on the way;

211
212

See Zheng Yongshao, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 29091.

10.12603; Shiyi.13b and 14a.

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B1

your ears are used to it: the grey colt

makes only the sound of yore.

C3

As the seasons pass, ones own courtyard

is the greatest consolation.

D1

the phoenix takes its chicks away;

the goose follows older brother.

Notes:
541-1/ In the seventh month of 1093, on the recommendation of the soon-to-be-deposed L
Dafang, Huang Tingjian was appointed assistant director of the Palace Library. (Fanghui uses the
Han Dynasty appellation for the institution, as was common). Huang, who had been at home in
mourning, was to resume his work on the Veritable Records of the reign of Shenzong. Zou shu
here may refer to a memorial announcing the completion of the work, or perhaps to the work
itself.
541-2/ Huang declined the appointment to the Palace Library but was summoned to approach
the capital to be interrogated about his earlier work on the Veritable Records, which were seen as
insufficiently laudatory toward the New Policies. He arrived in Chenliu in the eleventh month of
1094 and was exiled to Qianzhou after enduring several weeks of criticism for falsifying history. 213
541-3/ Commandant Li is Li Ling , a young general captured alive in 99 BCE. By defending
Li against his critics, the great historian Sima Qian earned himself a death sentence, commuted to
castration. 214
541-4/ Master Chu is Chu Shaosun (fl. ca. 35 BCE), who is credited with filling in missing
sections of Sima Qians Records of the Historian. 215
541-5/ Yellow Dog is another name for Yellow Ear, the dog that traveled back and forth from
home to capital to bring letters to Lu Ji (261303). 216 Budget is chosen to translate hao
because both words have meanings associated with both expenditures and news sent by letter. An
alternative parsing of the line would yield, Your heart was set on the Yellow Dog, but [the donors] sunk the budget that was on the way.
541-6/ The young man in the Yellow Millet Dream story was riding a grey colt. In his dream,
when he was on the point of suicide, he told his wife he wished he could go back to riding his grey
colt on the roads of Handan.
541-8/ The Phoenix Takes Its Chick Away was the title of an old ballad associated with parental
love. The reference to geese must reflect a belief that unmated male geese migrate with their unmated brothers born the previous year. 217

213 Huang had been at work on the Veritable Records from the year after Shenzongs death in
1085 until 1091, most of the Yuanyou period. For the events of 109394 mentioned, see Zheng
Yongxiao, Huang Tingjian jianpu xinbian, 25163.
214 See Stephen Durrant, The Cloudy Mirror, 89.
215 Although some scholars have seen Chu Shaosuns contributions as forgeries, Fanghui
clearly sees them in a positive light as completing an incomplete work. See Durrant, Cloudy Mirror,
xx.
216 See the Jin shu, 5:54.1473.
217 For the Phoenix, see Su Shis poem to a man who has gotten a post where he can take
care of his parents, , SSSJ, 5:28.15089, line 12. For the geese, I
have found only Liu Yuxis lines I see geese follow their older
brothers away / and hear the sound of orioles seeking friends, from the linked verse
, QTS, 22:790.89008901.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

365

This poem advances our understanding of Fanghuis interest in historiography

in his Jiangxia period. Guilt by association (line 541-3) was of course sending
into exile anyone who could be accused of being part of the Yuanyou faction.
The poem sees this as reminiscent of the humiliation of Sima Qian. If the modern-day Sima Qian (high praise for Huang!) were silenced, there will be gaps in
the record that others must fill (541-4), if only by the writing of unofficial histories.
 The third couplet is a clever way of referring to the diversion of the silver and
the waking of the fallen official from his Yellow Millet Dream. Allusion to the
dream through the grey colt is highly unusual (I know of no other example), and
indeed the dog as a carrier of silver rather than mere letters is fresh.
 The last line in the poem shows that the monk who had come down through
the Yangzi Gorges had related the comings and goings of Huangs family. References to the phoenixs parental love and the goose that follows its older
brother surely allude to the fact that one of Huangs younger brothers, Shuda
, had come up to Qianzhou in the middle of 1096, bringing Huangs son and
the boys mother. From the letters he wrote at the time, we know this was a
great comfort to Huang. 218
 The second poem of the pair looks from several angles at the poverty of the
honest official in exile, considers the hazards of living in the mountains of Sichuan, and concludes that none of this has prevented Huang Tingjian from enjoying the finest tea:
542

D2

All ones life he gets an emolument,

but it barely brings glory to the parents.

B4

You take it to the edge of the sky

and arrangements get meager.

C4

The nighttime door you dont secure,

owning no grand treasure;

D2

for morning cooking you want for fire,

beg it from the neighbors.

A1

Mountain baboons are pretty crafty,

skillfully summoning tigers;

B1

river crossbows somehow know

to unfairly target people.

(C14)

You have lost little of the family garden

feeling from years of old:

218

Zheng Yongxiao, Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 28081.

366
8

CHAPTER FOUR

D4

with basket in hand you go first to pick

before-the-rain spring.

Notes:
542-56/ The river crossbow is a three-legged turtle-shaped creature that gets its prey by spitting
sand at it. It and the baboon are paired in a poem by Zhang Hu to an exile:
Going along a stream, you guard against the water crossbow; / in a rustic inn you find
refuge from the mountain baboons. 219 One hesitates to single out the water crossbow as mythological, as the baboon was equally possessed of strange and dangerous characteristics in the
minds of those who contemplated travel in remote mountains.
542-8/ Before the rain is a type of fine tea made from tender leaves picked before Grain Rain
(the sixth solar node, about April 20). Tea is sometimes called spring because that is the season
in which it is picked.

We can read this poem in line with Fanghuis recent celebration of the security
enjoyed by a person from whom everything has been taken. No one gets rich on
an official salary; when exile to a remote place, barely enough becomes poverty. On the other hand, you have no nothing to lose to thieves and much to
gain from the generosity of neighbors. In the third couplet, Fanghui acknowledges the dangers of living in remote areas barely tamed by civilization. Yet this
only emphasizes the triumph of equanimity seen in Huang Tingjians cultivation
of tea in a homestead whose atmosphere is only a little diminished from that of
his native home.
 Fanghui comes close to aping Huangs style in the first poem of the pair, with
its challenging juxtapositions of allusions. On the other hand, these two poems
are nearly fully regulated, while about half of Huangs three hundred heptametrical Regulated Verses (especially in his early years, when he wrote more in this
form) are twisted tonally. 220 Where Fanghui does depart from regulated meter,
he generally has local purpose; for example, the slight tonal violation in
Fanghuis line 542-7 might express a touch of defiancedefiance of the baboons and river crossbows.

A SUMMARY
The other heptametrical Regulated Verses from 1097 and 1098 do not substantially advance our understanding of He Zhus art or life, so we shall end our
consideration of the genre here. This chapter has given us the opportunity to go
beyond the basic characteristics of Regulated Verse as they were presented in
the previous chapter and discuss the different dynamics of the pentasyllabic and
heptasyllabic lines. The characteristic effects of five- and seven-syllable lines will

219
220

, QTS, 15:510.5803.
See Mo Lifeng, Lun Huang Tingjian shige chuangzuo di sange jieduan, 74.

HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

367

be an important topic in our exploration of He Zhus Quatrains, also.

Whereas noncanonical meter guided our interpretations of poems in the last
chapter, the fact that heptametrical Regulated Verses can incorporate noncanonical sequences of line types gave us a new tool to use in this chapter. We
should remember that only ten percent or so of He Zhus heptametrical Regulated Verses are what we called anomalous in their sequence of line types, but
the fact that this option is apparently unique to this genre justifies our giving it
so much attention here. This is an area in which more comparative work could
produce new insights.
Such work could fruitfully take Du Fus poems as a point of departure, not
only considering non-canonical line sequences but other unusual or difficult
syntactic structures. The goal should be not to simply catalog these techniques,
but to see which are adopted by which poets and to what effect. Comparative
work needs to be done on genre preferences, too. Important studies have already been done on genre preferences among various Tang poets, but there is
room for work on more Song poets. For example, if Huang Tingjian and Guo
Xiangzheng wrote fewer heptametrical Regulated Verses, we need to explore
whether other genres replaced them in certain in social functions, whether their
individual styles could not be expresses as well in this genre, and similar issues.
Fanghui used this genre to have fun with language, and we have given many
examples. At the same time, he gives us glimpses of his thinking about major
figures of his time: Wang Anshi, Cai Que, and of course, Su Shi. We have seen
that he did not adhere rigidly to one faction or another, but at the same time his
implied views on political matters (such as the censorship of history) are more in
evidence as factional battles become more vicious. This change is not merely a
product of our shift of emphasis from technique to content as we progress
through the chapter.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS OF HE ZHU, 108598

About sixteen percent of Hu Zhus extant poems are pentametrical Quatrains
(wu yan jueju ). This proportion, representing ninety-seven individual
poems, is unusually high. The table below shows pentametrical Quatrains as a
percentage of the total corpus of a few important Tang poets and four contemporaries. It also shows the genre as a percentage of Regulated Verse, defined
for our purposes here as all Regulated Verses plus Quatrains, whether the latter
are regulated or not. 1
Table 4 Pentametrical Quatrains in the Works of Selected Poets

Poet
Du Fu
Li Bo
Yuan Zhen
Bo Juyi
Han Yu
Cai Xiang
Su Shi 2
Huang Tingjian
Zhang Lei
Guo Xiangzheng
He Zhu

31
48
30
76
26
7
99
96
18
139
97

% of Corpus
1458 = 02%

997 = 05%

746 = 04%
2807 = 03%

414 = 06%

423 = 02%
2856 = 04%
1878 = 05%
2212 = 01%
1415 = 10%

603 = 16%

% of Regulated Verse
31 1054 = 03%
48
214 = 22%
30
472 = 06%
76 1917 = 04%
26
164 = 16%
7
321 = 02%
99
850 = 12%
96 1156 = 08%
18 1413 = 01%
139
822 = 17%
97
418 = 23%

The only poet who comes close to He Zhu is Guo Xiangzheng. (Li Bo and Han
Yu show a similarly substantial percentage of their Regulated Verses to be devoted to pentametrical Quatrains; however, that is a function of the relatively
small number of Regulated Verses in their collections.)

1 All of the Tang statistics come from Umeda Shigeo, Haku Kyoeki ni okeru goketsu to
shichi-ritsu no tairitsusei o megutte, 3132. For Cai Xiang, the data come from Tao Wenpeng,
Cai Xiang: Bei Song qianqi di qijue gaoshou, 67. The figures for Huang Tingjian come from Mo
Lifeng, Lun Huang Tingjian shige chuangzuo di sange jieduan, 72. I compiled the statistics for
Zhang and Guo from the collections cited for them in this study.
2 2856 is the number of poems in the Su Shi shiji; not all of them are authentic. Using a round
figure of 2800 for the total corpus, the percentage of pentametrical Quatrains is 3.5%. Su Shi has
933 octaves, but I do not know how many unregulated octaves should be subtracted from that
number and how many extended Regulated Verses should be added to that number to arrive at
the number of Regulated Verses. 850 is a very arbitrary guess.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

369

To be sure, mere statistics do not reflect distinctions between different kinds

of Quatrains. For example, the Tang pentametrical Quatrain was generally regulated, while He Zhus works in this form tend not to be regulated. This puts him
at one extreme of Song Dynasty practice. Guo Xiangzhengs pentametrical
Quatrains are mostly regulated, so Guo is at the other extreme. Pentametrical
Quatrains by Zhang Lei and Su Shi are regulated about half the time, placing
them in the middle.
The pentametrical Quatrain, despite its long history (or perhaps because of it),
was by this time a difficult form in which to create. First of all, the full complexity of structures and strategies that one is accustomed to in the octave has to be
pared down for a quatrain, though the variety of logical relationships that can be
set up in four lines is still considerable. Parallelism can be used, but to use it in
both couplets risks monotony, especially when there is nothing preceding the
couplets to set the occasion and nothing following to provide an exit from the
balanced world and linguistic intensity of parallel couplets. Yet there has to be
some principle of coherence to hold the four lines together; with no recourse to
the relatively constant framework of the regulated octave, the poet must establish a new structure each time he writes a Quatrain, building it out of just a few
allusions, images, and types of illocutionary acts.
Adding to the difficulty in writing such a brief poem, the five-syllable line
looks outside of itself for completion of its meaning. To a greater degree than
the heptasyllabic line, the pentasyllabic line looks to its partner in the couplet
because only in conjunction with each other can the two lines acquire the context necessary for their significance to be understood. We touched on this idea
in the last chapter. I propose that short poems work in a way somewhat analogous to short lines: they seek connections outside themselves. Thus, pentametrical Quatrains can be well suited for presenting a paradox or making a witty allusive remark. Such poems self-consciously link to something beyond their own
four lines insofar as they react to a cultural concept, assumption, or precedent.
Second, poems in suites with an overall theme can explicitly work variations on
a structure or a theme. Read singly, they might be of limited appeal, like a single
line of verse; read together, the relationships of identity and change would introduce another level of involvement with the text, like a couplet.
This second solution appealed most to He Zhu. Seventy-nine of his pentametrical Quatrains are in eleven sets of three or more poems. Only eight poems out of the total ninety-seven stand alone:

370

CHAPTER FIVE

Table 5

He Zhus Pentametrical Quatrains by Year

Year
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
Totals

Titles
2
5
3
3
1
2
1
1
0
2
1
0
2
1
24

Singles
0
4
2
0
1
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
8

Pairs
0
0
0
3
0
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
5

Sets
2
1
1
0
0
1
0
1
0
1
1
0
2
1
11

No. of Poems
16
9
12
6
1
11
2
8
0
5
5
0
13
9
97

Su Shi may have agreed that Quatrains in sets overcome the limitations of the
pentasyllabic line. By one measure, the figures for Su Shi are similar: seventy-five
percent of his pentametrical Quatrains are in sets, comparable to a figure of seventy-seven percent for Fanghuis.
Table 6

Su Shis Pentametrical Quatrains by Year

Year
1059
1062
1063
1071
1072
1075
1077
1078
1079
1081
1084
1085
1088
1089
1090
1091

Titles
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
4
1
3
1
1
1
2
1

Singles
1
0
0
0
1
0
0
1
4
0
0
1
1
1
2
1

Pairs
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

Sets
0
1
0
1
0
1
1
0
0
1
3
0
0
0
0
0

No. of Poems
1
21
13
8
1
5
3
1
4
14
12 4
2
1
1
2
1

3
4

The other poem in this pair is heptametrical.

One poem is part of a set in which the other three poems are heptametrical.

371

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

1092
1094
1097
1100
?
?
Totals

2
2
1
1
6
3
37

2
2
1
1
6
0
25

0
0
0
0
0
1
2

0
0
0
0
0
2
10

2
2
1
1
75
8
99

(Guo Xiangzhengs case is complicated. Eighty-six percent of his pentametrical

Quatrains are in sets, but one set comprises one hundred poems, or seventy-two
percent of the total. Other than that, Guo has only two sets of six poems and
one set each of three and four poems. Nineteen titles are for single poems; none
is for pairs. One the one hand, then, he didnt write many sets. On the other, he
wrote only nineteen pentametrical Quatrains that were not in sets.)
Given the long history of the single pentametrical Quatrain, it must have
been difficult to write pieces that did not sound like museum reproductions.
Nearly all possibilities of tone and theme had been thoroughly explored by Tang
poets and their predecessors. Landscape vignettes, wistful little notes to friends,
boudoir scenes, stark frontier situationsthese were all too old-fashioned for
He Zhu. Suites of poems offered a way to do something fresh.

1085: XUZHOU
A marked aspect of Fanghuis pentametrical Quatrains is the fact that they appear in the record late, ten years after his earliest extant poem, a heptametrical
Regulated Verse from 1075. It is only in Yuanfeng 8 (1085), after three years in
Xuzhou and during a year of high output for his poetry in general, that Fanghui
comes up with pentametrical Quatrainsa set of six and a set of tenthat he
preserves.
The first set of poems recalls Ancient Verses from 1080 about moths in
flames and chickens in pots insofar as it is based on the observation of the death
of animals. This time, however, the poet sees a clear moral in the event. The
treatment is ironic, not only in the sense that the observer has a wider perspective than the victim, but also in the sense that the poet continually changes our
perspective, moving along a chain of ironies from the avian to the human.
The title of this set is Moved by Stirrings. 6 Tang poets who used this title
usually applied it to pentametrical poems, but not in sets of quatrains. A pentametrical set by Mei Yaochen with this title is relevant to the content of

5
6

Some of these may be fragments rather than Quatrains.

8.12577; 8.1a.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Fanghuis fifth Quatrain (see note 336-2 below), but before He Zhu only Fan
Zhongyan (9891052) applies the title to a set of pentametrical Quatrains. 7
332

Young sparrows learn to flip and fly,

Unaware of the slightness of their feathered wings.
The grey chicken-hawk smiles in a tall tree:
Ill wait for you and satisfy my morning hunger.

333

The grey chicken-hawk devours the sparrow young,

Gorging itself to shame kites and crows
Unaware that the black eagles power
has cleaned out the foxes in the north citywall.

334

The black eagle, vicious in beak and claw;

Flies away draped in liver and brains.
Unaware that the roaming hunter lad
will have you grow old on his gauntlet.

335

The hunting lad is the common sort of Yan or Chu;

Satisfied just to gallop and chase.
Unaware that in the royal basilica
sit men satiated on ten thousand cash worth of meat.

336

In the royal basilica they slaughter live animals to eat,

Bear every day more vilification from all the empire.
Unaware that on the Five Lakes
the traveler is in his small boat.

337

What kind of guy is that in the small boat?

Only when his state was hegemonic did he see to himself.
Unaware of the old fisher gent,
too embarrassed to be his old friends minister.

Notes:
335-1/ Yan or Chu: north or south, i.e., anyplace in China.
336-2/ The phrase translated bear vilification has other meanings, such as bear responsibility,
turn ones back on responsibility, and owe debt. The following 1056 couplet by Mei Yaochen
contains a similar ambiguity but suggests what Fanghui is getting at in the context of his Quatrain

7 . Quan Song shi, 3:166.189192. Li She (ninth century ) has one poem
under this title (QTS, 14:477.5424) that breaks into three quatrains by rhyme changes, but none of
the quatrains could stand alone. For a discussion of the quatrainstanza continuum in heptametrical Tang verse, see Paul Rouzer, Writing Anothers Dream, 3950.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

373

set: One who bears [disappoints?] the hopes of the world / must
worry about the vilification of the world. 8
336-34/ Five Lakes has several meanings but probably refers to Lake Tai or its region. Fan Li
served the King of Yue for twenty years and then, when the king became a Hegemon, took
to the Five Lakes in a small boat, eventually becoming rich. 9
337-78/ The old fisher gent is Yan Guang; see the note to line 6 of Crossing Yellow Leaf Hause,
Poem 283.

Most of these poems would make sense standing alone and even be of mild interest, but this is clearly a case in which they need to be part of a larger structure
in order to work their magic. The interesting point is that, as the reader moves
from the first poem to the last, he, along with the other figures in the quatrains,
is a victim of the irony. The reader is as unaware as they are that a new figure
of superiority will come along to topple the old. There is a well-known precedent for this rhetorical device. In the Shuoyuan, someone uses a similar foodchain allegory to warn the King of Wu that his plans to invade another state
expose him to dangers that his greed has caused him to ignore. 10
Perhaps this series can be related to the reluctance Fanghui showed in 1080
to draw neat lessons from animal life (see Poem 048): one is, as it were, sucked
into a continuum of animals and people and blocked from forming detached
and stable judgments. The reader is in the position of Fanghui, who observed a
moth causing its own death then found himself causing his own near-poisoning
with mosquito repellent; the reader expects to contemplate an allegory and finds
that he is actually experiencing, on a certain level, the predicament of the allegorized figures.
The use of rhyme at the ends of the first lines is unusual in pentametrical
Quatrains and in fact violates the description Fanghui gives in his preface for
the poems he classifies as pentametrical Quatrains: those with two rhymes and
five character lines, without regard for whether they are Regulated or Ancient
(emphasis mine). The effect of the added rhyme is to speed up the lines, which
in turn adds to the sense of wit and cleverness.
The second set of pentametrical Quatrains from 1085 is for Wang Gong and
Kou Changzhao, who were present at many of the outings that inspired poems
in other genres in 1084. It was written in the middle of the eighth month of
1085, a week or two after Kou and Wen had left Xuzhou. Let us look at
Climbing Yellow Tower, the sixth poem under the overall title
Thinking of and Sent to Kou Yuanbi and Wang Wenju: Ten Poems. 11

, Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 3:26.885.

See the Shi ji, 129.10 (Watson, Records of the Grand Historian, 1993 rev. ed., Han II, 43738),
and the commentary there.
10 This story is Lesson 18 of Michael Fullers An Introduction to Literary Chinese (1999).
11 Poems 33847, 8.1257778; 8.1b2b. Wang is the son of Kous older sister and the husband of Kous daughter.
8
9

374
343

CHAPTER FIVE

Where can I welcome the bright moon?

the eastern citywall, on the hundred-foot tower.
My old friends, how can I meet them?
tomorrow night is Mid-Autumn.

Notes:
343-4/ Hou ye usually means the last half of the night, and we understood it as such in Fanghuis
1084 pentametrical Regulated Verse Imitating Wen Feiqing (Poem 166). That might make for a more
interesting line, but I am not sure it would make sense in premodern China to say the MidAutumn Festival starts after midnight. There are poems in which it means either tomorrow
night or some night in the future. 12

This poem is carefully constructed. It contains two questions, one asking the
best place to view the moon, one asking where or how the poet can meet his
friends for mid-autumn fellowship. The answer to the former question points to
the building that is the topic of the poem. The latter question is a rhetorical one
that has no answer: the speaker knows he cannot see his friends. The last line
notes that tomorrow is a day when they should be together.
Another way to look at the poem is to study the relationship between the two
constituent couplets. The first two lines point toward a fine evening of moonviewing from one of the most famous spots in the empire. The second two lines
effect a countermotion: the fine evening cannot take place without the friends,
and yet, in another contradiction that takes us back to the reason why one even
cares about viewing the moon, it is the Mid Autumn Festival.
The unspoken connection between naming the festival and asking the rhetorical question provide the emotional overtones and the effort, however slight,
of logical reconstruction that enable four short lines to constitute a poem. For
all its skill, though, the Quatrain doesnt amount to much by itself. It is a verbal
postcard to absent friends, not a letter. Ten postcards, however, do add up to
something, and this set of ten poems does have a definite structure. The first
Quatrain relates He Zhus feelings after he saw Kou and Wang off; the next five
(including the one translated above) describe his visits to various Xuzhou landmarks that the three of them must have frequented together. The seventh poem
simply depicts He Zhu coming home from his office and closing his gate, sitting
on a folding chair, and listening to the birds. Obviously life in Xuzhou is not fun
without his two friends, so the next two poems summon them back individually. Finally, the last poem laments that the poetry society is empty when
Fanghui happens to come up with a good autumn poem; he is reduced to walking alone in the moonlit courtyard and reciting it aloud to the west autumn wind.
Placed in this context, each poem is one aspect of missing departed friends. The

12 See, for example, Bo Juyi, , QTS, 14:454.514445, and Dai Shulun

(73289), , QTS, 9:273.3072.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

375

Quatrains that seem so slight individually are building blocks for an extended
meditation that has the weight we expect from He Zhu.
This series is basically regulated, with some tonal violations. What is wanted
here is poetic sophistication, not the ancient tone appropriate to the parables
of Moved by Stirrings.

THE CAPITAL
1086: RELATIONSHIPS WITH PAST POETRY
We have already looked at the various Ancient Verse imitations of earlier poetry
that were written in the tenth and eleventh months of 1086; in this section we
shall give an overview of pentametrical Quatrains from the ninth month that
either imitate works of the past or acknowledge them in some other way.
Answering Chen Chuandao: Five Poems is a set that harkens back
to pre-Tang poetry, though not by imitation. 13 Instead, the five Quatrains take
their rhymes from the words of one line from a series of eighteen or nineteen
poems by Ji Kang collectively titled Presented to a Flourishing Talent
upon Entering the Army. 14 Chen Shizhong (Chuandao) selected the line
and added to make, Sending off / with my eyes / the goose / going home /
is difficult. Each word was then used to set the rhyme of one new poem; the
resulting five poems were sent to He Zhu. (Chen is probably in his native
Xuzhou at this time.) Asked to reciprocate, Fanghui uses the same five rhyme
words in his five poems. Not having Chen Shizhongs poems, we cannot say
whether all the rhyme words are the same, nor can we say anything about
Chens themes or style. What we can say is that Fanghuis poems are formally
very unlike Ji Kangs; their themes are related only on the highest level of generality, and the imagery and diction show no affiliation. Fanghuis themes are familiar from his other works. He dislikes the dusty world of the capital; he is tired
of traveling; it is better to go home; he misses his friend; and life in Kaifeng is
too expensive. Here is the second poem as a sample:
352

We roam in Liang, return again to Song;

South then north, in turns we see each other off.
Loss and gain, what of these two?
such toil and moil, better to be dreaming.

13

Poems 35155, 8.12579; 8.3a3b.

The count of nineteen includes a pentametrical poem sometimes included at the beginning.
With that poem, the line we are interested in comes from the fifteenth poem. See Ji Kang ji jiaozhu,
1.16. In the five poems from this series included in the Wen Xuan, 24, it is in the fourth poem.
14

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CHAPTER FIVE

Note:
352-1/ Liang can refer to Kaifeng, the Song capital, as noted in the last chapter. Song is the ancient region east of the eleventh-century Southern Capital, which might be considered to include
Xuzhou.

Incessant trekking between east and west (Liang and Song) and between north
and south does not break new ground poetically but nicely builds a tight opening couplet. A reaction to that back-and-forth rush follows in the second couplet. The rhetorical question in line 352-3 is indirectly answered in the next line:
as all good literary Daoists know, the unstated answer to the question is that
there is no distinction between loss and gain; the stated corollary is that it is
therefore better to dream than to toil and moil. (Note that the oppositional pairs,
Liang/Song, north/south, and gain/loss, have ended and are replaced by a pair
of identical syllables, laolao. Though toil and moil still refers back to those oppositional pairs notionally, formally it echoes the dissolution of their distinction
in dream.)
Thus, the fourth line responds to the third line and the two together respond
to the first couplet; there is a subtle layering of relationships that makes the
poem a satisfying whole. Because the ideas presented are so trite, however, I feel
that the poem still works best as one facet of the more complex plight of the
poet as he describes it in all five Quatrains together. The next two poems we
shall consider are different. They are not (to our knowledge) part of a set. But
do they stand alone?
One Quatrain by He Zhu announces itself as an imitation. As is usually the
case, we have no certain original, though the title names both a poet and a poem:
Imitating Liu Xiaoshengs Anren Acquires Fruit. 15 Anren is
Pan Yue, said to have been so get handsome that women threw fruit to him
whenever he went out, filling his carriage. 16 Liu Xiaosheng is a sixth-century
figure who leaves only five poems, none of them a Quatrain and none on Pan
Yue. There is a pentametrical Quatrain titled On Anren Acquiring
Fruit attributed to a Li Xiaosheng who leaves no other poems but apparently lived about the same time. 17 This raises at least three possibilities: 1)
this poem is by Li Xiaosheng and is Fanghuis model, so Fanghui erred in naming Liu as the author; or 2) this poem is by Liu Xiaosheng and is Fanghuis
model, so the attribution to a possibly non-existent Li Xiaosheng is an error that
originated in the anthologies from which our current texts of sixth century po-

15

8.12579; 8.3b.
Shishuo xinyu, 14.7, note 2.
17 See Lu Qinli, Quan Han Sanguo Jin Nanbei chao shi, 2:Liang shi.13.15 (1573). It is followed by a
poem with the same title by a Tan Shiyun . I am indebted to an anonymous reader of a
nearly final version of this study for alerting me to the existence of these poems and for many
other helpful suggestions.
16

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

377

ems have been derived; or 3) this poem is by Li Xiaosheng poem but irrelevant
and Liu Xiaoshengs poem on the topic, Fanghuis model, is lost.
This candidate for original poem does not, in my opinion, encourage the
same kind of analysis we have performed on other imitations. Fanghuis poem
seems to have little in common with it in either diction or structure. Let us
quote both poems.
*

Pan Yue returned from by the River,

knowing full well too much fruit would be thrown.
Shut in beneath his tiled roofs, he heard but did not appear;
his carriage is recognized---no help for that!

356

The fruit is exhausted, but hands still beckon;

his carriage stops, but more dust rises.
He really should hold that smile
and first requite the ones closest to the thills.

Notes:
*-1/ Heyang, where Pan had been magistrate at the end of the third century, was on the north
side of the Yellow River.
*-34/ Or: the women heard him but could not see him, so it availed them naught to recognize
his carriage.

Fanghuis first couplet depicts arrested movement (fruit is exhausted, the carriage stops) and lingering action (hands still beckon, dust rises even more) in
parallel lines. In the second couplet, we shift to possible future acts (holding a
smile and requiting someone) arrayed over two lines, both as the object of the
verb should. That is enough complexity and change of direction to provide a
complete experience. More than the poems from sets we have read so far in this
chapter, it seems to me that this poem can stand alone.
None of this structure is in evidence in the poem we know under Li
Xiaoshengs name. It is true that the metrical patterns of the two poems are
identical but for the first syllable: A1 B1 C1 D1 vs. A2 B1 C1 D1. However, the
ABCD line sequence is very common in He Zhus pentametrical Quatrains
when they are regulated, so it would be hard to argue that he thought that using
this meter and this topic was enough to constitute an imitation. I conclude that
his model was a lost poem by Liu Xiaosheng.
What strikes me about Fanghuis Quatrain is its strong visual dimension. By
this, I do not mean it deploys vivid imagery; rather, it works as if a scene of Pan
Yue sitting in a fruit-bestrewn carriage surrounded by beautiful women were
before our eyes. If we were told this was a colophon for a painting, we would
not be surprised. Literary figures as themes for paintings were becoming common in the late eleventh century, and this would have been an appealing subject.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Fanghuis Quatrain would be a good colophon for such a painting insofar as it

tells the temporal dimension of a scene that in a painting can only be implied. 18
Of course, we have no evidence that this poem was inscribed on a painting, yet
even so, the poem works as if a painting were present. In a sense, I think it is.
By singling out a woman (or women) near the shafts of the carriage and saying
Pan Yue should respond to her (or them), Fanghui is commenting on a particular tableau that he knows is already known to the reader in its general aspects. (It
is known presumably on the basis of many pictorial representations experienced
previously in an era when paintings on silk and paper have become commodities
in a flourishing art market.) This is a very specific realization of our earlier generalization about pentametrical Quatrains: they look outward to something beyond the four lines that constitute them.
The second imitation in 1086 is more precisely a harmonizing with an imitation of a style, the style of the sixth-century Jade Terrace Anthology. The title is
Harmonizing with Wang Wenjus Jade Terrace Style. 19
357

At the south citywall I saw you off with my eyes in vain;

in the western hall our inner commitment is broken.
Afar I know of your thoughts tonight:
bright lamp, half let down curtain.

Up to a point, the world of the Jade Terrace as refracted through this poem is the
world of the lyric. The diction is especially characteristic of Fanghuis own work
in that genre. South citywall is found in three of his lyrics. In four of his lyrics,
he sees someone off with his eyes. Hall (guan) is found eleven times in He
Zhus lyrics, three times specified as being in a certain direction (always south).
The inner commitment (or heart-expectation) of 357-2 occurs four times in
his lyrics. Tonight occurs only eight times in Fanghuis poetry, but fifteen
times in his lyrics.
There are precedents for this poem. In the Tang, Quan Deyu (761
818), one of the leading poets of the late eighth century, wrote
Twelve Poems in the Jade Terrace Style; all but the first two are pentametrical Quatrains. (Quan is someone who also anticipated some of Fanghuis contemporaries
by making poems out of the names of people, medicines, stars, and so forth.) 20
For pentametrical Quatrains in imitation of the same anthology style in the Song,

18 For a thorough discussion of the relations between colophons and paintings in this period,
with references to other important works on the topic, see my Colophons in Countermotion. A
comprehensive, newer study on colophons is Yi Ruofens Guankan, xushu, shenmei.
19 8.12579; 8.4a. Fanghui does not say where Wang Gong is at the time; he may be back in
Xuzhou.
20 QTS, 10:328.367374. See Jiang Yin, Dali shiren yanjiu, 1:42124. For Song poems built
around the names of medicines, see especially Huang Tingjians pentametrical Quatrains,
, Shangu shizhu, 2250:wai.17.39899.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

379

we have Mei Yaochens 1032 Seven Poems in the Jade Terrace Style
and Ouyang Xius set by the same name from the same year, using the same
sub-topics. 21 In Ouyangs collection, these poems are classified as ballads (yuefu);
neither his nor Meis poems are regulated. Fanghuis poem is composed of regulated lines in an unregulated sequence (C2 D1 C2 B1).
What sets Fanghuis poem apart from all of these predecessors is the ambiguity of the gender of the speaker; indeed, it is uncertain whether the identity of
the speaker remains the same. The pronouns added in the translation do not
entirely remove these ambiguities. All three of the other predecessor poets mentioned follow more closely the traditional palace style of poetry in using skirts,
jewelry, fans, and so forth to indicate that the lonely person is female; often they
use pronouns and make lines in the poem function as her address to her lover.
Fanghuis diction is quite different. In particular, the gender and persona ambiguities of Fanghuis poem reflect his debt to Late Tang and Five Dynasties lyrics. 22
In the tenth month on 1086, Fanghui wrote a pentametrical Quatrain called
Cold Night Lament. The title may remind the reader of the eight-line Ancient Verse Imitation of Bao Rongs Cold Night Lament, written in the following
month (Poem 092). Though not an imitation, the Quatrain contains echoes of a
number of famous poems, ranging from the frost-like moonlight in front of the
bed in Li Bos Quiet Night Thoughts to Su Shis perversely inquisitive moon in his
1076 lyric to the tune Shuidiao getou (Full moon, when did you appear?). 23
359

How remarkable the light of the full moon,

Twisting and turning to shine on an empty bed.
Already no dreams at all had come;
now I grieve this night will be long.

The fact that lines 359-1 and 2 end with words from Li Bos quatrain increases
the pressure on the poet to add something new to this situation. Fanghuis
choice is to load the poem with modality. In the first line he comments that the
light of Li Bos moon is kelian remarkable/lovable/strange/precious. Then he
ascribes intention to the moon, having it weiqu twist and turn to/make an effort

21

Mei Yaochen ji biannian jiaozhu, 1:2.4546; Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:jushi waiji.1.345.
For a subtle analysis of the many issues involved here, see Maija Bell Samei, Gendered Persona
and Poetic Voice.
23 Here is Burton Watsons translation of Li Bos poem, with the relevant words in italics. (Instead of bright, I use full in my translation of Fanghuis poem.) Moonlight in front of my
bed / I took it for frost on the ground! / I lift my head, gaze at the bright moon, lower it and
dream of home. Victor Mair, Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, 204. The first line
quotation of Sus lyric is from Alice W. Cheangs rendition in her Silver Treasury of Chinese Lyrics, 55.
There is another precedent for this gently ironic treatment of the moon in Su Shis shi poetry:
see Michael Fuller, Road to East Slope, 23739.
22

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CHAPTER FIVE

to shine on his bed. Of course, Su Shi was there first with his personification
of the moon, so Fanghui has to do something more. In line 359-3, then, the
scene is eclipsed in an explosion of function words: Already it-was-a-case-of allalong no dreams. The logical follow-up to zi already/as a matter of course in
this line leads to geng now/even more/further in line 359-4.
Kelian remarkable/lovable/strange/precious is a very common word in
Chinese poetry, but it seems to me, based on a survey of Su Shis poetry, that
kelian and the other modals or function words we see in this Quatrain are difficult to squeeze into a pentametrical Quatrain. Although Su Shi uses kelian in six
Quatrains, they are all heptametrical. He uses zi shi already/naturally is ten
times, but only in three quatrains; again, all are heptametrical. He uses yuan wu
all along, no in two heptasyllabic Regulated Verses only and never in Quatrains. He uses zi and geng in parallel eight times, but only once in a Quatrain
(heptametrical) and twice in pentametrical poems of medium length. There simply is not much room in a short poem with short lines for all of these modalities
and function words. 24
Even these limited comparisons indicate that Fanghui has tried to so something new with a familiar theme and prominent precedents. As a variation on
old imagery and themes, his Quatrain is able to stand independently because it
evokes familiar precedents and exceeds them in its modality. The muscularity of
that modalityalready it was no dreaming at all; on top of that I grieve that this
night is longalso gives the poem enough mass to stand alone.

1087: TEN SONGS ON AUTUMN DAYS

Moved by Stirrings (Poems 33237; pp. 371ff) was an atypical series insofar as it
had a tight and obvious structure based on an ever-widening perspective. We
have discussed Quatrains that come from other series and offered reasons why
they could not stand alone, but we need to work through an entire series to get a
better sense of how Fanghui varies the structure of each poem to explore different facets of his theme and avoid monotony. The ninth month of Yuanyou 2
(1087) gives us a fine series to study, another set harmonizing with Chen
Shizhong: Harmonizing with Chen Chuandaos Ten Songs on
Autumn Days. 25 We shall present the Quatrains in pairs; the first two poems are
on Autumn Rain and Clear Autumn Skies.

24 It must pointed out that Su Shi wrote seven times more heptametrical than pentametrical
Quatrains, so any word has a greater chance of appearing in the longer lines; there are more of
them. I dont think this invalidates our general hypothesis that modals and function words are
hard to fit into shorter lines.
25 8.1258081; 8.4b5b.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

362

On nearby steps are hurled singing tallies,

from long eaves are hanging plain white cords.
Sodden wings: dusky crows go home;
Tall Pawlonia sheds into a cold well.

363

Returning clouds go away to limitless vastness;

a long-blowing wind comes in howling and hurling.
At the corner of the eaves, two tall catalpa:
slanting radiance illumines their yellow leaves.

381

The poem on Autumn Rain never mentions rain but never departs from its
theme. The first two lines offer vivid images of substitution. Both the sound of
the rain and its streaking descent are suggested in the tallies, long, thin strips
of bamboo, clattering on stone steps. Drips from the roofs blur into hanging
white cords. The third line adds a little turn by moving its verb to the end of
the line (the verbs in the other three lines are in the medial position), inserting
the only animate creatures (crows), and showing the effect of the rain on
themthey have sodden wings. The paulownia tree (often left untranslated as
wu-tung/wutong) also implies the presence of the rain, which is traditionally
associated with this tree. 26 It also typically stands near a well and drops its leaves.
Despite the fact that it appears in literally hundreds of Tang and Song poems,
Fanghui refers to the tree only this single time. Perhaps he incorporated it here
because the combination of tree and well maximizes the distance that the leaves
dropfrom high above the ground to below the groundechoing the vertical
descent of the rain.
Perhaps it is no accident that the next poem refers to the catalpa tree, which
is sometimes paired with the paulownia, as they both drop their leaves quickly
with the onset of cold weather. This poem on clearing weather, like the one on
rain, starts with semantically parallel lines. The vividness this time is in the reduplicatives (youyou limitless vastness and lielie howling and hurling), not in
images of substitution. (Like the rain in the previous Quatrain, though, the
clearing skies are only implied.) The third line again interrupts the pattern, this
time because it lacks a verb. This gives added emphasis to the verb in the final
line, which is evocatively ambiguous: shai can mean to illuminate or to dry, and
of course the setting sun does both. I feel that this poem is strong enough to
stand by itself, but not so powerful that it seems out of place in a set.
The brief flare of yellow leaves in slanting evening sunlight (363-4) anticipates
what will come in the third Quatrain, Autumn Night. That poem is followed by
one on Autumn Dawn:

26

See David McCraw, Along the Wutong Trail, for more on the trees called wutong.

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CHAPTER FIVE

364

Sickly bones, weary in barren groves:

dragging my stick, in an idle court I stroll.
Dim candles and cold insects;
far-reaching longings wind and dew.

365

Not yet furled, half a screen of frost;

I still suspect its moonlight in the court.
Leaning on a tree, I draw from the clear font,
an unsteady wind ravaging grizzled hair.

With the coming of night, the visual imagery is curtailed: the body feels weariness; the body walks in a dark courtyard. The dim candles and cold insects in
line 364-3 are appropriate to the Autumn Night scene, but syntactically they
float untethered to the rest of the poem. One looks to line 364-4 for the verbs
that will tell us what the candles and insects do, but that line is difficult to parse.
Tiaotiao (far-reaching) most commonly describes night, roads, water, and distant places, so the normal 23 rhythm of the pentasyllabic line would suggest
far-reaching [night], || longings [in] wind and dew. Tiaotiao is also associated
with longings/thoughts, however. This makes possible an anomalous 32 parsing: far-reaching thoughts | [in] wind and dew. Finally, si (longings) could
be a verb, in which case the wind and dew may be its objects. Do the insects in
the previous line long for the breeze and nourishing dew of gentler seasons?
In the poem on Autumn Dawn, the age-old confusion of bright frost and
moonlight is again given new life in the first couplet. Zai + place + noun (365-2)
is a very odd construction in poetry. We may be more accustomed to an active
verb in place of zai, as in Frost attends the moon looking down on
the courtyard, by Li Qiao (645?714?). 27 Nevertheless, zai does have the
sense of to remain (of people, it means to be still alive). Thus, although the
diction is unusual, Fanghuis couplet makes perfect sense: is that frost on the
blind, or does moonlight remain in the courtyard despite the dawn? Another instance of unusual phrasing comes in 365-4, an unsteady wind ravaging grizzled
hair. The verb translated ravaging is commonly used with wind, but the object of the verb is usually plants or flags; Fanghui is the only poet I know who
takes the small step to make his wind ravage hair.
This is one of two poems in the set in which every line ends with a noun.
(The other is 369, Autumn Stirrings, below.) Ordinarily that would not deserve much notice, but it happens that the first two objects, frost and moon, are
cold and white; the third object, spring water, is cold and as liquid as moonlight;

27

, QTS, 3:58.698.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

383

the last object, hair, is cold (in the morning breeze) and touched with the frost
of advancing years. An effective combination.
The next two poems are on the Autumn Moon and the Autumn Wind:
366

Into the frosty void an argent moon emerges;

with a goblet of brew I regard it for a while.
The night of parting it is splendid once again;
my old friend is beyond a thousand miles away.

367

In a flurry and a scurry, leaves free of the branch;

tirling and whirling, tumbleweed cut from the root:
They dont wait for the force to blow them aloft;
following the wind, theyre eastward bound.

The Autumn Moon poem is so stereotypical in all its components that one
wonders how a poet in the eleventh century could avoid inadvertently quoting
earlier poetry. All the words seem like they should have been together in previous
poems about missing ones friends while enjoying the charming/splendid moon
with brew. Yet Fanghui uses traditional terms in unique phrasings, as far as I can
tell. Only hua yue argent moon stands out as an unusual term, though the reversed term, yue hua, moon light, splendor of the moon, moon, is so common
that the reader will not hesitate over it. The closest model for Fanghuis opening
line is from a summer poem by Du Fu: Into Great Heaven
emerges an argent moon. 28 Fanghui could be innovating by using a summer
moon in an autumn poem, but it would be hard to argue that such a rare term
has conventional seasonal associations. Leaving this term aside, it seems that
Fanghui has distilled all previous autumn moon poems into archetypal simplicity.
The Autumn Wind poem uses a structure that Su Shi uses several times: the
third line momentarily stops the flow of the Quatrain with a negative: they dont
wait for the force to blow them aloft. It creates a tension that has to be released in the fourth line, after which the poem can end satisfactorily: they do
follow the wind and go eastward naturally. Su Shi has seven pentametrical
Quatrains in which the third line starts with bu, as here. For example,
The light of the flowers:
pink fills the balustrade; / the color of the grass: green without borders. / I
didnt meet the dark-eyed one / but sang a long song in the white stone glen. 29
A statement in the third line that A didnt happen, A is not the case leads one
to ask, What did happen, what is the case? When the fourth line tells us B

, Du shi xiangzhu, 2:7.542.

, (1079) SSSJ, 3:19.961. Dark eyes, as opposed to eyes that show only the
whites, signify the expected friendly attitude of the Man of the Way whom Su came to visit. See
the note to line 5 of Poem 515.
28
29

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CHAPTER FIVE

happened, or B is the case, then the reader feels the poem has presented a
complete experience. It does not need to go beyond twenty syllables.
Let us note that in these two poems Fanghui has for the first time used the
name of the topic in the poem itself. Moon appears in line 366-1 and wind in
line 367-4. To enforce a rule of coyness on the entire series would, I think,
make the set conspicuously a feat of skill inconsistent with its casual nature. We
have also departed from the chronological framework that seemed to guide the
first four Quatrains (rainclearingnightdawn) and are working steadily
through other traditional themes toward topics that no one could predict.
The seventh and eighth Quatrains in the set are on an Autumn View and Autumn Stirrings, or Impulses.
368

Overnight rain: dust-storms in quiescence;

chilly plain: millet fields empty.
I turn into the wind and just let my gaze go
not to send off any flying geese!

369

Ive decided to follow Master Kangle,

in pairs to wear the mountain-climbing clogs:
A clear night Ill spend on Tiantai,
wreathed in clouds watch the newborn sun.

Notes:
369-12/ Kangle is Xie Lingyun, supposed inventor of geta-like clogs whose front or back rails
could be removed for climbing up or down mountains, so that ones foot remained level. 30
369-3/ Though barely over 1,000 meters high, Mount Tiantai, in Zhejiang Province, is the easternmost peak of significant size in mainland China (excluding the northeastern provinces that
China took over as heirs to the Manchu empire after 1911).

The Autumn View poem avoids a stereotypical autumn view. No mention is

made of autumn colors, the clear, deep sky, or frosty trees. The familiar migrating geese are here, but only to be ignored! This time, our poet will enjoy the
view for its own sake, with none of the expected whining over geese going
home or geese not carrying his letters. The Autumn Stirrings poem is remarkable because the poet professes to be stirred to climb Mount TiantaiI dont
recall any such enthusiasm for vertical exertion in his other poetry or in any
other poem on Autumn Stirrings. It is probably the cool, clean air of the season
that inspires this ambition.
The last two poems are on Autumn Swallows and Autumn Flies, two topics
rare in Chinese poetry and probably in the literature of other languages as well.
The first poem takes a position contrary to the only poem I know that does
more than mention autumn swallows in passing (and those are rare enough, es-

30

Nan shi, 2:19.540.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

385

pecially in the Song). That poem is a heptametrical Quatrain by Sikong Tu

(837908); it urges the swallows to stay close to the stove through the winter
rather than endure the hardship of migration. 31
370

Nanmu beams: the nests are already empty;

Leaving here, now how will you go?
Do not dread the distance of your homeward flight;
ice and frost will make no allowance for you.

371

No more the sound of your angry flight,

chickens of the morn monopolize the noise-making!
If you want to stagger and dawdle theres still a place:
snuggle up to the Stove God to finish out your lives.

Notes:
370-1/ Nanmu being a slow-growing tree prized for furniture and architectural detail, nanmu
beams implies a palace or elegant mansion. ( is now generally understood to equal in this
expression.)
371-4/ Snuggling up to the Stove recalls a proverb quoted in the Analects. The meaning of that
proverb is unclear but irrelevant; the poets humor turns on using a phrase from everyones classical education to urge the flies on to their destruction. 32

Fanghui and Sikong Tu have rejected a poetic tradition that noticed swallows
only when they came back in the spring to mate. However, Fanghui parts ways
with Sikong when he issues no invitation to the swallows to warm themselves by
the stove. Instead, he simply warns the swallows that they had better begin their
migration, for the ice and frost will not spare them if they stay. The kitchen
stove does appear, but only in the next poem, where it is the place for flies to
meet their end!
A set of poems that started with creative variations on standard themes in
poems 36266 has progressed from ever-more unconventional departures from
the expected treatment of themes in poems 36769 to the jocular treatment of
unexpected themes in these last two poems. (Before He Zhu, I know of no one
who devotes a poem exclusively to autumn flies. Although Chen Shizhong presumably used the same topics, his poem is not extant.) Note that these unwelcoming Quatrains on swallows and flies consist of regulated lines: Poem 370 is
B1 D2 A1 B1; Poem 371 is D2 B1 C2 D2. 33 The incongruity between the classical form and the decidedly un-classical topics surely adds to the effect of
Fanghuis malicious humor. The final two poems in the set also stand out for
rhyming the first line, which is as unusual in pentametrical Quatrains as it is in

, QTS, 19:633.726465.
See Legge, III.xii.1, 2, p. 159.
33 Two other poems in the set are regulated, but less neatly: Poem 367 is (C6) D2 A1 B1, and
Poem 368 is A1 B1 (C4) D2.
31
32

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CHAPTER FIVE

eight-line pentametrical Regulated Verse. I suspect that this further contributes

to the wit by speeding the tempo.
As we move through these ten Quatrains, the poems increasingly seem to
undercut my thesis that Quatrains in sets are slight poems that must work together to present facets of a theme. That is indeed one option for a set, but in
this case the Quatrains become strong enough to stand alone at some point.
They either effect a countermotion against generic expectations or they have a
strong enough conclusion and internal countermotion that they dont really require the other poems in the set. It is impossible to know whether Fanghui
planned this progression or thought about it in something analogous to these
terms; one has the feeling that the poems simply got more and more independent to resist the pressure to subsume themselves within a single over-arching
experience of autumn. Does this mean the set loses its significance as a set, that
the poems should be liberated from the confines of the set? I dont think so. I
think we and Fanghui want to keep them together because even those Quatrains
that could be enjoyed on their own acquire an added layer of significance precisely because they are part of this progression from the creative to the eccentric.

108890: LIYANG AND QUATRAINS FOR MONKS

Fanghuis poetic friendship with Master He at Qingliang Temple in Jinling was
maintained mostly through heptametrical Regulated Verses, but in 1088 and
1089 Fanghui sent three pentametrical Quatrains across the river from Hezhou.
In the tenth month of Yuanyou 3 (1088), in Liyang, he sent these two: 34
376

The traveler in the South I cannot meet;

the bell from the South I wish to hear.
I incline my ears to cross the distant night
the sky is chill; its mostly northern wind.

377

The traveler in the South I would ask,

when can you cross in your bowl?
So sentimental are the lakes waters
every day coming from Stony Head.

Notes:
376-1/ Traveler/guest is often simply a polite term of address, in this case for Master He.

34 Thinking of and Sending This to Master He of Qingliang [Temple]: Two poems. 8.1258182; 8.6a.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

387

377-2/ An otherwise unknown monk is said to have crossed rivers in a wooden cup; allusions to
this are common in Tang and Song poetry when rivers and Buddhists are involved. 35
377-3/ The lake is probably Xuanwu Lake , on the north side of Jinling. We know that in
the middle of the thirteenth century it drained into the Qin-Huai, whence its waters would have
entered the Yangzi and could have been brought to the opposite shore by the tides. 36
377-4/ Stony Head is the location of the Qingliang Temple.

The repeated structures in lines 376-1 and 2 and the play with the directional
opposites north and south in the first poem give it a strong sense of structure. The fulcrum on which this poem turns is either between the apparently
objective reference to a chilly sky and north wind in the last line and the subjective desires and actions of the speaker in the first three lines or between the last
line and the readers realization after the poem is finished that, therefore no
sound comes from the south. (The reader must supply the unspoken relationship between the wind in the last line and the rest of the poem: the wind from
the north blows the sound of the temple bell away from He Zhu; he will never
hear it booming from the south shore of the Yangzi.)
The fulcrum in the second poem is between the first and second couplets.
Line 377-2 is a question (when will you cross in your wooden bowl?); as such,
it creates a slight pause between the couplets while the reader supplies the answer (maybe never, but obviously not sometime soon, or you would not be
askingand thank you for giving allusive recognition to the fact that I am a
Buddhist monk). 37 The assertion after the pause that the lake waters have surplus feeling is in turn a response to the fact that Master He is unlikely to cross
soon. At first the response is opaque. Why would water be sentimental? When
we finish the sentence in line 377-4, we see it is because the water comes daily
from Stony Head, where Master He is. Now the interstice between the couplets
can be bridged in retrospect by the reader: In contrast to the hard reality that you will
not cross in a bowl, or in compensation for that fact, the waters from where you are
seem sentimental as they come to console me. Since this bridging comes after
the second couplet has been interpreted, we could say that this Quatrain also
contains a fulcrum after the poem ends.
Whether we place the fulcrums after lines 376-3 and 377-2 or at the ends of
the poems, the countermotion is strong enough to make each of these two
Quatrains complete in itself, I feel; a mate or a set of Quatrains is not needed to

35 See, for example, Liu Changqings , Liu

Changqing shi biannian jianzhu, 2:33940.
36 See Zhou Yinghe, Jingding Jiankang zhi, 18.6a8a (158687). Wang Anshi, the gazetteer tells
us, had proposed turning the lake into farmland for the poor, and Zhou marks that as the beginning of the lakes shrinkage to what it was in the thirteenth century. However, it was still considered a barrier to invaders in the twelfth century, so presumably He Zhu knew it as a large lake.
37 The pause may not be a literal silence, particularly if the poem is being read or chanted
aloud, but a momentary suspension of the mental parsing of what follows.

388

CHAPTER FIVE

build up enough aspects of the experience to achieve a sense of sufficiency. Yet

even if I am correct to say each of these two Quatrains can stand on its own, it
must be admitted that when they placed together in the order given they form a
whole that, formally at least, adds up to more than the parts. (One can discover
this by re-reading them in reverse order.) The conceit that waters from the lake
in Jinling cross every day to connect Master He and the poet (lines 377-3 and 4)
must be the final word in the pair. That conceit is not only the response to the
fact that Master He wont be crossing the Yangzi in a bowl but also the consolation for the failed attempts in the first poem to hear the bells at Qingliang Temple. Let us note that the poet did not sequence his poems as he did because he
just wanted a happy ending. It is fine (aesthetically) to follow happiness or
contentment with sorrow, and he does that often enough; but had he reversed
the poems, he would have placed consolation for sorrow (which is what we have
in lines 377-3 and 4) before the discovery of sorrow (which is what we have in line
376-4). That would have been clumsy; that would have made one feel that the
poems were best separated altogether.
The next pentametrical Quatrain in Fanghuis collection comes fourteen
months later, from Stone-Gravel Sconce. The headnote dates the poem to the
precise day, the twenty-third of the twelfth month (26 January, 1090), perhaps
because of the topic: a branch of flowering plum. It may be that this variety of
plum should not have bloomed so early, or that the poets relative inexperience
in the south and with the varieties of plum there made him think it was extraordinarily early. He was a northerner, we must remember, and the whole point of
the poem turns on the fact that the flowering plum is part of the culture of
South of the River. 38 Equally significant is that the poemwhose title is
Plum Blossoms: Sent to Master He of Qingliangreverses the old
story of sending a plum branch with news to the north. 39
The sojourner on Stony Head Enceinte

will take up this one branch of plum:

How is it that this news of spring

comes now from north of the River?

The poem is regulated, with a violation at the end that emphasizes the punch
line: C1 D2 A2 (B2). Like the flower itself, this Quatrain is delicate, yet valiant;
the little question Fanghui imagines forming in Master Hes mind as he receives
the sprig from Stone-Gravel Sconce brings centuries of poetic tradition to a halt
with one simple fact: the sprig has traveled north-to-south.
378

38 See Maggie Bickford, Ink Plum, 19ff, for the emergence of the plum in the culture of the
Southern Courts.
39 8.12582; 8.6a. For story, see the Taiping yulan, 21(55):970.3a.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

389

The poems we have seen in this chapter have aimed at capturing the flavor of
a moment (the autumn poems, especially) or making a single point, often a humorous one. Perhaps for that reason, or perhaps because of the difficulty of the
pentametrical Quatrain, Fanghui almost never uses them as farewell poems. The
next poem in his collection, dated the first month of the following year (Yuanyou 5, 109091), is one of two exceptions, the other being a set of eight quatrains from 1092 (Poems 39299), partially translated below. The 1090 poem is
Sending off Monks Fayin and Zhiyin Ascending Westward. 40 The
two monks are apparently going overland to the capital (rather than going east
to pick up the canal); most likely theirs is the same as the route of the modern
rail line from Nanjing that runs northwest until it reaches the Huai River.
379

A thousand miles, north of the Long Huai,

the eastern wind is shattering the snowy cold.
On this journey, forget about asking the route
presto be gone! youll arrive in Changan.

This message, couched within a perfectly regulated A2 B1 C1 D2 sequence of

four lines, appears much less personalized than a typical regulated octave. However, the second half of the poem comprises a witty allusion most appropriate
for monks setting off on a journey. In the early eleventh-century Transmission of
the Lamp, a monk asks Whats the way to Jingshan [the Buddhist center near
Runzhou]? The answer is the staccato expression meik drek we see in line
379-4: Presto be gone. 41 Fanghui is the only poet I know of who uses this
allusion and this expression in poetry before Lu You in the Southern Song.
Recognition of the allusion would come in a flash at the end of the poem, after
one has puzzled over why the monks are told they dont need to ask directions
on their way. This insiders joke is particularly effective after two lines that
evoke vast spaces and potential hardship. That the spring wind from the east is
shattering the snowy cold is some consolation (though the skeptic might see
muddy roads as a corollary). The two place namesthe Tang capital Changan
(standing for the Song capital, of course) and the Huai Rivercarry the aroma
of hundreds of years of poetic usage, as do thousand miles and east wind,
for that matter. (Eighteen Tang poems mention the Long Huai; Su Shi and
Fanghui mention it seven times each; Su Zhe uses the term six times; and
Fanghuis contemporary Zhang Lei uses it seventeen times!). Thus, the two
halves of the poem offer a pleasing contrast between the classical, timeless diction describing the journey ahead and the colloquial language of the joke that
erases the journey. As a farewell poem, it is satisfying on many levels.

40
41

8.12582; 8.6a.
Hanyu da cidian, s.v. mozhi.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Nine months later, Fanghui writes a set of pentametrical Quatrains to send

back to Xuzhou: Thinking of and Sent to Friends in Pengcheng:
Ten Poems. 42 It is difficult to say how common it was to use pentametrical Quatrains for quick sketches of friends. Huang Tingjians famous 1103 characterization of He Zhu and Qin Guan, for example, is in a heptametrical Quatrain. 43 In
any case, it is surely unusual to name the individuals as Fanghui does: he refers
to them by their rank among their (male) siblings. Chen Shizhong, for example,
is Chen the Second, because he is the second son in the family. 44 We shall
translate the poem for Zhang Tianji (the Seventeenth). The headnote to the
poem informs us that Zhang has actually given up his dwelling on Yunlong Hill
and expanded his Western Studio in town to a magnificent scale.
Bide thee well, Retired Scholar Zhang!

to Yunlong I commend my dreams often.

Western StudioI see the breezy moon;

benches in a rowwho else is there now?

The implied message is that the breeze and moon of autumn are there in the
Western Studio to be enjoyed, but the old coterie of friends who gathered
around Zhang Tianji at Yunlong Hill in the late Yuanfeng era is now scattered.
A small poem, but one that connects with both the treasured past and the friend
whose life has taken new turns in the present.
The translation offered here assumes that it is Fanghui who commends
dreams often to Yunlong; perhaps, however, he imagines Zhang dreaming of
his mountain retreat now that he has moved to the city. Whatever the case, this
phrase is found in the second lines of two ninth century heptametrical Regulated
Verses, one by Du Mu and one by Xu Hun. Du Mus line provides the closest
parallel: For southern realms I long, commending my
dreams often. Removing the third and fourth syllables gives us To southern
realms I commend my dreams often, a perfect model for to Yunlong I commend my dreams often.
The Xu Hun line that seems germane to the present poem is
Somewhereto the breeze and sunlightI commend my dreams often. I
find the line rather opaque, even in context. However, Xu Hun is not to be dismissed as a precedent. Xu was mentioned in our discussion of Poem 168 (the
second of two 1084 poems under the title Taking in the Morning and Evening Views
at the Delightful! Pavilion) as a possible source for paring two pentametrical Regu383

42

Poems 38089; 8.1258283; 8.6b7b. Written in Liyang in the ninth month of 1090.
, Shangu shizhu, 2246:nei.18.331: [Qin] Shaoyou lies drunk beneath an old wisteria;
/ who will sing a cups worth for his melancholy brow? / For knowing how to write heartbreaking lines about the South / these days theres only He Fanghui.
44 The older brother leaves a minimal record. See Zheng Qian, Chen Houshan nianpu Part
One, 12930.
43

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

391

lated Verses that use some of the same words but describe different times of the
day. We know that Fanghui read Xu Hun because we have his 1111 postface to
the ninth-century poets collection detailing how he spent twenty years restoring
about one hundred and fifty poems to the collection and collating the text. 45
We cannot prove that either poem provides the single precedent for
Fanghuis line. There may be no single precedent; we should say rather that
Fanghui had some memory, perhaps only a vague one, of a phrase from heptasyllabic Tang lines that he could creatively use in a shorter line. 46

109192: OUTSPOKEN IN THE CAPITAL

A month after writing the heptametrical Regulated Verses for the neighbor we
identified as Qian Shi, Fanghui harmonizes with a pair of poems by Qian. The
result is two satirical poems under the title Harmonizing with Qian
Dexuns Ancient Sense: Two Poems, the first of which we translate below: 47
390

What does drive-the-plow know about cultivation?

sow-the-grain never goes into a field.
The greatest farmers sit in government bureaus;
the myriad officers have full stomachs in lean years.

Notes:
390-1/ Drive-the-plow is one of several names for a small, black bird also known as a jijiu .
390-2/ Sow-the-grain is an onomatopoeic name for some species of cuckoo. 48
390-3/ The term translated greatest farmers was also a fiscal office or part of the title of a fiscal
officer in some regimes from the Han to the Song.

The moral is plain and it plays on the Confucian demand for a rectification of
names: that is, people whose names or titles identify them as having certain roles
in the family or in society should fulfill those roles. Fanghui uses a joke about
bird names to draw a parallel between the birds that dont do what their names
imply and parasitic officers who dont care for the people as their positions imply they should.

45 For Xu Huns line, see , QTS, 16:536.6119, and for Du Mus see ,
Fanchuan shiji, 323. For the postface to Xu Huns poetry collection, see Xus Xu Yonghui wenji, 157.
This Southern Song edition, held by the Beijing Library, is based on the edition collated by He
Zhu; the poem from which we quote is on pp. 6566. On pp. 15357, Fanghui lists the additional
poems he found and the editions in which he found them. Since this poem is not among them, we
can conclude that it was in the original edition with which he started.
46 There is an additional precedent in the last line of a heptasyllabic Regulated Verse by Li
Zhong, who was mentioned in our chapter on Songs. See his , QTS,
21:750.8543.
47 Poems 39091, 8.12685; 8.7b.
48 See http://www.cjvlang.com/Birds/cuckoo/cuckoo.html (accessed 31 July 2004).

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CHAPTER FIVE

Thirteen months later, still in the capital, Fanghui writes a remarkable set of
pentametrical Quatrains to see off Wang Yansou (104393). Wang had
been made notary of the Bureau of Military Affairs in the second month of 1091,
while Fanghui was still making his way back from Hezhou. However, in the fifth
month of 1092, he was removed from that position and sent out as prefect of
Zhengzhou. Wang had previously enjoyed a long but far from easy career as
Censor, and despite accusations to the contrary, he appears to have been independent of any faction. He was critical of Su Zhes proposal to mollify the XiXia by ceding territory to them and he forcefully argued against Su Shis support
for continuing the Hired Service policy. On the other hand, he indicted Cai Que,
he defended Su Zhe from his defamers, and he was demoted posthumously in
1094 in the same wave that swept L Dafang into exile. 49
In the sixth month of Yuanyou 7 (1092), Fanghui presented Wang with
Seeing off Wang of the Western Hub to Secure Zheng Gardens:
Eight Poems. Western Hub is a kenning for the Bureau of Military Affairs;
Zheng Gardens is a place slightly to the east of Zhengzhou also called Putian
zhen (a zhen being somewhat like a taxing parish), clearly a poetic reference to Zhengzhou here. Secure is used here in its sense of administer, but
its root meaning is felt in the context of the poems, which emphasize Wang
Yansous unwavering defense policy. 50 These poems are interesting for their
strong and yet carefully couched support for Wang. We shall translate the first
four, enough to show that they cover many topics, from the unfair amalgamation of wealth to frontier policy, with far more specificity than the Ancient Sense
Quatrain just translated.
392

Once in a thousand years ruler and ministers are in accord;

setting their sights on merit not measured in generations.
reeling in all the blessings under Heaven
they are especially generous to the guardian of the right!

Notes:
392-4/ The guardian of the right was one of three officials who administered the metropolitan
region in the Han Dynasty. The term can also refer to the general capital region.

The first poem appears to make a topical allusion to a specific powerful official,
the guardian of the right, or to powerful people in the region of the capital.
For our purposes, it is enough to recognize that the poem posits a time of great

49 See Song shi, 2:17.331and 334, 2:18.341, 31:342.10892, 1089495 and 10897, and
39:471.13700 for a few of the relevant incidents and dates. See also Ronald Egan, Word, Image, and
Deed, 96 and 98; and Li Tao, Xu Zizhitongjian changbian, 13:473.6b (4767).
50 Poems 39299, 8.1258384; 8.a8b. For Western Hub, see Gong Yanming, Songdai guanzhi cidian, 102.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

393

promise that has been betrayed by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a
few people in the capital.
393

In the tented council you joined in godly calculations;

dust on the borders, all ten thousand miles, cleared away.
The western frontiers tranquil for the while;
still it stands, one Long Wall.

The second poem looks back on Wang Yansous defense policy positions, credits him with achieving a period of peace with the Xi-Xia, and finally equates him
with the Long Wall. It has been recognized for some time that the Great Wall
that wriggles its way across maps of China is often an anachronistic fantasy and
has rarely if ever corresponded to the ill-defined and shifting borders between
China and other polities. Nevertheless, Song maps show walls, real or imagined,
in the far north, and a Long Wall as symbolic of defense (or of the hardship of
the laborers who built it) was already well established in the Chinese imagination
by this time. 51
394

Your rightful pleadings have always been given weight;

your lofty feelings make your departure light.
Its not that I am generous to one who understands me;
Im moved to sigh for the common masses.

Note:
394-12/ A paraphrase: you have always placed great importance on (or: been honored for?) just
opinions; now that you are leaving, your noble feelings will enable you to see this setback as trivial.

After praising the justice of Wangs opinions in the past and the mental equanimity with which he faces the present crisis (394-12) the poet apparently feels
he must defend himself against a whispered accusation from the audience that
he is simply flattering a powerful patron. (One does wonder how presumptuous
Fanghui appeared in claiming that Wang Yansou was one who truly understood
his heart.) Hence his protest that his feelings on these matters are inspired by
concern for the people and the nation, not personal relations (394-34).
395

By the new book we were bade to apply ourselves;

the cunning burrows were flushed and should be emptied.
Send these words to generals heading west:
dont take pride in a hunting dogs accomplishment.

Note:
395-4/ Fanghui alludes again to the incident when Han Xin remarked that when the cunning
hares have died, the good dog is cooked. (See note to lines 005-1516 in Chapter Two.)

51

See Arthur Waldron, The Problem of the Great Wall, 645 n.7, 657, and 658.

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CHAPTER FIVE

The fourth poem in the set clearly warns the generals that they will be betrayed
rather than rewarded for their valor. The difficulties lie in the first couplet. All
of the terms in the first line have various meanings; put together, they could
mean something like, The new edict allowed you to be an ancillary or administrative assistant to a military commissioner. However, there is no record of
Wang Yansou ever having one of these posts in the past and they are not appropriate references for Wangs new position as prefect. The term xin shu, is
probably better understood as we translate it: new book. In one historical account, Cao Cao, founder of the Wei Dynasty after the collapse of the Eastern
Han, is said to have written a book on military strategy. When his generals went
on expeditions, they all applied themselves to the matter in accordance with his
new book and were successful. In the limited context of that passage, this
comes across as one aspect of Cao Caos brilliance. Applying this to the present
poem, we might read, If our generals had been allowed to follow your new
book, the lair of the cunning enemy, having been flushed, would have been
empty.
We cannot rest content with this reading, however, because the phrase in
question acquired negative connotations at some point. In 770, Daizong issued
an edict in which he worries that, pressed by budget worries and military ultimatums, people make decisions based on expediency, they apply themselves to
the matter in accordance with the new book, and they simply deal with the
immediate crises. 52 It is not clear what the Tang emperor means by new book,
or whether it alludes to Cao Cao. However, his use of this term explains a line
by Su Shi that may be relevant to He Zhus use of it just a few months later. In
late Yuanyou 6 (1091), Su looked back on his tenure as prefect in Mizhou under
the New Policies: When I was in Dongwu back
then, / the clerks were scrupulous about the new book. In the context of Sus
poem, which is about the exhausted budget of his office in Yingzhou, new
book has been interpreted as connected with the New Policies and the fiscal
demands they made on local government offices. The connection has never
been explained clearly, however. I think the key is Daizongs edict: the clerks
were using the new manual then in force to deal with immediate crises, rather than
taking a long-term or comprehensive view. 53
This gives us a radically different reading: We dealt with border invasions on
a piecemeal basis in accordance with the wisdom of the New Policies, so that
although the cunning enemy was flushed from his lair, he was not extermi-

52

See the Sanguo zhi, 1: Wei shu.1.54n2, and Jiu Tangshu, 2:11.295.
, SSSJ, 6:34.1801. The only commentator to mention
the Wei shu passage about Cao Cao is Taigaku Shus (13451423), cited in Shikajikkai,
12:717. However, he does not explain the relevance of the quotation, nor does he mention
Daizongs apparent allusion to it.
53

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

395

nated. The verb xu in line 395-1 still seems rather opaque, but I think this is the
best we can do.
The most memorable part of the poem remains the advice to the generals
defending the northwestern frontier. They are useful for a time, then expendable.

1095: QUIRKY IN THE CAPITAL

He Zhus stay in Hailing produced five pentametrical Quatrains in 1094. Of
some interest is the set of three Quatrains from the fourth month under the title
Harmonizing with the Three Master Huang Songs
by My Late Friend Du Zhongguan. 54 The deceased friend is Du Yan, with whom
Fanghui had written the Ancient Verses Harmonizing with Du Zhongguans
qing-character Poems: Two Poems in 1086. (See Poem 084.) Although the Quatrains
of 1094 are equally minor pieces, they are patterned after a set of three old ballads of unknown date and authorship that complain of the faithless lover Master
Huang. 55 The impulse to work variations on ancient poems has not abated.
In the eighth month of the next year (Shaosheng 2, 1095), Fanghui makes
uses of ancient poems in a different way with more complex results. Back in the
capital now, he is inspired by the 1086 exchange of poems with Chen Shizhong
that had used the words from a four-syllable line by Ji Kang plus difficult to
set the rhyme. (See above, p. 377.) He decides to use the words from the next
line in Ji Kangs poem plus easy to set the rhymes for Living in
the Capital and Moved by Stirrings: Five Poems, which he hopes to show to Chen
Shizhong someday. 56 The variety in this set is intriguing.
The first poem has an old message in transparent language.
405

What further talk of grand plans?

lithophone-bent, I plot for my five pecks.
Two acres of land back to the outer wall
when will they fall into my hands?

Notes:
405-2/ In his 1088 Ancient Verse at Sorewaist Hill (Poem 107), Fanghui expressed his disdain for
bending his waist in the shape of a lithophone for the sake of Tao Yuanmings similarly-scorned
five-pecks-of-rice salary.
405-3/ Another allusion to Su Qins wish to have two acres of land against the wall of his native
Loyang to farm.

54

Poems 4024, 8.12584; 8.8b.

The originals are in Guo Maoqian, Yuefu shiji, 2:45.66263. Fanghui uses many of the same
words, but all of his rhymes are deflected-tone rhymes whereas all of the original ballad rhymes
are even-tone rhymes.
56 Poems 4059, 8.1258485; 8.9a.
55

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CHAPTER FIVE

The second and third poems are much more allusive. We shall translate the third:
407

The multitude gets itself high positions;

first or second is hard to reckon on the spot.
Spirited Calvarythat general
should never have considered Number Five worthy.

Note:
407-34/ The General of the Spirited Calvary is He Chong (262346). Number Five is his
fifth younger brother, He Zhun (ca. 31157). He Zhun was content to spend his life reading
Buddhist sutras and building pagodas and temples. He refused his brothers urgings that he start
an official career. 57

The paraphrasable message is that the bureaucracy has been taken over by the
mob, with no one standing out as number one or number two. When public
service is so meaningless, it is a mistake to consider someone worthy and try
to bring him into the system. The poem is built around an elaborate attempt to
end a line with five, one of the words in Ji Kangs line and thus a word that
must be used as a rhyme in this set of Quatrains. Evidently it was not easy to
end a line with five. Su Shi does it only three times: twice it is in the expression five out of ten times, and once in the number one hundred and five. 58
Fanghuis skill in meeting the challenge is admirable. Not only does he find a
way to end a rhyming line with five, he also uses the numbers one and
two in line 407-2 and, as the rhyme word in that line, sruoQ3c (translated
reckon), which is graphically identical to the word number, sruoH3c.
Though the meaning of the poem seems a little opaque to us, the theme of
number gives it structure and wit.
The fourth poem is simply bizarre. Bizarre, but eloquent.
408

Misordered and mistempered, deep in the dusty pannier

if I can get by, thats worthiness enough.
A stretched-out corpse, its a child by the road
everyone laughs: hes straight as a bowstring.

Seeing an abandoned innocent who is rigid in death by the road, someone

makes a grotesque comparison. The living laugh; what else can they do? The
poet gets his rhyme: string. But he also reminds us that there are dead children in the streets of the capital, and perhaps he makes us wonder what agony
would make a child stretch out so ramrod straight in the last seconds of his life.
The poet is a captive in the dusty pannier of officialdom, but at least he is alive.

57

See the Shishuo xinyu, 18.5 and the Jin shu, 8:93.2417.
(1072); (1079); and (1091),
SSSJ, 2:7.326, 3:18.933 (Fuller, Road to East Slope, 223), and 6:33.1740, respectively.
58

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

397

109798: MINING THE PAST IN JIANGXIA

The next pentametrical Quatrains we have are from two years later and comprise three sets. The first is Five Poems Harmonizing with
Binlaos Musings on the Past at Court Gentlemans Lake. 59 We already know the background to this from the extended pentametrical Regulated Verse with preface
that Fanghui wrote three months earlier (Poem 224). The theme of historical
memory is prominent, as we would expect in these years. In the third quatrain,
our poet revisits the discovery that Court Gentlemans Lake, named by Li Bo in
758, has largely sunk beneath the waves of the Yangzi, but it predicts that Li
Bos writings will survive (or have survived?) the kalpa fires of destruction. The
last quatrain scorns some of the other people who hosted Li for being unable to
respond to his poems and for handing down their names only thanks to the
poetry stone that remains: they are like two flies getting a free ride on a
horses tail (an old but apt comparison).
We shall translate the first poem.
410

The poesy-brush of the Court Gentleman

is available on your Longevity Spring stele.
The lingering numen of conspiring suborners survives
This Culture of Ours is a corpse on display.

Notes:
410-2/ Though Fanghui indicates in his poems that a stele of Li Bos poetry is present at this site,
I am unable to determine why he refers to it here as a Longevity Spring stele.
410-4/ The comparison is to the exposure to public view of the corpse of a criminal or rebel as a
warning to the populace and as an expression of the wrath of the executing party. For the nuances
of This Culture of Ours, see Peter Bols book by that name.

The first couplet does not prepare one for the outburst of rancor in the second.
It is as if remembering Li Bo reminds the poet how Li had been the victim of
conspiring suborners. I think Fanghui saw in those men an adumbration of
the liars and cheats who had seized control of the government in the present
day, forcing upright men such as Wang Yansou into exile. Ultimately, the victim
is culture itself. This Culture of Ours, which has always been the continuity that
runs through history, has reached its end; it is a corpse.
One month later, Fanghui immortalized eight sites in Jiangxia that had not
attracted much notice; he tells us his set of pentametrical Quatrains will supplement the gaps in the commanderys illustrated gazetteer. Under the title
Nine Songs on Jiangxia, we find poems on 1) the pond where the First
Emperor of Qin is said to have sharpened his sword on a rock; 2) a temple that

59 Poems 41014, 8.12585; 8.9a. Pan Dalins cognomen, Binlao, is written in this title with the
character for Bin that is standard with Su Shi. In some other instances Fanghui writes it .

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CHAPTER FIVE

is said to be the former residence of Meng Zong of the Three Kingdoms

period, famous for his filial piety; 60 3) a grave inscription for Zu Guan ,
who gave He Zhizhang some cinnabar and spells that evidently enabled him to
live to ninety-five; 61 4) a now-lost placard, written by Shu Yuanyu
(789835) before he left Jiangxia for an illustrious career; 5) a pavilion at a spot
visited by Niu Sengru (780848 or 849), friend of Han Yu, Bo Juyi, and
others; 6) a large boulder that is said to be the petrified remains of a sunken boat;
7) a pavilion by a stone that is as smooth and reflective as a mirror; and 8) a
dragons lair ford where a dragon was once spotted. Some of the poems attempt some measure of wit, but the wit often seems forced. The significance of
the poems lies in the poets will to make a record of these things; perhaps he
knew these places and the people associated with them would be remembered a
bit longer if his poems were circulatedor even incorporated into the gazetteer;
poetry is often quoted in such records as part of the history of a landmark.
The fourth poem deserves special mention as a comment on texts. Fanghuis
note to the poem tells us that the placard Shu Yuanyu wrote in 828 after he
passed the examinations and prepared to leave has been lost. It was lost just
recently, in the Yuanyou period, after a new account of Shu Yuanyu was written
and engraved in stone at the behest of Wang Dechen (1035?after
1115), the prefect at the time. Now, the text of Fanghuis quatrain is also missing. In some editions, there is simply a blank column; in others, the note
one piece lost; in the Quan Song shi, each missing character is indicated by
the standard symbol for missing characters, twenty of them, with punctuation at the end of each string of five. I think the poem never existed. It is a missing poem for a missing placard that Wang should have taken steps to preserve.
Wang Dechen shared He Zhus interest in preserving information; in fact, he
wrote one book in five juan whose title indicates that it contained poems and
anecdotes about Jiangxia (thus rivaling Fanghuis little set of eight Quatrains). 62
However, for him it was acceptable to replace old texts with new ones or with
copies. Fanghui knew that books preserved culture, but there was no excuse for
failing to preserve the original or earliest possible exemplar of a text, especially if
it was the holograph of the writer or the work of a good calligrapher. In the

60 Knowing his mother wanted to eat bamboo shoots, Meng went into the forest and wept,
for it was winter. Bamboo shoots sprung up in response to his tears. See the Sanguo zhi, Wu shu,
5:48.1169n3.
61 There appear to be corruptions in the text. First, He Zhizhang died at eighty-five, in 744. Second, the date given for Zus visit to He should be the yihai year of the Shangyuan period (corresponding to 67576), not the yihai year of Yuanhe. The Yuanhe period postdates He and contains
no yihai year.
62 See the Song shi, 16:209.5406. I doubt that this book is extant, though another of Wangs
collections of observations and anecdotes is readily available in collectanea: . The preface to
this work is dated 1115 and states that the author is eighty years old; if this is not a rounded-off
date, Wang was thus born in 1035.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

399

context of He Zhus historiographical concerns in the 1090s, writing a missing

poem about a missing original artifact also constituted a protest against the erasure of evidence.
The last pentametrical Quatrains from Jiangxia are nine Bamboo Branch
songs composed as part of a drinking game on the First Si Day of 1098 (7 April).
Bamboo Branch songs became popular in the Tang as a refined version of folk
songs from the region of the Yangzi Gorges. They are always heptametrical quatrains, so Fanghui calls his pentametrical poems variations, deviations:
Variations on Bamboo Branch Lyrics: Nine Poems. 63 The first couplet of
each poem describes a scene or situation in normal poetic language, but the second couplet turns the series into a game: the third and fourth lines invariably
repeat the structure I only hear X; / I dont see Y, in which X is one of
three variations on the name Bamboo Branch Song (ending in a level tone if
the rhyme of the poem is deflected, in a deflected tone if the rhyme is level) and
Y is a figure of the past, real or legendary, identified only through allusions,
never by name. While predecessor poets write Bamboo Branch Songs in pairs or
sets, they do not tie them together with this repeated structure.
We shall translate the second and third poems in the set.
424

On opposite shores, eastern and western provinces;

The clear River slaps the banks as it flows.
I only hear the Bamboo Branch tune
I do not see the Greyquill Boat.

425

Dew is moist, the clouds gauze-cyan.

The moon is lucid, the River boiled-silk-white.
I only hear the Bamboo Branch song
I do not see the sojourner astride the whale.

Notes:
424-4/ See Poem 197 for the association of the Greyquill Boat legend with Ezhou.
425-4/ Du Fu told a friend who was going off to the sea that he might meet Li Bo there, riding a
whale. 64

These nine poems must have delighted and impressed He Zhus banquet companions. The second couplet of each Quatrain is entertaining in somewhat the
same way as a running joke that always starts the same way (How cold was it?
It was so cold), piquing the listeners curiosity about what new variation

63

Poems 42331, 8.1258687; 8.11b.

See Du shi xiangzhu, 1:1.5458, . The statement in question is a variant that comes from a Song edition; see Yoshikawa Kjir, To Ho, 1:1.75, note to
line 17. Su Shi and other poets clearly accepted the version that put Li Bo on the whales: see especially Sus (1071), SSSJ, 1:6.265; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 2932; and
(1100), 7:43.2351.
64

400

CHAPTER FIVE

will follow the lead-in. The difference is that these poems dont offer humorous
punch-lines; instead, they give the listener the satisfaction of recognizing allusions that are familiar, but not too obvious. (The astute reader may have noticed
diction from some of Li Bos famous lines in lines 425-1 and 2, but I have been
unable to find similar clues in the other poems in the set.)
Variations on Bamboo Branch Lyrics typifies He Zhus work in this genre insofar
as the effect of the poems comes largely from their cumulative meaning as a set.
Also, even more explicitly than some of the other Quatrains we have seen, these
poems situation themselves as alternative versions of previous texts or, more
precisely in this case, of a pre-existing form (the heptametrical Bamboo Branch
songs).

ADDENDUM: HEXAMETRICAL QUATRAINS IN THE CAPITAL, 1086 AND 1092

Hexametrical quatrains are relatively rare. A mammoth Southern Song collection
of Tang Quatrains (7,500 heptametrical Quatrains and 2,500 pentametrical
Quatrains) includes only thirty-seven hexametrical Quatrains. For several reasons, the six-syllable line is simply ill-suited for writing and reading poetry in
Classical Chinese. In the pentasyllabic or heptasyllabic lines, an odd number of
syllables creates a tension and release or a proposition and answer across a definite strong caesura, either 2 || 3 or 2|2 || 3. Faced with an even number of syllables, one does not have a built-in structure to guide the parsing of the line. Is it
2 || 2|2, 2|2||2, or 3|3? Even if by custom or fiat one were to get everyone to
use one of those rhythms, the sameness of the constituent units would quickly
become tiresome, upon which poets would vary the rhythm from line to line
and we would be back where we started, with no underlying structure as guide
(or as target for resistance). Worse, there are only two line types available, Qi
Gongs types A and B. If we use for syllables that can be (in theory) either
level or deflected, regulated lines are limited to (Type A) and
(Type B). 65 Even if one adds the twenty-eight possible nonregulated permutations of the A line and the twenty-six non-regulated permutations of the B line to the four regulated A lines and six regulated B lines, one
never escapes those two basic configurations. Nevertheless, Wang Wei, Wang
Anshi, Liu Yuxi, and others produced a handful of works in this form that have
garnered praise through the centuries. 66

65 For reasons Qi Gong cannot explain, the type A line was not considered regulated unless it
ended with two level tones. Discussions of such matters took place in the context of Regulated
Rhapsodies. See Shiwen shengl lungao, 5860.
66 The preceding data and outline of the issues are based on Qi Gongs Shi wen shengl lungao,
5563, and Tan Ruwei and Cao Changhe, Liuyan jueju sanlun.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

401

All of Fanghuis Quatrains in six-syllable lines were written in the capital; four
of them were written on paintings. We shall consider the one that isnt a colophon first, dated the third month of Yuanyou 1 (1086). The title is
Once Again Passing Through Old Haunts on Horseback: Hexametrical. 67
348

Bubbling and babbling, eastward flowing Wan Creek.

(A26)
That year we finished the brew and untwined our hands.
A1
I recognize those willows by the bridge
B6
spring breezehow many times have these crows cried?
A1

Note:
348-1/ There are two or three Wan Creeks in Chinese poetry. Obviously, this Wan Creek (the
name means Winding Creek) is somewhere in or near the capital where people would be parting.

The theme is one we have seen before: revisiting the haunts of the poets youth
in the capital. The diction, however, is particularly reminiscent of Fanghuis lyric
poetry. Eastward flow is found in five of his nearly three hundred lyrics (and
nine of his poems); Wan Creek is found in two lyrics (associated with willowsZhong Zhenzhen dates them to 1078) 68 ; untwine hands (to part) is
found in four lyrics; recognize in three; that year in seven lyrics (and twelve
poems); and how many times in three lyrics. Some of these phrases are frequent in his poetry, as noted. We are not arguing that any of them by itself is
exclusive to the lyric or to He Zhu. Nevertheless, the phenomenon of all of
these phrases coming together in one poem alerts us to a case of genre crossover.
Lyric poetry is one genre in which hexasyllabic lines abound. (Over sixty percent of lyric matrices have at least one hexasyllabic line, and a few are all hexasyllabic in four-, six-, or eight-line stanzas.) 69 Music, after all, provides an overriding structure that solves many of the problems with the hexasyllabic line that
we have mentioned. Fanghui himself considered this poem a hexametrical Quatrain, so we have no idea if he sang it. We can see, however, that he manages to
be consistent in the rhythmic divisions in each line: a 2||2|2 parsing is sustained all the way through. Qianqian (meaning shallow and/or small, but translated bubbling and babbling) is set off as the quality that characterizes east-

67

8.12578; 8.2b.
See Dongshan ci, 14849 and 451.
69 Tan Ruwei and Cao Changhe, Liuyan jueju sanlun, 92. Tan and Cao dont make it clear
that they are describing stanzas, not complete lyrics. My correction is based on a limited survey
of Tang and Song lyrics.
68

402

CHAPTER FIVE

ward flowing Wan Creek; that year stands apart as the time-frame for finish
brew part hands; and recognize has the next four syllables as its grammatical
object. The last line is looser in structure but easily fits the same pattern. I think
we can say that this is another example of his fine sense of structure; however
subtly, he has tried to impose an overall framework on the lines within which he
can work some variations.
Also in 1086, Fanghui wrote a pair of hexametrical inscriptions on fan paintings by the early Song monk-poet Huichong . This was an artist whose
work attracted the colophons of Wang Anshi, Su Shi, Huang Tingjian, and Chao
Buzhi. 70 Fanghui was in privileged company. In fact, one of Fanghuis inscriptions is on a painting that has the same subject as one of Huangs hexametrical
inscriptions: wild geese. There is no reason to think Huichong had not produced
a great many paintings of geese, but it is certainly possible that both inscriptions
were for the same painting, since both poets were in the capital at this time. 71
We shall translate Fanghuis Autumn Waters, Geese Among the Reeds. 72
Huangs colophon is next, the first of a set under the title
Inscribed in Zheng Fangs Painting Folio: Five Poems. 73 Although Huang does not
identify the painting as being on a fan, fans could be mounted in an album; inscriptions could then be added on the mounting or on a separate piece of silk or
paper, not necessarily on the painting itself.
350

South of the barriers, autumn-water dykes and tanks.

A2

Reed leaves sigh and sough, half yellowed.


(A27)

70 For a translation of such a colophon by Su Shi, see Ronald Egan, Poems on Paintings,
436; for one by Huang, see my Colophons in Countermotion, 293.
71 Huangs poem is ascribed to 1087, but there is no reason to take that seriously. The inscriptions he plausibly wrote in the capital at this time are all grouped in 1087; to 1086 are ascribed
only an inscription on someones holograph and a poem matching the rhymes of an inscription by
Su Shi. Dates in Huangs collection are often assigned on the basis of groupings of poems, and the
groupings are often based arbitrarily on a similarity of topic or, as here, stated purpose. That said,
we cannot rule out a 1087 date. Although we shall argue that Fanghui in some ways exceeds
Huangs inscription, our point does not depend on the sequence in which the poems were written
or indeed whether they really were on the same painting.
72 8.12579; 8.3a. The general title for this and the other poem is Inscribed on Fans Painted by Huichong; Hexametrical; Two Poems. The pair is dated the first month of the
year, but it follows a poem dated the third month. Since Huichongs paintings must have been
rather precious works of art held by collectors in the capital, and since Fanghui reached the capital
only in the intercalary second month, I think first month must be a scribal error for third
month .
73 Huangs poem is in Shangu shizhu, 2244:nei.7.128. There is a version attributed to Su Shi,
with slight changes in wording, see SSSJ, 8:50.2770. The title of that version, , specifies
the same topic and artist as Fanghuis poem.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

403

From straight north the geese who flew here

B6
actually thought this place was Xiao-Xiang.
A1

Huichongs smoky rain and returning geese

(B23)

set me down in Xiao-Xiang or Dongting Lake.

(A26)

Im about to call for a little boat to take me home,

B6

but my old friend says its only a painting.

A2

Notes:
350-4/ The Xiao-Xiang region is referred to as the Three Xiang in a 1089 pentametrical Regulated
Verse. See note to line 192-6.
Huang-2/ There is a precedent for set me down in one of Du Fus poems on a painting. 74

Huang Tingjians professed confusion is an old device for praising verisimilitude

in painting, with ample precedents in China as well as in the West. These include
both humans and animals being fooled by the painting. 75 I think Fanghui has
taken this conceit to a slightly higher level: he imagines geese from the north
fooled by art into thinking they had reached their winter habitat in the Dongting-Xiang River region and then flying into the painting to become part of it.
During this stay in the capital, Fanghui was socializing with members of the
imperial clan; we saw his poems to Zhao Lingzhi and Zhao Lingshuai in the
chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse. Whether the Huichong paintings
Fanghui saw belonged to one of them or a relative, we do not know; perhaps
the otherwise unknown Zheng Fang named by Huang Tingjian was the owner.
In any case, during his next period in the capital, Fanghui wrote inscriptions for
paintings owned by Zhao Lingzi (10581100), a member of the imperial
clan whose place on the genealogical tree is presently unclear. 76 The poems were
written in Yuanyou 7 (1092), but Fanghui did not record them, he tells us, until
Zhao died eight years later and the paintings passed into other hands. We shall
translate the second, Sounding the Zither to Call a Crane under the

74 See Du Fus , Du shi xiangzhu, 1:4.27579, line 17; Yoshikawa

Kjir, To Ho, 2:618.
75 See Qian Zhongshu, Guan chui bian 2:71214.
76 Zhaos dates are from John Chaffee, Branches of Heaven, 303, and the death date is confirmed
by Fanghuis headnote.

404

CHAPTER FIVE

title Inscribed at the End of a Scroll of Paintings: Two Hexametrical Poems. 77

433

He thatched a hut: a hundred-foot, overgrown estrade.

A4

Goosefoot staff: one path, moss-covered.

A4

An old crane who has broken off with the chicken flock

B1

should not come hither just for a zither!

A2

There are two ways of reading this poem. If there is a crane in the picture appearing to respond to the floor-zither, the inscription is a playful criticism of the
painting: given that the crane is supposed to be so aloof, it should shun the
hermits music as resolutely as it shuns the common run of birds. This approach,
in which the colophon makes the painting the object of comment, is characteristic of Su Shi. If there is no crane in the picture, if the painting simply depicts a
hermit playing the qin in his hut on a woodsy mound, then the poet is telling us
why the crane is absent. In this case, the poet assumes or pretends that the
painter knows the crane will never come. (This interpretation could apply also to
a painting in which the crane is pictured in flight, not yet called down by the
zither.) The colophon positions itself and the painting together in playful criticism of the facile or vulgar notion that hermits can call cranes with their music.
A similar stance is demonstrable in the colophons of Huang Tingjian. 78
It would seem that Fanghui saw a colophon as an adjunct to a painting that
had to do more than simply restate the mood and theme of the painting; its task
was to tell us something we might not grasp by simply looking at the painting.
How did the geese get there? Should/would a crane respond to human music,
even if it is played on the venerable qin? Difficult as it is to interpret colophons
for paintings we shall never see, such inscriptions were important venues for the
exercise of Song Dynasty wit and subtlety. One regrets that we dont have more
of this kind of poem from He Zhu.

NEW LIFE FOR THE PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAIN

The difficulty inherent in writing free-standing pentametrical Quatrains that
would not seem merely derivative at this point in literary history may have con-

77
78

8.12587; 8.12a.
See my Colophons in Countermotion, for examples.

PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

405

strained He Zhu, but clearly he found that by grouping such poems into sets
and pairs he could give the genre new life. This surely accounts for his proportionately greater output of pentametrical Quatrains in comparison with other
poets. In this chapter, therefore, we found it useful to use what I hope are by
now familiar notions of poetic closure and countermotion to analyze why a
given Quatrain did or didnt seem complete in itself. Allusions to precedents,
celebrations of places and friendships, flirtation with allegory, and the inclusion
of inelegant subjects echo what we have seen in other genres. As in other
chapters, the 1090s feature more topical comments on mores and politics.
Whatever the theme, Fanghuis pentametrical Quatrains are distillations of the
wit and the genius for language that make him so appealing.

CHAPTER SIX

THE HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS OF HE ZHU, 107795

There is something very odd about the statistics for Fanghuis heptametrical
Quatrains (qi yan jueju ). In the first place, the numbers are too low for
a poet in the late eleventh century. Even including a handful of post-1100 Quatrains found in the supplementary section of Fanghuis works, there are only
eighty-nine heptametrical Quatrains in his corpus. 1 This is slightly fewer than his
pentametrical Quatrains. At their ebb in the High Tang, heptametrical Quatrains still accounted for sixty-three percent of the Quatrains written in that period; in the following Mid-Tang, they were up to seventy-four percent, and in
the Late Tang a full eighty-four percent of all Quatrains were heptametrical. 2
 The historical trend toward the heptametrical Quatrain continues in He Zhus
contemporaries, although it should be noted that three Song poets born in
10028, Mei Yaochen, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shunqin, diverged from this trend.
See the table below. 3
Table 7 Heptametrical Quatrains in the Works of Selected Poets

Poet
Du Fu
Li Bo
Yuan Zhen
Bo Juyi
Han Yu

107
48
198
674
75

% of Corpus
1458 = 07%

997 = 05%

746 = 27%
2807 = 24%

414 = 18%

% of Regulated Verse
105 1054 = 10%
48
214 = 22%
198
472 = 42%
674 1917 = 35%
75
164 = 45%

1 The titles of all nine post-1100 heptametrical Quatrains give us their place of composition,
but there are no headnotes giving precise dates. As noted in the Introduction, these and other
poems in the eleventh juan (buyi ) deserve different treatment and will not be covered in the
present study.
2 These figures are calculated on the basis of numbers from Shi Ziyu, Tangdai keju zhidu yu
wu-yanshi di guanxi, quoted in Umeda Shigeo, Haku Kyoeki ni okeru gozetsu to shichiritsu no
tai-ritsusei o megutte, 46. Shis data represents all poets in the Quan Tang shi who have one or
more juan in that collection.
3 See Table 4 in the previous chapter for data sources and the caveat about Su Shi. For Mei
Yaochen, Ouyang Xiu, and Su Shunqin, the data come from Tao Wenpeng, Cai Xiang: Bei Song
qianqi di qijue gaoshou, 79, supplemented by my own count of Su Shunqins Regulated Verses.
Taos figures are approximate for Mei and Ouyang, and he does not give the form for two of the
fifteen poems in a supplementary juan of Cais recovered poems. (The other thirteen are heptametrical Quatrains.) Those two poems are not included in my total number of Regulated Verses
for Cai.

407

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

Poet
Mei Yaochen
Ouyang Xiu
Su Shunqin
Cai Xiang
Su Shi
Huang Tingjian
Zhang Lei
Guo Xiangzheng
He Zhu

180
133
34
143
681
590
673
309
89

% of Corpus
2800 = 06%

850 = 15%

223 = 15%

425 = 34%
2856 = 24%
1878 = 31%
2212 = 30%
1415 = 22%

603 = 15%

% of Regulated Verse

34
143
681
590
673
309
89

116
334
850
1156
1413
822
418

= 29%
= 43%
= 80%
= 51%
= 48%
= 38%
= 21%

We must add one caveat here. It will be recalled that many of He Zhus pentametrical Quatrains are grouped in pairs and sets. The poems we are to consider in this chapter tend not to be in pairs or sets. If we redefine a work as a title,
Fanghui actually wrote many more heptametrical than pentametrical works,
seventy-two to twenty-four.
Table 8 He Zhus Heptametrical Quatrains by Year

Year
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
Totals

Titles
2
0
1
4
12
3
3
0
4
8
7
8
4
1
2
1
0
4
3
3
1
1
72

Singles
2
0
1
3
10
3
2
0
4
7
7
0
4
1
2
1
0
3
3
3
1
1
58

Pairs
0
0
0
0
2
0
1
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
5

Sets
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1

No. of Poems
2
0
1
7
14
3
4
0
4
9
7
8
4
1
2
1
0
5
3
3
1
1
80

If we look for sets of ten heptametrical Quatrains, we find none in He Zhu, in

contrast to his three sets of ten pentametrical Quatrains. Among all other poets,

408

CHAPTER SIX

decades of heptametrical Quatrains were more common than decades of pentametrical Quatrains. Huang Tingjian wrote five sets of ten heptametrical Quatrains; Mei Yaochen, three; Su Shi, Su Zhe, and Zhang Lei, two each. Three Tang
poets we know Fanghui read, Bao Rong, Xue Neng, and Li Bo, wrote at least
one set of ten apiece (Xue wrote two).
 Fanghuis heptametrical Quatrains also dwindle in number with the passage
of time. This is the opposite of what Mo Lifeng has observed in Huang Tingjian.
Huangs works in this genre comprise only twenty-four percent of his poems in
his early period (to 1085), second to his pentametrical Ancient Verse (thirty percent), but after that early period the heptametrical Quatrain is his preferred form.
It rises to account for thirty-six percent of his poems in his second period (to
1093) and forty-six percent in his later period (to his death in 1105). In the case
of He Zhu, there is an early peak before the Xuzhou period and a moderate plateau in the capitalLiyang period of 108688. After that, his output in both Quatrain forms is quite modest. In contrast, his production of heptametrical Regulated Verse (octaves) hits peaks in 1090, 1094, and 1096; his Ancient Verse enjoys revivals in 1089, 1091, and 1096; and even his Songs, which first reached a
peak of five in 1084, continue to hit or exceed that number in 1090, 1091, 1094,
and 1096.
 We could blame this on a quirk of preservation. Accidents do happen:
twenty-five heptametrical Quatrains from the years 1088 through 1095 were
dropped from what is now juan 9, then recovered and patched into juan 10 (shiyi),
as discussed in note 1 to our chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse. Yet
these poems were recovered, after all. We need to explore other explanations for
the paucity of Quatrains in the later years covered by our study.
 I suspect that the real reason for the modest output of Quatrains in the 1090s
is that our poet found that other genres were better for what he wanted to do.
We have already talked about the difficulty of the pentametrical Quatrain; some
of the challenges are the same for the heptametrical Quatrain, even though
more complex dynamics can be established with a 2-2-3 cadence. One is still
limited in the amount of parallelism that can be used and there is no framing
that holds up parallel middle couplets for careful scrutiny. Octaves and longer
songs or Ancient Verses gave He Zhu the space he needed to develop complex
progressions of feeling.
 The Quatrain was in competition with another genre, as well: the lyric. Certain heptametrical Quatrains were written explicitly to be sung to traditional
melodies. We know this because the titles of these poems are simply the names
of the tunes: Yangguan Pass, Bamboo Branch, Willow Branch, and so on. However, an ordinary heptametrical Quatrain could also be put to music and sung if
it stood out as a favorite poem for some reason. Such poems were set to certain
tunes, most especially Bamboo Branch for Quatrains and Zhegutian for

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

409

either octaves or Quatrains, with a little pruning and augmenting where necessary.
 Now, one could criticize a persons lyrics by saying they sounded like an ordinary heptametrical poem put to music. (Fanghuis friend Zhao Lingzhi leveled
this charge against Huang Tingjians lyrics.) 4 This implies that the boundary between a mediocre lyric and a poem sung to music was fuzzy and open to aesthetic dispute. If a bad lyric sounded like a poem set to music, then a poem set
to music could also sound like a bad lyric. Fanghui was a fine lyricist. My theory
is that if he had a choice between writing a heptametrical Quatrain that could be
sung and writing a lyric that would take advantage of and even extend all the
musical and rhythmical resources of that genre, he would write the lyric. Furthermore, as he got older and wrote more and more lyrics, this preference
probably became stronger. On occasions where either a heptametrical Quatrain
or a lyric would serve, the lyric would win out. 5

EARLY START IN THE NORTH

Twenty-seven heptametrical Quatrains survive from 1077, when Fanghui was
collecting wine taxes in Zhaozhou, through the seventh month of 1082, when
he was on his way to Xuzhou. Most of them are solitary pieces.

1077: QUIET SCENES IN ZHAOZHOU

The following poem is the fourth extant poem in any shi genre by He Zhu. Before it, we have only the heptametrical Regulated Verse On the First Si Day,
Thinking of Excursions at Jinming Lake (1075; Poem 232), the pentametrical Regulated Verse Evening Prospect in the Aftermath of Rain (1076; Poem 160), and one
other heptametrical Regulated Verse from 1076. 6 All of those poems headnotes
say they were written in Lincheng. This poem from the fourth month of 1077
and all the later poems (two heptametrical Regulated Verses and another Quatrain) from the same year are ascribed, however, to Zhao Commandery, an old
Tang designation for the prefecture. Perhaps the change in how he refers to the
area reflects a shift of assignment: we know that the young poet was an acting
magistrate in the prefectural seat at Lincheng at some point, but he was also
managing the collection of brew taxes.

Zhao Lingzhi, Hou qing lu, 2:8.11a.

For a more complete treatment of the phenomenon of singing poems and references to the
relevant sources, see Yang Xiaoai, Zhuo qiangzi chang hao shi.
6 Presented to Zhang Shiyuan, Poem 233, 6.12558; 6.1a.
5

410

CHAPTER SIX

 Whatever the sequence of posts, Fanghui was only in his mid-twenties at the
time and must have been precocious. According to his epitaph, as a new magistrate he issued rulings on several hundred stalled legal cases in three days, much
to everyones astonishment. 7 Could this reflect the impatience of youth? In any
case, there is an intriguing incongruity between the image of the decisive young
Fanghui clearing the docket and the mood of this first heptametrical Quatrain,
Hall of Fine Swallows: 8
434

D3

Sparrow voices peep-a-cheep,

swallows dart and dive.

B1

They count on getting, mid fading pink,

a twig or two.

C4

Sleepy thoughts unwares come

and unwares leave again;

D1

the day is long, I lay open a scroll,

when the blinds are down.

Note:
434-2/ Whether it is the poet or the birds who hope to get the fading pink blossoms is unclear. A
variant, There remains fading pink, a twig or two, avoids the question of why
the insectivorous birds or the poet would want to possess fading blossoms.

In the first line of this slight little poem, the heptasyllabic line gives the poet
room to use two reduplicatives (tsreik-tsreik and pi-pi) to lighten the tone and
speed the rhythm. Then, in the third line, he uses another kind of repetition, a
hook word, to the same effect: unwares come and unwares go. By creating a
livelyslowlivelyslow progression through the four lines of the poem, Fanghui
mimics the seductive waves of sleepiness that he talks about in line 3.
The structure of the poem and its distinctive diction must be what made it
worth preserving. (The peep-a-cheep reduplicative is much more common in
the Tang than in He Zhus time, and I believe no one before him combines
dart and dive with another reduplicative in a heptasyllabic line.) In deploying
two reduplicatives in one line (the only time he does this in this genre) and in his
use of hook words, Fanghui flirts with the style of Wang Anshi. In Wangs
heptametrical Quatrains, both of these tools are significant structural and expressive devices. A recent study on Wangs heptametrical Quatrains lists fiftyseven reduplicatives that he uses in this genre, some of them ten or more times.
That is three times the number of reduplicatives Fanghui uses in his admittedly

The epitaph by Cheng Ju (10781144) is found in Zhong Zhenzhens Dongshan ci, 523

9.12588; 9.1a.

24.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

411

much smaller corpus of Quatrains, only twenty-seven of which use a reduplicative (nineteen heptametrical and eight pentametrical Quatrains).
Wang Anshi is extreme in his fondness for reduplicatives. He uses them in
over half of his heptametrical Quatrains. For the sake of comparison, I have
searched Su Shis corpus for all the reduplicatives used in Wang Anshis heptametrical Quatrains and all those used in these twenty-seven Quatrains by He
Zhu. My conclusion is that Su is less enamored of reduplicatives than Wang, but
more apt to use them than He Zhu. Su Shi uses reduplicatives from this list (and
he uses most of them) in sixty Quatrains. (Fifty-three of these are heptametrical.)
Among these sixty Quatrains, Su uses two reduplicatives in sixteen poems. My
impression is that the proportion would be higher in Wangs Quatrains. In only
one of those sixteen poems does Su use the two reduplicatives in a single line.
This line, from a 1087 poem, happens to have the same structure as He Zhus
(XYAAZBB). 9 Wang uses this XYAAZBB format at least once; he also uses
reduplicatives in tandem (AABBXYZ) at least twice. 10
Reduplicatives have a long history in Chinese poetry, from the Classic of Poetry
on down. In the pentametrical line, their use can evoke the Nineteen Old Han
poems and other hoary precedents. In the heptametrical line, the expressive use
of reduplicatives seems to have come right along with the rise of the heptametrical Quatrain. Late Tang poets such as Du Mu were particularly skilled at their
deployment. In this little digression we may have discovered one reason why Su
Shi is quoted by Zhao Lingzhi as saying Wang Anshis heptametrical poems had
a Late Tang air. 11 Possibly it was in a conscious effort to avoid this Late Tang
air that Fanghui later limited his use of reduplicatives. Their deployment in this
1077 Quatrain is exceptional.
Fanghuis garden poems are concentrated in the heptametrical Quatrain.
There are six heptametrical Quatrains with garden in the title: five from 1077
to 1087 and one more, on an abandoned garden in the capital, dated 1091. In

, SSSJ, 8:48.2667, line 1: .

See Zhang Ruijun, Wang Anshi qiyan jueju di yuyan yishu, 1011. The XYAAZBB structure is in , the first line of which is . See Linchuan xiansheng wenji,
30.336. An example of the AABBXYZ format is , the opening line of ,
34.370. The example of two reduplicatives in a string cited by Zhang Ruijun is the third line of
, , 33.356. Reduplicatives meaning every morning, every evening obviously
have a semantic value that is different in kind from in a flurry in a fluster, but in terms of formal
rhythm they are the same, and we shall not discriminate between them in this discussion of the
device.
11 Hou qing lu, Zhibuzuzhai congshu ed., 2:7.10ab. Tao Wenpeng notes the effective use of reduplicatives in the heptametrical Quatrains of Cai Xiang and cites five examples. Whether Cai was
as enthusiastic about reduplicatives as Wang and Su cannot be extrapolated from those examples,
but Cai was an early leader in the return to the late Tang fondness for the heptametrical Quatrain.
See Cai Xiang: Bei Song qianqi di qijue gaoshou, 76.
9

10

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CHAPTER SIX

other genres, besides the Ancient Verse An Excursion to Eupatorium Bottoms Garden at Lingbi (1088), only one pentametrical Regulated Verse and one heptametrical Regulated Verse have a garden as their topic. 12 It seems that the garden as a
place one stops to visit for a short time was best presented in poetry in a genre
that picked out the essence of a momentary experience, but did so in a more
relaxed rhythm than the pentametrical Quatrain, where there are no garden poems. (Note, however, that the topic of buildings that may have been in gardens
is more widely distributed across genres.)
Here is the 1077 garden poem, North Garden: Beginning of Summer. 13
435

B4

The breath of Heaven is clear and mild,

the shade of the trees is heavy.

D2

The murky mist of drizzly rain

dampens the fenestral.

A1

Carmine-red has half fallen

engendering such perfume!

B1

towards evening on the trellis

of roses, a breeze.

Notes:
435-3/ The first four syllables are a direct quotation from the third line of a heptametrical Quatrain by Du Mu. I take the zai at the end of the line as exclamatory. 14 An alternative reading would
yield: the living musk remains, comparing the scent of the flowers to musk produced by a living
musk deer, the highest grade.

Fanghui was probably pleased with this Quatrain as a summation of the season
in four perfectly regulated lines, the first couplet capturing the mild weather,
thick foliage, and humidity of early summer, the second couplet bringing the
scene to life with color and scent. The sound patterns do not create the lilting
effect we saw in Hall of Fine Swallows; more subtle, they are simply pleasing to the
ear. In line 435-2, the alliterative compounds meing meng (hazy; murky mist,
more commonly written ) and lam lung (window-curtain and lattice;
fenestral) are balanced against the staccato entering tone syllables: meing
meng | bak ghuoQ || syep lam lung. In line 435-4, the rhyming disyllabic word
mei1a ghwie1a (roses) and the final word, pung (breeze) are framed within
the assonance of all the other syllables in the line: syangH3 manQ3a mei1a ghwie1a
kaH2 dzyangH3 pung3b.

12 Making an Excursion to the Shi Family Garden and Ponds in Tengxian; 5.12547;
5.4b (1085) and Inscribed on the Water Pavilion in the Yongcheng County[-office] Gardens,
6.12564; 6.9b (1086).
13 9.12588; 9.1a.
14 Du Mus poem: , Fanchuan shiji zhu, 2.18283. For similar uses of zai, see
Zhang Xiang, Shi ci qu yuci huishi, 3.307308.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

413

This framing actually enhances a critical point of interest in the poem because
it foregrounds the roses and the breeze, whose relationship is both obvious and
open to doubt. Note that the line is a noun phrase (breeze on the rose trellis
towards evening) or two (roses towards evening; breeze on the trellis); it
makes no proposition, simply noting the existence of the breeze (or the breeze
and the roses). Thus, it opens up two possibilities: either one becomes aware of
the breeze because it brings the scent (mentioned in line 435-3) from the rose
trellis or one becomes aware of the scent because it was carried by the breeze.
At this moment in the garden, the consciousness through which we experience
the scene is unable to decide which was perceived first, the breeze or the scent.
What seemed to be merely a poem about a pretty scene ends up inviting introspection about our perceptual operations.

1080: RESTRAINT IN FUYANG

A more intimate view of the poets life is offered in two poems of Yuanfeng 3
(1080), after Fanghui has moved south to Fuyang, now assigned to a Chief
Manufactory. The first Quatrain shows a startling discovery for a young man of
twenty-nine sui: Upon Seeing my First White Hair: Shown to My
Wife. 15
437

D2

How could I count off on my fingers

to reckon when Ill be made a lord?

B1

The westing sun, the easterly wind

I see a white head!

C4

Indeed it is true that this self of appearances

does not belong to me;

D1

if you want to consider whats outside the self,

it is even more remote.

Notes:
437-1/ If the speaker cannot calculate on his fingers when he will rise to a high position, that day
must be far off.
437-2/ Since the poem was written in the third month, the last month of spring, this line may
simply mean late on a spring day I discovered the white hair.
437-3/ Appearances translates the Chinese equivalent of the Sanskrit rpa, that which is apprehended by the senses.

With the discovery of the white hair, the poet knows viscerally that his body is
just another phenomenon that goes its own way independent of his will. The

15

9.12588; 9.1b, third month

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CHAPTER SIX

idea that the body is a form lent by Heaven and Earth comes from the Zhuangzi,
but the contingent reality of the self implied in line 437-3 gives a Buddhist tone.
If this line sounds familiar, it is because Su Shi, two and a half years later and in
exile at Huangzhou, will say in a famous lyric that his body/self does not belong to me. 16 Whether we should construe such sentiments to mean that the
officials body is controlled by the orders of the government or that it is the officials own ambition that places his self under the control of external forces is
difficult to say. Perhaps both meanings are intended. Although much of
Fanghuis later poetry repeats this kind of complaint in various forms, however,
in this Quatrain he seems not to be pulled or pushed by whats outside the
self, which he pronounces remote, insubstantial, youyou. The discovery of a
sign of aging seems to have triggered a renunciation of worldly concerns. One
wonders whether his wife was ready to accept such sweet insouciance in a husband not yet thirty.
Fanghuis wife may have been both charmed and worried by the heptametrical Quatrain Fanghui wrote a couple of months later, in the fifth month of 1080:
Home from the Office. 17
438

B4

The fires of my heart have turned to ash

and will not burn again.

D3

My old garden I left with smiles

thirteen years ago.

A4

In the evening cool I retire to dine

and have no other business

B1

but to sit and with a crowd of kids

hold the line of a paper kite.

Note:
438-4/ Or: and so (zuo) with a crowd of kids I hold the line of a paper kite.

When ones heart has turned to ashes (as in line 438-1), it often means he is no
longer a slave to passions; he can look upon the world with unruffled calm.
Frankly, though, Fanghui is a little young to be claiming such imperviousness to
excitement. The context here tells us rather that the fires of his heart have
turned to ashes because of the gap between the hopes and aspirations he entertained when he left home with smiles thirteen years ago and his present station in life. It is the renunciation of ambition that gives He Zhu quality time
with the children.

16 See Su Shis lyric of 1082 to the matrix Linjiangxian (), Xue Ruisheng,
Dongpo ci biannian jianzheng, 2.37678, Ronald Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 31516, and Wang
Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 300. For the Zhuangzi passage, see Watson, 238, and Graham, 161.
17 9.12588; 9.1b.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

415

The fact that heptametrical Quatrains tend to be perfectly regulated encourages one to use them to express measured calm and balance. That calm and balance, however, can be deceptive, as we have just suggested.
For more evidence of this, let us consider the idyllic life enjoyed by the peasants in what appear to be set pieces harmonizing with a series of poems by an
otherwise unknown acquaintance: Harmonizing with
Lyrics on Peasants in the Four Seasons, by Cui Ruozhuo: 18
440

441

442

443

D1

With sound of drums they welcome a guest,

and drunken go back home.

B1

The trees of the shrine enring them

and sunlight slants.

C2

All delight that this year

the spring offering is lovely;

D4

wrapping heads in pink are

life-like flowers.

B1

Wild tendrils pull flowers,

crossing low walls.

D1

Its the season of ripening wheat,

and then theres the silkworm rush.

A1

Greeting me at the gate, elders

entertain their guest:

B1

whats drawn from the well is pure and sweet,

and cool in the shade of trees.

D2

Chicken voices and barks of dogs

here and there, afar.

B1

Shrine brew shows up in the troughs

and they call the guest to taste.

C2

The morning sun is sheer and clear,

the reservoir vaster than before;

D4

a breeze blows over buckwheat,

dense flowers wafting fragrance.

B1

The sheeted snow of evening

submerges rabbit toils.

18

9.12589; 9.2a. Composed in the eighth month of 1080 at Fuyang.

416

CHAPTER SIX

D3

A4

B1

Full cups of bean porridge

are offered to the neighbors.
When nights are long a young wife
has no husking or weaving;
a point of bluish lamplight
attends while she spins hemp.

Notes:
441-2/ Qiu means (when speaking of grain) ripe, but also harvest and autumn.
442-1/ An obvious allusion to the ideal Daoist state, in which villagers can hear the chickens and
dogs of neighboring hamlets but have no desire to travel that far away.
443-4/ The steps of braking, heckling, and spinning hemp are all encompassed, I believe, in the
verb ji.

This is a world of perfect order and bounty. (Even the metrical sequences are
well ordered, alternating between DBCD and BDAB.) Work in this village must
be getting done, but the labor is out of sight: when winter wheat is being harvested and silkworms tended in summer, the old men have time to invite the
poet in for a drink of cool water; while everyone gathers in the fall to drink
more brew at the shrine, buckwheat is there to be smelled, not to be harvested
and processed. In spring, the celebrants wear artificial flowers on their heads;
then and in the fall, there is brew to share, and later a surplus of steaming cups
of porridge to take the chill out of winter. The only person working is the young
wife.
Is there a slight note of discord here? Of course, that a young wife slaves
through the night might strike the poet as a reassuring sign of industriousness,
not a mark of desperation, but he does let slip the information that she does not
pound grain in a mortar or weave. Does this mean those tasks are already done,
or that there was little grain to husk and no silk to weave, despite all the activity
of the previous seasons?
Five months before this set of Quatrains, Fanghui had written an Ancient
Verse to describe drought conditions in the area. 19 In the previous year, in Joy
Over Rain (Poem 040) his relief at the ending of a drought had been tempered
with the warning that high rents and heavy taxes could still cripple the peasant
economy. At the very moment the present Quatrains are being written, let us
remember, Su Shi is settling into his exile in Huangzhou. He had earned his
exile largely by vividly portraying in his poemsmany of them heptametrical
Quatrainsthe hardships and disruptions visited upon the peasants by the New
Policies. Even as he approached Huangzhou early in this same year, he still
wrote a poem contrasting a utopian village in a painting with the present-day

19

Spring Travel: Poem 043, 2.12511; 2.3ab.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

417

reality of county clerks pressing for cash, beating on the doors at night. 20 Also,
Sus poem about the shed-tattered-pants bird (mentioned in our chapter on
Songs) was written in 1080. Whether or not he knew that Su Shi was still writing
such poems about the suffering of the peasants, Fanghui had to have known the
widely-circulated poems that had gotten Su into trouble. (An important factor
that brought about this unprecedented literary persecution was the simple fact
that they were so widely circulated, thanks to the relatively new technology of
print.) In this context, it seems to me that even a purely literary exercise on
the theme of happy farmers could not avoid evoking a comparison between the
idyllic village life depicted in such a poem and the village life portrayed by Su Shi.
This would be true even if local conditions in Fuyang were not as drastic. If the
final couplet in the set implies that taxes or rents have taken away the households grain and silk, this is the imperfection in the tableau that reveals the
poets true thoughts about the four seasons of the peasants life.
With this in mind, Id like to take another look at the meaning of our poet
sitting with a crowd of kids holding the line of a paper kite (438-4). In the first
month of the year, when he crossed the Huai River on his way into exile, Su Shi
had written these words about the son who was accompanying him:
I only delight in my small
son, / in youth he devoted himself to contentment and happiness. / Now he
follows me in arduous difficulties; / his liver and lungs are like iron and stone.
In a diary entry for 17 August 1891, the Qing official Zhang Peilun
(18481903) singled out these four lines as one example of the restrained
brushwork (lianbi ) that characterizes Su Shis poetry at this juncture. The
idea seems to be that by speaking of his own plight as reflected in the changed
life of his son and telling us his admiration for his sons fortitude, Su Shi expresses his own shame and frustration only through implication. 21 Su Shi had
been in a position where he could actively campaign for relief from the excesses
of the New Policies, but now he was powerless. Fanghui had always been powerless, no matter how high his ambitions. Collecting taxes and supervising arms
production, he must have been aware that he was extracting surplus value from
the people, not returning benefits to them. However different the situations of
the two men, it seems appropriate that Fanghui also express his frustrations
over the meaninglessness of his job in restrained brushwork.

20 , SSSJ, 4:20.1030; Egan, Word, Image, and Deed, 53;

Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 12829.
21 Jianyu riji, xinmao B.33b34a. The Su Shi poem is , SSSJ, 4:20.1022. The other poem
Zhang Peilun cites is , 4:20.1017. The point there seems to be that Su
Shis anguish or anger over the exile of himself and his brother is expressed indirectly in the opening lines. In those lines, the poet expresses wonderment that Su Zhe, in exile himself, yet grieves for
him.

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CHAPTER SIX

1081: MAKING IT FRESH

The following poem from the second month of 1081, At the
Eastern Citywall, Seeing off a Guest, On Horseback, is unusual for a farewell poem in
that it says virtually nothing about the person who is leaving except that it refers
to the smoke rising from the cooking fire on his boat; it is not even clear
whether his is the only boat moored there, east of Fuyang, so I have chosen to
translate as if there were several outlander or guest boats. 22
446

B1

Toward noon a lone smoke

rises from outlanders masts.

D1

One bank of springtime waters,

two mandarin ducks.

A1

The fisher lad knows how to sing

the Canglang Song

B4

and must be laughing at himall dusty

the young man on the horse.

One hopes Fanghui shared this poem with the departing person, who surely
would have appreciated the way he distilled the scene into vertical images (the
smoke and masts) in the first line, juxtaposed against the horizontal (water
stretching away along the bank) and the point (the colorful ducks) in the second
line. There is structural interest, also, in the use of the numbers one (meaning
whole) and two in line 446-2. We can see this as a kind of variation on the
repetition of a hook word, a device we mentioned above (see p. 410).
If we imagine boys fishing along the river, the traveler likewise might have
enjoyed Fanghuis pretence that one of them knew the Canglang Song sung by
the ancient fisherman who laughed at Qu Yuan. Fanghui puts himself in the
place of the ancient poet: though he is the young man on the horse, he is
supposedly the object of the boys scorn. Qu Yuan was scorned because he
would not adapt to a changing situation to wash his cap-strings when the
Canglangs waters were clear and wash his feet when they were muddy. Does
this suggest that Fanghui sees himself as equally committed to his course in the
world, unable to withdraw?
There is one other heptametrical Quatrain preserved from the second month
of 1081. Its structure is similar insofar as a striking first couplet of scene description is followed by a second couplet that is syntactically continuous. The
title of the poem is East of the Wei Wall. 23

22
23

9.12589; 9.2b. Written in Fuyang.

9.12589; 9.2b. Composed in Yuancheng , the county in which Daming lies.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

447

B1

Over a low and stubby palace wall

apricot blossoms can be seen;

D2

by drizzling drops of evening rain

crying crows are drenched.

A2

I want to take tonights

dream of longing to return

B4

and rely on the spring breeze

to blow it all the way home.

419

By now we recognize the vivid effect of the reduplicatives (translated low and
stubby and drizzling drops), though they dont create quite the strong forward momentum that we observed when two reduplicatives were used in the
first line of Hall of Fine Swallows (Poem 434; see p. 410). In fact, we might pause
a bit to wonder why the wall around a palace would be low and stubby, until
we remember that the title tells us this wall was built during a Wei Dynasty, that
is, under one of the powers that ruled the area at various times from the third to
the sixth centuries. It has been worn down by time and cannot screen off the
apricot trees that a poet might wish to imagine were once part of the palace gardens.
Perhaps it is the apricot blossoms that make the poet want to enjoy spring at
home; perhaps it is the drenching rain that makes him want to be away from
where he is now. Either way, the scene described in the first couplet leads to the
hope that the spring breeze will blow him in dream to the place to which he
always hopes to return. The balance and stasis of the seemingly parallel first two
lines set off the flowing enjambment of the last two lines very effectively, making the second half of the poem seem like a spontaneous release of energy.
For comparison, we can take Bo Juyis heptametrical Quatrain Boat
Back to Hangzhou. 24 I choose this poem because Bo also uses a similar construction in the last couplet of a Quatrain: he wants to take something and rely
on a (non-animate) agent to convey it to a distant destination.
*

24

QTS, 13:446.5009.

C2

Since I bade Qiantangs

hills and waters farewell,

D3

I have not drunk much wine

and Im too lazy to chant poetry.

A4

I want to take this feeling and

rely on the returning oars

(B3)

to make it known to West Lakes

breeze and moonlight.

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CHAPTER SIX

Notes:
1/ Qiantang is another name for Hangzhou.
4/ West Lake is Hangzhous most famous landmark.

Bo Juyis poem differs from He Zhus in two important ways. First, the first
couplet uses continuous syntax and thus provides less of a ground against
which the next couplet can stand out. The parallel neglect of both wine and poetry in line 2 can be seen, however, as a substitute for interlinear parallelism; it
does give us pause and its implied message (that the finer things of life lose their
appeal when you are away from Hangzhou) provides the psychological ground
for the next couplet. Second, both of Bos auxiliary verbs come in line 3, while
Fanghui prefers to use as much of that line as possible to showcase the long
noun phrase tonights dream of longing to return. Each poem is effective in
its own way, and although I prefer He Zhus poem overall, I think Bo Juyis first
couplet is a small masterpiece. The point of our comparison is not to rank the
poems, however, nor can we generalize about the language and style of each
poet on the basis of two Quatrains. My purpose is simply to sharpen our appreciation of how a similar, unusual use of two auxiliary verbs in the closing lines of
a Quatrain has slightly different effects in different contexts.

1081: DISINGENUOUS QUATRAINS IN THE DAMING AREA

The Yellow River changed course in 1081, breaking through its dykes near the
end of the fourth month and overcoming weeks of efforts to contain the flooding. 25 As it established a more western course northward to the Bohai, it became
possible to wade across the old riverbed. Living in Guanshi , a little over
30km northeast of Daming and even closer to the old riverbed, Fanghui experienced this firsthand. (Why Fanghui was living in Guanshi after leaving his position in Fuyang is unknown.) In the eighth month, he wrote Crossing
at Nanluo Ford Again. 26
452

B1

Stagnant water engenders algae

that sinks a horses hooves.

D3

Rising sand: indistinctly

the Metal Dike is visible.

A2

The accomplishments of Yu have aged

and no one continues them;

25 See the Song huiyao, 8:193.756263. Most breaks at this location and others occurred later in
the year, in the sixth, seventh, and eighth months. See the table on pp. 5859 of Yoshioka Yoshinobu, Sdai Kka shi kenky, under Chanzhou .
26 9.12590; 9.3b.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

B1

421

Ill never believe the eastward flow

wont go west again.

Notes:
452-2/ One of the more than dozen dikes in the Daming area was called Metal Dike.
452-3/ Yu is the ancient culture hero who drew off the flood waters and gave mankind dry land
on which to dwell.

The eastward course of the Yellow River is so inexorable that it became an ancient image for the linear flow of time. To suggest that the Yellow River might
flow west is as absurd as expecting time to run backward or water to flow uphill.
The reality, however, is that the river has done just thatin the sense that its
course has shifted to the west (though it still flows ultimately to the east via a
more northerly route). To remark on this strange fact is to make a little joke, but
there is nothing funny about the rising sand that has pushed the waters out of
the river bed to carve a new course. It is not only an indictment of mankinds
failure to maintain the waterways of the great Yu, it is a sign of a topsy-turvy
world in which the Yellow River might go west again.
There is nothing in this Quatrain to suggest that the Fanghui is passing
through anything but an empty landscape. In fact, however, the Song Dynasty
had seen a marked increase in population in this area precisely because of the
need for labor on hydraulic projects; Daming actually exceeded Kaifeng in size
and Hebei Circuit produced the largest number of civil and military officials in
the Northern Song. 27 The next two Quatrains, written in the same eighth month,
bring us to the human cost of the floods, but again with a sharp sense of irony.
Passing By the Flooded Houses of the People in Chan and
Wei: Two Poems, take an odd its-an-ill-wind-that-blows-nobody-good attitude
toward the havoc wreaked by the Yellow River: 28
454

D3

Sand-laden, the reans and acres,

how often washed away?

B1

Half dead, brown mulberry trees

ring the thorps of yore.

C2

Its not necessarily that neighboring fiefdoms

collect taxes like tigers;

D3

They relish the fact that of ten houses

nine have gone to fish.

27 See Yoshioka Yoshinobu, Sdai Kka shi kenky, 229 and 242, and Cheng Minsheng, Songdai
diyu wenhua, 134.
28 9.12590; 9.4a. Chanzhou appears on the Zhongguo lishi ditu ji map (6:1617) as Kaide Superior Prefecture . Wei is probably Wei County on the same map; cf. the location of
Weizhou on the map in Yoshioka Yoshinobu, Sdai Kka shi kenky, 396.

422
455

CHAPTER SIX

B1

Dont ask if the people who live here,

have drowned or run away;

D1

Smashed hedges and leaning houses

shelter fishing bateaux.

A1

The old tree in the courtyard

after autumns winds,

B1

storks and cranes will bring their young,

to seize the nests of magpies.

Note:
454-3/ Neighboring fiefdom conventionally refers to neighboring counties or similar units.
Zheng, collect taxes, would mean administration if read with a departing tone, but that would
result in a tonal violation, a phenomenon we have yet to see in Fanghuis heptametrical Quatrains.

The first poem notes the destruction of agriculture and sericulture caused by
flooding and refers to the sites of former villages, yet its second couplet seems
to indicate that the people have not fled. The explanation given for their remaining here is not that taxes are higher elsewhere (nor that refugees find no welcome in neighboring circuits, which is probably the reality) but that the fishing is
so good now! The same point is made more explicitly in the first couplet of the
second poem: the ruined farms shelter fishing bateaux. The reference to
storks and cranes seizing magpie nests (line 455-4) could symbolize the fact that
the people one sees now are fisher-folk who have replaced the peasants, but
perhaps it is the peasants themselves who live on boats in their ruined farms.
Either way, the magpies have left for drier climes and cataclysmic change is still
the overriding theme.
I think these two poems and the one we introduced before them hint at a
complex and tragic situation that cannot be expressed within the limited space
of a heptametrical Quatrain and in fact could not be safely voiced in any poetic
form. The hints come in the form of statements that are not quite appropriate in
the context.
Another example: in another heptametrical Quatrain written at the same time,
Gazing at Nanle City from a Lodge on the Metal Dike, Fanghui
says that if the millet crop is lost it is not the fault of the administration, and the
people can still dine on fish. 29 Such a statement flies in the face of the reality
that river administration was a matter that high officials spent a great deal of
time debating. We may think that control of the Yellow River is ultimately impossible, or that it was certainly not feasible with the technology available to the
Song government, no matter how many tens of thousands of laborers were employed on it or how ingenious the construction of dikes. That does not mean

29

Poem 453, 9.12590; 9.3b. Nanle was south of Daming, on the route down to Chanzhou.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

423

that the people of eleventh century China accepted floods as inevitable or believed their effects could not be ameliorated. The debates at court had to be
predicated on the faith that the river could be tamed if only the right principles
were applied. In fact, the administration was still congratulating itself on having
repaired the disastrous 1077 break at Chanzhou (causing the flood that nearly
inundated Xuzhou when Su Shi was prefect there) in only two years, whereas a
similar effort in the Han Dynasty had required three decades to complete. Under the New Policies administration, new fiscal measures, new offices, new engineering projects, and new relief measures had just been put into place, centered on Chanzhou. 30 If these efforts failed to prevent another breakout in another direction, it was a failure of administration. Asserting the contrary, it seems
to me, is blatantly disingenuous, just as declaring let them eat fish in the pair
of poems we have just translated is intentionally provocative. The use of perfectly regulated Quatrains that carefully balance the two possible metrical sequences (DBCD and BDAB) to cheerfully report the benefits of fishing in
drowned villages and towns is surely a calculated move to increase the sense of
irony and satire. We suspected that Fanghuis poems on the happy villagers in
Fuyang in the eighth month of the previous year were insincere; the mask of
insouciance in the flood poems of 1081 is even more transparent.

1081 AND 1082: IN AND OUT OF THE CAPITAL

Back in the capital, Fanghui writes only four (extant) heptametrical Quatrains
before moving on to the mint in Xuzhou in the seventh month of 1082. We
shall present two of them, one for its unique diction, the other for its anticipation of a concept that Li Qingzhao made famous in one of her lyrics.
On a Winters Night, Thinking of and Sending This to
Zhou Wenqing and Guo Tianfu was written in the eleventh month of 1081, shortly
after Fanghui returned to the capital. Before entering the city, he had gone to
the northern suburbs and spent several days in the Garden of the Gourd
with his brothers-in-law, Zhou Hang and Guo Chen . He imagines that
they are still having a lively time while he sits in his chilly study. 31
457

D3

The wall mortar on the verge of extinguishing,

my inkstone has sprouted brash.

B1

I look up at the ceiling, canting again

from the old scroll of poems.

30
31

See Yoshioka Yoshinobu, Sdai Kka shi kenky, 244254.

9.12590; 9.4b. See the headnote to Poem 062, 2.12516; 2.10a.

424

CHAPTER SIX

C4

From afar I imagine, in the northern garden,

my fellows in idle leisure,

D1

with green coins piled at their seats,

gambling at palace go.

Notes:
457-1/ The only other reference I can find to a mortara bowl of oil with a floating wickhung
on the wall for illumination in the Tang or Song is in a similarly autumnal lyric by Chen Shidao. 32
The reservoir in the stone on which the poet should be grinding ink is filling with brash-ice because of the cold.
457-4/ Green coins are bronze coins. Palace go is mentioned only in a handful of Tang poems, not
in other Song poems I know of or lyrics.

Fanghui seems determined to individualize his expression, all the while keeping
within the good taste of regulated lines. In addition to the unusual lamp and
game mentioned in the notes, we might observe that no Tang poets and only a
very few Song poets look up at the ceiling. Only two use the phrase more
than once, as far as I can tell: Wang Anshi (five times) and Fanghui. 33 It also
appears in four biographies in the dynastic histories. Generally, it is associated
with sighing, weeping, or feeling preoccupied (but Zhang Lei sings looking at
the ceiling when he is drunk). Fanghuis poem-chanting is unique (in the verb
used), but especially apt and effective in this poem because it contrasts in orientation and mood with the intensity with which we can imagine Zhou Hang and
Guo Chen are staring down at their game board and coins.
When the great lyricist Li Qingzhao, born about two years after the next
poem was written, feared her little boat could not carry so much grief, she
may have been quoting from He Zhu. Written While Moored
Outside Broadford Gate records the poets feelings as he was about to leave the
capital for Xuzhou in the seventh month of 1082: 34
460

B1

West of the colored sunbow bridge

I tarry on the seventh.

D1

So many times have I turned my head

to the phoenix loft!

A1

How can I in a single

leaf of a boat

(), Quan Song ci, 1:587.

In one other poem, he imagines Pan Dalin sleeping in this position. See the last couplet of
the 1097 Inscribed on the East Studio of Pan Dalin (Poem 157), a portion of which was translated in
our chapter on Ancient Verse.
34 9.1259091; 9.4b. For a translation of Li Qingzhaos lyric ( []),
see, inter alia, Alice Cheang, ed., A Silver Treasury of Chinese Lyrics, 87. Ten years later, Fanghui will
be at the same location on horseback; see Poem 211 in our chapter on pentametrical Regulated
Verse.
32
33

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

B1

425

carry the ten thousand bushels

of the grief of departure?

Note:
460-1/ The seventh day of the seventh month is the day the cowherd and weaving maiden stars
can unite across the Milky Way.

This Quatrain is strongly reminiscent of a lyric. It implies that the speaker is

leaving a courtesan with whom he has fallen in love (in the phoenix loft), a
situation we expect to see in He Zhus lyrics but not his poems. Only the meter
and the uniform, balanced rhythm keep this poem within the bounds of the
Quatrain. The long noun phrase in the last line (leave-person ten-thousandbushel grief) also strikes me as a construction that would be rare in the lyric. Li
Qingzhaos cannot carry / so much grief is a translation of
this line into the rhythm and simpler phrasing of the lyric. Again, He Zhus heptametrical Quatrains resolutely assert their distinction from the lyric.

1083 AND 1085: XUZHOU

It would seem that Fanghuis poetry society in Xuzhou ignored the heptametrical Quatrain. Perhaps the form was seen as most suited for casual social functions, not for serious work. Fanghui leaves only four heptametrical Quatrains
from 1083, none written in Xuzhou. One was written in Yongcheng, on the way
to the poets home district on the north side of the Yellow River. Twoa pair
of Willow Branch Songswere written at a banquet in his native Weizhou. One
more was written in Yongcheng on the way back to Xuzhou and shortly before
he climbed the Delightful! Pavilion. He leaves no poems in this form from 1084
and the four from 1085 have interesting touches but seem mostly perfunctory.
(On the other hand, in 1085 Fanghui ventures the first pentametrical Quatrains
that proved worthy of preservation, as we saw in the previous chapter.) Su Shi is
writing interesting and memorable heptametrical Quatrains in Huangzhou at
this time, but apparently they have no immediate impact on He Zhus writing. 35
The two Willow Branch songs would ordinarily be for singing, as we mentioned above (p. 408). However, in his headnote, Fanghui tells us that the singer
Yang Rou brought out two round white fans and requested poems, so
these particular songs were to be inscribed on fans for her use or enjoyment. (In
fact, it is only in writing that one can see the clever acrostic in the poems, which
we shall discuss in a moment.) The songs turn on the common association of

35

54.

Most of these are anthologized in Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 14748, 15052, and 153

426

CHAPTER SIX

willows with feminine grace and the convention that willow twigs are to be
given to a departing friend. Here are Two Willow Branch Songs:
462

463

B4

Right after Qingming,

subsequent to rain,

D2

In the winding tank they see their image

and sport their swaying grace.

A1

With deepest feeling they will beseech

the lord of wind and light

B4

to hold dear their long wands

until the young man comes.

B4

Willowsthe eastern wind

blows all day,

D3

Their supple wands surely

can not withstand it.

A3

At the metropolitan gate in the third month,

a place of anguished hearts;

B4

more than half of their green-so-green

is given away in parting.

Notes:
462-1/ Qingming is a spring festival that takes place early in the fourth month.
462-3/ Fengguang, wind and light, means scenery, or time, among other things. The lord of
wind and light may refer to something like nature, or a force that controls time and nature.

Fanghui makes no effort to vary the line-type sequence here, using the same
BDAB sequence in each poem of the pair. He has another goal: acrostic couplets. The first characters in lines 1 and 2 of each Quatrain spell out two names:
Fanghui in Poem 462, and Yang Rou (the singer) in Poem 463. (The words
marked in italics in the translation are translations of the relevant syllables in the
context of their lines.) Actually, one could make a sentence with the first characters of all the lines in Poem 462: Fanghui deeply loves. The initial characters
in Poem 463 could form a sentence meaning perhaps Yang Rou is really something, but this is a guess. I cannot say with absolute assurance that all four
characters make a meaningful string. In any case, whether the poems were partially or wholly acrostic, our poet must have impressed Yang Rou and all the
Weizhou locals at the banquet.
On his way back to Xuzhou later in 1083, Fanghui evokes Tao Yuanming
with simple and conventional allusions in a poem titled

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

427

Returning from Wei to Xu, I Rest in Mr. Wangs Garden in Yongcheng. 36 The new
interpretations we saw reflected in his Songs after 1096 are not yet in evidence,
yet our poet finds a way to startle us.
464

B4

On the road home, dirt and dust

softly coat my whip.

D1

Below the north window I look up from the pillow

at a sky of cerulean clouds.

A1

This gusto of Chaisang

is emulated by no one;

B1

we have turned our back on your pure style

for seven hundred years.

Notes:
464-2/ In a letter, Tao Yuanming describes the happiness of lying below a north-facing window in
the fifth or sixth month and enjoying the cool breeze, as if he were Master Fu Xi. See Note to line
30-56.
646-3/ Chaisang is an old name for Tao Yuanmings native district. (See line 063-24 for a 1081
pun based on this name.)

It is of course an absurdity to claim that the Chinese literati had turned their
backs on Tao Yuanmingat least as an ideal. To be sure, one might argue that
Taos genteel rusticity could never be revived in a world in which the economics
of owning and farming land were undoubtedly much more complicated than
they had been seven centuries in the past. That, however, is probably not the
message here. Rather, I think this poem is a compliment to Mr. Wangs garden.
If we have forsaken the gusto of Chaisang, that is true only outside the garden;
within it lies a haven like Tao Yuanmings homestead. As proof, once Fanghui
returns to Mr. Wangs garden (the first word in the poem is a nod toward
Taos Return rhapsody), 37 he actually emulates Tao by lying below a window on
the cool side of the house (this is the sixth month, summer) to gaze at the sky.
It seems to me, by the way, that if the title had told us this poem was written
for a site named after Tao Yuanming or a phrase associated with him, the poem
would have been trite; it would have simply explained the name. Part of the appeal of the poem is that it discovers the neglected Tao Yuanming spirit where
Mr. Wang had not contrived to declare it.

36 9.12591; 9.5b. It will be remembered from our chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse
that Yongcheng is on the Bian Canal about 250 km southeast of the capital.
37 Gui connotes going home; note that the word in the title also translated return, huan, refers to He Zhus trip back to Xuzhou and does not have the same connotation.

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CHAPTER SIX

108687: THE CAPITAL

On the way from Xuzhou to the capital at Kaifeng in early 1086, Fanghui
stopped again in Yongcheng. As he was leaving in the intercalary second month,
he wrote a Quatrain as an inscription for the studio of the assistant magistrate,
Chen Lin . Earlier, in the second month, he had written a heptametrical
Regulated Verse for Chens Pacing the Clouds Pavilion on the southeastern
coast, apparently based on a painting. 38 The heptametrical Quatrain is far more
conventional, but we translate it here because it ends with a skillful pairing of
allusions to He Zhizhang (the Crazy Traveler from Siming) and Liu Yuxi. It includes, moreover, the first tonal violation we have seen in a heptametrical Quatrain by He Zhu. Its title is About to Leave Yongcheng;
Inscribed on Chen Bojuns Studio of Meng. Meng is the fourth hexagram in the Classic
of Changes; it is probably not possible in a Quatrain to do much with the various
meanings ascribed to a hexagram and there is no sign that Fanghui attempts to
do so. 39
How many times have we faced the spring wind

B1
with a cup of brew in hand?

My little boat is on the verge of departure

D1
but then I hesitate.

The day this Crazy Traveler from Siming

A4
comes back again,

4
the pomegranate blossoms in your courtyard

(B4)
will they have bloomed?

The allusion in the last line is a fairly common one in the Song, in both poetry
and lyric. It originates in a pair of heptametrical Quatrains by Liu Yuxi, the first
stating that the peach trees that he sees flowering at a Daoist observatory in the
capital in 817 were all planted after he left, the second, written twelve years later,
observing that all the trees have disappeared. The allusion implies uncertainty
about the future or an acute awareness that what one remembers about a place
is likely to be ephemeral. It could even suggest uncertainty over the future political situation. In 1070, when Su Shi had wondered whether the peach blos471

See Sent as an Inscription for the Pacing the Clouds Pavilion of Mr. Chen in
Quannan, Poem 265, 6.12564; 6.9a. Quannan, south of Quan does not appear in the usual
sources as a place name, but several references to Quannan in the dynastic histories from the Song
on indicate that it was on the Fujian coast, presumably south of Quanzhou. Fanghuis poem mentions the moon bringing the tide as it rises over the ocean.
39 9.12592; 9.6b. For Meng, see Richard John Lynn, The Classic of Changes, 15865. Lynn renders
the hexagram name as Juvenile Ignorance.
38

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

429

soms would have bloomed when his friend Liu Bin returned in the future from
a post in Hailing, the question was seen as a political comment. 40
Is Fanghui expressing similar misgivings about what lies ahead in the capital?
Even though the tonal violation in line 471-4 constitutes an invitation to think
more deeply about the line, it is impossible to say. It may be that Fanghui is
caught up in the subtle wit of his assuming the persona of his eighth-century
ancestor to allude to a ninth-century story. The fact that Liu Yuxi admired He
Zhizhang and regretted that he lived in a later generation adds to the interest of
Fanghuis ability to range across the centuries. 41
The next heptametrical Quatrain in He Zhus collection also features a metrical violation. It is the first of a pair of poems under the title Living in the Capital, Moved by Stirrings at the End of Spring, dated the third month of
1086. 42 We shall translate both poems so we can consider to what degree they
depend on each other to create a complete aesthetic experience (as did most of
the pentametrical Quatrains in pairs or sets that we examined in the last chapter).
If this title looks familiar, it is because in 1095, back in the capital, Fanghui will
use a similar title for the set of five pentametrical Quatrains we discussed in the
last chapter: Living in the Capital and Moved by Stirrings (Poems 405 and 407 were
translated). We see nothing so long or heterogeneous in Fanghuis heptametrical
Quatrains.
472

473

D2

B4

(C15)

D1

In a quiet ward I pay mail for rooms

far from the herds of people.
Magpies at dawn and crows at dusk
tire me to hear.
You cant do anything about the spring wind
that does too much:
the whole court is blossoms and catkins,
flying in a flurry.

B1

Misordered, reckless, racing hooves

and frenzied wheels:

D1

In the Nine Boulevards, on the prowl,

they are as madmen.

40 , SSSJ, 1:6.24244; Fuller, Road to East Slope, 12527. See also Zhong
Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 23738, for Fanghuis jocular use of this allusion in a lyric that Zhong
dates to 11024.
41 See Fuller, Road to East Slope, 18485, translating and explaining Su Shis 1072
, SSSJ, 2:8.371.
42 9.12592; 9.6b.

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CHAPTER SIX

A1

To no avail the east wind sends

rain falling since the morning;

B1

nothing you can do, in Changan,

about the dust of olden times.

The tonal violation appears in the phrase translated does too much. The
phrase is readily understood: it means creates trouble/work/disturbances.
However, it is, to my knowledge, unique to He Zhu in poetry. Perhaps the tonal
violation, minor though it may be, is meant to call attention to the fact that he
had coined (or adopted from vernacular speech) a phrase that was perfectly apt
for this context, or perhaps Fanghui wanted to give the impression that he truly
was writing on the inspiration of the moment, with no time to polish. The
phrase pay mail for rooms/a house is also rare, though it is recycled from the
Last Night of the Year Lament of 108182 and Huang Tingjian had used it in 1085
(See Poem 063).
It seems to me that each of these poems could stand alone. The heptasyllabic
line has an intrinsic advantage in including more complexity, of course, so that
there is less need to look beyond it for some kind of completion. Compare: I
pay mail for rooms far from the herds of people; / Crows at dusk tire me to
hear. / The spring wind does too much: / blossoms and catkins fly in a flurry.
Even in translation, the thinness of the poem with the first two characters in
each line lopped off is apparent. One could argue that the second poem is more
easily reduced to a single ideait is busy and dusty on the streets of the capital
(the Nine Boulevards, Changan)but the phrase dust of olden times in
line 473-4, by suggesting century after century of striving in the world of human
affairs, sets up resonances that require no adjacent poem to create, complete, or
confirm.
The rhymes in these poems tease us with the possibility that the two Quatrains could be combined to form a single octet. They are: gwen3a, men3a, phen3a,
and lwen3b, nyen3b, dren3b. If these two poems were given to us without a blank
space between them, would we know to separate them? We might be suspicious,
for the AABAAABA rhyme scheme would be impossible in a Regulated Verse
and unlikely in an Ancient Verse without a change of rhyme: AABACCDC. Still,
given the absence of semantic parallelism in the middle couplets, we might
guess that we were in fact reading an Ancient Verse. Moreover, Su Shi occasionally rhymes words from the first and second groups (men3a and nyen3b or dren3b,
for example) so we know this was possible (though far more often he does not
mix the rhymes). There are several things that reveal we are only being teased
by the rhymes, however. The two Quatrains are too disparate in focus to be
combined into a single poem. The first is a poem of quiet solitude; the second
takes us onto the busy streets. The third and fourth lines of each poem, while

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

431

not syntactically continuous, have a logical continuity that we are accustomed to

seeing at the ends of poems. (The spring wind is making trouble, so the courtyard is filled with blossoms and catkins; The spring wind brings rain in vain,
because there is nothing you can do about the dust of the ages in the human
world.) Even the phrase flying in a flurry is so common at the end
of Quatrains (of both meters) in the Tang that it constitutes a signal for closure
in line 472-4.
This leads to a final observation about Fanghuis cleverness in this pair: the
reduplicative that ends first poem, fenfen, and the reduplicative that begins the
second poem, raorao, form a double reduplicative that occurs occasionally in
Tang and Northern Song poetry: fenfenraorao in confusion and misorder. (The
less-vivid fenrao is slightly more common.) This suggests that, although his Quatrains would have worked as independent poems, Fanghui wanted them to be
read together, in this order. In fact, one can imagine him chanting them with no
pause between fenfen and raorao to surprise and delight his audience with the cleverness of his segue from the quiet world of the first poem to the chaotic public
spaces in the second. The maintenance of a rhyme that is loosely consistent
throughout the eight lines of the pair supports this sleight-of-hand.
Much later in the year, on the twentieth of the tenth month (28 November
1086), we get a poem that is explicitly announced as a spontaneous composition.
The occasion is being drunk at the hour when an official usually reported for
duty, the fourth dual-hour of the day (designated by the fourth Earthly Branch,
mao, and equivalent to 5:00a.m. to 7:00a.m.): Extempore on Mao Intoxication: 43
476

(D5)

In Bingyin, Yuanyou
First Year, winter:

(B29)

Old Man He dwells straitened

in the dust of the capital.

A1

He has no inclination to burn his hands

on the hot gates of the powerful,

B1

but exposes his back to the clear-day sun,

sitting east of his house.

Notes:
476-1/ Bingyin is the cyclical designation of the first year of the Yuanyou period, 18 January 1086
5 February 1087. The tenth month, when this poem was written, is the first month of winter.
476-3/ Fanghui used the conceit of burning ones hands on the gates of the powerful in a heptametrical Regulated Verse in the first month of this year, before he had left Xuzhou; see Note 2622.

43

9.12592; 9.7a.

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CHAPTER SIX

In keeping with its impromptu nature, this poem is unregulated. The first thing
we notice is the metrical violations in the first two lines. The effect of three consecutive level tones in the last three syllables of a line is far more startling than
that of a level-deflected-level string (as in line 471-4, p. 428) or a deflected-leveldeflected string (as in line 472-3, p. 429), which are fairly routine types of violations. Next, we note that the proper adhesion between the couplets is also ignored: although lines 476-3 and 4 are regulated, they should be CD lines, not
AB lines.
It is very unusual for He Zhu to use a reign title in a poem. In this poem it is
almost as if the poet were showing that he is not so drunk that he cannot answer the questions, Do you know what date it is? and Do you know where
you are? Yet there may be more to it. Su Shi mentions dates by reign title
within the text of a poem only nine times, starting in 1072. Usually Su is looking
back on an experience in a previous era, but in the five poems (written 108793)
that mention the Yuanyou era there is a sense that this is a particularly important
period, as of course it was for him and his allies. After 1093, the last full year of
Yuanyou, Su Shi never mentions that or any other reign title. Is Fanghuis use of
Yuanyou 1 in line 476-1 an expression of his hope that the end of the New
Policies era will bring a better life? The only other time Fanghui uses a reign title
in a poem is in the opening line of Song of the Yellow Tower (Poem 002; 1084),
where he recalls the ding-si year of Xining in which Su Shi led the people of
Xuzhou in fending back the flood that threatened their city.
This reminds us that Fanghui is unique in not only dating his poems clearly,
but also in almost never using a reign title in the dates. One wonders if this was
a retroactive decision made in the mid-1090s, when he put his poetry collection
into final form and when he was also re-reading Tao Yuanming. It was said that
Tao Yuanming had used only cyclical dates after the Liu-Song Dynasty was
founded in 420, whereas up through 419 he had used the Jin Dynasty reign titles.
Huang Tingjian had mentioned this belief in a 1078 poem written in Daming, so
we may assume that Fanghui would have been familiar with it long before the
1090s. Perhaps his work with Taos collection made him realize that Tao did in
fact sometimes use cyclical dates before 420, from which he might have concluded that Tao did so as a way of disassociating himself from a court that was
already controlled by the Liu clan that would eventually declare a new regime. 44
Whatever Fanghui believed about this historiographical controversy, if he was
inspired by Tao Yuanming to show his disdain for a particular faction in power,

44 See Taos biography in the Song shu, 8:93.2289 and the Nan shi, 6:75.1859. Huangs poem is
, Shangu shi zhu, 2247:wai.2.35. For a good survey of the controversy over
Taos dating practice, see Huang Baohua, Huang Tingjian xuanji, 3133.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

433

he was smart enough to change all his dates so no one could spot the point at
which he became disloyal. 45
In the third month of Dingmao (Yuanyou 2; 1087), Fanghui wrote a poem that
is not unusual for a poet in the upper ranks of the bureaucracy, but most unusual for him: Seeing Someone Off to Pay Court at Yu Barrow. Yu
Barrow, the full name of which is Yongyu Barrow , was the tomb in
which the emperor Shenzong had been laid to rest 11 November 1085. 46
482

D2

Three years we have not seen

the dragon of Tripod Lake.

B4

Bow and sword are covered with dust;

the nephrite throne is empty.

C2

White-haired, the lone minister

has a broken heart;

D1

a whole barrow of full moon,

wind in the cypress-walls.

Notes:
482-1/ The Yellow Emperor rode off on a dragon after he had cast a tripod by a lake. 47 Reference
to Tripod Lake and a dragon, therefore, denotes the death of an emperor. Shenzong died the fifth
day of the third month of 1085 (Yuanfeng 8), two years before this poem was written. Perhaps
Fanghui counts three years by the same logic according to which a Chinese person is one sui upon
birth: 1087, the date of this poem, is the third year during which Shenzong has been dead.
482-2/ A landslide exposed the Yellow Emperors tomb, upon which it was discovered that his
coffin was empty while his bow and sword remained. 48 The nephrite throne here designates a
throne for the deceased emperor.
482-4/ Imperial tombs were surrounded by walls and cypress trees. A hymn that was composed
for Shenzongs burial mentions the wind in the cypress-walls at autumn. 49

Fanghui uses all the proper imagery for a courtier in mourning. The difference is
that he is an outsider; the person he is seeing off will actually participate in the
ceremony. And yet, as a descendent of an imperial consort (see note to 271-1),
Fanghui must feel that he has the right to mourn.

45 We also have to consider the possibility that cyclical dates simply were more efficient: they
were shorter (two characters, as opposed to a minimum of four characters in a reign-title + number + year) and they used characters that generally had no semantic content beyond their function as cyclical tokens, thus being immediately recognizable as dates.
46 9.12593; 9.8a. See Song shi, 16.314, et passim for the burials of several empresses at the same
site. In 1097 it was suggested that over thirteen hundred commoners graves be removed from the
site! See 122.2856.
47 Shiji, 4:28.1394.
48 Max Kaltenmark tr., Le Lie-sien tchouan, 5051.
49 Song shi, 10:140.3318.

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CHAPTER SIX

After this poem, Fanghui reverts to the quiet charm that will characterize his
heptametrical Quatrains in Hezhou the following year. Here is At the
Pond of Mr. Li, written in the seventh month of 1087: 50
484

B4

Beyond the lake a west wind

blows rainy threads.

D1

Half follow the willow trees

and brush ripples on the water.

(A6)

A girl slyly breaks off

a lotus blossom as she leaves;

B4

on the sand, mandarin ducks

sleep unawares.

It is possible to see improvements on predecessor poems here. Having streaks

(silk threads) of rain descend to blend with willow wands brushing the pond
could be seen as an attempt to make more dynamic Wei Zhuangs image of
Rainy threads, misty willows. 51 I think, however, that Fanghui may
want us to pay more attention to the ducks, and he has a subtle way of making
them more than mere denizens of the garden. Although the tonal deflectedlevel-deflected violation in line 484-3 is a common one in the penultimate line
of a poem, it may not be accidental that the offending word is lotus, ou.
That term for lotus is traditionally used paronomastically for ou, pair; because mandarin ducks exemplify and symbolize pairing for life, there is a subtle
link between them and the lotus. Of course, romantic connotations run
throughout the poemthe girl (undoubtedly walking with the grace of a willow)
must have secret longings as she quietly breaks off the lotus blossom. Beyond
that, there might be delicate echoes of other predecessor poems. Many readers
will be reminded of warm sand putting mandarin ducks to sleep in a famous
pentametrical quatrain by Du Fu. Or, since Fanghuis ducks are unawares,
unknowing, Fanghui might be consciously contradicting a 1085 heptametrical
Quatrain on one of Huichongs paintings in which Su Shi says ducks (not mandarin ducks, admittedly) are the first to know when the spring waters turn warm. 52
These echoes of prior poems are by no means profound, nor is it even necessary
to agree that our poet was conscious of them to appreciate the charm of the

50

9.12593; 9.8b.
See Weis , QTS, 20:699.8040. Rainy threads is a
rare phrase in the Tang, rarer in the Northern Song, and I know of no other precedent for juxtaposing it with willows.
52 Du Fus poem is , Du shi xiangzhu, 3:13.1134. Su Shis poem, dated the year
before Fanghui wrote his hexametrical inscriptions on a painting by Huichong (see previous chapter) is , SSSJ, 5:26.1401. Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 17677, relates
the wrangling among later critics over the merits of this line.
51

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

435

scene. Nevertheless, the fact that such comparisons come to mind expands the
scope of a small poetic world.

LIYANG
108889: SOUTHERN SCENES
Fanghui leaves no heptametrical Quatrains from his progress to Chenliu in late
1087, on to Jinling in early 1088, or across the Yangzi to Hezhou in the second
month of 1088. The next poem in this genre is dated the fifth month. Another
garden poem, it originates from a visit to a temple we know to have been in Bitter Bamboo, west of Liyang: Wandering in the Garden of Zhuangyan
Temple. 53 Fanghui is still remarking the newness of the southern clime. The
month before, in the pentametrical Regulated Verse On Horseback at Bitter Bamboo Village (Poem 185), he had mentioned the calid wind; shortly after his arrival in Hezhou, he had also sent his Song of Three Birds back to the capital to tell of
his ornithological discoveries in the countryside, one of which was the cuckoo
(see Poem 010). The cuckoo reappears in this Quatrain:
485

D1

Photinia flowers have dropped,

the little pond is clean:

B1

Alone I descend a level bridge,

toying with a fan as I walk.

C4

In the sun-covering green shade

theres no place to find him:

D1

better to go home,
two or three notes.

Note:
485-1/ There are many varieties of photinia in China, many with attractive white flowers in the
spring.

It is possible that the photinia was as new to He Zhu as the cuckoo, though
some varieties must have grown in the northern areas he had frequented in the
past. At any rate, this is a well-constructed little poem. Time and place are
sketched quickly in the first line, with the ubiquitous qing clean/pure/unsullied
defining the atmosphere. Line 485-2 places the poet in the scene and gives him
things to do: walk alone from the bridge over the pond, play with his fan. The
fan and the falling of the photinia flowers tell us this is midsummer in the south.

53 9.12593; 9.8b. For the location, see Chen Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 2:8.453 and 36263.
Fanghui says simply that he composed the poem in Liyang.

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CHAPTER SIX

The third line puzzles momentarily: what is it that cannot be found? The fourth
line creates closure by answering the question: it is the source of those two or
three notes that cannot be located. Because its call urges the traveler to go
home, we recognize the bird as the cuckoo.
In comparison to the Song on the cuckoo, the setting is greatly abbreviated
and the reaction of the speaker to the call of the bird is only implied. Presumably, Fanghui would be only too happy to go home, but we are spared his regrets
over (and excuses for) the pursuit of his career and his vows to retire to a farm.
There is only so much space in the heptametrical Quatrain; the nonessential
must be left unspoken.
An alternative strategy is to make the expected mea culpa early and then shift
to a scene that offers an alternative way of life:
488

D3

Heroic plans huddled and scuttled,

I betrayed my youth.

B4

Looking back I envy the peasant boy

as wiser than me:

C2

The water has dropped in the reservoir

and the autumn sun is wan;

D1

he lies and sleeps on the buffalos back,

looking at the blue sky.

This is , On Horseback at Rush Tank, from the ninth month of 1088 in

the Wujiang area (9.12594; 9.9a). The complaint in the first line is familiar.
Weve heard Fanghui moan in 1091 that The years and months press on; Ive
betrayed my stalwart plans. (Line 314-2 of Harmonizing with Qian Dexuns Writing my Feelings; Poem 314.) Weve seen him begin a pentametrical Quatrain with
the same complaint (Living in the Capital and Moved by Stirrings, 1095; Poem 405).
What is makes this poem less oppressive than those later poems is the fact that
it ends with a scene of pastoral innocence. The scene is not just the context for
the poet to feel sorry for himself; it is the agent of a momentary escape from
himself and from the consequences of his bad decisions in life.
Like the poem on the temple garden, this Quatrain expertly creates a slight
uncertainty to be resolved in the last line. Here, it is the second line that provokes our curiosity: how is the peasant boy wiser than the poet? The third line
delays the answer (while at the same time offering the spatial and temporal context we are used to seeing at the beginning of a poem). The last line finally answers the question by simply telling us what the boy is doingor not doing.
While the poet is at work on horseback (presumably on militia business), the
boy has leisure to stare contentedly at the sky.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

437

The poems that are completely devoted to scene descriptions are even more
of a relief from Fanghuis complaints, but they seem shallow until one analyses
their structure. For example, Again on an Excursion to Brahm Action
Cloister, written sixty li south of Liyang in the tenth month of 1089: 54
559

B1

At dawn I cross the southern ridge

five li of pines.

D2

The shelter of purification not yet seen,

already I hear the bell.

A1

In front of the gate, brushing the ground,

pendant willows

B1

have swept clean autumn

tracks of a visiting horse.

Line 559-2 is poised on a point of transition: not yet and already exist in the
same moment. Then the second couplet releases the tension in a syntactic flow.
Line 559-3 builds up a slight suspense at the major caesura because an action is
named before the actor: In front of the gate | sweeping the ground || [are] pendant willows. The willow trees are in turn the subject of the verb sweep in
the next line, and because of that enjambment, I think, we then re-parse line
559-3 as a long noun phrase: the pendant willows that brush the ground in
front of the gate / sweep. The object of sweep is a fairly long noun phrase:
since-autumn || passing-horse tracks (meaning, tracks of [my] visiting horse
that have been there since autumn). This combination of enjambment and long,
complex phrases constitutes an effective release from the threshold hesitation in
line 559-2.
The last line also takes us back to the title. The hoof-prints the willows have
swept clean were made on the previous visit that is implied in Again on an Excursion. More subtly, clean is the Chinese equivalent of the Brahm in
the name of the cloister named in the title.
108991: THE SOCIETY OF OTHERS
Again on an Excursion to Brahm Action Cloister suggests, I suppose, a certain
pleasure in discovering the ephemeralness of the traces one leaves behind in
lifea Buddhist pleasure, if you will. The three heptametrical Quatrains remaining between this 1089 poem and Fanghuis return to the capital in 1091 are also

54 Brahm action is activity of a pure nature, often expressed in negatives: not getting angry when provoked, not using coarse language, not harming people, etc. For the location of the
cloister, see Chen Tinggui, Liyang dianlu, 2:8.451. 10.12606; Shiyi.18b.

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CHAPTER SIX

written in the context of Buddhist settings: two are written at temples; another is
for a pair of monks leaving for the capital.
Perhaps for this reason, these Quatrains play more than usual with illusions
and paradoxes. I define illusion broadly here to include, in the first poem, two
statements to the effect that the present scene resembles something else. The
title is Staying Overnight with Zhang Hanqiu in West Lodge
of Shengzhong Cloister; the poem was written two months later than the Brahm
Cloister poem, in the twelfth month of Yuanyou 4. 55
560

B4

The windows and doors of the monacal lodge

imitate a painted boat.

D4

In the blue brilliance of the lamp

we sleep on facing beds.

A4

The north wind brings snow

to mantle bamboo at the eaves;

B4

its just like Xiao-Xiang,

on a day one moors for the night.

Note:
560-2/ Qingying refers to the small glow from a lamp; I borrow Knechtges translation blue brilliance from another context, finding in its alliteration an irresistible analog for the rhyme in qingying. 56

Mention of the Xiao-Xiang region evokes contradictory emotions, for it is both

a place of exile and a place of misty beauty. A heptametrical Regulated Verse by
Wei Zhuang avers that it is perfectly understandable to feel melancholy when you
encounter a friend in a place that resembles the Xiao-Xiang. 57 On the other
hand, Fanghui himself, in a heptametrical Quatrain inscribed on a banana leaf
in Hailing in 1094, will be thankful that the banana leaves outside his window
have not let him downthey produce the sound of night rain in the XiaoXiang. 58 We might add that, a few decades after Fanghuis poem, Zhang Yuangan (10911161) will attempt to capture the charm of a river scene in a
lyric by saying it is like a painting, just like Xiao-Xiang. 59 Reading the present
Quatrain as a whole, we understand wherein the charm for He Zhu lay. The
windows and doors of the monastery hotel resemble those of a boat painted
with scenes and designs; the two travelers chat in the lamplight from facing beds,

55 10.126067; shiyi.18b. The location is given as Wujiang. Zhang Hanqiu is otherwise unknown.
56 Wenxuan, 2:131, line 215 of the Plume Hunt by Yang Xiong, where the phrase describes jade
boulders, peaked and pointed.
57 , QTS, 20:698.8035.
58 Inscribed on a Banana Leaf, Poem 569; 10.12607; shiyi.19b.
59 (), end of first stanza; Quan Song ci, 2:1080.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

439

as if in the cabin of a boat, while outside snow falls just beyond the eaves. Overall, there is a feeling of cozy togetherness.
What strikes me, however, is the fact that the hotel is not a boat, and the poet
is not in what is now southern Hunan. The word imitate (xue) and the phrase
perfectly resemble (hun si) are meaningful assertions of identity only in the context of difference. (There is a similar double-vision in Fanghuis observation that
the willows have swept away the tracks of his previous visit to the Brahm Action Cloister [559-34]: they are no longer visible, but his memory of them
makes them present.)
The next poem will find concrete analogies for abstract qualities and actions.
In our last chapter, we noted that Sending off Monks Fayin and Zhiyin Ascending
Westward represented one of only two occasions when Fanghui used pentametrical Quatrains for seeing someone off. Heptametrical Quatrains are used on five
occasions for this purpose; as it happens, we have already translated two of
them: see pp. 418 (Poem 446) and 433 (Poem 482). Curiously, when he saw
Fayin and Zhiyin off to the capital in the first month of 1090, Fanghui wrote a
heptametrical Quatrain in addition to the pentametrical Quatrain. The title is
Sending off Monks Fayin and Shiyin on a Westward Excursion
to the Capital: 60
561

B1

Carved snow and cut-out ice:

men beyond things.

D4

They bring themselves to follow plump horses

racing through the dust of the capital.

A2

You wont find there is no ground

to plant peaches and plums;

B4

north of the River, south of the River

is the same springtime.

Note:
561-34/ To plant peaches and plums is to foster the development of good disciples. If you
choose wisely whom you will plant in the spring, you can figuratively rest in the shade of the
trees in the summer and eat their fruit in the fall. 61

While snow and ice are common images for purity, the suggestion that these
two monks seem to be made of carved snow and cut-out ice (line 1) is new;
such expressions as cut-out snow and shaped ice were later used in
poetry for plum blossoms, not people. 62 Similarly, the application of peaches

60

10.12607; shiyi.18b19a.
The allegory originates in the Hanshi waizhuan (ca. 150 B.C.E.), 7.20. See James Robert
Hightower, Han shi wai chuan, 244.
62 See, for example, Lou Pan (fl. early thirteenth cent.), Shuangtian xiaojiao (),
QSC, 4:2850.
61

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CHAPTER SIX

and plums outside the realm of political mentoring strikes me as unusual,

though Fanghui does it again in 1096, referring to the monk with whom he used
to call on the late Faquan as peach and plum 63 Here, it seems to indicate that
Fayin and Zhiyin will be engaged in some kind of proselytizing in the north,
perhaps as part of the general infiltration of Chan into the capital in the middle
period of the Northern Song. 64 Though none of the language in this poem is
obviously Buddhist (unlike the phrase presto, be gone! in the pentametrical
Quatrain for the same two individuals), the last line clearly asserts the universality of the message the monks will take to the capital: spring comes to the capital
just as surely as it comes to the South.
The next heptametrical Quatrain Fanghui saved comes after a one-year hiatus
in the genre. It is written in Jinling as Fanghui is on his way down the Yangzi:
Making Another Excursion to Dinglin Temple on Mt. Zhong. Wang
Anshi had maintained a room at Dinglin (Grove of Samdhi) Temple where he
studied, wrote, and received guests, but the poem appears to be about nothing
more than Fanghuis own relationship with the place. 65
562

D3

Shattering ice, a fountains vein

flushes the root of the hedge.

B4

A worn-out robe looks from afar

like a gibbon hanging in the tree.

C2

Old tracks of my waxed clogs

I seek but do not find;
the east wind opens the gate for me first.

D4

Notes:
562-2/ The term translated robe applies specifically to the patchwork robe worn by Buddhist
monks.
562-3/ The clogs are footwear similar to Japanese geta. The grammar here is ambiguous. Our
translation is one alternative, supported by the fact that Li Shangyin refers to the light from a cliff
reflecting on or shining from the waxed clogs (adjective-noun) of a Buddhist master. The other
alternative would be that Fanghui cannot find the place where he waxed his clogs (verb-object) for
excursions on Mt. Zhong. In a 1090 poem, Su refers to waxing clogs as a preparation for hiking
up a mountain. 66

See the heptametrical Regulated Verse Presented to Monk Yan, Poem 516, 10.12599;
shiyi. 10.7b.
64 See Cheng Minsheng, Songdai diyu wenhua, 26973.
65 10.12607; shiyi.19a. First month of 1091. For Dinglin Temple, see Liu Naichang and Gao
Hongkui, Wang Anshi shiwen biannian xuanshi, 169.
66 Lis poem is , Li Shangyin shige jijie, 2:63639. Waxed clogs commonly figure in an allusion to Ruan Fu ( 278/9326/7), who was obsessed with wooden
clogs and found relaxation in waxing his huge collection. Perhaps Fanghui has reason to believe
that this temple on Mt. Zhong is associated with Ruan. (Ruan spent a couple of decades in Jinling
63

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

441

562-4/ For me bridges the major caesura in this line, overriding it forcefully: east wind | first
for || me open gate. I have therefore not started a new line in the translation at the point where
the caesura should be.

There is an interesting progression of verbs in this Quatrain. The fountain

breaks the ice and rinses the base of the hedge or fence; that is a dynamic emergence of the unseen. 67 This is followed by the misprision of the monks robe for a
gibbon hanging in a tree, mental or static activities that involve the concealment of
the seen object (he names the robe first; he knows what it is) behind the illusory
object. The crucial third line describes the frustrated action of looking for something and not finding it; the tension of this blockage is released in the last line
when the wind literally removes a barrier and does it first, already. The absent caesura emphasizes this release.
The balance of presence and absence (or recognition and illusion) we see in
this and the heptametrical Quatrains of late 1089 provides another perspective
on the air of insubstantiality we found in the heptametrical Regulated Verses
Fanghui wrote in these same months. The east wind of spring opens the gate to
the temple for the poet, but he cannot find his old tracks. In fact, he is not
really given time to look for them, because the wind opens the gate firsta
tiny detail, but just as mysterious as his assertion that the Cassia Girl had fled
from this mountain to the moon in her canopied carriages last night. Why this
feeling that things are happening just fast enough for He Zhu to miss them?
Who had worn the tattered monks robe that disguises itself as soon as he sees it?
If this is not a purely private matter, could these signs have something to do
with Wang Anshis death in 1086?

THE CAPITAL AND HAILING

1091 AND 1092: SPRING WIND IN THE CAPITAL
The next hexametrical Quatrain in Fanghuis collection treats the theme of
times passage in a much more conventional way, though there may be a valid
allegorical reading. Although it is open to different interpretations, we no longer
see the ambiguities of presence and absence or reality and illusion that we have
just observed in the poems of late 1090 and the beginning of 1091. What is per-

before dying en route to a remote post). Then the meaning would be that he cannot find traces of
where Ruan Fu waxed his clogs. See Shishuo xinyu, 6.15. Su Shi alluded to this story in 1094. Su
Shis poems are (1090; SSSJ, 5:32.1704) and (1094; 6:38.2072).
67 Although the phrase used occurs nearly thirty times in the Tang, it is rare in the Northern
Song; whether we are meant to feel its period flavor or to revivify the metaphor that is buried in
the expression is difficult to say.

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CHAPTER SIX

ceived may be symbolic, or not, or both, but it is stable. The topic is the abandoned garden of Grand Councilor Jia Changchao (9981065). 68
563

B4

The grand councilors garden grove

was half planted by his hand.

D4

Fine goblets were once set out

for so many people!

(A8)

Unruly thorns and wild creepers

have replaced the peaches and plums;

(B4)

shamethat the spring wind

comes as it did before.

Note:
563-4/ Who is ashamed is not specified, but I take it to be the garden, in an effective image of
transference (personification).

The first question is whether the peaches and plums in line 563-3 represent
good and loyal followers, perhaps talent fostered by Jia Changchao. Fanghui
does use peaches and plums allegorically in 1090 and 1096 to refer to religious
disciples, as we have noted (see p. 439), so it is not farfetched to take line 563-3
as lamenting the passing of those who benefited from Jias political and moral
leadership. (The poem does not give away Fanghuis assessment of Jia, but he
seems to have enjoyed a good reputation.) Thorns and creepers could then
represent the talents of He Zhus own generation, inferior by comparison. I
think we can be even more specific than that, though: perhaps the phrase designates the squabbling factions at court that had driven Su Shi in 1089 to escape
the capital for the post of prefect in Hangzhou. Since it is likely that Su Shi had
already been recalled to court when this poem was written, he would be the
spring wind coming again as before. Although a safely conservative reading
would see the poem as a simple lamentation on the ephemeralness of all things,
embodied in the demise of Jia Changchaos horticultural heritage, the allegorical
interpretation strikes me as equally convincing in the context of the time. (I
should add that the tonal violations in lines 563-3 and 4 might be a hint to the
reader that there is something worth pausing over, even though these are, admittedly, mutually compensating violations of no great rarity.)
Fanghui must have had very specific people in mind as the garden grove
planted by Jia Changchao and, most importantly, as the unruly thorns and wild
creepers that infest it. A general attack on everyone in power would not have

68 Inscribed on Mr. Jias Abandoned Garden, 10.12607; Shiyi.19a. The poem is dated
the second month of 1091; one edition dates it to the first month. However, for a number of
reasons pointed out by Zhong Zhenzhen in his 1994 Du He Fanghui nianpu zhaji, it is more
plausible to ascribe it to the third month.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

443

made sense for him in 1091. Sometime this year it seems that Fanghuis mother,
who is still alive, will be honored with the title Grand Lady of Yongnian County
. 69 Fanghui himself will be promoted to the civil side of the bureaucracy under the sponsorship of Su Shi and other very prominent people, as
we have seen. He had friends in high places.
The coming of the spring wind does not expose the garden to embarrassment
in the next poem, composed in the second month of the following year, but it
does blow the blossoms from their branches. A wall, through another image of
transference, is granted the potential to plan to fend off the wind, but it fails:
564

D3

Beneath the colorful rainbow bridge

and east of the sluice,

B4

Adjoining the field-paths, garden and grove:

a narrow way goes through.

C1

Flourishing apricots half blossom

and straightaway half fall;

D1

the short wall has no strategy

to hinder the winds of spring.

This poem is titled On Horseback at the East Citywall. 70 The first couplet carefully orients us in space: we are below a certain bridge, east of a certain
sluice or checkpoint on the waterway; we are following a narrow path through a
grove of trees that abuts the borders of farmland. This geometric world dissolves in line 564-3, where trees flourish and change is out of control. Out of
control, but symmetrical in their action: half the blossoms open and those blossoms promptly fall. With the wall in line 564-4, we return to straight lines. Alas,
that wall is an ineffective boundary. Too short, it cannot halt the wind; in fact, it
has not even tried to find a strategy, so its helplessness is absolute.
This balancing of sharply defined space in the first couplet with stark rigidities in the second couplet was surely instinctual, but the poets instincts were
admirable.

69 See the grave inscription, quoted by Xia Chengtao in He Fanghui nianpu, 291. Zhong
Zhenzhen, Bei Song ciren He Zhu yanjiu, 27, n. 49/51, states that the custom for such an honor was
to enfeoff the mother in the place where her (natal) family was registered. The Song huiyao says
nothing about that, but the ranks that one had to attain in order for ones mother to be enfeoffed
as Grand Lady of a county appear to be higher than He Zhus. See 2:2007b2008a. He Zhu was
made a chengshi lang (see Xia Chengtao, loc. cit.), which was ninth rank upper class; the
positions listed in the Sung huiyao are titular offices that appear to range from the fourth to the
sixth ranks, mixed in with some functional titles. (The titles are those used before the reorganization of the bureaucracy in 1082. Table 11 on p. 688 in Gong Yanming, Songdai guanzhi cidian,
shows how the old and new titular offices correspond to each other and includes some of the
titles mentioned in the Song huiyao.)
70 10.12607; Shiyi.19a.

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CHAPTER SIX

1094: FAREWELLS IN HAILING

Other than the poem inscribed on the banana leaf that we mentioned above
(Poem 569; see p. 438), Fanghui leaves us only four heptametrical Quatrains
from the year and some months he spent with relatives in Hailing. That is still
an increase over his rate of production in the preceding four years. In any case,
three of these Quatrains are farewell poems, constituting half of all his heptametrical Quatrains devoted to this purpose. Interestingly, they are the second
poems written for each occasion; they were preceded by heptametrical Regulated Verses (another example of the earliest poems marking a relationship with
someone being in that genre). In one case, we know that the first poem was
written at a banquet after rhymes were drawn, though we can only guess
whether the Quatrain followed on it immediately. 71
In the other case, the heptametrical Regulated Verse Requiting and Parting from
Zeng Chen, which we translated in our chapter on heptametrical Regulated Verse
(Poem 496), is followed by a pair of Quatrains under the title
Again Seeing Off Zeng Chengzhi and Sent Also as a Letter to Yu Dan and
Chen Yu. 72 As indicated, the Quatrains expand He Zhus audience to include
two other friends. These friends are probably in Yangzhou, where Zeng Chen
will probably board a boat to go down the canal and back up the Yangzi to
Jinling. Chen Yu and our poet became friends in Yangzhou on his way back up
to the capital in early 1091. 73 Yu Dan, according to the headnote to the present
poem, was also an old friend from Yangzhou. We know a bit more about him:
he had studied alongside Huang Tingjian when Huang was in his late teens.
Huangs letters and other writings indicate that Yu found it difficult to mix with
the common lot, perhaps because he was very bright and also very comical. This
explains Fanghuis epithet for him in line 566-1: san, undisciplined, careless.
Fanghui probably admired his unconventional style. Interestingly, Yus installation at Banshan Temple outside Jinling at the behest of Wang Anshi is seen by
Huang as one indication that those who associated with Wang in his late years
were for the most part fine men, . 74

The first poem is Seeing Off Jiang Yujing, Who is Returning to Shanyang; Poem
499, 10.12596; Shiyi.3b. The second is At Level-outlands Hall, Again Seeing Off
Jiang Maozong; Poem 567, 10.12607; Shiyi.19b20a. Maozong is the cognomen of Jiang Yujing,
according to Fanghui, but I have no other information on this individual.
72 10.12607; Shiyi.19b.
73 Chen is introduced in the headnote to the 1091 Ancient Verse An Excursion to Jinshan, Poem 124, 4.12534; 4.3a.
74 See the dozen or so works indexed under Yus name in Huang Tingjian quanji, Hu Sheng,
Huang Tingjian nianpu xinbian, 1718, and Zhao Lingzhi, Hou qing lu, 2:8.8ab.
71

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

565

566

D2

The spring breeze forlornly loneful

ages the selinum,

B4

Go on your way, poet!

and may you keep yourself well.

C4

Half a hundred, this illusionary body;

should it somehow remain sturdy,

D1

below Stony Head Enceinte:

two thatched roofs.

D4

Crazy Chen and dissolute Yu,

my old companions,

B4

We met with goblets of brew

and had to tarry a while.

C1

Worn and sick, I find the old feelings

are still with me;

D2

in spring breezes the entire night

I dream of Yangzhou.

445

Notes:
565-1/ The use of momo with wind is rare. Wang Anshi is the only poet I know who uses it with
the spring wind: he refers to the wind forlornly loneful coming onto my clothing
. Selinum is a fragrant type of plant with small umbellate flowers. It is mentioned at the
beginning of the Li sao, where Qu Yuan says he dressed in selinea and shady angelica. 75
565-2/ The expression for poet is sao person, a common term derived from Qu Yuan as an
ancestor to all poets.
565-3/ Conventionally, the human life span is one hundred years, so half a hundred could mean
half my life has passed. 76 In 1094, however, Fanghui is only forty-three sui. Thus, the line could
be understood as referring to the future When this illusory body is fifty.

The first poem is obviously addressed to Zeng Chen. The mention of selinum
and sao person might be meant to tease Zeng for being habitually as anxious
in his outlook and his poetry as was Qu Yuan. (See our earlier discussion of Requiting and Parting from Zeng Chen.) That said, it may be unwise to read the lighthearted tone of the second poem into the first. Compare the two spring

See David Hawkes, Songs of the South, 68. The Wang Anshi poem is . Li
Deshen, Wang Anshi shiwen xinian, 169, ascribes the poem to 1066, but the date is immaterial here.
Since Wang died in 1086, any poem by him would precede this Quatrain by He Zhu.
76 Most sources will site the Zhuangzi and other early texts for the origin of the idea that the
human lifespan is one hundred years. However, the passages cited consider such an age to be at
the very limit of, if not beyond, the possible life span. I think the convention was actually adopted
from Buddhist sources. For example, the Dazhi dulun (T25:1509) states that a Buddha will appear when peoples life spans have shrunk to one hundred years (4.89c); this notion
appears also in the Mahpadna-suttanta (T1:1.2a).
75

446

CHAPTER SIX

breezes that frame the pair: one forlornly loneful, ages the selinum; the other
blows on the poet dreaming the entire night of romantic Yangzhou
romantic because Du Mu awoke from a ten-year Yangzhou dream with a
reputation for being a heartless lover in the brothels. 77 Whatever structural principle led He Zhu to use spring breeze in the first line of the first poem and
the last line of the second poem, these two lines help us gauge the shift in mood.
The anticipated retreat to Stony Head in Jinling (565-4) is intriguing. Is there
some shared connection with Zeng Chen and either Qingliang Temple or
since his diction is used in line 565-1Wang Anshi? The significance of that
line may forever remain private.

1096: UP THE RIVER TO JIANGXIA

We shall skip over the three heptametrical Quatrains Fanghui leaves from 1095
(a slow year for him in all genres). After returning from Hailing to the capital
and then setting off for Jiangxia in the tenth month of Shaosheng 2 (1095),
Fanghui was still en route when he was held up by unfavorable winds on the
Yangzi at Lesser Lone Mountain in the fifth month of 1096. He seems to have
been in a comical and clever mood; perhaps he was happy to postpone reporting for duty at the mint in Jiangxia. A few days after his entertaining heptametrical Regulated Verse (Poem 529) with its Princes and Black Ghosts, he
wrote the Quatrain Held up by Wind at Lesser Lone Mountain,
Written When the Sky Cleared in the Evening. When reading the poem, it is helpful
to know that the name of the peak rising from the river, Xiaogu, is a homophone of Little Maiden. Similarly, the name of Slapping Waves Shelf is a
homophone of Master Peng, which appears in He Zhus poem. 78
489

D1

Below Lesser Lone Mountain,

the waves of evening are demure.

B1

Trailing, detressed loops of hair so dark;

a jade mirror-case.

(C14)
D4

She lets Master Peng use it

as a model for her brows:
the new moon in the southwest,
so sharp and slender!

, Fanchuan shi jizhu, 369. Fanghui quotes Du Mu verbatim in his lyric , Dongshan
ci, 118, dated by Zhong Zhenzhen to 1100 on the assumptions that ten years have passed since
Fanghuis first visit to Yangzhou and that his first visit to Yangzhou was in 1091.
78 9.12594; 9.9a. This poem is dated the fourth of the fifth month; the Regulated Verse is
dated the fourth month. That would indicate that Fanghui had been detained for at least five days.
77

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

447

The imagery in this poem is worth savoring. In line 489-2, the undone rings of
hair hanging down must be vines and bushes on the dark, steep-sided island. A
clich comparison of water and mirror is avoided by making the river a jade
mirror case. Finally, a similarly obvious likening of eyebrows to a sliver of
moon is given new life by making the moon a model for Master Peng to use in
plucking or painting the brows of his Little Maiden lover. Fanghui finds such
slender shapes highly erotic, to judge by the frequency with which he mentions
slender fingers in his lyrics. Once it is the very same phrase, sharp and slender, that he uses to describe the fingers of a musician playing songs of love. 79
Because the names of these landmarks along the River had already been incorporated into established puns, it would be somewhat trite to simply repeat
the joke. Su Shi does exactly that in a 1078 poem, but he is not at Lesser Lone
Mountain, he is inscribing an old painting, which makes a difference. His needs
are to show that he recognizes the scene depicted and to praise its lifelike quality,
which he does in this case by addressing the boatmen in the picture to warn
them Little Maiden is already married. 80 Fanghui is not adding these gestures
to a painting; he is on siteand undoubtedly hearing the same pun over and
over from his boatmen and the locals while he waits for a favorable wind. Of
course, he cannot ignore the puns on the names because they are inseparable
from the place, but he can and must wrestle them into submission.
And so he does. The first line, Below Lesser Lone Mountain, the waves of
evening are demure, resolutely ignores the puns. It simply describes the evening scene without even enough vividness to give us simple imagery, let alone
anything more complex. (Although my translation of tian as demure suggests
some personification of the waves, tian is commonly used in connection with
waves and wind and simply means quiet, subdued.) Most importantly, the
line includes the word mountain in the name of the landmark to forestall the
expected pun. (Hearing Xiao Gu alone, one would not know whether it was
Lesser Lone [Mountain] or Little Maiden.) Line 489-2 gives us the Little
Maiden who was withheld in the first line, but in the form of an image of substitution, not a verbal pun: Trailing, detressed loops of hair so dark can only
refer to her, or rathersince there is no real person to be so describedto

(), Zhong Zhenzhen, Dongshan ci, 16; Sargent, Experiential Patterns, 227. Xian or xianxian slender is used fifteen times as a descriptor for hands or fingers in
He Zhus lyrics, so often that it is sometimes apparently unnecessary even to specify the noun.
Line 489-4 accurately depicts what Fanghui would have seen in the southwestern sky that evening. The waxing moon on that date (28 May 1096) would have been about six percent illuminated and would have set around 21:17. This is extrapolated on the basis of data for Jiuzhang on
28 May 1960 (corresponding to the fourth day of the fifth lunar month) from the U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department, http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_One
Day.html.
80 , SSSJ, 3:17.872; Wang Shuizhao, Su Shi xuanji, 112.
79

448

CHAPTER SIX

something on the peak in the river that looks like dark and drooping hair. The
maiden is thus the vehicle of the unnamed tenor (the peak); our focus is actually on the aptness of her image as a substitution for the peak, not (yet) on her
role as the sweetheart of Master Peng. Only in line 489-3 does a personification of one of the landmarks appear: Peng Lang (no Shelf). Little Maiden
herself now comes into her own as the understood subject of the verb: [She]
gives it to Master Peng. This is the closest we get to the expected treatment of
the landmarks names. The last line, though it appears to tell us what Little
Maiden gives Master Peng, is by itself a simply description of the scene: in the
southwest, the new moon: so sharp and slender. Note that the moon does not
substitute for her brows, nor is there any explicit or implied comparison between it and her brows. The moon is a model to be followed in shaping her
brows, so it is always separate from them; it is simply the moon, whether she
passes it to her lover or we see it in the sky. We are back where we started, then,
with the river scene as it would appear to someone who had never heard the
puns.

109698: HANYANG AND JIANGXIA:

Only four heptametrical Quatrains survive from Fanghuis sojourn in the area of
modern Wuhan, two from 1096, one from 1097, and one from 1098. The 1097
heptametrical Quatrain is an exception that proves the rule insofar as it is the
first poem written for an acquaintance but is not a heptametrical Regulated Verse.
(The two other poems we have for the same person are heptametrical Regulated
Verses, but they come later in the same year.) Beyond this reversal of the usual
sequence of genres in a relationship, there is nothing remarkable about the
Quatrain. 81 More interesting are the changes Fanghui works on well-established
themes in the two Quatrains from the previous year. The 1098 poem is the
poets inscription at the end of his collected works and will appropriately mark
the conclusion to this study.
In the sixth month of 1096, still recuperating on the north side of the Yangzi,
Fanghui wrote Inscribed on an Old Mulberry at My Lodgings in
Hanyang. 82 The theme of the old and rotting tree was an old one by now, but
Fanghui gives it several strange twists.

81 The poem is Harmonizing with the Inscription Wu Dafu Left when he Visited,
Poem 492, 9.12594; 9.9b. Wus name is given as Qian in the title to one of the Regulated
Verses; see 10.12604; shiyi.15b. Nothing else is known of the man other than that he made friends
with He Zhu without consideration for the difference in their ages.
82 9.12594; 9.9b.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

490

D2

B1

(C14)

D3

449

You never had the glossiness

to satisfy silkworms of Wu.
You harbor boring insects just for
the cravings of wood-peckers.
Why with such solicitude
did you comfort the turtle?
[you] should not have knowingly
gone close to the blaze!

Notes:
490-1/ The phrase translated glossiness describes the leaves of the mulberry in the Classic of
Poetry, Ode 58. Wu, the region around modern Suzhou, is a prime sericulture region; Wu is thus
sometimes an epithet for good silkworms, regardless of location.
490-34/ Turtle is Yuanxu in the original. In an old tale, a large turtle is captured and is being
transported to present to Sun Quan, king of Wu. When the boat carrying the turtle stops for the
night near an old mulberry tree, the tree sympathizes with the turtle (calling him Yuanxu), but
the turtle tells the tree he is not worried because no fire can cook him. That turns out to be true
until the old mulberry tree is used to make the fire. 83

Fanghui does not give the mulberry the time-honored treatment of old trees
that the poetic tradition would have us expect. This is not a withered cypress
assailed by xylophagous insects and standing for the morally superior gentleman
who must endure petty antagonists; in fact it never produced good leaves for
sericulture, so its decline is not to be lamented. Nor is it a gnarled oak tree preserving its life by being useless for timber (a model for not chasing after the rewards of society). In fact, the tree is useful now, if only as a site for one kind of
creature to devour another.
So far as I can tell, Fanghui is the first poet to allude to the story of Yuanxu
and the mulberry tree, so the allusive second half of the poem is also a fresh
treatment of the topic. Since it was the overheard conversation between the tree
and the turtle that suggested burning the tree to cook the uncookable turtle, I
think line 490-4 is a rebuke to the tree for getting involved. (An alternative reading would rebuke the tree for showing sympathy for such a cocky creature: [he]
should not have knowingly gone close to the blaze).
Is this simply a playful treatment of the topic, or is there an allegory here? I
think it is the former. As we have noted, the poem rejects the standard allegorical treatments of a withered tree. The personification of the tree in the second
couplet is simply a witty allusion to a story; even if it suggests a Lesson for Living, the personification is not consistent with any allegorical reading I can imagine for the first couplet.

83

Liu Jingshu, Yiyuan, CSJC (1991 ed), 2723:3.7071.

450

CHAPTER SIX

Three months later, having crossed over to Jiangxia, Fanghui writes a Quatrain that similarly avoids making a trite comparison, this time between a scene
and a painting. While the scene does remind the speaker of a painting by the
tenth century artist Dong Yuan that hed seen on the art market, the painting
and the scene remain distinct. Dong Yuan is well known in art history as one of
the men who defined the style of Song landscape painting and in fact the first
half of the poem perfectly describes the kind of scene he would have painted,
with layered mountain ranges bordering a river. The title of the poem is
Evening View on an Autumn River. 84
491

D4

B4

C4

D1

Yellow reeds on holms and aits;

a crimson maple forest.
Beyond the forest the fading sun;
layered ranges profound.
I recall, at Guangling,
at the market within the walls:
Dong Yuans horizontal screen
going for a thousand in gold.

Note:
491-3/ Guangling is another name for Yangzhou.

Just as Fanghui refused to treat the old mulberry allegorically, he refuses to see
the scene as a painting or even to recognize the painting as a evoking a scene.
The painting makes its appearance in the poem only as a commodity. Of course
Fanghui mentions the Dong Yuan painting because there is a similarity between
the painted and the real scenes, but his remark about the price makes the differences more important. Fanghui wants us to see the scene as itself, not as standing for something else. Beyond that, the implication is that Fanghui could not
afford a painting by Dong Yuan, whereas the scene in lines 491-1 and 2 costs
him nothing. Furthermore, the painting, for all its suggestion of receding space,
is trapped within the walls of a busy commercial city, whereas the scene here
is boundless, extending even beyond the forest.
Finally, we come to Inscribed After the Scrolls of Poetry, 1098. 85

493

84
85

9.12594; 9.9b.
9.12594; 9.10a.

(B4)
(D20)

How can poetry impoverish one?

those who are impoverished are good at it.
These words Ive heard from
Old Six-Ones.

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

(A5)

Pointlessly ashamed of youthful works,

I get clumsier as I age;

(B17)

not throwing away your poems,

I am indeed impoverished.

451

Notes:
493-1/ This line is a consolidated version of Ouyang Xius 1046 statement that It is not that
poetry can impoverish a person; it must be that one is impoverished and only then becomes good
[at poetry]. 86
493-2/ Ouyang Xiu took the name The Retired Scholar of Six Ones in 1070, explaining that in his
household he had one library of ten thousand volumes, one thousand epigraphs, one qin, one chess
set, and one jug of wineplus himself, one old man, to make six. 87
493-4/ This line seems addressed to the collection at the end of which this poem is inscribed.

The poem takes up a theme Fanghui used several times in the 1090s, as we have
seen: the relationship between poetry and poverty. It does so in a series of very
clever linguistic twists accentuated by metrical deviations rarely seen in our
poets heptametrical Quatrains. The first couplet is a restatement of Su Shis
four 1074 lines, , It
is not that poetry can impoverish a person, / one is impoverished and only then
becomes good. / These words are truly not nonsense; / I heard them from the
Drunken Old Man. 88 (The Drunken Old Man is another of Ouyang Xius
sobriquets.) To anyone who recognized the layers of quotations, Fanghuis consolidation of Su Shis lines from four to two (or twenty syllables distilled to fourteen) would have seemed witty enough in itself. The repetition of sounds in
gunggungkung (impoverishimpoverishgood) in such rapid succession accentuates the consolidation. (It also makes us realize that modern
Mandarin (qiongqionggong) softens the phonetic closeness between poverty
and poetic craftsmanship that the Middle Chinese ear would have felt.)
Then Fanghui ruefully reflects that his poetry is getting more clumsy, using
a word that is the opposite of gong, well-crafted, good. Finally, he concludes
that if he cannot throw away his poems, if he clings to them as his prized possessions, then he is truly impoverished. (Impoverished implies here a general
exhaustion of possibilities.) This places the whole controversy over the relationship between poetry and poverty into a new perspective. Now it is not lack of
success in the world that makes a person write well-crafted poetry; it is a doting
fondness for his already written but not-so-well-crafted poetry that brands He
Zhu a failure.

, Ouyang Xiu quanji, 1:Jushi ji.14.295.

; for the text and an appreciation, see Zeng Zaozhuang, ed., Ouyang Xiu shiwen
shangxi ji, 188193.
88 , SSSJ, 2:12.57677, lines 1316. The whole poem is translated in Beata
Grant, Mount Lu Revisited, 66.
86
87

452

CHAPTER SIX

CLOSING THOUGHTS ON THIS GENRE AND THE LYRIC

Ironically, the metrical violations in this Quatrain that supposedly reflect He
Zhus clumsiness actually show how much in command of his medium he is.
Ordinarily, his heptametrical Quatrains are metrically perfect or nearly perfect,
so his ineptitude here is clearly intentional. I believe that Fanghuis resolute adherence to meter in all the other works in this genre is one way he kept his poems firmly within the realm of shi poetry and distinct from the ci (lyric). It would
be interesting to see if other poets known primarily for their lyrics also wrote
fewer than average heptametrical Quatrains and were as exacting in their form
as He Zhu. A related study could be done of the use of reduplicatives in Quatrains to see if there was indeed a late Tang flavor associated with them, a flavor that Fanghui rejected either because he was trying to create a new style for
his own time or because the old style was associated in his mind with the early
lyric.
This chapter has included poems that are either blatantly sarcastic or imply a
serious complaint beneath their insouciance and poems in which illusions play a
puzzling role. The appearance of these features coincides with similar or related
phenomena we have noted in other genres at the same periods of time. However, with these often intriguing exceptions, the heptametrical Quatrain is not a
medium for the presentation of serious issues. For example, the censorship of
history or the erasure of texts does not appear to be a topic for this genre. If
contemporary poets wrote proportionately more heptametrical Quatrains, as
noted at the beginning of the chapter, it would be interesting to see if it is because they found ways to address complex issues in them or, as I suspect, they
used the Quatrains to explore topics that Fanghui either reserved for the lyric or
neglected altogether.

CONCLUSION
I hope the reader will by now agree that Fanghuis shi poetry rewards close study,
both for its own sake and as a starting point for reassessing the works of other
poetsthis despite the fact that all the poems from the last third of his life are
no longer extant, making a complete picture of him forever beyond our reach.
Although he stayed out of the spotlight shown on Su Shi and the group of men
closely associated with him, he was clearly part of the late eleventh-century poetry world and was recognized for more than his lyrics.
We have already seen ways in which Fanghui exemplifies certain traits that
scholars have identified as Song. In trying to understand why he thought a
given poem was interesting and worth keeping, I have pointed to its freshness
and precision of description as a desideratum for Song poets. 1 (In contrast, I
have interpreted evident pleasure in pushing the meanings of words and grammar to the very limit of paraphrasable sense as a revival of Tang preoccupations.) Various kinds of intellectual wit evident in He Zhus poems can be seen
as typical of his age or, more precisely, of either Su Shi or Huang Tingjian. Such
general remarks are useful up to a point, because they help explain what Fanghui
and his audience valued. They also reassure us that neither Fanghui nor the
more important poets were atypical; they represent variations on characteristic
Song Dynasty responses to life and to literary traditions.
On the other hand, since these responses recur throughout the three hundred
years of Song poetry, we are still left with the task of discovering some line of
chronological development within that span and Fanghuis contribution to it.
There have been promising attempts to associate literary change in the Song
with changes in the perceived relationship between wen (culture/writing) and
the moral development of the individual, the improvement of society as a whole,
or both. Fanghui, who was above all a verbal artist much enamored of words
and all their colors, surely was never persuaded by the argument made in
some quarters that literary writing impeded the cultivation of the person. It is
doubtful that he problematized the question, however. Regrettably, anything he
might have written about the nature and value of literature has been lost along
with nearly all of his prose and I find it difficult at the present state of my own

1 Precision of description has to be understood relative to the Chinese tradition up to this

time; English language landscape poetry typically strives for far more particularity. Chinese poets
had little interest in describing all the visual details of a scene. Partly because of the concision
achievable by Classical Chinese within the prosodic structure of traditional shi poetry, their emphasis would generally be on implied meanings and associations.

454

CONCLUSION

knowledge to use this gross thematic rubric to tease out any deeper meanings in
his poetry.
The organization of this book reflects my belief that another type of research
has to be pursued further before we can write a more adequate history of Song
poetry, or indeed of all post-Tang shi poetry. First, the chronological arrangement of the investigation within each of my chapters does more than remind us
that a poet doesnt happen all at once, despite the continuities we expect from
a mature and active writer. While chronology encourages us to give due attention to shifts in direction, interruptions, and bypaths in the works of a single
person, we can also use it to bring to the fore similar explorations on the part of
other poets working at roughly the same time. As we accumulate data, we can
start to make historical hypotheses of great potential value. If we reduce each
poet to one or two ideas or features that fit into a received narrative of literary
development, we both efface the complexity of the individual poet and obscure
other lines of development waiting to be discovered.
Second, by devoting each of the six chapters in this book to one genre of shi,
I suggest that at least some of these lines of development are to be found in the
history of each genre. To put it another way, I think it might be fruitful to focus
on these histories rather than the history of Song shi as a whole. Of course, it
would be absurd to say genre has been totally neglected in previous studies. Literary historians have traditionally noted that some poets favored such-and-such
a genre or did their most characteristic work in a certain form; studies are even
being done now on changing genre preferences during the lifetime of a single
poet, notably Mo Lifengs work on Huang Tingjian, cited elsewhere in this book.
The next step is to go beyond noting that Ouyang Xius best poems are Ancient
Verse, for example, and examine how his work in Regulated Verse or Quatrains
did or did not advance those forms. When we better understand how genre expectations from the Mei Yaochen generation were remolded in the hands of He
Zhu and his contemporaries of similar stature, opening the way for younger poets, we will be much closer to writing a new history of Song Dynasty poetry as a
whole.
Let us review here how Fanghuis work relates to the development of each
genre as we understand it now and as we might like to probe it in the future. In
Ancient Verse, there seem to have been few options for formal experimentation.
The significance of He Zhus use of first-line rhyme (concentrated in 108086)
is difficult to assess without comparison to the practice of other Song Dynasty
poets; for the present, we can only say it is unusual in pentametrical poetry.
Thematically, Fanghui innovated within categories already established by the late
eleventh century. The fact that allegory seems to have become a problematic
mode with him is consistent with what other scholars have noted in Huang
Tingjian and Su Shi. Whether the theory of imitation we proposed for He Zhus

CONCLUSION

455

Ancient Verse imitations will be verified by research on other poets is a matter

that cannot be resolved yet. In Songs, the urge to experiment is more in evidence: Fanghui appears to have adopted diction from popular tales; he used interlocking rhymes at least once; and he built a suite of three Songs whose designations seem to indicate that he was either following or inventing a definite
sequence of yin, ci, and ying as an overall structure. The distinction Fanghui apparently made between heptametrical Ancient Verses on a set topic (with some
word meaning song appearing in the title) and heptametrical Ancient Verses
in general is perhaps to be found in the works of other Song Dynasty poets, but
whether particular combinations of line length and rhyme patterns correlate
with certain topics or occasions is a question for more research.
 Innovation is a bit harder to speak of in Regulated Verse, whose form is
supposedly set by definition. Like most poets, however, Fanghui finds ways to
work outside narrow expectations. In our chapter on the pentametrical form, we
noted that Fanghui shows an unusual willingness to begin these poems with a
rhyming couplet. I proposed that this enabled him to achieve certain pleasing or
evocative placements of even-tone syllables later in the poem. If we can divide
Song Dynasty poets into those who avoided rhymed openings in pentametrical
Regulated Verse (like Huang Tingjian, Guo Xiangzheng, and Zhang Lei) and
those who embraced them (like He Zhu), we can then look for factors that
might explain this, such as an ear for music (as evidenced by stature in the realm
of the lyric) or lines of influence. This would contribute to the history of this
genre. On another level, I frequently explain details of pentametrical Regulated
Verses (as well as other poems in the book) by reference to the diction or structure of earlier poems that are presumed or known to have been read by the poet.
Sometimes we find He Zhu correcting predecessor poets in the conspicuous
and often witty ways that were celebrated in jottings on poetry then and later,
but more often they seem to be subtle reworkings of phrases and ideas that the
poet would have pointed out only to someone who was as deeply immersed in
the sounds and senses of words as he was. Such a person would be interested in
poetic challenges, other examples of which would include pairs of poems on the
same site or the imitation of an extended Regulated Verse; these would be of
greatest interest to the practicing poet, not the wag who tries to get a laugh out
of his fellow party-goers with clever overturned cases (fanan). Our chapter on
heptametrical Regulated Verse emphasized the expressive rationale behind noncanonical sequences of line types; this opens up a new way of viewing the loss
of adhesion between couplets in the Regulated Verses of other poets by encouraging us to analyze the phenomenon as more than just a prosy rejection of
the rules. This chapter also offered examples of other topics for exploration in
other poets: enjambed lines with long noun phrases, subtle variation in rhyme

456

CONCLUSION

with apparent rhetorical effect, and Du Fu as a source of inspiration for prosodic experimentation.
Fanghuis pentametrical Quatrains are notable for being proportionately more
numerous in his corpus in comparison with Tang and other Northern Song poets, for seldom following the rules of regulated verse, and for almost always
coming in pairs or sets. I think he was searching for new ways to work in a form
whose possibilities must have seemed exhausted by the eleventh century, but
wider comparative studies are needed to show whether others adopted similar
solutions. With heptametrical Quatrains, it appears that Fanghuis contribution
to the development of the form would lie in steering it away from the lyric. He
did this by using mostly regulated lines in regulated sequences. Whether this is
related to his proportionately low output in the heptametrical Quatrain and his
avoidance of sets of ten, in contrast to other poets, is a topic that requires comparative research. The wit he often displays in these short poems is surely typical
of his age; whether other Song poets can match him in the careful craftsmanship
that we described in Chapter Six remains to be seen.
I hope to be able to contribute more to this work in the future. In the meantime, perhaps some aspects of this book have lived up to the mission of the
critic as summarized by William H. Gass:
What one can do, with description and analysis and expressions of enthusiasm, is
entice, lure others to peek between the covers; to remove possible prejudices or
expectations that might interfere with the experience; to provide suggestions of
where best to start, what to expect, how to look or read or listen; and to give reasons why the work should be treated with seriousness and respect.2

2 Quoted by Michael Dirda in his review of Gasss A Temple of Texts: Essays, the Washington Post
Book World, February 19, 2006, p. 15.

CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS TRANSLATED OR MENTIONED IN THE

PRESENT STUDY
Year

Mo.

Place

1075
1076

1077

1078

1079

1080

1081

3
5
10
4
4
5
6
9
4
8
9
9
3
3
3
4
4
5
5
5
7
7
8
9
9
9
10
2
2

Title
No.
232
160
233 !
434
435
234
161
039
040
041
237
042
239
437
044
045
047
048
049
438
054
001
440
056
057
058
059
446
447

QSS

6.12558 (c)
5.12544
6.12558
9.12588
9.12588 (b)
6.12558
5.12544
2.12510
2.12510
2.12511
6.12559 (c)
2.12511 (a)
6.12559 (a)
9.12588 (a)
2.12511 (c)
2.12512
2.12512
2.12512 (a)
2.12512 (a)
9.12588 (a)
2.12514
1.12497
9.12589
2.12514 (c)
2.12515
2.12515
2.12515
9.12589
9.12589

Key: (a) Sequence in month unknowable. (b) Sequence deduced from title or contents. (c) He Zhu
provides specific day.
Note: Only the first poem in a pair or set is listed here, regardless of which poem appears in this
study.

458

CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS
Year

Mo.

Place

11

11

12
1082 7

9
1083 1

10

12
1084 2

5 1

8 2

11

11 3

12

12

Summer.
Undated.
3 Month uncertain.
2

Title
No.
452
453
454
062
457
063
459
064
065
066
067
242
243
163
164
165
462
464
070
244
245
071
246
072
248
073
166
167
075
002
005
006
076

QSS

9.12590
9.12590
9.12590
2.12516
9.12590 (b)
2.12517
9.12590
2.12517
2.12518 (c)
2.12518
2.12518 (a)
6.12560
6.12560 (c)
5.12544
5.12544
5.12545
9.12591
9.12591
2.12519
6.12560 (c)
6.12560
2.12519
6.12560
2.12520 (c)
6.12561 (c)
2.12520
5.12545
5.12545
2.12521
1.12498
1.12499
1.12499 (a)
2.12521 (a)

459

CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS
Year

1085

1086

Mo.

Place

2
3
6
6
8
8
8
8
8
8
8
9
9
9
10
1
1
1
2
2
2
2 4
3
35
3
4
9
9
9
9
10
10
10
10

Intercalary second month.

be error for .

5must

Title
No.
171
007
175
332
255
080
177
178
082
338
465 !
256
257 !
258
260
083
262
263
264
265 !
267
471
348
350
472
084
352
356
357
086
090
091
359
476

QSS

5.12546
1.12500 (a)
5.12547 (a)
8.12577 (a)
6.12562
3.12523
5.12547
5.12547
3.12524 (a)
8.12577 (b)
9.12591 (a)
6.12562
6.12562
6.12563
6.12563
3.12524 (b)
6.12563
6.12564
6.12564
6.12564
6.12564
9.12592
8.12578
8.12579
9.12592
3.12525
8.12579
8.12579
8.12579
3.12525 (a)
3.12525
3.12526
8.12580 (a)
9.12592 (c)

460

CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS
Year

1087

1088

1089

Mo.

Place

11
12
3
3
3
4
7
7
9
9
11
12
2
3
3
3
3
3
4
5
7
7
9
9
9
10
10
10
1
4
5
6
7
9
9
10

Title
No.
092
271
480
481
482
273
184
484
362
095
096
099
100
102
275
276
279
008
185
485
105
106
186
283
488
107
376
554
189
108
109
119
288
292
190
011

QSS

3.12526
6.12565
9.12593
9.12593
9.12593
6.12565
5.12548 (a)
9.12593 (a)
8.12580
3.12527
3.12527
3.12527
3.12528
3.12528 (b)
6.12566
6.12566
6.12566
1.12500
5.12548 (c)
9.12593 (a)
3.12529 (c)
3.12530 (c)
5.12549 (a)
7.12568 (a)
9.12594 (a)
3.12530
8.12581
10.12606
5.12549
3.12530
3.12530
4.12533
7.12569
7.12570 (c)
5.12549 (a)
1.12501 (a)

461

CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS
Year

Mo.

Place

10

10

12

12
1090 1

11
12

12

12 6

12

12

12

12

12

12
1091 1

Undated.

Title
No.
192
559
378
560
195
295
379
561
197
012
380
303
201
013
014
015
204 !
306
307
016
494
308
562
017
311
124
126
127
020
563
314
315
390
128
129

QSS

5.12550 (a)
10.12606 (a)
8.12582 (c)
10.12606
5.12550
7.12570
8.12582
10.12607
5.12551
1.12501
8.12582
7.12571
5.12551
1.12502
1.12502
1.12502 (a)
5.12552 (c)
7.12572 (a)
7.12572 (a)
1.12502 (a)
10.12595 (a)
7.12572 (a)
10.12607 (a)
1.12503 (a)
7.12573
4.12534
4.12535
4.12535
1.12503
10.12607
7.12573
7.12574
8.12583
4.12535
4.12535

462

CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS
Year

Mo.

Place

1092

1093

1094

77
8
9
1
2
2
6
8
?
?
2
5
5
8
8
9
10
11
11
12
12
2
3
3
3
3
4
4
48
59
5
5
5

Out of sequence in text.

Intercalary fourth month.
9 Summer.
8

Title
No.
132
131
209
316
211
564
392
212
321
432
322
323
134
213
214
135
215
136
137
326
330 !
496
565
567
023
499
504
402
507
024
139
510
569

QSS

4.12536
4.12536
5.12553
7.12574 (c)
5.12553 (a)
10.12607 (a)
8.12583
5.12553
7.12575
8.12587
7.12575
7.12575 (a)
4.12536 (c)
5.12553
5.12554
4.12537
5.12554
4.12537
4.12538
7.12575
7.12578
10.12595
10.12607
10.12607
1.12504 (a)
10.12596 (a)
10.12597
8.12584
10.12597
1.12504
4.12538 (a)
10.12598 (a)
10.12607 (a)

463

CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS

Year

Mo.

6
6
9

Place

Title
No.
025
026
218

QSS

1.12505
1.12505
5.12554 (c)

1095 2 10 552

10.12605

1096

10.12599 (a)
8.12584
1.12505
10.12599
10.12599
10.12599
10.12599
10.12600
10.12601
5.12555
10.12601
9.12594 (c)
1.12506
5.12555
4.12539
9.12594
4.12539
4.12539
4.12540
10.12601 (b)
5.12556 (b)
9.12594 (a)
10.12602 (a)
10.12602
1.12507 (c)
4.12541
4.12542
1.12507 (a)
10.12603 (a)
1.12508

6
8
9
3
4
4
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
5
6
7
7
7
8
8
9
9
9
9
10
10
10
10
12

10

Date or place clearly wrong.

515
405
028
516
517
519
520
524
526
223
529
489
030
224
140
490
141
142
143
530
225
491
534
537
032
146
156
033
538
034

464

CHRONOLOGY OF POEMS
Year

Mo.

1097 4 11
4

5
5

10

10

10
1098 3

5
6

11

Qingming festival.

Place

Title
No.
492
539
227
541
035
157
410
544
545
415
036
229
546
423
037
230
493
159
550
551
038

QSS

9.12594
10.12603 (a)
5.12556 (a)
10.12603 (a)
1.12508
4.12542
8.12585
10.12604
10.12604 (a)
8.12585 (a)
1.12508
5.12556
10.12604
8.12586 (c)
1.12509
5.12557
9.12594
4.12543
10.12605
10.12605
1.12509

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FOUR-CORNER INDEX OF POEMS TRANSLATED

Code

Num.

0022

315

2010

559

0022

326

2010

562

0024

080

2110

072

0024

2110

232

0028

2111

075

283

0033

054

2224

424

2224

425

2600

161

2600

464

2600

177

2600

295

2624

530

2641

447

2690

357

2690

440

2690

2690

2690

2690

2690

248

2690

084

2690

362

2690

363

2690

364

2690

365

2690

366

2690

367

2690

368

2690

369

211

0062

306

0071

023

0090

472

0090

473

0090

405

0090

407

0090

408

0090

409

0468

073

0761

048

1010

036

1022

234

1022

160

1024

134

1044

452

1060

184

1111

435

1210

192

1210

066

1260

273

1260

496

1768

005

2010

565

2010

566

441
442
443
159

FOUR-CORNER INDEX

480
0

370

3322

143

2690

371

3410

044

2690

171

3512

434

2690

172

3713

006

2690

390

3722

437

2690

314

3730

454

2690

410

3730

455

2690

3730

042

3772

224

3815

504

3830

030

2690

237

2724

471

2730

059

2730

457

2732

288

3830

392

2744

013

3830

393

3830

394

3830

395

2780

212

2845

015

2998

213

2998

350

2998

491

3830

034

3022

275

3830

561

3023

264

3830

379

3830

026

3830

197

359

3830

086

3830

3830

3026

3030

105

3062

033

3062

064

3062

016

3062

135

3062

140

3830

515

271
035
175

3062

538

3830

3111

535

3830

482

3111

536

3830

230

100

3111

227

3830

3111

223

3830

065

485

3214

001

3830

3216

539

3830

102

4001

243

4001

244

3216

540

FOUR-CORNER INDEX

481

292

5708

092

4022

5708

166

4022

5708

090

5708

091

4040

541

484

5708

356

4060

039

6022

209

4060

040

6040

178

4422

488

6180

493

4460

185

6180

186

4471

041

6180

047

4471

024

6180

563

4480

002

6180

156

4692

462

6180

128

4692

463

6180

157

4772

057

6180

490

4895

459

6180

507

4895

526

6180

509

4895

303

6180

139

4895

201

6180

242

4895

6180

4895

6180

245

6180

038

6180

433

4001

542

202
378

056

5060

246

5090

517

5090

518

6180

5090

097

6180

308

6180

307

6401

106

311

142

5090

5090

564

5090

011

6401

5320

332

6701

6701

6701

6886

014

7124

107

7132

348

7721

489

446

5320

333

5320

334

5320

335

5320

336

5320

337

5706

258

108
032

529

FOUR-CORNER INDEX

482
0

560

8860

494

7722

195

8860

058

7722

267

8860

352

7722

8860

256

9003

343

7722

438

7740

510

7760

099

9003

7760

376

262

9003

377

7760

020

9003

383

7760

215

9003

147

7760

216

9003

148

7772

476

9003

149

7790

045

9003

151

7790

046

9003

154

7829

063

9503

070

8010

126

9503

167

8860

277

9503

168

INDEX OF POEMS BY POEM NUMBER

Page numbers in italics include translations (full or partial).
SONGS
001 , 12630, 173, 187
002 , 13739, 432
005 , 13135, 186
006 , 13536
007 , 13941
008010 , 14146, 435
011
, 14649
012 , 14953, 18687, 221n,
350
013 , 15557,
272, 322
014 , 15355, 187
015 , 155n, 272
016 , 15760
017 , 116n
020 , 163
023 , 16062
024 , 16264
025 , 164n
026 , 16467,
341
028 , 255n
030 , 16871,
187
032 , 17577
033 , 171, 17375, 187, 241n,
255n
034 , 177178, 187
035
, 17879
036 , 125, 171, 17982
037 , 171n, 255n
038 , 18286
ANCIENT VERSE
039
040
041
042
044

, 1315, 22, 193

, 1517, 124, 255, 416
, 1719, 64, 123, 124
, 1921
, 2123, 24, 25, 129

045, 046 , 3536

047 , 23, 25, 122, 123
048 , 2830, 123, 373
049 , 2930, 123
054 , 3033, 123, 129
056 , 2324, 123, 261
057 , 24, 34, 102, 190, 193
058 , 2425, 126n
059 , 2527, 123
062 , 36n, 423n
063 , 3638, 427, 430
064 3841, 55n
065 , 4245, 281
066 , 4142, 123
067, 068 , 123
070 , 4847
071 , 284n, 285n
072 , 4748
073 , 4849
075 , 49, 63
076 , 39n
080 , 26, 5154
082 , 13n, 123n
083 , 53n
084 , 5556, 395
086 , 39n
090 , 5657
091 , 5859
092 , 59, 6263, 121, 200, 379
095 , 107n
096098 ,
80
099 , 25n, 6470, 73n
100 , 7477, 78, 12122
102 , 77
105 , 7879
106 ,
79
107 , 8082, 395
108 ,
8284
109118 , 8486, 326n
119 , 82n

484

INDEX OF POEMS BY POEM NUMBER

124 , 86n, 444n

126 , 7980, 86
88
127 , 88n
128 , 8990
129, 130 , 327n
131 , 90n
132 , 53n, 9091
134 , 9192
135 , 9296, 122
136 , 14n, 96n
137 , 97n
139 , 9799
140 , 89, 100104,
123
141 , 100n
142 , 10810, 122, 187
143 , 11013, 115
146155 , 11517
156 , 11718, 122
157 , 120
159 , 11920, 123
PENTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
160 , 18991
161 , 19194, 210
163 , 211n
164 , 211n
165 , 193
166 , 194202, 268, 374
167, 168 , 202207
171, 172 , 211214
175 , 42n, 21417
177 , 21721, 222
178 , 221223
184 , 22325
185 , 22628, 435
186 , 22830
189 , 230n
190 , 211n
192 , 23032
195 , 23234
197 , 211n, 23435, 258
201, 202
, 23638, 325n
204 , 322n
209 , 23943, 268
211 , 24345, 426n
212 , 24548
213 , 24851
214 , 251
215, 216 , 25255
218 , 107n

223
224
225
227
229
230

, 80, 25658
, 25862, 268, 397
, 255n
, 26265
, 211n
, 211n, 26566
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE

, 27376, 409
, 409n
, 27677
, 27880, 290
, 35n
, 28082, 284
, 28385, 304
, 28587
, 28789
, 193, 270t, 28991, 311
, 284
, 222n
, 270t, 29193
, 293n
, 270t,
29394
260 , 108n, 292n
262 , 29496
263 , 58n
264 , 29698
265 , 428n
267 , 58n,
298300
271 , 300
302
273 , 3024
275 , 3056
276, 277 ,
3079
279 ,
230n
283 , 30911
288 , 270t, 311
12
292 , 270t, 31213
293 , 271t, 313
15
303 , 271t, 31516
306 , 271t, 31619,
326
307 , 31922
308 , 32225
311 , 32529
314 , 32223, 436
315 , 271, 32931, 353
232
233
234
237
239
242
243
244
245
246
248
255
256
257
258

INDEX OF POEMS BY POEM NUMBER

316
321
322
323
326
330

, 271t, 359n
, 271t
, 269n, 336n
, 255n
, 33132
, 328n
PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

332337 , 37173, 380

343 , 37375
HEXAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
348 , 4012
350 , 4023
PENTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
351355 , 37576
356 , 37678
357 , 37879
359 , 37980
362371 , 38086
376, 377 , 38688
378 , 388
379 , 389
380389 , 39091
390 , 391
392399 , 39295
402404 ,
395
405409 , 39596, 416, 425
410414 , 397
415422 , 10, 397399
423431 , 399400
HEXAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
432, 433 , 4034
HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS
434 , 410, 419
435 , 41213
437 , 41314
438 , 414, 417
440443 , 415
17
446 , 418, 439
447 , 41820
452 , 42021
453 , 422
454, 455 , 42122
457 , 42324
459 , 42425
462, 463 , 42526

485

464 , 42627
465 , 301n
471 , 42829, 432
472, 473 , 42931, 432
476 , 43132
480 , 258n
481 , 250n
482 , 433, 439
484 , 43435
485 , 43536
488 , 436
489 , 44648
490 , 44849
491 , 450
492 , 448n
493 , 45051
HEPTAMETRICAL REGULATED VERSE
494 , 189n
496 , 33334, 444
499 , 444n
504 , 271t, 33436, 353
506, 507, 509
, 120, 168, 271t, 336n, 33639,
35758
510 , 33941, 362
515 , 34244
516 , 440n
517, 518 , 271, 34448
519 , 348n
520 348n
524 , 271t
526 , 271t, 34850, 358
529 , 35051
530 , 336, 350, 352
55
534536 , 26, 35558
537 , 271t
538 , 35859
539, 540
, 36063
541, 542
, 337,
36366
544 271t
545
358n
546 , 359n
550 , 255n
551
, 255n
552 , 343

486

INDEX OF POEMS BY POEM NUMBER

HEPTAMETRICAL QUATRAINS

554
559
560
561
562

, 80n
, 437, 439
, 43839
, 43940
, 44041

563 , 44142
564 , 443
565, 566 ,
44446
567 , 444n
569 , 438, 444

INDEX
AB poems. See opening line-type sequences,
AB
acrostics, 425, 426
adhesion. See couplets, adhesion between
alchemy, 154, 168
allegory: as a mode not favored, 733, 54, 337,
373, 405, 442, 449; political, 11015; Zhang
Hengs Four Sorrows as, 149
alliterative compounds, 412. See also bisyllabic
compounds; sound play
Also Yan Studio, 18285
ambiguity: of implication, 9899; of reference,
6263, 249, 334, 353, 379; syntactic, 200,
22930, 24950, 280, 31516, 382. See also
gender ambiguity
Analects, 184, 262n, 385
Ancient Verse: as Bao Rongs least favorite
form, 62; farewells in, 164; formal characteristics of, 1213, 101, 12123; He Zhus definition of, 23, 12; importance of historiography in late, 178, 262; obliterated texts in
early, 322; preferred by Huang Tingjian and
Guo Xiangzheng, 269; preferred for imitations and inscriptions, 12123, 139; preferred in past for poems on Xuzhou sites,
131; preferred in Tang for ganyu poems,
110; relative weight of, in He Zhus works,
12; thematic variations in, across time, 123
24, 276; unusual form in, 42, 161; used for
farewells and correspondence, 188; variations in output of, 13, 91, 100, 160, 408. See
also under genre boundaries; meter; rhyme;
Songs
Anyang, 13
Anzhou, 300
ao lines (awkward lines), 202. See also metrical
violations
Arai Ken, 32
arms, manufacture of, 13, 278
assonance, 412
Badong, 177
Baixia, 83, 156, 157
ballads, 120, 142, 144, 381; alluded to, 201, 332,
34647, 348, 364; diction recalling, 20, 41,

130, 137, 395; from Dunhuang, 134; titles of,

42, 139, 141, 143, 343n
bamboo: horses, 137; roof tiles, 264; tabula,
280; writing on, 83, 91, 118, 290n, 332
Bamboo Branch songs, 235n, 389400, 408
Ban Chao, 23943, 268
Banshan Temple, 305, 444
Bao Rong, 5963, 121, 131, 200, 379, 408
Bao Zhao, 56
Baofeng Industrial Prefecture, 3839. See also
Baofeng mint
Baofeng mint, 5051, 292, 300
Baoguang Dharma Master. See Jian Gongchen
Baojia Mountain, 168
Baoquan mint, 100. See also mint, in Ezhou
Baoquan Mountain, 78
BB poems. See opening line-type sequences,
BB
BD poems. See opening line-type sequences,
BD
Bi Shao (Yanzu), 298, 299
Bian Canal, 64, 74, 222, 243, 252, 296, 297, 302,
342; construction and management of, 40,
65n
Biographies of the Lofty Gentlemen of the Lotus Society, 179
birds: calls of, in poetry, 14142, 145; imagery
of, discussed, 212, 231, 253, 31719, 322,
364, 365; names of, in satiric poetry, 391
bisyllablic compounds, 143. See also alliterative
compounds, reduplicatives, rhyming compounds
Bitter Bamboo (village), 226, 435
Blackrobe Lane, 140
Bo Juyi, 126, 138n, 219, 353, 398; alluded to,
174; and East Slope, 173; enjambment in,
28485; overturned by He Zhu, 287; as
precedent or parallel, 20, 103, 132n, 142,
15657, 21617, 22930, 250n, 374n; Quatrain by, 41920; treatment of animals in, 27
Bo pagoda, 90
Bolangsha, 71
Boliang form, 15758, 160, 304
Bols, Peter, 397
borrowed parallelism. See parallelism, by pun
Boyang, 109

488

INDEX

Brahm Action Cloister, 437

Branner, David Prager, 7, 8
Broadford Gate, 243, 245
Brown Crane Tower, 235
caesura, 200, 210, 231, 238; as guide to parsing
of line, 382, 400; in heptasyllabic lines, 275;
overridden, 28384, 295, 297, 302, 304, 335,
345, 359, 382, 441; suspense at, 345, 400,
437
Cai Canal, 300
Cai Jing, 261, 262n, 302, 327n
Cai Que, 85, 107, 300302, 304, 392
Cai Xiang, 303, 304, 411n
Cai Youlin, 39
Canglang Song, 2223, 101, 418
Cao Anthology, 25n, 143n, 280, 290n
Cao Cao, 15, 5253, 86, 147, 247, 248, 394
Cao Fu, 241n
Cao Jie (Mengde?), 313, 314, 316
Cao Tang, 323n
Cao Tingdong, 25n
Cao Xuequan, 25n
Cao Zhi, 306
Cassia Girl, 323, 443. See also Change
CD poems. See opening line-type sequences,
CD
Cen Jing, 259
Cen Shen, 4041, 244n
Chaisang, 38, 109, 427
Chan Buddhism, 440
Chan Master Quan. See Faquan
Changan, 19, 55, 68, 93, 177, 315, 317
Change, 323, 324. See also Cassia Girl
Changgan (district or temple), 319, 322
Changlu, 325
Changsha, 138, 288
Chanzhou, 420n, 421n, 422n, 423
Chao Buzhi, 57, 96, 108, 11315, 279, 362n,
402; ganyu in title of poem by, 111
Chao Duanzhi (Zuyu), 19, 20
Chao Guanshi, 159n
Chao Yuanzhong, 113
Chao Yuezhi, 128, 159n, 176n, 215n, 264
Chaozhou, 340, 362
chaupar, 165
Chaves, Jonathan, 217
Chen Congyi, 3334
Chen Lin (Bojun), 428
Chen Shi, 104, 251
Chen Shidao (Wuji), 14, 49, 89n, 107, 257,
284n, 287n, 316n; lyric by, 424

Chen Shizhong (Chuandao), 49, 1078, 130,

135, 214, 291, 292, 301n, 375, 380, 385, 390,
395
Chen Yu (Minshan), 86n, 444
Chen Ziang, 237
Cheng Hao, 159
Chengdu, 247n
Chengtian Temple, 296n
Chenliu, 64, 65, 74, 79, 364, 435
Chenzhou , 85, 107, 300, 301, 339
Chenzhou , 358, 359
Chi Yin, 328, 329
Chicken Pannier, 86, 32526
Chongshen Temple, 89
Chu: ancient state, 22, 23, 45, 104, 132, 255,
264; Han fiefdom, 41; the south, 68, 176,
226, 227, 23435, 372; thorny trees, 227
Chu Shaosun, 364
Chu Tao, 294n
Chu ci, 140, 151, 226n
Chu waters (the Yangzi), 307
Chuzhou , 233, 296n, 314, 331n
Chuzhou , 28
ci (supposed type of heptametrical Ancient
Verse), 131, 14345, 160n, 186. See also lyrics
Cizhou, 13, 278
Classic of Changes, 66, 67n, 68, 70n, 101, 224,
262n, 428
Classic of Poetry, 14n, 15, 42, 105, 114, 115, 168n,
256, 303, 307, 320, 411; diction from, 19, 48,
59, 61n, 68, 109n, 127, 151, 159, 32930,
352, 360, 449
Cloud-Roosting Hut, 9798
clouds: and light, 21617, 219; and no-mind,
9799; over Shamanka Mountain, 23, 35;
short for yunmu, mica, 229n; white, associated with reclusion, 88, 279; early symbolism
of, 66, 67
Clustered Estrade, 127
colophons (on paintings), 23, 122, 37778;
4024
communication in Song China, 88, 262n, 287,
336n, 339, 359, 361, 363, 365
Confucius, 11920, 183, 184; born at Hollow
Mulberry, 114; expressions derived from, 49,
52, 94, 10910, 117; as historian, 92, 11819;
and recluses, 22, 26
countermotion, 374, 377, 386, 38788, 405
couplets: adhesion between, 9, 138; closing,
191, 193, 29091, 311, 347, 34950, 354;
constituted by theme rather than form, 161;
ending on odd-numbered lines, 137; in extended Regulated Verse, 195, 199, 24748;

INDEX
couplets (continued)
importance of, in pentametrical verse for
completion of idea, 275; middle, 188, 189,
194, 2047, 216, 225, 233, 235, 240, 243, 253,
276, 277, 313, 347, non-adhering, 208n,
24445n, 272, 311, 316, 319, 326, 331, 337,
345, 34849, 432; non-adhesion between, as
key to analysis in heptametrical Regulated
Verse, 36667; opening, 347; opening, determining sequence of middle couplets, 215,
267, 277, 291; opening, rhymed, 20710,
26970, 27476; parallelism in three or more
consecutive, 199, 227, 258, 235, 319, 326;
pentametrical, in heptametrical poem, 128,
14849 16667, 168; rhyming, in Songs, 130,
15556; semantic parallelism in first, 199,
258, 310; third, lack of parallelism in, 331;
tonal antithesis within, 138; two or more
consecutive AB, 271, 290, 31114, 316, 319,
325, 326. See also under opening line-type sequences; rhyme
Court Gentlemans Lake, 25862, 397
Cui Hong, 170
Cui Ruozhuo (Zhizhi), 415
Culai Mountain, 159
Cyan Ceiling Cavern, 340
Cypress Hill, 82
Dai Kui, 45, 317, 318, 332
Dai Shulun, 374n
Daizong, 394
Daming, 309, 418n; Huang Tingjian in, 54n,
128, 432; larger than capital, 421
Dangtu, 8485, 256, 269n, 348
Danzhou, 359
Daoan, 148, 308
Daoism, 1819, 69, 97, 118n, 153n, 253n, 262n,
32225, 327
Daoists, 128, 15355, 170, 191, 254, 325; noncelibate, in Sichuan, 155
Daosheng, 77
Daotong, 23134, 314
dates, cyclical, 24; cyclical vs. by reign title,
43233
Davis, A. R., 103, 108, 109
DB poems. See opening line-type sequences,
DB
DD openings. See opening line-type sequences,
DD
Delightful! Pavilion, 4547, 202, 281, 425
Deng Forest, 11213
Deng You, 147n, 165
Dengzhou, 296

489

Deping, 55n
Deqing, 241n
Dezhou, 49
Ding Lingwei, 12728, 130, 163
Dinglin Temple, 440
Dingzhou, 107, 336, 339
Directorate of Palace Buildings, 223
Dong Yuan, 450
Dongfang Shuo, 247, 355n
Donghua, 146
Donglai, 77
dou (pause; penetrates), 7980, 257
Dou Hongyu, 149n
Double Ninth (Double Yang), 170, 278, 283,
287
drought, 15, 17, 117n, 416
Du Fu, 45, 9396, 147, 181; precedents for
language in, 27n, 3334, 70, 11213, 170,
19091, 2056, 256, 25758, 260n, 273, 295,
328n, 34950, 354, 383, 399, 403; precedents
for syntax and structure in, 138, 204n, 216,
22021, 229, 280, 326, 34950, 353, 367;
thematic precedents in, 1516, 17, 39n, 69,
71, 106, 126, 136, 434
Du Mu, 40n, 71, 95, 260n, 28687, 329n, 390,
411, 412, 446
Du Qiu, 40
Du Shenyan, 191
Du Xunhe, 111n
Du Yan (Zhongguan), 24n, 39, 5556, 126, 130,
395
Du Yu (Zizhi), 9697, 339
Du Yu , 119n
Du Zhengcang, 103n
Du Zhengxuan, 103n
Duan Xun (Shencong), 211n
Dugu Ji, 119
Dunhuang, 134
E, Lord of, 23435
East Slope, 17273, 18286
Egan, Ronald, 28, 64
Emperor Xiao Temple, 306
Empress Gao, 332n
Empress L, 68, 69
enjambment, 53, 28485, 245, 295, 298, 419,
437
Erya, 3132
Eupatorium Bottoms Garden, 7476, 121, 122,
293
Ezhou, 100n, 101n, 118, 171, 172n, 178, 179,
235, 264, 340, 399

490

INDEX

fan an (overturned cases), 28587

Fan Bolu, 90n
Fan Kuai, 240, 24143, 268
Fan Li, 373
Fan Zhongyan, 372
Faquan, 8284, 440
farewells, 241n, 244, 245, 254; in Ancient
Verse, 88, 164, 188; in heptametrical Quatrains, 418, 439, 444; in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 266, 272, 32627, 343; in pentametrical Quatrains, 389, 439; in pentametrical Regulated Verse, 188, 21011, 234,
26566; in Songs, 126, 164
Fashioner of Things, 9899, 173
Fayan, 183
Fayin, 389, 43940
Feng Xuan, 16264, 235, 29394
Fenghuang (mountain and village), 93
filling out (guang) a poem, 14953
First Si Day, 4748, 273
fishermen, 2223, 25, 13536; 182, 191, 418
Five-Cloud Stream, 329
Five Hauses (Wuling), 231
Five Phases (wu xing), 129, 137
Five Tumuli, 290, 291, 332
floods, 53, 86, 100n, 114; in Daming area, 4, 36,
42023, in Xuzhou, 41, 52, 137, 28182, 432
flowering plum, 388
folding chairs, 2034, 206
four elders, 68, 170
Four Sorrows, 15053, 350, 353
Frodsham, J. D., 185
fu (and then; again), 193
Fu Liang, 6465n
Fu Xi, 109, 170, 427
Fuchun River, 285
Fujian, 45n, 89n, 181, 241n, 361
Fuli, 293
Fuller, Michael, 31
function (empty) words: in heptametrical
Regulated Verse, 282, in pentametrical Regulated Verse, 194, 220; in Quatrains, 380
Fusang, 136
fuxi (lustration) festival, 225
Fuyang, 13, 17, 23, 27, 36, 39, 123, 191, 413,
415n, 417, 418, 423
ganyu in poem titles, 11011
gao (bottom-land), 22627
Gao Changgong, 2324n
Gao Huaide, 91
Gao Pian, 60
Gao Shi, 240

Gaoyou, 331n, 339

Gaozong, 86n, 327n
gazetteer from regional government unit, 397,
498
ge (supposed type of song), 14445
gender ambiguity, 36, 379
genre boundaries: Ancient Verse vs. heptametrical Regulated Verse, 12122, 280, 287, 290;
Ancient Verse vs. the lyric, 3436; Ancient
Verse vs. Regulated Verse, 12; Ancient
Verse vs. Song, 12; heptametrical Quatrains
vs. the lyric, 36, 4089, 425, 452; heptametrical Regulated Verse vs. Ancient Verse and
Songs, 272; hexametrical Quatrains vs. the
lyric, 401; Songs vs. heptametrical Ancient
Verses broadly defined, 126, 128; Songs vs.
heptametrical Regulated Verse, 155, 156, 304
Ghost-Gate Pass, 360
gifts, 5657, 157, 17981, 3024, 353
Gongcheng, 52, 230, 332
goosefoot staff, 181, 227, 299, 352
Grand Canal, 40, 86, 163n, 233, 236n, 244, 314,
325n, 331n
Great Wall, 393
Greyquill Boat, 23435
gu (still), 25758
Gu Kuang, 5657
Guan Lu, 129n
Guan Ying, 7374
Guancheng, 165, 166
Guangji Canal, 222
Guangling (Yangzhou), 450
Guangnan Circuit, 230
Guangnan East Circuit, 339
Guanshi, 420
Guling, 67, 73
Guo Chen (Tianfu), 423, 424
Guo Ji, 137n
Guo Xiangzheng (Gongfu), 82n, 85, 209, 269,
367, 368, 369, 371
Gushu, 85
Gushu Creek, 348n, 357
Hailing, 97, 160, 164, 166, 171, 178, 186, 248,
256, 331, 33437, 33839, 359, 395; Liu Bin
in, 42829
Hainan, 184, 185, 359
Han (ancient state), 65
Han Chuan, 309
Han Cong, 295n
Han Dynasty, founding of, 6574, 104,
13136, 215, 308
Han Fei, 114

INDEX
Han Hong, 235n
Han Kang, 317, 318, 322
Han River, 181, 215, 26364
Han Xin, 67, 69, 73, 133, 13435, 240, 241,
308, 393
Han Yu, 18n, 59, 149n, 201n, 303n, 398; exile
of, 340, 341; He Zhus familiarity with, 48
50, 207, opening line-type sequences in, 208,
as precedent or parallel, 2627, 42, 116,
250n, 25758, 337, 353; Quatrains by, 368,
stele inscription by, 262
Han Yue, 240
Handan, 25, 126, 280, 322, 364
Hangzhou: Bo Juyi on, 41920; Su Shi in, 87n,
100, 172, 147, 240n, 242, 442
Hanshan, 35758
Hanyang, 100, 105, 110, 120, 168, 248, 258,
262, 264, 347n, 351
Hare Garden, 332
harmonizing. See rhyme: following others
He Chong, 396
He, Master, 146n, 3067, 340, 347, 386, 387
He Shengzhang, 16062, 292
He Zhizhang, 92; allusions to, 55n, 29192,
428, 429; Du Fu on, 170n; He Zhus identification with, 55n, 9495, 308, 328, 329,
33031; longevity of, 398
He Zhu (Fanghui): allusions in lyrics by, 128n,
140, 225, 22627, 235, 446n; ancestry of,
88n, 301, 433, anecdotes about, 56, 265,
302, 410; cognomen of, 7, 329, diction in
lyrics by, 47n, 359, 378, 401, 447; editorial
activities of, 391; father of, 53n, 329n; financial status of, 182, household of, 96, 292;
mother of, 53, 329, 443; poetry collection of,
12, 11, 95n, 100, 243, 269, 301; postings of,
13n, 5051, 53, 74, 86, 100, 141, 18889,
191, 223, 22526, 252n, 256, 278, 300, 310,
315, 344, 40910, 413, 417, 423, 446; preface
to collection of, 2, 12526; promotion from
military to civil status of, 8889, 90, 172, 238,
239, 242, 443; and Qu Yuan, 182, 191; ranks
of, 240n, 443n; religious aspirations of, 81
82, 148, 31011, themes in lyrics of, 21; wife
of, 162, 414
He Zhun, 396
Hebei, 13, 189n
Hebei Circuit, 421
Hebei East Circuit, 52
Hebei West Circuit, 13, 17, 189n, 230
Hengtang (Thorter Dykes), 335
Henricks, Robert, 114

491

heptametrical poems: sense of insubstantiality

in certain, 157. See also genre boundaries;
Quatrains, heptametrical; Regulated Verse,
heptametrical; Songs
Heyang, 179, 266, 361, 377
Hezhou, 53, 74, 86, 141, 155, 22526, 228, 232,
233, 238, 310, 386, 392, 435. See also Liyang
history: alternative possibilities of, 71, 131;
censorship of, 4, 36465, 367; evidential
bases of, 1415, 25, 3940, 9192, 25868,
322, 39799; existing only in the present,
357; lost, 1415, 22, 92, 322; a poem performing the functions of, 104; necessity of
writing, 92, 117120, 17879, 262, 36465;
non-canonical, 69, 13334, 36465; not a
topic for He Zhus heptametrical Quatrains,
452; number and, 129
Hollow Mulberry, 114
Holzman, Donald, 165, 185
homosexuality, 343
Hong Chu, 362
Hongmen, 66, 71
honkadori, 206, 34546
hook words, 410, 418
Horse-Sporting Estrade, 130, 28284
Hu Zeng, 71, 131
Hu Zi, 105
Huai-Chu, 233
Huai River, 65n, 76, 96, 106, 132, 133, 233, 314,
417
Huaihai Campaign, 284n
Huainan East Circuit, 96, 339
Huainan West Circuit, 74, 352
Huainanzi, 176
Huaiyang Commandery. See Chenzhou
Huan Wen, 34445, 348
Huang Cai (Chengbo), 86n, 88
Huang Shang, 75n
Huang Shu (Jixu), 86n, 88
Huang Shuda, 365
Huang Tingjian (Shangu), 3, 83, 85n, 96n, 100
101, 119, 153n; 18485n, 302, 327, 444; calligraphy of, 11617; and Chao Buzhi, 113
14; colophons by, 4023, 404; contrasted
with He Zhu, 14, 51, 53, 57, 79, 366; exile of,
116, 362, 364; and He Zhu, 337, 359n, 362
66, 390; and the heptametrical Quatrain, 408;
and the heptametrical Regulated Verse, 269,
366, 367; and historiography, 118, 364; lyrics
of, criticized, 409; as precedent, parallel, or
influence, 49, 5456, 128, 142, 219, 227,
24142 25253, 295, 298, 299, 310, 334, 430;
preferred opening line-sequences of, 209;

492

INDEX

and the question of allegory, 3132; on Su

Shi, 36263; on Tao Yuanming, 432; on
Wang Anshi, 306, 324n, 444
Huang Xiang, 88
Huangfu Mi, 170n
Huanggang. See Huangzhou
Huangxian, 296
Huangzhou: Delightfull! Pavilion in, 46; Pan
family in, 120n, 361; Su Shi in, 27n, 30, 31,
137, 138, 139, 142, 172, 183n, 203, 281, 288,
414, 416, 425
Huichong, 402, 403, 434
Huikan, 56, 5758
Huiri Temple, 78
Huizhou, 114, 360n, 361
Huiyuan, 179
Huizong, 302, 327n
humor, 157, 15960, 166, 167, 185, 187, 308
309, 31819; malicious, 385; playful, 25455,
291, 293; parodic, 29394; sarcastic, 52; sardonic, 129, 423; satirical, 393, 425; directed
at self, 52, 53, 247. See also wit
Hunan, 231
Huzhou, 137, 138, 139
images of substitution, , 2056, 44748
images of transference, 347, 37879, 442, 443
imitations, 5664, 121, 194202, 268, 37677;
and filling out, 15153; heptametrical
Regulated Verse not used for, 272; of period
style, 121, 37879; Su Shis, of a ti (style),
142
Inferior Baofeng Industrial Prefecture, 3839,
5051n
ink, 15760, 3024
inscriptions, 92, 12123, 18186, 281, 28789,
324, 352, 428
intercalary months, 76
inversions, 282
irony, 129, 187, 247, 27375, 423
Jade Terrace Anthology, 37879
Jar Mote (Purple Gold Mountain), 32223
Ji Bu, 134
Ji Kang, 246, 254, 298, 375, 395, 396
Ji River, 176
Jia Changchao (Ziming), 442
Jia Dao, 286
Jia Shou, 186n
Jia Yi , 73, 138, 264, 288, 340, 341
Jia Yi , 309
Jian Gongchen (Yizhi), 15355
Jian kiln, 181

Jian Xuchen (Shouzhi), 153n

Jian Zhoufu, 153n
Jianan, 89n
Jiang-Huai, 133, 134, 316
Jiang Xu, 102
Jiang Yan, 103n
Jiang Yujing (Maozong), 444n
Jiangnan East Circuit, 341
Jiangnan West Circuit, 39n, 55n, 100, 114, 157,
227, 341, 360
Jiangxia, 88, 117, 171, 176, 178, 181, 208, 234
35, 256, 258, 264, 344, 364; compilation of
texts about, 398; low cultural level of, 347;
sites in, 397498
Jiangzhou, 168, 170
Jiaoran, 244n
jiedui (borrowed correspondence). See parallelism, by pun
Jin Dynasty, 64, 432
Jing Ke, 115
Jing-Luo, 316
Jinghu North Circuit, 354
Jinghu South Circuit, 358
Jingshan Sconce, 293
Jinling, 74, 179, 238, 257, 346, 347, 435; feelings of absence and insubstantiality in, 319,
32125, 441; sites in, 77, 8283, 140, 14648,
156, 228n, 236, 3057, 31920, 32226, 344,
386; and Wang Anshi, 3046, 444, 446
Jinming Lake, 224, 225, 273
Jinshan, 86, 88
Jintan, 265n, 266
jiu (recovery; matching awkwardness), 202.
See also metrical violations; tonal violations
Jiujiang, 168n
Jizhou, 341
Jurchen, 1, 302, 327n
Kaifeng (the capital), 36, 51, 88, 315; canals in
vicinity of, 65n, 297; dusty, 375, 430; Liang or Great Liang, 176, 312, 376;
smaller than Daming, 421
Kamimura Baiken, 60, 62
Kang Pian, 149n
Kangle Precinct, 305
Kong Rong, 19, 20, 103n
Kongzi jiayu, 184
Kou Changzhao (Yuanbi), 49, 75, 77, 130,
29393, 37374
Lake Dongting, 231, 340, 353, 354, 403
Lake Tai, 44, 186n, 373
Lake Jinming. See Jinming Lake

INDEX
Lake Pengli. See Pengli Lake
Lantian (Indigo Fields), 112, 181
Laozi, 109, 154, 155
Leizhou Peninsula, 114
Lesser Lone Mountain, 35051, 44648
Li Bo, 86, 348n, 399; in Jinling, 82, 305n; and
the heptametrical Quatrain, 408; and the
pentametrical Quatrain, 368; precedents and
parallels in, 8485, 95n, 115, 126, 136, 244,
263, 287, 337n, 379, 400; preferred opening
line sequences of, 208; sojourn of, through
Hanyang, 25862, 268, 359, 397; on Zhang
Liang, 64, 7071
Li Deyu, 362
Li Guang, 73n, 112, 173
Li He, 359n
Li Hui (Zhifu), 149, 15152, 22123
Li Lake, 156
Li Ling, 364
Li Qiao, 382
Li Qingchen, 46, 47, 90n, 239
Li Qingzhao, 423, 42425
Li Shangyin, 91, 260n, 26465, 440
Li She, 372n
Li Shen (Daoyuan), 29899
Li Tinggui, 159, 303
Li Xiaosheng, 37677
Li Yi, 48, 59
Li Yixing (Yichu), 39n
Li Yong, 200
Li Zhaoqi (Chengfu, Chengji), 28586
Li Zhi, 165, 215n, 355n
Li Zhiding, 11, 253
Li Zhiyi (Duanshu), 269, 336n
Li Zhong, 136n, 391n
Lian Stream, 101, 117
Liang Deyu, 111n
Liang Dynasty, 306
Liang Hong, 25455, 317, 318, 322
Liang Zhe Circuit, 168, 265n
Liangshan Marsh, 222
Lianyue (Lotus Peak), 56
Liaodong, 128
Liezi, 218, 219, 357
Liguo Industrial Prefecture, 39, 46n
Lincheng, 168, 188, 189n, 191, 273, 409
line length: changing, in Songs, 125, 14243,
144n, 151, 166, 183; diction associated with,
79; heptasyllabic and pentasyllabic, compared, 14849, 16667, 168, 171, 27475,
341, 430; pentasyllabic expanded to heptasyllabic, 60; titles associated with, 84, 111
Lingbi, 76n, 293

493

Lingnan (South of the Hauses), 340

Liting, 93, 96, 122
Liu Ban, 75n, 241n. See also Liu Bin
Liu Bang, 6669, 7173, 104, 13035, 215, 240,
280
Liu Bin, 429. See also Liu Ban
Liu Chang, 40
Liu Changqing, 149, 152, 220, 227, 387n
Liu Chen, 154
Liu Cheng, 253
Liu Gui, 302n
Liu Jing, 68
Liu Jingsu, 103n
Liu Jisun, 24042
Liu Ping, 242
Liu-Song Dynasty, 283, 432
Liu Wei, 111
Liu Wu, 90
Liu Xiaosheng, 37677
Liu Yizhi, 237
Liu Yong, 314
Liu Yu, 64n, 71
Liu Yuxi, 52, 77n, 86, 2067, 286, 337, 364n,
400, 428, 429
Liu Zhi, 75
Liu Zongyuan, 220, 351n
Liyang, 74, 80, 8486, 208, 226, 233, 238; port
of, 236, 315; sites in or near, 86, 156, 314,
325, 435, 4377. See also Hezhou
locative phrase at end of line, 282
Longe (Dragon Forehead), Marquis of, 240,
241
Longevity Spring stele, 397
Lou Pan, 439n
Lowell, Robert, 152
Loyang, 38n, 68, 72, 73, 133, 174n, 292, 298
99, 315, 317, 395
Lu (ancient state or region), 51, 118, 159n
Lu Deming, 224
Lu Dian, 16, 31n
Lu Guimeng, 135n, 260n
Lu Ji, 29899, 3078n, 364
Lu Sidao, 2324n
lu yin (salaried recluse), 254, 255
Lu You: and enjambment, 285; expressions
and diction in poems of, 215n, 332; ganyu in
poem title, 111; travel records of, 82, 85n,
236, 325n, 348, 35051
Lu Yu, 44
Lu Yun, 29899
L Benzhong, 129
L Dafang, 360, 361, 362, 364, 392
L Shang, 357

494

INDEX

L Zuqian, 128
Luo Binwang, 237, 248
Luo River, 65
Luo Ye, 372
Luo Yin, 260
Luo Yuan, 140
lustration festival, 225
lyrics (ci), 269n, 149n; expressions and diction
in, 79, 176, 19798, 216, 244, 314, 425, 439;
gender ambiguity in, 379; rhymes in, 321;
term used in title of Song, 131n; tunes or
matrices of, 330n. See also under genre
boundaries; He Zhu
Ma Dai, 233
Madman of Chu, 2627, 88
Mather, Richard, 11, 165
mei (besmirch), 255
Mei Yaochen, 26, 2728, 90n, 111n, 146n,
303n, 37879; on bird words, 142; and the
heptametrical Quatrain, 406, 408; on obsession with poetry, 247n; poems by, on creatures, 27, 29, 206; poems by, in sets of ten,
85; as precedent, parallel, or influence, 40, 49,
7980, 121, 214, 233, 257, 371, 37273;
pride of, in his poverty, 182; social poetry
by, 1516, 17; xing by, 144n
Meishan (Brow Peak), 41, 44, 123, 288, 289
Mencius, 20, 22
Meng Haoran, 60, 24445
Meng Jiao, 28, 59, 86, 111n, 116n, 253; He
Zhus familiarity with, 29, 80
Meng Zong, 39798
Metal Dike, 421
meter, 810; adherence to, effect of, 293, 296,
343, 351, 356; emotive effect of, 16062,
21112, 245, 266, 291, 319, 341, 34738;
identical, in adjacent lines, 353; identical, in
different poems, 202, 207, 21617, 228, 377;
impact of, on analysis, 9, 218, 224, 267, 271,
309, 36667; influence of, on content, 188,
230; latitude of, in heptametrical Regulated
Verse, 27072; notation of, explained, 910;
overriding normal readings of characters, 8,
256, 345, 353; regulated and unregulated, in
poem pairs, 34748; regulated, incongruous
with topic, 385; as regulated line-type sequences in Ancient Verse, 78; regulated, in
Songs, 138, 13941, 167; regulated, in unregulated line sequences, 379. See also under
couplets; metrical violations; opening linetype sequences; poetic closure; tone; tonal
violations

metrical violations: compensating, 290, 311,

338; emotive effect of, 215, 231, 338; formal
effect of, 9; rare in heptametrical Quatrains,
422, 428; rhetorical effect of, 309, 314, 345,
388, 429, 430; systematic, 353. See also under
meter; tonal violations
Mi Fu (Yuanzhang), 5, 6, 8688, 107, 197,
25155, 302
Mi Heng, 112
Mian River, 317, 358
Mid-Autumn Festival, 374
Milky Way, 197, 201, 263
millet and broomcorn millet, 219
mints: in Cizhou, 13n; in Xuzhou, 3839, 50
51, 292, 300; in Ezhou (Jiangxia), 100, 171,
172, 234, 264, 344, 357, 359, 446
Mirror Lake, 95, 171, 329
Mizhou, 137n, 240, 296n, 309, 394
Mo Lifeng, 408
Moling, 83
Mou Huaichuan, 199, 200, 201, 207
Mount Emei, 154
Mount Hui, 44
Mount Lu, 100
Mount Min, 154
Mount Sumen. See Sumen
Mount Tai, 76, 98, 104
Mount Tiantai, 154, 384
Mount Zhong, 83, 440
Nanjing. See Jinling
Nankang, 39n, 55n, 157
Nanle, 424
nanmu, 385
narrative poetry, 133
Nephrite Void, 323
New Policies: attempts to reverse, 308; consequences of, 30, 394, 41617; factions of, 85,
111, 286, 306; flood control under, 423;
pressure on historians to praise, 118, 364;
question of He Zhus attitude toward, 302,
432
New Songs from a Jade Terrace, 19697n, 244
no-mind, 90, 9899
No-Mind Hut, 90
north-south differences, 157, 3089
Northern Marchmount Shrine, 252n
Niu Sengru, 398
noun phrases: 282, 29798, 318, 413, 420, 425,
437
numbers: correlations featuring, in parallel
couplets, 200201, 250, 326, 350;

INDEX
numbers (continued)
as hook words within line, 418; odd vs.
even, 241n; Quatrain built around, 396
no Shsaku, 32
onomatopoeia, 223, 391
opening line-type sequences: AB, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 312, 316; BB, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 293, 294; BD, in
heptametrical Regulated Verse, 26970, 277,
313, 31920; BD, in pentametrical Regulated
Verse, 20810, 258, 270; CD, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 319, 320, 321; CD, in
pentametrical Regulated Verse, 20810, 215,
245, 252, 258; DB, in heptametrical Regulated Verse, 156, 26970, 277, 291, 292; DB,
in pentametrical Regulated Verse, 20811,
21415, 258; DB, in Song, 156; DD, 271,
345, 353
oral storytelling, 134, 186
Ouyang Xiu: as connoisseur, 39n, 45n, 57;
contrasted with He Zhu, 235, 29293, 379;
and Du Fu, 33, 2056, 280; ganyu in title of
poems by, 111n; and the heptametrical
Quatrain, 406; imitation of Han Yu by, 149n;
poems by, on animals, 2728; in politics, 303;
on poverty and poetry, 116, 451; as precedent, parallel, or influence, 49, 147n, 165,
191, 192, 212, 213, 250, 295, 346n, 379
Owen, Stephen, 108
ox cloak, 307, 308, 309
Ox Harness, 11415
Ox Holm, 236, 325
pai l. See Regulated Verse, pentametrical: extended
paintings: as commodities, 450; of Daoist, 154.
See also Huichong
Palace of Upper Clarity Stored-up Auspiciousness, 26162
Palumbo-Liu, David, 32
Pan Daguan (Zhongda), 182, 185
Pan Dalin (Binlao), 119, 120, 185, 182, 359,
361
Pan Geng, 120n
Pan Gu, 159
Pan Xiaoben (Jingren), 230, 231
Pan Yue, 80n, 179, 266, 361, 37677
Pang Degong, 83, 317, 318, 322
Pang Wen, 8384
Panpan: women named, 284
parallelism, semantic, 12, 7778, 84, 188, 189
90, 129, 21213, 233, 267, 268, 284, 349; dif-

495

ficulty of, in Quatrains, 171; coherence of,

needed in heptametrical verse, 276; ease of,
dangerous in heptametrical verse, 296; expected, weak or absent, 21314, 22223, 235,
238, 24345, 250, 331, 349, 350, 353; folding-fan, 155, 156, 244; internal to line, 212,
290, 324, 420; in more than two couplets of
a Regulated Verse, 19192, 199, 227, 24951,
258, 319, 326; notional, rather than lexical,
79, 212, 223, 282, 310, 349; and numbers,
250; by pun, 200, 215, 22021, 227, 260, 279,
345; rhetorical effect of, 289; rhetorical effect of absence of, 29293; visual or graphic,
263, 324
parallelism, tonal, 78, 121, 188, 213, 243, 245,
250, 292, 345; coherence of, needed in heptametrical verse, 276; violated, 272, 337
Pavilion for Releasing Cranes, 281
Peach Blossom Spring, 197, 201
Peach Leaf (song, woman, and mountain), 140,
196
Pei, 131, 132
Pen City, 117
Peng Gate Road, 138
Peng Yue, 67, 73n, 131
Pengcheng (Peng City). See Xuzhou
Pengli Lake (Poyang Lake), 341
Pengze, 344
pentasyllabic lines in heptametrical poems, 128,
137, 14041, 144, 14849, 16667. See also
under line length
personification, 449. See also images of transference
Phoenix Estrade, 82n
Phoenix Mountain, 284n
Phoenix Perching Estrade (=Phoenix Estrade?), 325
Phoenix Plain, 284
Pi Rixiu, 28
pivot construction, 285
poems on objects, 142
poetic closure, 48, 53, 77, 82, 145, 193, 21516,
22425, 227, 228, 248, 277, 326n, 354, 383
84, 405, 431, 436
poetry society, 50, 374, 425; not mentioned in
context of Songs, 130, 139
Pound, Ezra, 63
poverty, 308, 362, 36566; and poetry, 116,
171, 246, 451; the poets, 1921, 247; Yan
Huis contentment with, 18285
Poyang, 34142, 343
print culture, 92
prosy language, 295, 335

496

INDEX

pronouns: first-person, 168, 254, 318, 359;

interrogative, 220; relative objective, 220;
second-person, 174, 254, 318; supplied in
translation, 253, 301, 333, 379; third-person,
334, 359
puns, 255n, 347, 44648. See also parallelism, by
pun
Purple Gold Mountain (Zhongshan; Northern
Mountain), 323
Putian jian, 392
Qi (ancient region or state), 114, 117, 159n,
194n
Qi Gong, 9, 10, 271, 337n, 400n
Qi Prefecture, 352
Qian Shi (Dexun), 327, 391
Qian Qi, 208
Qian Qianyi, 170n
Qian Yu, 327
Qiantang River, 95
Qianzhou, 114, 362, 364, 365
Qiao Xuan, 247
Qichun, 352
Qiji, 244
Qin (ancient state), 38n, 115, 174
Qin Dynasty, 65, 71, 130, 132, 134
Qin Guan, 40, 53n, 89n, 160n, 237, 239, 257,
28687, 343n, 391; exile of, 35859
Qin-Huai, 83, 236, 344, 347, 387
Qinfeng Circuit, 92, 307
Qing Bu, 67, 131
Qingliang Temple, 148, 306, 308, 309, 340, 347,
386, 387, 446
Qingming, 426
Qingping, 309
Qinzhou, 93
Qishan, 307
Qizhou, 108n, 114
Qu Yuan, 22, 136n, 181, 189, 191, 215, 287,
288, 333, 334, 418, 445; by the marshes, 41
42, 182, 237
Quan Deyu, 111n, 192n, 378
Quannan, 428n
Quanzhou, 86n
Quatrains, heptametrical, 13; by Cai Que, 85;
Cai Xiang and the revival of late Tang fondness for, 411n; difficulties of, 408; as first
poem to a new acquaintance, 448; on history,
131; for inscriptions, 121; in pairs or sets,
41517, 42931; preferred by Huang Tingjian and Guo xiangzheng, 269; preferred in
past for poems on Xuzhou sites, 13031;
relative weight in poets works, 4068; usu-

ally regulated, 415; by Wang Anshi, 7172,

146n; variations in output of, 408. See also
genre boundaries, heptametrical Quatrains
vs. the lyric
Quatrains, hexametrical, 400404
Quatrains, pentametrical: as correspondence,
386; difficulties of, 369, 371; He Zhus definition of, 373; linking to something outside
themselves, 369, 378; in pairs or sets, 36976,
38086, 38788, 390, 391400, 429; relative
weight in poets works, 368, 405; regulated
vs. unregulated, 369, 375
Queen Mother of the West, 197, 324
Quzhou, 86
Raffel, Burton, 63, 152n
Raozhou, 341
recent-style verse. See Regulated Verse
Record of Exhaustion and Sorrow, 362
Record of Rites, 176
Red Embankment, 313n, 314
reduplicatives: examples of, 376, 382, 401, 414;
linking two Quatrains, 431; in late Tang
and/or Wang Anshi, 41011, 445, 452;
placement of, dictating line sequence, 221;
two, combined to make rhyming compound,
245; vivid effect of, 381, 419; in yin, ci, and
xing, 14345
Regulated Verse: conventional structure of,
204, 249; development of, 141; difficulty of
writing imitations in, 121; Mi Fus preference for, 253; without parallel lines, 24445
Regulated Verse, heptametrical: for correspondence, 386; explicit social function of, 188,
272, 296, 32627; extended, 35154; as first
poems to new acquaintances, 222n, 272,
3067, 444; for inscriptions, 121; metrical
latitude in, 27072; opening line-type sequences in, 156, 16970; pre-Xuzhou, 273,
279; preferred over pentametrical for farewells, 266; prevalence of first-line rhyme in,
26970; relative weight in poets works, 269;
variations in output of, 155, 160, 273, 306,
408
Regulated Verse, pentametrical: avoidance of
repeated characters in, 260, 309; extended,
194202, 24548; as first poems to new acquaintances, 272; never used for harmonizing, 278; in pairs, 207, 23538, 262, 268; sequence of line types in, 188, 270; used for
farewells and correspondence, 188; variations in output of, 2078
Rhapsody of the Houlet, 138, 264, 340

INDEX
Rhapsody on Living in Idleness, 361
Rhapsody on Snow, 332n
Rhapsody on the Yellow Tower, 261
rhetorical questions, 193, 212, 215, 328, 334,
374, 376; in predecessor poet answered by
He Zhu, 286
Rhino Shining Pavilion, 325
rhyme: across category boundaries, 430; across
tone boundaries, 321; in all or most lines,
137, 139, 157, 160, 161, 163, 167, 181;
anomalous pattern of, in Su Shi, 321; borrowed from song alluded to, 294; categories
of, indicated in transcriptions, 8; change of,
dividing poem into sections, 6162, 128, 137,
143, 145, 14849, 161; change of, an option
in Songs, 12, 125; change of, rare in pentametrical Ancient Verse, 1213, 123; contribution of, to overall sound play, 41; contribution of, to reading, 130, 183; deflectedtone, in Regulated Verse, 138n, 154; deflected-tone, in Songs, 141, 155; dictating
order of images, 84; difficult categories of,
88, 316; entering-tone, 28; feigned, in fifth
line of Regulated Verse, 327, 32930; following others, 64, 105, 108,113, 114, 153n,
211, 27879, 391; interlocking, 128, 15354,
168, 187; internal slant, 218; level-tone, required in Regulated Verse, 10, 272; openingline, rare in pentametrical verse, 13, 25n, 120,
123, 149, 20811, 233, 320, 223, 373, 385
86; opening-line, typical in heptametrical
verse, 26970, 274, 276, 326; reconciled,
32021; resumed, 153, 163; set by words
from another text, 375, 395; slant, 149n,
299300; suggesting content, 185; unchanging, in Songs of 109097, 187; virtuoso, in
extended Regulated Verse, 195, 353
rhyming compounds, 14345, 245, 25051,
337
Rising Dragon Festival, 238n
Rongzhou, 360
Round Fan song, 19697
Rouzer, Paul, 195
Ruan Fu, 44041n
Ruan Ji, 26, 52n, 55, 58, 59, 185, 246, 252, 298,
340, 342n
Ruan Zhao, 154, 155
Rufang Mountain, 8081n
Ruichang, 168
Ruzhou, 137
Samei, Maija Bell, 36
Sanshan, 82

497

Shaanzhou, 309
Shadick, Harold, 162
Shamanka Mountain, 23, 25, 35,
Shandong, 51, 76, 77, 159, 160n, 296, 309
Shandong West Circuit, 214n
Shanyin, 88, 97, 253, 255n, 328n, 332
Shao Yong, 32, 129
Shaoxing, 88, 92, 95, 292
Shen Gua, 33, 159n
Shen Huan/Linghuan (Xianyu), 26566
Shen Quanqi, 346n
Shen Yue, 165
Shen Zongjie, 17172n
Shenzong, 50, 118, 225, 364, 433
Shi Decao, 14445
shi ming (poetic cries), 116
Shouna, 189n
Shu (state), 136, 201
Shu Yuanyu, 398
Shuanggou, 107, 214n, 292
Shuoyuan, 373
Si River, 215, 288
Sichuan, 52, 93, 136, 153n, 154, 155, 274, 332,
361; dialect, 351; Li Shangyin in, 265; as
place of exile, 260, 362, 365
Sikong Tu, 385
Sima Daozi, 323
Sima Guang, 300n
Sima Qian, 72, 73n, 11718, 364
Sima Shao, 197
Sima Xiangru, 35, 247n, 288, 332
Siming, 9495, 328
Sir Fantasy, 288
Sizhou, 65n, 96, 98, 182, 302, 339
slant rhyme. See under rhyme
Slapping Waves Shelf, 350, 351, 446
Snow Hall, 361
solar nodes, 232, 366
song in title of heptametrical Ancient Verses
on set topics, 12526
Song Minqiu, 29
Song Xiang, 184n
Song Yu, 45
Song of the Great Wind, 131
Songs: challenges of, 125; composed with
group, 130; as first poem to new acquaintance, 272; He Zhus definition of, 2, 125;
preferred in Song Dynasty for bird-speech
poems, 14243; relative weight of, in He
Zhus corpus, 125; variations in output of,
130, 408. See also under Ancient Verse; genre
boundaries; meter; rhyme
Sorewaist Hill, 8081n

498

INDEX

sound play, 290, 295, 412, 451

South Estrade, 284, 287
Sporting Horse Estrade, 130
Stone-Gravel Sconce, 312n, 388
Stony Head, 148, 228n, 306, 387, 446
Su Qin, 38n, 174, 395
Su Shi (Zizhan, Dongpo): allusions to, 4647,
109, 13839, 28789, 3089, 360, 451; arrest
of, 17, 31; associates of, 57n, 82n, 83, 85,
87n, 96, 97, 100, 1068, 119, 130, 153, 186,
232, 240, 241n, 301n, 339; and Bo Juyi, 229n,
and the Boliang form, 158, 160; and Cai Que,
85; calligraphy of, 11617; collection of, 3;
colophons by, 402, 434, 447; comparisons
with, 1415, 17, 79, 81, 97, 9899, 100101,
147n, 14849, 153n, 160n, 257, 264, 28687,
29293, 37980, 396, 411; concordance to
poems by, 5n; and East Slope, 172, 173, 182,
18586; equanimity of, 357; on Eupatorium
Bottoms, 7475; exiled to Hainan Island,
184, 185, 203, 35962; exiled to Huangzhou,
30, 74, 137, 13839, 172, 414, 41617; exiled
to Huizhou, 108n, 26162; exiled to Yingzhou, 336, 339, 359; and Han Dynasty Daoist Mr. He, 324; in Hangzhou, 100, 240n,
442; and He Zhu, 90, 239, 242, 359, 443;
and the heptametrical Quatrain, 380n, 408,
425; Huang Tingjian on, 36263; and measurement of time, 314; and New Policies, 4,
30, 324n, 392, 41617; northerners hostility
to, 3089; and the pentametrical Quatrain,
369, 37071, 380n; as precedent, parallel, or
influence, 20n, 27, 34, 38, 40, 5253, 65n,
69n, 77, 80, 8384, 88n, 91n, 104, 109n, 116,
117, 144n, 170, 173, 176, 192n, 212, 239n,
249, 264, 274n, 281, 282, 298, 305n, 329,
337, 340, 345n, 35758, 361n, 379, 38384,
414, 42829; as prefect of Dingzhou, 252n;
as prefect of Yingzhou, 24041n; and the
question of allegory, 31, 32; references to
goosefoot staff in, 181; reign titles in poems
by, 432; rhymes in, 123n, 218n, 299, 321,
430, 440; route of, to Dengzhou, 296; route
of, to Huizhou and Tengzhou, 11415; Stele
for the Palace of Upper Purity and Stored-up Auspiciousness by, 26162; and Tao Yuanming,
10510, 177, 187; and Wang Anshi, 306, 411;
wit of, 8990, 142, 177, 187, 28687; and
Xuzhou, 4147, 137, 13839, 202, 227, 281
82; 283, 28789, 423, 432; on Zhang Liang,
64, 66
Su Shunqin, 90n, 337, 406

Su Zhe (Ziyou): attacks on Li Qingchen by,

47n; comparisons with, 257; and the heptametrical Quatrain, 408; as precedent, parallel,
or influence, 94, 17273, 184, 250n, 337;
Rhapsody on the Yellow Tower by, 261; and Su
Shi, 46, 114, 298, 360; and Wang Yansou,
392
Sui River, 297
suites of poems, 14146, 186
Sumen, 52, 145, 177, 279
Sun Deng, 52n, 279
Sun Fang, 50n
Sun Quan, 449
Sun Xiu (Anshi), 3079
Suzhou, 292, 335, 449
Swallow Tower, 284
Taihang Mountains, 286
Taihe, 100
Taiqiu, 251
Taiyuan, 5
Taizong, 301
Tan Shiyun, 376n
Tanabe Shha, 60
Tao Hongjing, 324
Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian): allusions to, 38, 49,
77, 98, 16771, 17374, 330, 331, 34445,
395, 42627; collection of, 184; diction of,
cited, 19, 20, 81, 103, 197, 21314, 249;
format of dates in writings of, 432; friends
of, 146, 340; image of, revised in 1090s,
10510, 171, 17377, 187; studio named after, 292n
tea, 4445, 56, 11516, 181, 36566n
temples: on ancient site, 90; founded by
Wangwu, 9798; as hostels, 78, 86, 215, 322;
at Jinshan, 86, 88; kennings for, 98; on Mt.
Zhong, 83; poems on, 226n, 232
temporal phrase at end of line, 282
Tengzhou, 114, 360
Thorter Dykes. See Hengtang
Three Chus, 332
Three Galleries, 320
Three Hundred Tang Poems, 193, 244n
three-syllable lines, 42, 123, 142, 143
Three Xiang, 231
Tian Zhiming (Tian Zhou; Chengjun), 35, 163
Tianqing Observatories, 322
Tianxi Temple. See Changgan
time, 2325, 275, 283, 435; ambiguous, 353;
cyclical, 193, 212, 218; living only in the present, 35557; passage of, 189, 212, 224, 247;
measurements of, 314, 433;

INDEX
time (continued)
as running away from the self, 129, 436;
transition points in, 218. See also temporal
phrase at end of line
titles: as clues to existence of sub-genres, 264;
harmonizing vs. following the rhymes
of in, 278; unusual, 24849
tonal violations: emotive effect of, 31112;
minor, in third syllable, 24546, 250, 253,
254; offsetting semantic parallelism, 191;
offsetting each other, 192, 202, 24546, 254;
rhetorical effect of, 193, 202, 235, 240, 254
55, 291, 319, 337, 338, 345, 434; symbols
showing, 9. See also metrical violations
tones: antithesis of, between lines of a couplet,
138; awkward sequences of, 12, 158, 292,
335, 337, 346, 347, 432; decided on basis of
meter, 224, 260, 266, 345, 353; deflected, effect of, 155, 162, 22425, 231, 238, 314, 346;
and diction, 245; emotive effect of, 16162;
entering, 28, 123, 223, 251, 290, 412; the
four, indicated in Branners transcriptions, 8;
level, in B lines, 224, 231; level, in D lines,
210, 21516, 313, 316; level, effect of, 155,
235, 314; level, forbidden at end of nonrhyming line in Regulated Verse, 309; line
type defined by, in second and last positions,
9, 188, 271, 291, 311; lone deflected or level,
12, 222, 231, 290, 335, 432, 434, 442; metrical importance of, at second position in
opening line of Regulated Verse, 210, 270;
of numbers, 250 349, 350; and rhyme, 12, 41,
123, 138, 141, 155, 156, 157, 2078, 221, 272,
290, 32021; rhetorical effect of, 138; rising,
123n; symbols for, used in this book, 910.
See also couplets, adhesion between; meter;
metrical violations; parallelism, tonal; tonal
violations
Tongchuan, 332
Tonggu, 93, 94
Tongji Canal, 297
transcriptions of Chinese, 78
Tripod Lake, 433
Tripod Stream. See Si River
Vimalakrti, 69n, 83, 98
Wai Kam-moon, 208n
Wan Creek, 401
Wang Anli, 75n
Wang Anshi, 38n, 164, 348n, 402; comparisons
with, 190, 257, 280, He Zhus view of, 306,
32425, 441; and the hexametrical Quatrain,

499

400; in Jinling, 83, 146n, 305, 309n, 387n,

440, 444; as precedent, parallel, or influence,
23n, 81, 181, 23334, 263, 424, 445, 446; reduplicatives used by, 41011, 445; on Zhang
Liang, 64, 7174; Zi shuo by, 31n
Wang Chang, 192n
Wang Chun, 152
Wang Dechen, 398
Wang Gong (Wenju), 130, 194, 373, 378n
Wang Hong, 170
Wang Huizhi, 355; snowy night journey of, 88,
317, 318, 322, 332, 355
Wang Ji , 3078n
Wang Ji , 315
Wang Li, 193, 245n, 282n, 28485, 309n
Wang Ling, 128n, 15253, 241n
Wang Mao (Yuangong), 179
Wang Rong, 24647
Wang Sheng, 166
Wang Shi, 130, 135, 172, 173
Wang Shipeng, 3
Wang Shizhen, 60, 62, 63
Wang Wei, 17, 118, 160n, 208, 282n, 284, 400
Wang Xiang (Yuanxu), 155, 238
Wang Xianzhi, 140, 196
Wang Xizhi, 35, 88, 117, 148, 305, 328
Wang Yang, 52
Wang Yansou (Yanlin), 3089, 39294, 397
Wang Yucheng, 190, 215n, 230, 318n
Wang Zhang, 307
Wang Zhuo (Xiansou), 146, 148, 31619, 321
22
Wang Zun, 52, 53
Wangchun Gate, 91
Wangwu (mountain and/or monk), 97, 98, 99
Wei Zhongjiang, 159
Wei Zhuang, 434, 438
Wei River, 307, 357
Wei Xian, 102
Weizhou , 52, 145, 296, 332, 425, 426
Weizhou , 421n
Wen Qiao, 325
Wen Tingyun, 59, 196n, 197202, 219n, 260n,
265, 268
Wen Tong, 91n
Wenyang, 160
Western Province Gate, 306
Western Studio, 390
whistling, 52n, 102n, 165, 167, 2067, 341
White Cloud Hut, 309
White Cloud Villa, 213, 294
White Egret Island, 140, 148
White Lotus Society, 146, 179

500

INDEX

Whitegate Road, 227228

Willow Branch songs, 408, 42526
wit, 1819, 8788, 8990, 135, 145, 177, 187,
24748, 251, 261, 373, 38586, 398, 404,
429, 449, 451; See also under humor
Wu (region or state), 254, 449
Wu form, 326n
Wu Jiong, 91n
Wu Qian (Dafu), 448n
Wu Rong, 196n
Wu Xiang (Mingshu), 17778
Wu Youxu, 178
Wu Yu, 321
Wu Yuanheng, 111n
Wu Yun, 170
Wu Zetian, 178
Wuchang, 118, 171, 175n
Wucheng, 94
Wuhan, 118, 172n, 235, 448
Wujiang, 78, 228, 311n, 335n, 436, 438
Wukang, 164
Wuwei, 309
Wuxi, 44
xi (refrain word), 144n, 151, 160n
Xi Kang. See Ji Kang
Xi Shen, 103n
Xi-Xia, 392, 393
xianpu (gazetteer?), 86
Xiang River, 231
Xiang Yu, 66, 67, 71, 73, 130, 132, 280, 283n
Xianyang, 133
Xianyu Shen (Zijun), 57n
Xiao He, 68, 69
Xiao-Mian, 132, 133
Xiao Qingwei, 105, 106
Xiao-Xiang, 76n, 403, 438
Xiayi, 73n
Xie An, 45, 305, 306, 332, 343, 355
Xie Huilian, 343
Xie Lingyun, 113n, 185, 283n, 305, 343, 384
Xie Tiao, 82, 348
Xie Xuan, 305
Xie Zhan, 71
Xin Qiji, 170n
xing (supposed type of Song), 14346, 186
Xinhui, 114
Xu Dazheng, 89
Xu Hun, 207, 260n, 39091
Xu Prefecture, 214n
Xu Zhongya, 244
Xuanren Empress, 50
Xuanwu Lake, 387

Xuanzong, 149
Xue Neng, 47, 281, 282, 408
Xun Shuang, 174
Xuyi. See Sizhou
Xuzhou, 53, 261, 376; and Chen Shizhong, 107,
108n, 214, 375; flood threat to, 423, 432; and
Han Yu, 42, 4950, 207; sites in or near, 38
39, 4148, 13031, 137, 13839, 202, 222,
28084, 28788, 292, 294, 373, 390; and
Yang Shi, 157, 159. See also poetry society; Su
Shi, and Xuzhou
Yan Guang, 310, 373
Yan Hui, 18385
Yan Jun, 39
Yan Shu, 314
Yan Yanzhi, 340, 341
Yan Zhenqing, 253
Yang Guifei (Honored Consort Yang), 149
Yang Jie, 96
Yang Rou, 425, 426
Yang Shi (Zhongli), 157, 15960, 161, 179, 181,
302, 304
Yang Tan, 306
Yang Wanli, 165, 215n, 332
Yang Xiong, 160, 18283, 303
Yang Xiuzhi, 184n
Yang Zhu, 218, 354
Yangchun, 114
Yangchun Pavilion, 281
Yangguan Pass (tune title), 408
Yangzhou, 88, 244n, 308, 339, 444, 450; romantic associations of, 40, 446; Su Shi in, 97,
1068
Yangzi River (Jiang): boiling, in sagas of Han
founding, 132, 134; downstream travel on,
154, 177; crossing of, 97, 100, 186, 236, 315,
331, 339, 435; erosion along, 259, 261, 313n,
397; and Greyquill boat, 235; in Jiangxia area,
181, 26364, 355; kennings for, 55n, 307;
sites along, in Liyang-Nanjing area, 82, 84,
86, 140, 148, 156, 236, 313, sites along, in
Runzhou area, 86, 325; as emblematic of the
South, 22627; upstream from Jiangxia, 118,
177, 340, 362, 365, 399; upstream travel on,
74, 156, 168, 342, 344
Yanshi, 308
Yanzi, 194n
Yao He, 88
Ye, 13, 92, 280
Ye Mengde, 5, 38n, 265
Yecheng, 305n
Yelang, 259, 260, 262, 359

INDEX
Yellow Emperor, 433
Yellow Leaf Hause, 310
Yellow Millet Dream, 364, 365
Yellow River, 309, 315; administration of, 422
23; and Bian Canal, 65n; boiling, in saga of Ji
Bu, 134; climate along, 233n; course change
and flooding of, 4, 36, 42021; reference to,
in oath, 104
Yellow Stone, 66, 70, 73
Yellow Tower, 41, 137, 261
Yi Yin, 114
yin (supposed type of song), 14345, 186
Yinglong, 98
Yingzhou , 339, 340, 359
Yingzhou , 91n, 106, 107, 24041n, 301n,
394
Yiyang, 56
Yong Chi, 6768, 72
yong wu shi (poetry on objects), 142
Yongcheng, 296, 299, 425, 428
Yongchun xian, 86n
Yongjia, 340
Yongqiu, 107, 251, 252
Yongyu Barrow, 433
Yu Dan (Qinglao), 444
Yu Liang, 2034
Yu Shinan, 237
Yu Yi, 117
Yuan Jiang, 216
Yuan Zhen, 17, 85n, 142, 147, 337, 343n, 353
Yuancheng, 418n
Yuanming Studio, 107, 108, 292n
Yuanxu, 449
Yuanyou Empress, 327
Yue , 340
Yuezhou , 340
Yuezhou , 95, 328, 329, 332, 337
Yuling. See Yongyu Barrow
Yunlong Hill (Cloudy Dragon Hill), 4243, 139,
227, 28182, 390
Yunzhou , 172n
Yunzhou , 217
Yuzhang, 343n
~zai exclamation, 4849, 137
Zeng Chen (Chengzhi), 33234, 44446
Zeng Guofan, 42
Zhang Bangjie (Zicai), 16871
Zhang Fangping, 131
Zhang Han, 292, 342
Zhang Hanqiu, 438
Zhang Heng, 15053, 323n, 350, 353
Zhang Hu, 111n, 36566

501

Zhang Ji, 52, 86

Zhang Jiuling, 111
Zhang Lei: cited, 120n; comparisons with, 257,
424; ganyu titles in the works of, 111n; and
the goosefoot staff, 181; as precedent or parallel, 165, 216, 24042, 250, 389; preferred
openings in Regulated Verse by, 209; Quatrains by, 369, 408
Zhang Liang, 6474, 109, 132, 133, 170
Zhang Peilun, 417
Zhang Shizhi, 348
Zhang Shuo, 76, 77
Zhang Siyong (Zixiu), 8687n
Zhang Tianji (Shengtu), 4243, 227, 228, 281,
282, 390
Zhang Wei, 259
Zhang Xu, 303
Zhang Yuangan, 438
Zhang Yue, 340, 341, 343
Zhang Zai (late third century), 35, 151
Zhang Zai (102077), 3233
Zhang Zhonglian (Mofu), 211, 212, 213, 293,
294
Zhang Zhongwei, 40, 41n
Zhao (ancient state), 25
Zhao Commandery, 276n, 409
Zhao Defang, 301n
Zhao Dexiu, 301n
Zhao Dezhao, 301
Zhao Lingshuai (Jingdao), 302, 403
Zhao Lingzhi (Jingkuang), 85, 1067, 300302,
304, 339, 403, 409, 411
Zhao Lingzi (Wenhuan), 403
Zhao Mian (Daoyuan), 171n
Zhao Pang (Peiran), 171n
Zhao Tingzhi, 309
Zhaozhou, 409
Zhedong, 292
Zhegutian (tune title), 4089
Zheng Fang, 403
Zheng Gardens, 392
Zheng Jin (Yanneng), 54
Zheng Yuan (Linji), 278
Zhenjiang, 86, 87, 107
Zhezong, 50, 238n, 327n
Zhi River, 278
Zhiyin, 391, 43940
Zhong Zhenzhen, 359
Zhongnan Range, 177
Zhou Bin (Kaizu), 97, 98, 16467, 34143
Zhou Bo, 7374
Zhou Dunyi, 89, 100104, 352
Zhou Hang (Wenqing), 3638, 300, 423, 424

502
Zhou Jianzhong (Yuantong), 29698
Zhou Shou (Yuanweng), 100104, 11518,
35254
Zhou Tao (Ciyuan), 100104, 352
Zhou Wei, 297n
Zhu (ancient state), 160n
Zhu Guangting, 308
Zhu Xi, 321, 362n
Zhu Yun, 310
Zhuangyuan Temple, 435
Zhuangzi, 18, 27n, 77, 153n, 194n, 214n, 218,
227n, 251, 41314

INDEX
Zhuge Liang, 136, 201, 229
Zhuge Vale, 229, 230
Zigong, 184
Zilu, 184
Zizhang, 184
Zu Guan, 398
Zuo Ci, 52
Zuo Qiuming, 119
Zuo Si, 20
Zuo Tradition, 119, 148, 184, 264, 356
Zuo Yu (Tusou), 235