“There was Yang Hsiung. He hated all books that were not orthodox. Yet he made a wide study of heterodox writers. By force of education he was enabled to take what of good and to reject what of bad he found in each. Their pernicious influence was altogether lost on him; while on the other hand he was prepared the more effectively to elucidate what we know to be the truth. Now, do you consider that I have been corrupted by these pernicious influences? If so, you know me not.
“No! the pernicious influences of the age are not to be sought for in the Canon of Buddha. They are to be found in the corruption and vice of those in high places; in the false and shameless conduct which is now rife among us. Do you not agree with me?”
SU SHIH
Su Shih (1036-1101), better known by his fancy name as Su Tung-p’o, whose early education was superintended by his mother, produced such excellent compositions at the examination for his final degree that the examiner, Ou-yang Hsiu, suspected them to be the work of a qualified substitute. Ultimately he came out first on the list. He rose to be a statesman, who made more enemies than friends, and was perpetually struggling against the machinations of unscrupulous opponents, which on one occasion resulted in his banishment to the island of Hainan, then a barbarous and almost unknown region. He was also a brilliant essayist and poet, and his writings are still the delight of the Chinese. The following is an account of a midnight picnic to a spot on the banks of a river at which a great battle had taken place nearly nine hundred years before, and where one of the opposing fleets was burnt to the water’s edge, reddening a wall, probably the cliff alongside: —
“In the year 1081, the seventh moon just on the wane, I went with a friend on a boat excursion to the Red Wall. A clear breeze was gently blowing, scarce enough to ruffle the river, as I filled my friend’s cup and bade him troll a lay to the bright moon, singing the song of the ‘Modest Maid.’
“By and by up rose the moon over the eastern hills, wandering between the Wain and the Goat, shedding forth her silver beams, and linking the water with the sky. On a skiff we took our seats, and shot over the liquid plain, lightly as though travelling through space, riding on the wind without knowing whither we were bound. We seemed to be moving in another sphere, sailing through air like the gods. So I poured out a bumper for joy, and, beating time on the skiff’s side, sang the following verse: —
‘With laughing oars, our joyous prow
Shoots swiftly through the glittering wave —
My heart within grows sadly grave —
Great heroes dead, where are ye now?’
“My friend accompanied these words upon his flageolet, delicately adjusting its notes to express the varied emotions of pity and regret, without the slightest break in the thread of sound which seemed to wind around us like a silken skein. The very monsters of the deep yielded to the influence of his strains, while the boatwoman, who had lost her husband, burst into a flood of tears. Overpowered by my own feelings, I settled myself into a serious mood, and asked my friend for some explanation of his art. To this he replied, ‘Did not Ts’ao Ts’ao say —
‘The stars are few, the moon is bright,
The raven southward wings his flight?’
“‘Westwards to Hsia-k’ou, eastwards to Wu-ch’ang, where hill and stream in wild luxuriance blend, – was it not there that Ts’ao Ts’ao was routed by Chou Yü? Ching-chou was at his feet: he was pushing down stream towards the east. His war-vessels stretched stem to stern for a thousand li: his banners darkened the sky. He poured out a libation as he neared Chiang-ling; and, sitting in the saddle armed cap-à-pie, he uttered those words, did that hero of his age. Yet where is he to-day?
“‘Now you and I have fished and gathered fuel together on the river eyots. We have fraternised with the crayfish; we have made friends with the deer. We have embarked together in our frail canoe; we have drawn inspiration together from the wine-flask – a couple of ephemerides launched on the ocean in a rice-husk! Alas! life is but an instant of Time. I long to be like the Great River which rolls on its way without end. Ah, that I might cling to some angel’s wing and roam with him for ever! Ah, that I might clasp the bright moon in my arms and dwell with her for aye! Alas! it only remains to me to enwrap these regrets in the tender melody of sound.’
“‘But do you forsooth comprehend,’ I inquired, ‘the mystery of this river and of this moon? The water passes by but is never gone: the moon wanes only to wax once more. Relatively speaking, Time itself is but an instant of time; absolutely speaking, you and I, in common with all matter, shall exist to all eternity. Wherefore, then, the longing of which you speak?
“‘The objects we see around us are one and all the property of individuals. If a thing does not belong to me, not a particle of it may be enjoyed by me. But the clear breeze blowing across this stream, the bright moon streaming over yon hills, – these are sounds and sights to be enjoyed without let or hindrance by all. They are the eternal gifts of God to all mankind, and their enjoyment is inexhaustible. Hence it is that you and I are enjoying them now.’
“My friend smiled as he threw away the dregs from his wine-cup and filled it once more to the brim. And then, when our feast was over, amid the litter of cups and plates, we lay down to rest in the boat: for streaks of light from the east had stolen upon us unawares.”
The completion of a pavilion which Su Shih had been building, “as a refuge from the business of life,” coinciding with a fall of rain which put an end to a severe drought, elicited a grateful record of this divine manifestation towards a suffering people. “The pavilion was named after rain, to commemorate joy.” His record concludes with these lines: —
“Should Heaven rain pearls, the cold cannot wear them as clothes;
Should Heaven rain jade, the hungry cannot use it as food.
It has rained without cease for three days —
Whose was the influence at work?
Should you say it was that of your Governor,
The Governor himself refers it to the Son of Heaven.
But the Son of Heaven says ‘No! it was God.
And God says ‘No! it was Nature.’
And as Nature lies beyond the ken of man,
I christen this arbour instead.”
Another piece refers to a recluse who —
“Kept a couple of cranes, which he had carefully trained; and every morning he would release them westwards through the gap, to fly away and alight in the marsh below or soar aloft among the clouds as the birds’ own fancy might direct. At nightfall they would return with the utmost regularity.”
This piece is also finished off with a few poetical lines: —
“Away! away! my birds, fly westwards now,
To wheel on high and gaze on all below;
To swoop together, pinions closed, to earth;
To soar aloft once more among the clouds;
To wander all day long in sedgy vale;
To gather duckweed in the stony marsh.
Come back! come back! beneath the lengthening shades,
Your serge-clad master stands, guitar in hand.
’Tis he that feeds you from his slender store:
Come back! come back! nor linger in the west.”
His account of Sleep-Land is based upon the Drunk-Land of Wang Chi: —
“A pure administration and admirable morals prevail there, the whole being one vast level tract, with no north, south, east, or west. The inhabitants are quiet and affable; they suffer from no diseases of any kind, neither are they subject to the influences of the seven passions. They have no concern with the ordinary affairs of life; they do not distinguish heaven, earth, the sun, and the moon; they toil not, neither do they spin; but simply lie down and enjoy themselves. They have no ships and no carriages; their wanderings, however, are the boundless flights of the imagination.”
His younger brother, Su Chê (1039-1112), poet and official, is chiefly known for his devotion to Taoism. He published an edition, with commentary, of the Tao-Tê-Ching.
HUANG T’ING-CHIEN
One of the Four Scholars of his century is Huang T’ing-chien (1050-1110), who was distinguished as a poet and a calligraphist. He has also been placed among the twenty-four examples of filial piety, for when his mother was ill he watched by her bedside for a whole year without ever taking off his clothes. The following is a specimen of his epistolary style: —
“Hsi K’ang’s verses are at once vigorous and purely beautiful, without a vestige of commonplace about them. Every student of the poetic art should know them thoroughly, and thus bring the author into his mind’s eye.
“Those who are sunk in the cares and anxieties of this world’s strife, even by a passing glance would gain therefrom enough to clear away some pecks of the cobwebs of mortality. How much more they who penetrate further and seize each hidden meaning and enjoy its flavour to the full? Therefore, my nephew, I send you these poems for family reading, that you may cleanse your heart and solace a weary hour by their perusal.
“As I recently observed to my own young people, the true hero should be many-sided, but he must not be commonplace. It is impossible to cure that. Upon which one of them asked by what characteristics this absence of the commonplace was distinguished. ‘It is hard to say,’ I replied. ‘A man who is not commonplace is, under ordinary circumstances, much like other people. But he who at moments of great trial does not flinch, he is not commonplace.’”
Chêng Ch’iao (1108-1166) began his literary career in studious seclusion, cut off from all human intercourse. Then he spent some time in visiting various places of interest, devoting himself to searching out marvels, investigating antiquities, and reading (and remembering) every book that came in his way. In 1149 he was summoned to an audience, and received an honorary post. He was then sent home to copy out his History of China, which covered a period from about B.C. 2800 to A.D. 600. A fine edition of this work, in forty-six large volumes, was published in 1749 by Imperial command, with a preface by the Emperor Ch’ien Lung. He also wrote essays and poetry, besides a treatise in which he showed that the inscriptions on the Stone Drums, now in Peking, belong rather to the latter half of the third century B.C. than to the tenth or eleventh century B.C., as usually accepted.
CHU HSI
The name of Chu Hsi (1130-1200) is a household word throughout the length and breadth of literary China. He graduated at nineteen, and entered upon a highly successful official career. He apparently had a strong leaning towards Buddhism – some say that he actually became a Buddhist priest; at any rate, he soon saw the error of his ways, and gave himself up completely to a study of the orthodox doctrine. He was a most voluminous writer. In addition to his revision of the history of Ssŭ-ma Kuang, which, under the title of T’ung Chien Kang Mu, is still regarded as the standard history of China, he placed himself first in the first rank of all commentators on the Confucian Canon. He introduced interpretations either wholly or partly at variance with those which had been put forth by the scholars of the Han dynasty and hitherto received as infallible, thus modifying to a certain extent the prevailing standard of political and social morality. His principle was simply one of consistency. He refused to interpret words in a given passage in one sense, and the same words occurring elsewhere in another sense. The result, as a whole, was undoubtedly to quicken with intelligibility many paragraphs the meaning of which had been obscured rather than elucidated by the earlier scholars of the Han dynasty. Occasionally, however, the great commentator o’erleapt himself. Here are two versions of one passage in the Analects, as interpreted by the rival schools, of which the older seems unquestionably to be preferred: —
Han.
Mêng Wu asked Confucius concerning filial piety. The Master said, “It consists in giving your parents no cause for anxiety save from your natural ailments.”
Chu Hsi.
Mêng Wu asked Confucius concerning filial piety. The Master said, “Parents have the sorrow of thinking anxiously about their children’s ailments.”
The latter of these interpretations being obviously incomplete, Chu Hsi adds a gloss to the effect that children are therefore in duty bound to take great care of themselves.
In the preface to his work on the Four Books as explained by Chu Hsi, published in 1745, Wang Pu-ch’ing (born 1671) has the following passage: – “Shao Yung tried to explain the Canon of Changes by numbers, and Ch’êng I by the eternal fitness of things; but Chu Hsi alone was able to pierce through the meaning, and appropriate the thought of the prophets who composed it.” The other best known works of Chu Hsi are a metaphysical treatise containing the essence of his later speculations, and the Little Learning, a handbook for the young. It has been contended by some that the word “little” in the last title refers not to youthful learners, but to the lower plane on which the book is written, as compared with the Great Learning. The following extract, however, seems to point more towards Learning for the Young as the correct rendering of the title: —
“When mounting the wall of a city, do not point with the finger; when on the top, do not call out.
“When at a friend’s house, do not persist in asking for anything you may wish to have. When going upstairs, utter a loud ‘Ahem!’ If you see two pairs of shoes outside and hear voices, you may go in; but if you hear nothing, remain outside. Do not trample on the shoes of other guests, nor step on the mat spread for food; but pick up your skirts and pass quickly to your allotted place. Do not be in a hurry to arrive, nor in haste to get away.
“Do not bother the gods with too many prayers. Do not make allowances for your own shortcomings. Do not seek to know what has not yet come to pass.”
Chu Hsi was lucky enough to fall in with a clever portrait painter, a rara avis in China at the present day according to Mr. J. B. Coughtrie, late of Hongkong, who declares that “the style and taste peculiar to the Chinese combine to render a lifelike resemblance impossible, and the completed picture unattractive. The artist lays upon his paper a flat wash of colour to match the complexion of his sitter, and upon this draws a mere map of the features, making no attempt to obtain roundness or relief by depicting light and shadows, and never by any chance conveying the slightest suggestion of animation or expression.” Chu Hsi gave the artist a glowing testimonial, in which he states that the latter not merely portrays the features, but “catches the very expression, and reproduces, as it were, the inmost mind of his model.” He then adds the following personal tit-bit: —
“I myself sat for two portraits, one large and the other small; and it was quite a joke to see how accurately he reproduced my coarse ugly face and my vulgar rustic turn of mind, so that even those who had only heard of, but had never seen me, knew at once for whom the portraits were intended.” It would be interesting to know if either of these pictures still survives among the Chu family heirlooms.
At the death of Chu Hsi, his coffin is said to have taken up a position, suspended in the air, about three feet from the ground. Whereupon his son-in-law, falling on his knees beside the bier, reminded the departed spirit of the great principles of which he had been such a brilliant exponent in life, – and the coffin descended gently to the ground.
CHAPTER III
POETRY
The poetry of the Sungs has not attracted so much attention as that of the T’angs. This is chiefly due to the fact that although all the literary men of the Sung dynasty may roughly be said to have contributed their quota of verse, still there were few, if any, who could be ranked as professional poets, that is, as writers of verse and of nothing else, like Li Po, Tu Fu, and many others under the T’ang dynasty. Poetry now began to be, what it has remained in a marked degree until the present day, a department of polite education, irrespective of the particle of the divine gale. More regard was paid to form, and the license which had been accorded to earlier masters was sacrificed to conventionality. The Odes collected by Confucius are, as we have seen, rude ballads of love, and war, and tilth, borne by their very simplicity direct to the human heart. The poetry of the T’ang dynasty shows a masterly combination, in which art, unseen, is employed to enhance, not to fetter and degrade, thoughts drawn from a veritable communion with nature. With the fall of the T’ang dynasty the poetic art suffered a lapse from which it has never recovered; and now, in modern times, although every student “can turn a verse” because he has been “duly taught,” the poems produced disclose a naked artificiality which leaves the reader disappointed and cold.
CH’ÊN T’UAN
The poet Ch’ên T’uan (d. A.D. 989) began life under favourable auspices. He was suckled by a mysterious lady in a green robe, who found him playing as a tiny child on the bank of a river. He became, in consequence of this supernatural nourishment, exceedingly clever and possessed of a prodigious memory, with a happy knack for verse. Yet he failed to get a degree, and gave himself up “to the joys of hill and stream.” While on the mountains some spiritual beings are said to have taught him the art of hibernating like an animal, so that he would go off to sleep for a hundred days at a time. He wrote a treatise on the elixir of life, and was generally inclined to Taoist notions. At death his body remained warm for seven days, and for a whole month a “glory” played around his tomb. He was summoned several times to Court, but to judge by the following poem, officialdom seems to have had few charms for him: —
“For ten long years I plodded through
the vale of lust and strife,
Then through my dreams there flashed a ray
of the old sweet peaceful life…
No scarlet-tasselled hat of state
can vie with soft repose;
Grand mansions do not taste the joys
that the poor man’s cabin knows.
I hate the threatening clash of arms
when fierce retainers throng,
I loathe the drunkard’s revels and
the sound of fife and song;
But I love to seek a quiet nook, and
some old volume bring
Where I can see the wild flowers bloom
and hear the birds in spring.”
Another poet, Yang I (974-1030), was unable to speak as a child, until one day, being taken to the top of a pagoda, he suddenly burst out with the following lines: —
“Upon this tall pagoda’s peak
My hand can nigh the stars enclose;
I dare not raise my voice to speak,
For fear of startling God’s repose.”
Mention has already been made of Shao Yung (1011-1077) in connection with Chu Hsi and classical scholarship. He was a great traveller, and an enthusiast in the cause of learning. He denied himself a stove in winter and a fan in summer. For thirty years he did not use a pillow, nor had he even a mat to sleep on. The following specimen of his verse seems, however, to belie his character as an ascetic: —
“Fair flowers from above in my goblet are shining,
And add by reflection an infinite zest;
Through two generations I’ve lived unrepining,
While four mighty rulers have sunk to their rest.
“My body in health has done nothing to spite me,
And sweet are the moments which pass o’er my head;
But now, with this wine and these flowers to delight me,
How shall I keep sober and get home to bed?”
Shao Yung was a great authority on natural phenomena, the explanation of which he deduced from principles found in the Book of Changes. On one occasion he was strolling about with some friends when he heard the goatsucker’s cry. He immediately became depressed, and said, “When good government is about to prevail, the magnetic current flows from north to south; when bad government is about to prevail, it flows from south to north, and birds feel its influence first of all things. Now hitherto this bird has not been seen at Lo-yang; from which I infer that the magnetic current is flowing from south to north, and that some southerner is coming into power, with manifold consequences to the State.” The subsequent appearance of Wang An-shih was regarded as a verification of his skill.
WANG AN-SHIH
The great reformer here mentioned found time, amid the cares of his economic revolution, to indulge in poetical composition. Here is his account of a nuit blanche, an excellent example of the difficult “stop-short:” —
“The incense-stick is burnt to ash,
the water-clock is stilled.
The midnight breeze blows sharply by,
and all around is chilled.
“Yet I am kept from slumber
by the beauty of the spring…
Sweet shapes of flowers across the blind
the quivering moonbeams fling!”
Here, too, is a short poem by the classical scholar, Huang T’ing-chien, written on the annual visit for worship at the tombs of ancestors, in full view of the hillside cemetery: —
“The peach and plum trees smile with flowers
this famous day of spring,
And country graveyards round about
with lamentations ring.
Thunder has startled insect life
and roused the gnats and bees,
A gentle rain has urged the crops
and soothed the flowers and trees…
Perhaps on this side lie the bones
of a wretch whom no one knows;
On that, the sacred ashes
of a patriot repose.
But who across the centuries
can hope to mark each spot
Where fool and hero, joined in death,
beneath the brambles rot?”
The grave student Ch’êng Hao wrote verses like the rest. Sometimes he even condescended to jest: —
“I wander north, I wander south,
I rest me where I please…
See how the river-banks are nipped
beneath the autumn breeze!
Yet what care I if autumn blasts
the river-banks lay bare?
The loss of hue to river-banks
is the river-banks’ affair.”
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries Hung Chüeh-fan made a name for himself as a poet and calligraphist, but he finally yielded to the fascination of Buddhism and took orders as a priest. This is no trifling ordeal. From three to nine pastilles are placed upon the shaven scalp of the candidate, and are allowed to burn down into the flesh, leaving an indelible scar. Here is a poem by him, written probably before monasticism had damped his natural ardour: —
“Two green silk ropes, with painted stand,
from heights aërial swing,
And there outside the house a maid
disports herself in spring.
Along the ground her blood-red skirts
all swiftly swishing fly,
As though to bear her off to be
an angel in the sky.
Strewed thick with fluttering almond-blooms
the painted stand is seen;
The embroidered ropes flit to and fro
amid the willow green.
Then when she stops and out she springs
to stand with downcast eyes,
You think she is some angel
just now banished from the skies.”
YEH SHIH – KAO CHÜ-NIEN
Better known as a statesman than as a poet is Yeh Shih (1150-1223). The following “stop-short,” however, referring to the entrance-gate to a beautiful park, is ranked among the best of its kind: —
“’Tis closed! – lest trampling footsteps mar
the glory of the green.
Time after time we knock and knock;
no janitor is seen.
Yet bolts and bars can’t quite shut in
the spring-time’s beauteous pall:
A pink-flowered almond-spray peeps out
athwart the envious wall!”
Of Kao Chü-nien nothing seems to be known. His poem on the annual spring worship at the tombs of ancestors is to be found in all collections: —
“The northern and the southern hills
are one large burying-ground,
And all is life and bustle there
when the sacred day comes round.
Burnt paper cash, like butterflies,
fly fluttering far and wide,
While mourners’ robes with tears of blood
a crimson hue are dyed.
The sun sets, and the red fox crouches
down beside the tomb;
Night comes, and youths and maidens laugh
where lamps light up the gloom.
Let him whose fortune brings him wine,
get tipsy while he may,
For no man, when the long night comes,
can take one drop away!”