BACK IN HIS HOMETOWN

All Li Bai chronologies give 720 as the year that he left Yu Prefecture. Early in the fall, he came back to his hometown of Jiangyou, exhausted and dejected. His return must have embarrassed his parents, who had expected him to obtain a position in Sichuan. According to local customs, a man his age, almost twenty, should already have started a career and a family, but Bai’s life seemed to be stalled. Worse yet, he could not enter for the civil-service examination like many other young scholars whose families were affiliated with officialdom or aristocracy. Some people sympathized with Bai, saying he was too great a talent for this backwoods county, and in due time he would find his place in the world. As if in confirmation, soon word reached Jiangyou that Governor Su Ting in Chengdu had praised Li Bai’s writing, calling his literary talent “unstoppable.” Those officials, having heard their superior compliment Bai, had spread the word, even though they secretly had the young poet dismissed.

Around the same time, the county magistrate, apprised of the governor’s praise, invited Bai to serve at the local government. This was not due to any direct effort from Su Ting. The county head, a dilettante at poetry, intended to earn credit for himself by employing the young man. Who was to say that Li Bai might not hold a high post someday? It would be better to help him start here. Bai accepted the offer, likely at his father’s urging. For a long time, this episode in his life was glossed over by scholars, since it contradicted the romantic image of the poet. How could “the great roc” allow himself to be caged in the tiny office of a county administration? Li Bai himself also seemed to find this period embarrassing and made no mention of it in his writings. Yet several historical sources confirm his service with the county, such as a stone tablet at Daming Temple erected in 1068, which states: “The Royal Academician Li Bai, when he was young, served as a small official in Dang County (modern Jiangyou) and then stayed in this mountain, studying books.”1 Several other sources document this period of his life in more detail. Without question, Li Bai became a petty bureaucrat of the magistrate soon after he returned from Chongqing. This episode is crucial for us to understand the turmoil and struggle he must have experienced. He must have been tormented by his decision to accept such a humble job, the likes of which his teacher Zhao Rui had warned him to shun categorically. But he was determined to start his official career, even from the bottom of the official echelon, so that he could test the skills and knowledge that Zhao had given him.

The local records and folk memories preserved in Li Bai’s home region2 contain several notable incidents in this period of his life that illustrate his unhappiness about his job. One day, near the entrance to the yamen, the government office, Li Bai caught sight of a boy leading an ox. He approached the cowhand and borrowed the animal. Without announcement, Bai led it through the yard in front of the trial hall. It was a disruptive and defiant act and was noticed by the magistrate’s wife immediately. She was incensed. How could a petty clerk let a beast of burden trespass on the tribunal’s ground? She was about to yell at Li Bai, but then refrained and turned to her husband, her eyes ablaze. Bai saw the anger on her face, but before the magistrate could open his mouth to scold him, Bai began to chant a poem, improvised on the spot, that eloquently flattered the woman: “A lady without makeup leans against a rail, / Then a sweet voice rises from over there. / If it’s not the Weaving Girl, / Who would ask about the Herd Boy?”

These verses are based on a folktale of a pair of star-crossed lovers. As the story goes, a herd boy and a weaving girl once fell in love and married. The girl had been a heavenly maiden who had stolen down to earth together with six other maidens. They bathed in a river and meant to return to heaven before daybreak. But the herd boy’s old ox told him that he should pick one of the maidens as his wife by hiding her clothes. The boy loved the youngest of them, the most beautiful, and put away her clothes so that the girl could not go back to heaven once it was light. The two fell in love and married.

But soon after the births of their two children, the couple were forced apart: Goddess Wang Mu, the queen who ruled over the maidens, was angry at the girl and threw a seemingly uncrossable river between her and the herd boy. He pined away helplessly on the riverbank, gazing in her direction, holding their children in two baskets with a shoulder pole. Their love moved thousands of magpies, who formed a bridge on July 7 so that the herd boy could cross the water to meet his wife. Every year the couple could be together, but only for one day. This day—the seventh day of the seventh month by the lunar calendar—has come to be observed by lovers, especially by those kept apart, and has now evolved into “Chinese Valentine’s Day.”

In his improvised verses, Li Bai teased the petulant magistrate’s wife, but with a compliment, alluding to the tale of the herd boy and the beautiful weaving girl. The woman was mollified, her anger dissipated. Her husband no longer had to intervene and was relieved.

Having witnessed Li Bai’s poetic flair, the magistrate began to take him to banquets and parties so that Bai could compose poetry for the occasions. The official would also bring Bai along when he went on inspections. From time to time the magistrate would throw out a couple of lines of poetry himself to show off his own skill and to test Li Bai further. Once, observing a brushfire rage on the ridge of a hill, the magistrate let out these lines: “After the wildfire passed the hill / People have returned but the fire continues.”3 At this he stopped, unable to proceed beyond such a clunky start. To save his superior’s face, Bai stepped in, chanting, “The flames are receding with the scarlet sun / While the mountain is wavering with the evening clouds.” Instead of appreciating the assist, however, his boss merely felt annoyed, outshone by Bai in front of his inferiors. Li Bai was irritated by this incident as well, because it showed that the magistrate didn’t care about the farmwork—and people’s livelihood—that had been disrupted by the fire.

On another day, his boss led a group of underlings to the riverside to check a flood condition, which could present a danger to crops and villages. A corpse appeared in the water, bobbing to the surface. It was the body of a young woman. Unmoved by the pitiful sight, the magistrate smiled and recited these lines: “Whose daughter is this sixteen-year-old? / She has been floating along the reedy bank. / Birds observe the jade above her brows / While fish touch her rouged lips.” Again he stopped, unable to continue. His callousness was too much for Li Bai to stomach, so Bai retorted, “Her glossy hair is scattered among the waves / And the red of her cheeks has disappeared in the flood. / When will she find a righteous judge / To voice all her grievances?” Again the magistrate took offense, but Li Bai was too upset to care and strode away. Soon afterward he quit his job, which he realized had become intolerable. Later, a historian described his time at the county administration as “a stranded dragon swarmed by ants.”

Throughout his life, Li Bai dedicated flattering poems to petty officials right and left. Some are laced with extravagant lines; for instance, he praised a minor official for possessing an elegant manner “like a phoenix’s” and “a graceful air like a deity’s” (“For Official Wang in Xiaqiu”). He didn’t always feel contempt for the recipients of those poems, and even liked and respected them, partly because he hoped to become a high official himself. His response to his home county’s magistrate’s lines was different—Li Bai simply couldn’t see his boss as his artistic equal, and despised his callous indifference to the suffering of the people in his charge. It should be mentioned that none of the three poems composed in 720 have been included in the standard collection of Li Bai’s writings. They have been kept in the local annals and in the memories of the denizens, so the Li Bai Museum in Jiangyou has listed the three poems as work produced when he served in the county government. In other words, there is another Li Bai preserved in folklore, whose validity usually can be corroborated by historical writings and records.

Having left his position, Li Bai went to stay in Daming Temple on Kuang Mountain instead of rejoining Zhao Rui, whom he now regarded more as a friend than as a teacher. He wanted to go his own way and live a monastic life dedicated to the study of poetry and books. His father’s influence could still be felt in Bai’s choice of shelter; without Li Ke’s support, the temple might not have admitted him. He would study on his own on Kuang Mountain for more than two years before he set out on the road again. His failed attempt to seek a post must have agitated him and thrown his mind into turmoil.

For centuries Sichuan (also known as the land of Shu) had been viewed as a place of marvels and deities, surrounded by high mountains and hidden in endless mist, nearly inaccessible to people from central China. The land is fertile, with an abundant water supply, and its warm climate nurtures bumper crops. Throughout history, the Sichuanese have become known for their ability to enjoy life and for their distinct culture. The region is also regarded as a place that produces poets and other artists—a habitat of crouching tigers and hidden dragons (secluded figures of great talent). Before him, a number of illustrious men from Sichuan had made their fame in the capital by serving the country’s rulers. These men were not just courtiers: many were accomplished poets and essayists. Among them are the great writer of rhapsodies Sima Xiang-ru, the statesman Zhuge Liang, and the poet Chen Zi’ang.

The work of Chen Zi’ang was vital for Li Bai’s progress as a poet. Chen had grown up in a nearby county, Shehong, which Li Bai often passed through on his way to see Zhao Rui. Li Bai viewed Chen as a kind of fellow townsman, even though Chen had died shortly after Bai was born. When he reentered Daming Temple, Bai had not yet studied Chen’s poetry thoroughly, but now an older monk presented him with a volume of Chen’s collected poems, a rare book Bai had long been seeking. Studying the book gave Bai great joy. He loved Chen’s simple, straightforward verses—they had a singularly distinguished aura, expansive and timeless. Bai was moved by lines such as these: “I cannot see ancient people ahead of me, / Nor can I see people coming after me. / Observing heaven and earth, I feel sad and can’t help my tears.” Those verses expressed a kind of existential despair and loneliness that resonated with Li Bai. He began to imitate Chen’s poetry as part of his “apprenticeship.” More fundamentally, Chen’s work helped Li Bai form his own poetic position. Chen believed that the poetry of the last five hundred years had grown mannered, thin, enervated, and in need of reform. He insisted that poets look to earlier times for inspiration, such as the works written in the Jian’an period (196–220), which were charged with passion, grief, and austere beauty. Chen, like Bai, emphasized the spirit of literature instead of technical rules. Bai even went further and claimed that the only worthy poetic model was the Book of Songs.

The volume of 305 songs is one of the five ancient Chinese classics and was compiled by Confucius, who had selected the poems—mostly folk songs—from a period between the twelfth and sixth centuries BC. Bai’s claim was of course an oversimplification (in fact, later he would embrace other traditions as well), but he was utterly earnest about his proposition. He learned a great deal from the Book of Songs, particularly the ancient folk songs. He envisioned a kind of poetry rooted in the raw experiences and feelings of common people’s lives.

Unlike other Tang poets, Li Bai wrote numerous poems from a female point of view, a tradition that can be traced back to the folk poetry in the Book of Songs. He also wrote songs in the voices of courtesans, foreign women (huji) from the western regions, barmaids, and weaving girls—people he often encountered during his wanderings. These song poems distinguished his work from that of the other poets of his time. Later he summed up his principle of poetic composition this way: “Lotus flowers come out of limpid water, / Natural without any decoration.” His principles also included emphasizing poetic immediacy and the sensation of thoughts: “Bright moonlight comes in straightaway, not allowing the mind to guess.” Indeed, his best poems have a kind of spontaneity and straightforwardness that seem to pour out of the speaker, with the underlying structure absent or invisible.

Li Bai also continued to study the history of political events and policies, the art of war, and government management. Now that his effort to climb up from the bottom of officialdom had failed, he was all the more eager to find another approach to transforming himself into a man of consequence. Since ancient times, there had traditionally been two ways to achieve such a goal. One way, counterintuitively, was to withdraw from society and live an eremitic life in solitude. A recluse’s detachment was seen as an indication of integrity, an indifference to fame and material gain. Ancient Chinese rulers tended to be drawn to those who stayed far from the center of power and often promoted them to consequential positions, partly because they embodied the fresh energy vitally necessary for government. Li Bai had learned about this passive path from Zhao Rui. Yet this approach also had drawbacks. Prolonged seclusion could easily cause one to become lost in oblivion, and deep isolation could narrow one’s vision, limit one’s understanding of the world, and make one fall behind the times.

The other approach was to travel to cultural and political centers so as to spread one’s name and befriend important figures. A more poetic term for this kind of travel is yunyou, “wandering like a cloud.” Many Tang poets used this approach, mingling with the rich and powerful in the capital and other major cities, waiting for opportunities. Some were successful in the endeavor, while others failed utterly. Now Li Bai kept his eye on the central land down the Yangtze, beyond the Three Gorges. He planned to travel extensively in the coming years, but first he had to study hard and prepare for the arduous journey ahead.