A History of China (38 page)

Poetry, in particular, flourished, as skill in versification became an asset for the true “gentlemen” in the elite. As a result, about fifty thousand poems by more than two thousand Tang poets are still extant. The most prominent of these poets aspired to literati status, which was certified by passing the civil-service examinations. In addition, the examinations tested skills in the writing of poetry, which, in turn, bolstered the prestige of poets.

Wang Wei, Li Bo (701–762), and Du Fu (712–770), three of the great Tang poets, were almost exact contemporaries, but their poems reflect different themes and styles. Wang Wei was conventionally the most successful because he passed the highest-level civil-service examination and served in various bureaucratic posts. Although later literary critics have not esteemed him as highly as his two fellow poets, he perhaps surpassed them in the range of his accomplishments, which also encompassed painting, calligraphy, and music. He continued to assume government positions, but his best-known and most revered poems reflect a desire to escape from the pressures and obsessions of ordinary life. He expresses this sentiment most clearly in his poem “Given to My Younger Paternal Cousin, Military Supply Official Qiu”:

In younger years I knew little of worldly affairs:
I forced myself to learn to seek fame and power.
But vainly I heard of the years of frisking horses
And suffered for lack of wisdom surpassing others.
As for managing things, have I indulged in mere talk?
In post after post it’s not that I haven’t been tested.
Since there are few joys that satisfy my nature,
I fear being blamed for going against the times.
In clear winter I see the distant mountains,
The gathered snow, the frozen azure green.
Brightness emerges from the eastern woods.
And brings out my thoughts of escaping from the world.
²

Wang Wei returned more than once to the theme of seclusion in beautiful natural surroundings. His growing attraction to Buddhism reinforced this emphasis on the natural. Yet his desire for detachment conflicted with his involvement in political affairs – a theme he addressed in “A Poem to Leave Behind at Parting from My Elder Brother Monk Wen-ku in the Mountains”:

Taking off the hermit’s robes, I will ascend to the emperor’s morning court;
Going away from my master, I will meet prominent men of the time…
My younger brother is an official of high rank;
My older brother has this monk’s shaved head…
At your brushwood gate, only sprinkle water and sweep;
When I have leisure, I will pass by and join you.
³

Li Bo, the second of the triumvirate, did not achieve the same worldly ­success as Wang Wei. Yet, ironically, he was the one who praised secular and ­sensual values. Anecdotes about his alcoholic binges and his dissipated later life have ­occasionally blurred the essential seriousness of his work. The story that he drowned during one of his drunken nocturnal escapades when he fell from a boat while trying to clasp the moon that was reflected in the water has been discounted, as have other fanciful accounts of his adventures. However, his career was dogged by disappointments, failures, and exile. Like other prominent poets, he sought association with the scholar-official elite as well as imperial patronage, both of which he obtained sporadically and then lost through his alcoholic excesses or through such poor choices as appearing to support an abortive rebellion against the Tang. He surely did not have a typical civil-service career, which may be related to his mercantile origins and to his possible Turkic background. Born in central Asia, he seems to have been influenced by exposure to Turkic culture. His ­fondness for wine and his repeated references to black and white mountains and to the moon reverberate in Turkish culture. A few of his poems may originally have been intended to be accompanied by central Asian music, further evidence of Tang cosmopolitanism. The hedonism and the unconventional attitudes that characterized his poetry may have been a reaction to his perception that many Chinese in his own times viewed him as an outsider, if not an alien. His paeans to liquor hardly jibe with the stereotypical Confucian values. The views expressed in his “Wine Will Be Served” surely alienated many traditional moralists:

To be elated in life, one should enjoy oneself to the full
And never let the golden goblet stand empty toward the moon…
Roast the sheep, slaughter the ox! Let’s take our pleasure,
And with one long drink, empty three hundred cups!
Young scholar Tan-ch’iu, Master Ts’en
Wine will be served;
Don’t stop drinking! …
The five-colored horse,
The thousand-gold fur –
Let’s call the boy to take them out and pawn them for good wine,
That drinking together we may dispel the sorrows of myriad years.
⁴

Li Bo’s hedonistic poems tended to overshadow the more melancholy and more restrained sentiments he expressed in his other poetry. Love of nature, awe at the majesty of the mountains, and joy at the peace and stillness of the towering peaks were also common themes in his works. He repeatedly referred to the appeal of the quietude of a contemplative and hermit-like existence in the mountains – a far cry from the views with which he is commonly associated.

While Li Bo revealed, in part, the foreign influence on Chinese culture ­during the Tang and his somewhat romantic but individual reactions to ­society, Du Fu expressed a Confucian moral judgment of developments in turbulent mid-eighth-century China. Although Du Fu did not pass the highest-level civil-service examinations, he remained a staunch Confucian (a system of ­values that emerges repeatedly in his poems). His Confucian values resulted not only in poems championing family responsibilities and pleasures but also poems critical of social conditions. He lived during what was reputed to be the apogee of Tang power, but recognized that the disparity between the elite and the poor, along with the exploitation of the peasantry, were creating social ­fissures that could lead to the downfall of the dynasty. He was critical of the oppression that compelled, for example, peasants conscripted into the army to hire substitutes because they could not leave the land for long periods of time. He shows his dismay at the exactions imposed upon ordinary people in his “My Trip from the Capital to Feng-hsien”:

The silk that was bestowed at the vermillion court
Came originally from some poor shivering women;
Their husbands were whipped and flogged
So that it could be levied as a tribute to the imperial city.
⁵

Du Fu’s descriptions of the An Lushan rebellion and its devastating ­aftermath are particularly heartrending in their evocations of the miseries and sufferings inflicted upon the masses. His poems graphically depict the sale of children by parents in order to pay for taxes or merely to eke out survival; bloodshed and rotting corpses; and discombobulated scholars and peasants. His concern for the common people and his rectitude as a good Confucian moralist, as well as his remarkable use of language and images, ensured that he would be esteemed in later generations, prompting his most important English-language biographer to subtitle his book “China’s Greatest Poet.” Du Fu was unable to have much effect on social conditions, and, in fact, spent most of his last years living in exile in a thatched cottage in Chengdu.

A number of other prominent poets lived during the Tang. Like Du Fu, Bo Juyi (772–846) was appalled at the inequities in the Tang system and the exploitation of common people, and some of his poetry reflected his concern and distress at the heavy taxation on the poor, the forced recruitment of peasants into the military and their dispatch to dangerous and unhealthy environments, and the elite’s spending of vast amounts on luxuries while the bulk of the population barely eked out a living. Additional evidence of Bo Juyi’s identification with ordinary people was his attempt to make his poetry accessible by limiting arcane allusions and using clear, simple language. In contrast, some esteemed Tang poets hardly dealt with the dynasty’s social and political crises. Li He (790–816) wrote difficult poetry that often expressed personal, morbid, and gloomy views in somewhat abstruse language. Hanshan, a poet whose identity is unclear, wrote poems informed by the tenets of Chan Buddhism, by critiques of the secularization of the Buddhist monasteries, and by descriptions of the beautiful mountain retreat he sought as a recluse in Cold Cliff in the Tiantai Mountains. Li Shangyin (812–858) wrote poems replete with ­symbolism and mystical significance and allusions.

Although overshadowed by the remarkable achievements in poetry, prose also made strides during this era. Histories of the dynasties of the period of disunion were compiled (a traditional kind of enterprise) but at least one historical work was unique. Liu Zhiji (661–721) produced
Shitong
(
Generalities of History
), a work that analyzed the writing of history and was the first true critical investigation of earlier historical studies and their defects and virtues. The compilation of encyclopedias, which contained excerpts from other books on subjects such as medicine, foreign lands, and military and tax affairs, came into vogue. In 801, Du You (735–812) completed his
Tongdian
(
Comprehensive Institutions
), just such a compilation, which also included sections from an account, now lost, of the ‘Abbasid capital of Baghdad by his relative Du Huan, who had been captured by an Arab army and may have resided for a time in the Arab capital. Local gazetteers, which consisted of compilations of facts ranging from ­geography to taxes to history to biographies of locally prominent figures, began to appear in large numbers.

Han Yu was the premier prose stylist of the time. Staunchly opposed to Buddhism, Han Yu tried to reassert the primacy of Confucianism. He emphasized the writings of Mencius and of the
Daxue
(Great Learning) section of the
Liji
, the early ritual text. To him, the object of philosophical and literary discourse was the explication of Confucian beliefs and morality and their dissemination. Literature had an obligation to foster the spread of Confucian doctrines. His staunch support of Confucianism in the face of a powerful Buddhist establishment earned him the plaudits of the founders of Neo-Confucianism in the Song dynasty, contributing further to his renown as a champion of the traditional morality. In his own time, however, his bitter critique of Buddhism and of corrupt court officials led to his banishment to an isolated region in south China. Beyond his specific policy objectives, he also supported the use of the old prose style (
guwen
) employed in the Confucian classics. He proposed restoration of the simple, unadorned language and lack of embellishments characteristic of the classical works. Objecting to the more elaborate and attention-attracting writing styles of the recent past, he opted for traditional prose untainted by artifice and by needlessly complex verbiage. His own essays satirized avaricious and exploitative officials and so-called great men of his times. Like other scholars of his era, he also dabbled in poetry. Although he never achieved the renown of his predecessors Li Bo and Du Fu, he used his poems to accentuate his support for Confucian doctrines, his nostalgia for the classical era, and his yearning for a restoration of the traditional prose style.

The art of fiction flourished during the Tang. The earliest and somewhat rudimentary stories had appeared during the Six Dynasties period, but the Tang witnessed significant developments. Many stories diverged from the earlier tales, which had emphasized the supernatural; instead they were more realistic, though some had fantastic elements. Love stories abounded, and a common theme was the sad fate of courtesans and concubines who were betrayed by their former patrons or lovers. Accounts of great swordsmen and swordswomen made up still another popular genre, with these courageous figures performing amazing feats of derring-do. It would have been unusual if Buddhism, with its striking influence during this time, had not inspired stories. Thus, the cache of texts in the Buddhist caves at Dunhuang contains simple stories illustrating basic Buddhist principles.

The development of a similarly simple theater was presaged by singing, dancing, and acrobatics productions. Performances by central Asian ­dancers, musicians, mimes, acrobats, and magicians were popular, and culminated in the creation of playlets. These dancers may also have initiated the practice of foot-binding, which will be discussed later. The Tang court recruited attractive and talented young people and trained them on the palace grounds in singing, dancing, and acting. However, a full-fledged theater, with a repertoire of ­carefully crafted plays, did not develop for ­several centuries.

Although not as significant in terms of science and technology as the ­subsequent Song dynasty, the Tang witnessed some development. Daoist adepts, who dabbled in alchemy, stumbled upon discoveries in chemistry. Elaborate engineering and irrigation works resulted in new understandings of mechanical engineering. However, the most significant development was the invention of printing. Some texts may have been reproduced earlier, but great strides in technology and in the production and dissemination of printed texts occurred during the Tang. A substantial market for books had been generated by this time. Fervent Buddhists were eager to own copies of the sacred texts, and candidates for the civil-service examinations required reproductions of the classics for their studies. As China had had access to paper and ink for some time and had developed the technique of fashioning seals out of metal, the development of block printing did not require much of a technological breakthrough. Because the Chinese delighted in making rubbings of images and writings on stone and bronze, they were primed for the evolution of a technique for reproducing texts. Early examples of Chinese block printing deriving from the sixth century have been found in Korea; small charms dated 764 were printed in Japan; and the
Diamond Sutra
, a major Buddhist text that used to be considered the earliest printed text found in China, dated 868, was found in the Dunhuang caves. The development of printing in the Tang laid the foundations for large-scale printing of multivolume texts that were disseminated on a wide scale during the Song dynasty.