IMPRISONMENT

Li Bai was hallucinatory and raved in prison for days. Even after he had calmed down, his hands still shook, but he worked furiously on a petition. He believed he had been unjustly arrested. Between his bouts of writing, he read a volume of Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (154–90 BC), attempting to find strength in the stories of heroic historical figures. His wife had managed to deliver a few books to him and he was allowed to keep them in jail. At the same time, he felt remorseful for having incidentally gotten entangled in the politics of court. He had become a joke and a criminal in the public opinion, though he did not believe he was guilty. Sometimes he would raise his head and shout out his complaints, but the guards ignored him.

One day in late March a young man named Zhang Mengxiong came to see Bai. Zhang was a fan of Bai’s and told him that he was going to Yangzhou to join the army led by Gao Shi. He also told Bai that General Ji Guangshen was now serving on Gao Shi’s staff. Bai was amazed: Guangshen had been Prince Yong’s major officer and should have been punished, if not executed, but it seemed he was safe and even had a high position in the army of the former enemy. Meanwhile, Bai had landed in prison with an uncertain fate. It was likely that he would be exiled.

The more Bai thought about this, the more convinced he became that he deserved more lenience: he had never fought against the emperor’s army and had joined Prince Yong’s camp for less than a month. So he decided to appeal to Gao Shi for help. Gao was a military commander of two circuits, a major power in Emperor Suzong’s government. He was the only poet in the Tang dynasty to have reached such an important position, though later he would fall from the pinnacle of his career. Bai felt uncomfortable appealing to Gao Shi openly, so he wrote a poem instead and asked Zhang Mengxiong to deliver it to Gao Shi personally in Yangzhou. The poem praises Gao Shi for his victory over Prince Yong’s army and expresses Bai’s remorse and emotional turmoil. The last four lines state, “I don’t have much bitterness, / Though everything, good or bad, was destroyed. / What can I say trapped in such a situation? / All I can do is shed my tears” (“Goodbye to Scholar Zhang Who Is Leaving for Inspector Gao’s Camp”). Bai hoped that his old friend would see his plight and offer his help. At the same time, he could not afford to complain openly—if Gao Shi turned against him, the poem could be used as evidence of his hatred for the court—so his language is rather bland and hesitant.

Zhang Mengxiong delivered the poem to Gao Shi, but the latter remained reticent about it. About a month later, Zhang sent a poetic note to Bai, which informed him, “It’s a pity that you’re not Ji Guangshen, / Having no power or troops. / A man of books is worthless like dirt / And had better not expect any help.”1 Evidently Zhang had made no progress with Gao Shi and reported the bad news to Bai, who was devastated by his old friend’s silence. Meanwhile, at his wife’s insistence, he completed the petition he had written on his own behalf, proclaiming his innocence. Miss Zong began to present it to powerful people, attempting to find a way to get him out of prison. She paid bribes to men in key positions, spending all the gold Bai had received from Prince Yong. She went to Gao Shi to beg for his help, but the man would not receive her (and still would not respond to Bai’s poem). Clearly, Gao feared being implicated in Bai’s case.

It might be unfair to judge Gao Shi too harshly: he had been generous to his other friends and even had provided for the impoverished Du Fu, building him a cottage and arranging for his family to receive foodstuffs. Yet his refusal to help Li Bai remains a stain on his character: to this day, Li Bai’s fans condemn him for having betrayed the great poet. They tend to neglect the fact that Li Bai was the only public figure who aligned himself with Prince Yong—all other noted literary men, including Du Fu, supported Emperor Suzong. Viewed through this lens, Bai was a national disgrace, a criminal who had worked against the country’s unification, which had become a popular mandate.

However, there were other friends of Bai’s who worked to get him out of jail. Among them were Cui Huan and Song Ruosi, both high officials who were well connected in the central government. When Bai’s wife learned that Song’s father and Bai had been close friends during their time in the capital, she went to Song with Bai’s petition. He agreed to do his best to help. Song was an assistant director of the Royal Censorate and had been traveling with three thousand troops under his command to review criminal cases in the southern prefectures. Through Song Ruosi, Bai’s wife also secured the assistance of Cui Huan. The two officials had heard that Emperor Suzong had wept on learning about his brother’s death. His Majesty flew into a rage, blaming the local official who had had Prince Yong killed without first bringing him to the court. The emperor stripped the official of his post and announced that he would be “unsuitable for employment for the rest of his life.” In fact, this was just a show on the part of the emperor to mask his own guilt—without the order from His Majesty, no one would have dared to put the prince to the sword. Yet by seizing this moment when the emperor appeared to forgive his brother, Cui Huan and Song Ruosi managed to put in a good word for Li Bai and have him released from prison. Bai stayed on Song’s staff as a civilian adviser, where he was safe and could recuperate.

In the fall, the court finally returned to Chang’an. Throughout China people celebrated what appeared to be the restoration of the imperial reign. But the victory was dubious and even shameful: the emperor had not been able to take back the capital with the Chinese army alone. Instead, he had borrowed tens of thousands of troops from the Uighur State and let them attack the defending rebels. The Tang court made a pact with the Uighurs to divide the spoils: “When the capital is recaptured, all the land and people of high classes shall belong to the Tang government, whereas gold, silver, fabrics, women, and servants all shall go to the Uighurs.” This agreement also applied to Luoyang. As a result, the foreign troops sacked both cities and inflicted tremendous destruction.2 Nonetheless, the court wished the whole country to celebrate its return to Chang’an. Even convicts were given better food for a day. Li Bai also became infected by the excitement and wrote ten poems to sing his praises of the event. The series of poems was sent to the palace by his friends, who hoped that they would please the emperor enough that His Majesty would award Bai a position. The country needed an indispensable talent like Li Bai now more than ever, they argued.

Bai also wrote a self-recommendation to Song Ruosi and intended to have it passed on to the emperor. In the letter, he said that as a man who was deeply knowledgeable in the arts and capable of managing civilian affairs, he was still useful to the country. He implored, “Please grant me a post in the capital.” Even though already fifty-six, an old man by the standards of the time, Bai kept alive the dream of having a high position near the emperor. He believed that he deserved a reward now that he had been absolved of any misdeed. He also regarded himself as “a supremely cultured man,” a great celebrity whose presence could draw all kinds of talent to Chang’an. But although Song Ruosi dutifully dispatched the letter to court, he was unsure that Bai would be allowed to proceed to the capital: they were yet to hear from the emperor about how to handle Li Bai’s case, which was actually still pending despite Bai’s own conviction of his innocence. Bai was notorious throughout the country; only a few friends remained loyal and sympathetic to him. Du Fu was one of them and wrote several poems lamenting Li Bai’s fate. In one poem, he says, “People all want to have him executed, / But my heart alone aches for his gift.” In the same poem, Du Fu, trapped in Sichuan himself, summons Li Bai to return to his home region: “The quiet reading place on Kuang Mountain is the same. / Please come back despite your full head of white hair.”3

Then Bai wrote Song Ruosi a petition in which he suggested that the court move to Nanjing and make it the new capital. Indeed, Nanjing possessed a great cultural heritage and was perfectly situated, sitting in the north of the fertile Wu land, against a mountain to the south and the Yangtze to the north. The city was a natural fortress, Bai argued, a most auspicious place for the new capital. Many dynasties had set up their capitals in Nanjing, so Emperor Suzong should seriously consider moving east. In the petition, Bai spoke eloquently, like a classical state counselor, a role he had always dreamed of for himself. There were many advantages, he argued, in moving the capital to Nanjing, to which many rich families had fled from the north during the rebellion: the land was now the wealthiest area in the country. Bai must also have intended to remind the emperor of his sincerity and concern for the royal family and their dynasty.

In spite of all this, it was unlikely that Bai could have himself fully exonerated of his egregious misdeed, which had in fact arisen from a more deeply rooted cause. Ever since his studies with his teacher Zhao Rui in his youth, Li Bai had been possessed with the spirit of the migrant advisers and knights-errant of the Warring States, ready to seize any opportunity to help a sovereign expand his territory and conquer his neighboring countries. For those ancient statesmen, chaotic times usually presented the optimal moment for such action. Bai’s foreign origins also had influenced his blunder—the chieftains of the western tribes often ascended the throne by brute force, heedless of decorum and procedure. We can say that Bai’s act was in keeping with the core of his mind-set and character.

Not until the end of 757 did the emperor’s reply come. It decreed Li Bai’s punishment: “Banish him to Yelang for three years.” Yelang was a far-flung county in the southwest, more than a thousand miles away. Everyone was stunned: his wife cried for days and Bai was devastated. Such a banishment, however, was a light punishment compared to what the emperor had originally had in mind for him. His Majesty viewed Li Bai as an accomplice of Prince Yong, which meant that he should have been sentenced to death. But General Guo Ziyi, the officer Bai had saved from execution thirteen years before, implored Emperor Suzong to spare the poet. It is said that Guo was willing to sacrifice his own position in exchange for Bai’s life. Guo was a brilliant warrior who had led his army back from the northeast and helped retake Chang’an from the rebels. By now he had become a linchpin of the country, so the emperor relented and showed mercy to Bai.

Zong Jing, Bai’s brother-in-law, joined his sister to see Bai off at Sugong Town. They accompanied him south for twenty miles to Jiujiang, where he boarded a boat to sail up the Yangtze. Then sister and brother turned back and returned to Henan. Because of his fame, Bai was treated decently by his guards; his wife had also given them each a piece of jewelry to ensure they would not be rough with him (though he had to wear irons at all times). By rule they were to arrive at Yelang within a year, but an additional clause to the rule also said, “Extension may be allowed for exceptional circumstances.” So they let Bai proceed at his own pace—he could stay in a town or port as long as he wanted on their travel up the river—the guards could report that the convict was ill and had to pause from time to time. After a year’s imprisonment, Li Bai had indeed grown very frail and bony. He had also aged considerably and now had the gray hair of an old man.

The journey was slow and arduous. Fortunately, they could take breaks on occasion. As on his previous travels, Bai would run into friends in the towns and cities along the river; though in disgrace now, he didn’t always meet hospitality as before. Some friends would host him and keep him for days, sometimes even a month. When they reached Jiangxia (modern Wuhan), its governor, Wei Liangzai, who was a friend of Bai’s, received him as an honored guest. Liangzai persuaded Bai to stay in his city for two months so that he could recuperate. In August when they arrived at Hanyang, a port town in Hubei, another friend of Bai’s from his days in the capital, Zhang Wei, kept him in his home for a whole month. In mid-fall they reached Jiang-ling, where again friends and local officials hosted Bai for several days. The guards themselves enjoyed the journey to a degree because they were treated to fine dinners and had time to relax.

Not until winter did they enter the Three Gorges. As they traveled up the river, the mountains on both sides grew higher and higher and the hilly landscape turned to rocky walls and cliffs. The waterway narrowed and flowed more rapidly. Bai had traveled this way when he had left Sichuan at the age of twenty-four, but on that journey he had been sailing down the river. Now they were going up against the current, and the boat had to be pulled by trackers. They proceeded so slowly that the pace surprised and frustrated Bai. At Yellow Oxen Mountain, the boat hardly moved at all. Weary and bored, Li Bai wrote this poem:

巫山夾青天 巴水流若茲

巴水忽可盡 青天無到時

三朝上黃牛 三暮行太遲

三朝又三暮 不覺鬢成絲

《上三峽》

Going up the river, we enter Wu Mountain,

Where hills hold the gray sky in between.

The water suddenly seems to end,

Although the sky stretches ahead endlessly.

Three mornings we’ve gone up the Oxen Gorge

And three evenings we still sail in it.

For three full days we cannot get out of it.

This pace makes my hair grow white and sparse.

“GOING UP THE THREE GORGES”

It took them two months to emerge from the Three Gorges. Not until the early spring did they reach Fengjie, the ancient Baidi Town. From there they would turn south and head down toward Yelang. This was Bai’s first time back in his homeland of Sichuan. The dialect was refreshing and comforting to his ears, the food tasted spicier and more peppery, and everything reminded him of his youth. Even the butterflies and dragonflies looked as familiar as if he had met them before. His hometown in the northwest wasn’t far away, but he needed to follow his course, trudging south by land. For more than three decades he had dreamed of returning home; now finally he was back in the land of Shu, but only as a criminal. Even if he had been allowed to continue northwest, he wouldn’t have let his family and neighbors see him in such a condition. He would only have brought them disgrace and heartbreak. Besides, his parents had died long before.

As Bai was about to depart from Fengjie, suddenly word came that he had been pardoned. No one had expected such wonderful news, and Li Bai was astounded, unable to understand what had happened. In fact, his pardon came from an unlikely and impersonal source. A severe drought had been plaguing the central land, and so the court, in its efforts to combat the natural disaster and unite the country, granted amnesty to all exiled convicts. Bai was ecstatic and believed the pardon signaled the end of his troubles. All the evil chancellors who had once hounded him were dead now, and even the head eunuch, Gao Lishi, had been expelled from the palace. Bai had no more enemies at court. His path to the capital was finally open, he believed, and in all likelihood he could ascend again.

Without delay he boarded a small boat, sailing down the river swiftly. His buoyant mood inspired him to compose a verse, which would become another masterpiece of his:

朝辭白帝彩雲間 千里江陵一日還

兩岸猿聲啼不住 輕舟已過萬重山

《早發白帝城》

In the morning I leave Baidi Town hidden in colored clouds,

Sailing three hundred miles back to Jiangling in a single day.

Before the gibbons on both shores can stop screaming,

My light boat has passed ten thousand hills.

“LEAVING BAIDI TOWN IN THE MORNING”

The beauty and fluidity of these lines is charged with political resonance. The swift boat is unstoppable, no matter how the gibbons leap and clamor. Bai is darting back to the central land. In his mind, this sudden twist of fate foreshadowed his imminent ascent.

He misunderstood the pardon, which stemmed from a general amnesty, believing instead that the emperor had been so impressed by his writings that he had granted him a personal favor of clemency. Therefore he decided not to immediately return to his wife and instead stayed in the region near Dongting Lake, waiting for the new appointment that would bring him back to the capital.