Poet Li Bai: The Banished Immortal

Today, we’ll tell you about an animated summertime blockbuster that brings to life some of the most iconic figures in Chinese literary history and has revived interest in a Tang Dynasty poet whose name alone can evoke legends.

Transcript

Poet Li Bai: The Banished Immortal

Today, we’ll tell you about an animated summertime blockbuster that brings to life some of the most iconic figures in Chinese literary history and has revived interest in a Tang Dynasty poet whose name alone can evoke legends.

Amid the scorching heatwaves and raging typhoons of summer 2023, a Chinese animated film has heated up the box office. Since its release on July 8, the unexpected blockbuster has raked in more than 1.5 billion yuan, or over 209 million USD. And it earned a rating of 8.1 out of 10 on Douban, one of the country’s largest review platforms, outperforming 91 percent of other animated films listed on the site.

The film Chang An, or literally from its Chinese name “30 thousand miles from Chang’an”, draws inspiration from one of China’s most well-known poets of the Tang Dynasty, which was one of the most prosperous eras of Chinese history and lasted slightly less than 300 years from 618 to 907. In the present-day Xi’an of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province, Chang’an was the capital of the Tang Dynasty and was also one of the world’s largest and richest cities at that time. “30 thousand miles from Chang’an” is taken from a poem by Ming Dynasty poet Chen Zilong, in which Chang’an represents the ideal of the Tang poets.

The 168-minute film chronicles the decades-long friendship of Li Bai, arguably China’s most beloved poet, and Gao Shi, a military general and renowned poet in his own right, amid Tang’s transition from prosperity to its downfall. Aside from Li and Gao, the film also features some of the most famous poets and artists of the time, including poets Du Fu and Wang Wei, calligrapher Zhang Xu, palace musician Li Guinian, as well as royal members, such as Princess Yuzhen, who maintained close ties with literary greats and famous artists of the day.

With 48 well-known poems interwoven into the life stories of these Tang poets, the film is especially praised, among other things, for reviving interest in traditional literature. School children were reported to have been reciting the poems aloud as they watched the film, while parents were kept busy explaining the plot to them.

Australian translator and writer Linda Jaivin was invited to assist with the English subtitles of the film so that the beauty of the Tang poetry could be better conveyed and the cultural context better understood. Linda has been actively engaged in Chinese culture for more than 40 years and has played a role in translating many famous Chinese films, including Farewell My Concubine, which won the award for best film at the Cannes film festival in 1993.

As the golden age of ancient Chinese poetry, the Tang Dynasty boasts over 50,000 poems composed by some 2,000 poets. Credited with about 1,100 of these poems, Li Bai is oft’ regarded, along with Du Fu, as one of the two greatest poets ever in Chinese literary history. His poetry is best known for its unrestrained imagination and conversational tone. His influence has continued in the modern age and found its way into Western culture partly due to American poet Ezra Pound’s translation of his poems in Cathay, and Austrian composer Gustav Mahler’s integration of four of his poems into The Song of the Earth.

Wine and the moon are the two subjects featured prominently in Li Bai’s poems. He probably wrote more poems on these subjects than any other poet. In the film Chang An, many audience members were awestruck by one scene in which the entirety of Li Bai’s well-known poem Invitation to Wine is recited as he stands with his friends by the roaring Yellow River and then soars into the sky on the back of a crane. Later in today’s podcast, I’ll read this poem so you can savor its beauty for yourself.

In the year 701, Li Bai was born into a wealthy merchant’s family in present-day Kyrgyzstan. According to legend, when his mother was pregnant with him, she dreamed of a white star falling from heaven. This partially gave rise to the myth that he was a “banished immortal”, which later became his nickname.

When Li Bai was four years old, the family moved to settle in Qinglian in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. He grew up reading Chinese classics and practiced riding and fencing. He is said to have begun to write poems when he was only ten, but he was not a hardworking student and tended to spend most of his time outdoors.

One day when he was roaming around outside, he saw an old woman grinding an iron rod on a big grindstone in front of a straw-thatched hut. He asked the woman what she was doing, and was told that she was trying to make a needle out of the iron rod. Li Bai laughed and thought the old woman had lost her mind. But the old woman admonished him saying, “Don’t laugh young man. As long as I keep grinding, I will make a fine needle out of this coarse rod someday.” Li Bai pondered her words and eventually understood what she meant. After that, he became a very dedicated student and paid undivided attention to his studies. His story circulated widely and over the years gave rise to the Chinese idiom 只要功夫深zhi yao gong fu shen，铁杵磨成针tie chu mo cheng zhen, literally – with sufficient time and effort, you can grind an iron rod into a needle.

As an adult, Li Bai harbored the ambition to become a person of political significance, but his birth into a merchant’s family created a lifelong obstacle. In those days, business people were considered low-class and were not allowed to sit for the imperial examination, which was the most conventional way to climb up the social ladder. Li Bai, therefore, decided to pursue an alternative strategy known as “passing the scroll”, which means that he would present his writings to powerful officials seeking their patronage, a fairly common protocol at that time as well. Nevertheless, all his efforts were in vain.

At the age of 24, Li Bai left home to travel around with a substantial amount of money that his father had left him. He sailed along the Yangtze River all the way down to the present-day Yangzhou and Nanjing in east China’s Jiangsu Province. During his travels, he associated with many celebrities, spending extravagantly to entertain his friends. Meanwhile, he was trying to secure a position from various patrons, but before things could materialize, he had spent all his money and had to return home. To express his nostalgia for this period, he wrote his popular poem A Tranquil Night:

Abed, I see a silver light,

I wonder if it’s frost aground.

Looking up, I find the moon bright;

Bowing, in homesickness I’m drowned.

It wasn’t until nearly two decades later in the year 742 that Li Bai was finally able to present his writings to Emperor Xuanzong in Chang’an per the recommendation of a friend. The emperor took a great personal liking to Li Bai and gave him a position at the Hanlin Academy, which served to provide scholarly expertise and poetry for the emperor.

During his stay in Chang’an as a poet in the emperor’s service, Li Bai wrote quite a number of poems complimenting the beauty of the emperor’s favorite concubine Yang Guifei. But once while he was drunk, he offended the most powerful eunuch Gao Lishi, by asking Gao to help remove his boots in front of the emperor. Gao managed to persuade Yang Guifei to take offense at Li Bai’s poems about her. At the persuasion of the two, Emperor Xuanzong dismissed Li Bai from the imperial court in the year 744, but not without a generous severance package of gold and silver.

After leaving Chang’an, Li Bai, who had been interested in and practiced Taoism since he was very young, officially became a Taoist by enduring a physically challenging ritual that was witnessed by friends. Also, around that time, he met poet Du Fu, who was 11 years his junior, in the autumn of the year 744. The two lived in the same accommodation for a while and shared their love of poetry and wine. It was through Du Fu’s introduction that Li Bai met Gao Shi. So, the decades-long friendship of Li Bai and Gao Shi only started when the two were in their 40s even though the film Chang An has the two meeting in their 20s, perhaps to maintain the interest of younger moviegoers. For the next 10 years, Li Bai continued to travel around the country, writing poems and getting together friends along the way. It was during this period that he wrote the timeless classic Invitation to Wine. In this scene that I will read to you now, you can imagine Li Bai drinking wine and singing songs with two good friends as they give vent to their grievances:

Can you see the Yellow River decanting from the sky

And racing to the sea never to return?

Can you see the grief of white hair in the mirrors

As dawn’s black silk turns to evening snow?

When life goes well, be joyous

Never show the moon an empty cup

Heaven gave me the talent for a reason

Spend now, riches return in season

Stew the lamb, prepare the ox, let us feast

Tonight, we’ll drink three hundred cups at least

Master Cen, Master Danqiu

drink and don’t put down your cups

I’ll sing for you –

Please lend your ears

Bells and jades are not so precious

As eternal inebriation

Ancient sages leave no name

It’s great drinkers who enjoy great fame

At the table of Prince Chen of old

Wine flowed like water

Hosts shouldn’t fret over costs –

Buy more wine and fill those cups

Fine horses, expensive robes –

Tell the servant to sell these for wine

We’ll banish sorrow from this world

In the year 755, the An Lushan Rebellion broke out. General An Lushan declared himself emperor in north China by establishing the rivaling Yan Dynasty. The rebellion spanned eight years over three Tang emperors and stroke a devastating blow to the most glorious empire in Chinese history. During the disturbance, Emperor Xuanzong’s 16th son, Prince of Yong, tried to occupy the region south of the Yangtze River. In a last-ditch effort to fulfill his political aspirations, Li Bai joined the prince to become his poet laureate. But the prince was soon accused of intending to establish an independent regime and was executed. And due to guilt by association, Li Bai was also arrested and imprisoned.

In year 758, Li Bai was exiled to Yelang, the remote extreme of the Tang empire in present-day southwest China’s Guizhou Province. He stopped for prolonged visits with friends on the way, leaving poems with detailed descriptions of his journey. Before arriving there, he was set free in a general amnesty, which was a customary practice upon the ascension of a new king or emperor. Upon receiving the news, Li Bai composed the poem Leaving Baidi in the Morning to express his joy in returning home:

Leaving at dawn the White King crowned with rainbow cloud,

I have sailed a thousand miles through Three Georges in a day.

With monkeys’ sad adieus the riverbanks are loud,

My boat has left ten thought mountains far away.

Li Bai finally settled down in Dangtu of east China’s Anhui Province to live with a relative. He passed away in the year 762. According to legend, he drowned in the Yangtze River, having fallen drunk from his boat when trying to embrace a reflection of the moon. In a final bit of irony, he finally obtained his life-long wish when the new emperor Daizong issued a decree in 764 appointing him as counselor to the emperor, not knowing that he had already died.

Li Bai’s life is full of contradictions – he married four times and had children, but he could never settle down in one place and help raise his family; he was politically active towards the end of his life, only to find himself always on the wrong side. His poetry reflects all these contradictions and more – he can be lyrical or descriptive, wildly celebratory or somberly self-reflective. Perhaps it was his life’s contradictions and the wide spectrum of emotions expressed in his poems that made him popular in his own time and as well as today.

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Lü Weitao, translator Yang Guang, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.