IN THE NORTH
One day in the late spring of 735, Li Bai received a letter from Yuan Yan, the friend he had made in Luoyang eighteen months before. Yan wrote that he now held the position of inspector in Haozhou, Henan. It was an inconsequential job, but it enabled him to travel. At the moment, he was planning to go to Taiyuan, a northern frontier city, where his father was serving as a military commander, guarding the border against Mongolians and other tribesmen. Yuan Yan invited Li Bai to join him on this trip, generously offering to cover all expenses. If Bai was interested, they should meet in Luoyang City and from there they would travel north. Bai, who had always longed to see the northern frontier, jumped at the invitation. Two months later, he went to join Yuan Yan in Luoyang, and without delay they set off for Taiyuan.
Taiyuan was a large city, nicknamed the North Capital, though it was not as prosperous and grand as Chang’an or Luoyang. Li Bai found the landscape around the city quite unusual. The land was flat and vast, with grassy plains stretching to the edge of the horizon. Bands of camels were passing south and north. The southbound caravans were loaded with furs, nuts, and medicinal herbs, while the northbound ones carried grains, fabrics, salt, bricks of tea, and utensils. It was already summer but hot only around midday—a cool breeze always flowed from the Mongolian steppe, and the air turned cool after sunset. At night Bai had to cover himself with a thick blanket. He was told that fall came early in this area, in late August. Autumn was the best season for hunting, which was a major sport among the locals. He noticed that the people of Taiyuan were more straightforward and quick-tempered, likely because of the influence of the tribal folks in the north. The region was especially significant to the Tang rulers because it was their ancestral land—before the Lis seized the throne, they had lived here. So in a way, Li Bai, as a “relative” of the royal clan, might have felt that this was a kind of homecoming. He would carry deep memories of this trip and write about them in his poetry.
General Yuan, Yan’s father, was in his late forties with a weather-beaten face, but he was still sturdy and spirited, physically nimble and acute in his perception. He was delighted by the arrival of his son and Bai. By then Li Bai, despite his isolation and financial struggles, was well known, his poetry cherished by many fans as the work of a genius (although few thought of him seriously as a soldier or a statesman, as Bai viewed himself). General Yuan presented him with a marten robe, worth hundreds of pieces of gold, and a dappled steed. With the horse, Bai could go to the prairie and the border with Yan, and wearing the fur robe, he could attend parties and banquets as a respectable guest. His presence in the city brought honor to the general, who presented him to the local dignitaries. Bai was invited to many gatherings, at which he composed poems and short essays in honor of the hosts. Soon he became popular among some of the officers. He admired their dedication and bravery and often went to watch them drill their troops. He even practiced archery, of which he was already a master of sorts. In one poem, he even claims that he once killed two tigers with a single arrow—most likely a boast, though it shows his pride in his archery.
One day he found a few gray hairs on his head and realized that he was thirty-four—already more than halfway through his lifetime by the standards of the era. This realization saddened him and made him pensive. He wondered if it might be better for him simply to stay in the Taiyuan area, serving in the army. He was good with a sword and knowledgeable about military strategies and tactics, and believed he could be a capable officer, useful to General Yuan.
But when Bai broached the topic with Yan, his friend was opposed to it, saying Bai was unaware of the hardships that his father’s soldiers had been suffering. Yan went on to explain that the central government had no consistent policies for border defense, and as a result, battles and expeditions were often started at the frontier at random, regardless of long-term consequences. Worse still, the court had not been fair in issuing rewards and meting out punishments. His father’s troops had been garrisoned in this area for more than a decade, but there was still no word about transferring back inland. Some men had grown too feeble to fight any longer. In fact, those who had stayed behind, safe and comfortable in the central land, might never come to the front. Yan feared that his father might die in the Taiyuan region without ever seeing their hometown again. That was why the general had insisted that Yan, his only son, hold a civilian job elsewhere, as a way to preserve their family’s bloodline. It was not too much to say that the men stationed here were in a hopeless situation—Bai must not be misled by the officers’ brave faces.
Yan’s words were a revelation to Li Bai, who gave up the thought of staying in the frontier permanently. He began to observe the soldiers more carefully and saw their predicament and hardships with new eyes. He wrote poems that empathize with their misery. Here is one, written in the style of ancient songs, fresh and realistic and straightforward:
代馬不思越 越禽不戀燕
情性有所習 土風固其然
昔別雁門關 今戍龍庭前
驚沙亂海日 飛雪迷胡天
蟣虱生虎鶡 心魂逐旌旃
苦戰功不賞 忠誠難可宣
誰憐李飛將 白首沒三邊
《古風其六》
The northern horses don’t think of the south
Where animals cannot long for the north.
Their indigenous habitats have shaped
Their habits and lives.
Long ago we came out of Goose Pass
And ever since have stayed in the barbarous land.
Sandstorms distort the view of the sun and the steppes
And flying snow blocks the foreign sky.
Lice infest our clothes and leather mail,
Yet we resolve to keep our banners aloft.
So many bitter battles won but without rewards,
Our devotion never recognized.
Who has ever taken pity on General Li the Swift,
Who lost his white head in the desert?
“ANCIENT SONGS 6”
General Li was the legendary commander of the Chinese army in the remote western reaches of the Han dynasty, the very man Li Bai’s father had claimed as their ancestor. The soldiers’ plight in Taiyuan must have reminded Bai of the unjust fate of the great general, who was never granted an official post despite his many victories on the battlefield, who had never been able to return home, and who out of despair had committed suicide in the frontier. So many heroic men had gone unrecognized and mistreated. The more Bai brooded about the injustice of their fates, the more despondent he became.
In recent decades, the border area had been frequented by poets who had served in the military. Li Bai greatly admired those men not only for their robust verses but also for the bravery and flair displayed by their poetic personas. He and Yan made trips to ancient battlefields, where they recited poems by the poets who, as officers, might have served and even fought in this region. They also chanted poems that had become popular songs, mostly the kind of frontier ballads called “Liangzhou Song-lyrics” (so named because they are all set in the border region). One poem goes:
葡萄美酒夜光杯 欲飲琵琶馬上催
醉臥沙場君莫笑 古來征戰幾人
Grape wine is poured in gleaming cups
And guitars urge us to drink before we ride away.
If I get drunk, I’ll doze on a battleground.
Don’t laugh at me. Since ancient times
How many men have returned from war?
—WANG HAN (687–726)
Another:
黃河遠上白云間 一片孤城萬仞山
羌笛何須怨楊柳 春風不度玉門關
The Yellow River rises into white clouds.
Beyond a lone fortress sits a mountain
That is tens of thousands of feet high.
The barbarian flute shouldn’t blame the trees
That haven’t turned green—
The spring breeze doesn’t reach Jade Pass.
—WANG ZHI-HUAN (688–742)
Although these two poems were written by contemporaries of Li Bai, he admired the music and the space of these verses so deeply that he regarded them as classics and their creators as already immortalized. He too tried to create vast spaces in his own works to give them more magnitude and grandeur.
After the last snow, the weather grew windier and the willows began to sprout buds on their drooping branches. Li Bai decided to return home. In addition to a farewell dinner, General Yuan gave him a large sum of funds for the road. Bai went back alone—Yan would stay on a little longer to help his father with some administrative work.
On his way back, Bai again ran into his devoted friend Yuan Danqiu. They both fell into raptures about the encounter in Luoyang City. Danqiu had gone on to Mount Emei in Sichuan and was on his way back to his retreat in Mount Song, which Bai had visited two and a half years before. Danqiu invited him to stay a few days at his hermitage on Yingyang Hill in Mount Song, but Bai was eager to go home, and so they parted ways. However, Bai had hardly gotten out of the city the next morning when a messenger from Danqiu caught up with him and handed him a letter, which said that a friend of Danqiu’s named Cen Xun was a longtime admirer of Bai’s poetry and would love to have him over for a few days. At the moment, Cen Xun was living near Danqiu in Mount Song, so Bai should come to Yingyang Hill again so that the three of them could meet.
Bai had heard about Cen Xun from Danqiu and knew that he was from a renowned family, but had chosen not to enter for the civil-service examination in spite of his comprehensive education in classics. We don’t know the dates of Cen Xun’s birth and death, but it is believed that he was younger than Li Bai, and was such a fan of his poetry that he had traveled hundreds of miles to Mount Song in the hope of encountering him there. Danqui had enclosed a poem written by Cen Xun, and Bai could tell that the man was a genuine poet—someone he would like to meet. He recalled that a scholar in Chang’an had also mentioned this remarkable young talent. Bai was touched to learn that Cen Xun was such an admirer of his own work.
Both Danqiu and Cen Xun were famous recluses and heavy drinkers, so Bai’s arrival made the wine flow. As the host, Danqiu gave a party, attended by just the three of them, which started in the afternoon. They drank in the yard in front of Danqiu’s cottage, cracking jokes and composing verses. Cen Xun was eager to witness Bai’s legendary poetic abilities, so he tossed out a line, and Bai spun a poem around it. Both Danqiu and Cen Xun were amazed by the swiftness of Bai’s composition. Together the three men continued to sing songs and chant poems and play the lute, the bamboo fife, and the zither, which Cen Xun could strum with skill. When the moon was high above the clouds, Cen Xun suggested calling it a night, but Bai wanted to continue. To entertain his two friends, he even performed a dance he had just learned in Taiyuan, kicking his heels and brandishing his arms. That made them laugh.
The three men decided to move the party to Cen Xun’s place on the other side of the hill; from there they could see the moon more clearly, and could catch the view of the Yiluo flowing east into the Yellow River. Although the water was hardly visible in the dark, the lanterns on the fishing boats glowed as they sailed back and forth. The men went up the slope to Cen Xun’s shack and resumed their merriment. As the night wore on and Li Bai got more drunk, he asked Danqiu to get out ink and a brush for a new poem that was brewing within him. Under coppery brown light thrown by a pair of oil lamps, he chanted it slowly while Danqiu transcribed:
君不見 黃河之水天上來 奔流到海不復還
君不見 高堂明鏡悲白髮 朝如青絲暮成雪
人生得意須盡歡 莫使金樽空對月
天生我材必有用 千金散盡還復來
烹羊宰牛且爲樂 會須一飲三百杯
岑夫子 丹丘生 將進酒 杯莫停
與君歌一曲 請君爲我傾耳聽
鐘鼓饌玉不足貴 但願長醉不復醒
古來聖賢皆寂寞 惟有飲者留其名
陳王昔時宴平樂 斗酒十千恣讙謔
主人何為言少錢 徑須沽取對君酌
五花馬 千金裘
呼兒將出換美酒 與爾同銷萬古愁
《將進酒》
Have you not seen the Yellow River flow down from heaven,
Rushing toward the ocean but never coming back?
Have you not seen the mirror in the lofty hall grieve the white hair
That is black in the morning but snowy in the evening?
When happy, we must enjoy ourselves to the full,
Not let our gold goblets empty to the moon.
Heaven begot a talent like me and must put me to good use
And a thousand cash in gold, squandered, will come again.
Boil a sheep and butcher an ox for our feast,
And let us drink three hundred cups at one go.
Mr. Cen and Sir Danqiu, drink without stop.
Let me sing a song, please give me your ears.
Drums and bells and sumptuous food shouldn’t be cherished.
What I want is to be drunk forever without sobering up.
Since ancient times saints and sages have been obscure,
But only drinkers have left behind their names.
Prince Chen, throwing a banquet in the old days,
Got wine at ten thousand cash a gallon.
My dear host, why say you are short on cash?
Let us buy wine and enjoy it at any cost.
My dappled horse and gorgeous fur robe,
Let your boy take both to the shop
And exchange them for good wine
So we can drown our sorrow of ten thousand years.
“PLEASE DRINK”
Yuan Danqiu and Cen Xun were astounded by the energy and the madness of the poem. Looking over the transcription, they were overwhelmed by the poem’s emotional intensity that verged on mania. At one moment the lines seem laden with grief, but then the mood turns to ecstasy. It is sad yet vibrant with rapture. Awestruck, they remained wordless for a good while. Later, they told others how Li Bai had composed this poem, how they had seen him pouring out lines without premeditation. Every word, every line, and every rhyme were in place—the poem was perfectly wrought at the very first attempt. This was something only a deity could do, they said, and the verses must have come from heaven. Thereafter, whenever they talked about Bai, they felt pity for him: his genius seemed too great for any office in this world.
The next morning, Danqiu asked Bai to title the poem. Bai said it should be something related to drinking. Danqiu gave it some thought and then came up with “Please Drink.” The three of them liked the suggestion—it echoed a type of ancient song performed as an elaborate toast to urge people to drain their cups. Since then, the poem has become one of Li Bai’s most quoted works, and its lines are often tossed out at tables where people gather to drink.
Bai stayed at Mount Song for several days, visiting nearby Buddhist temples with his two friends. Before his departure home, he composed a few more poems for Yuan Danqiu and Cen Xun.