it was Autumn the season for justice
when the political economy
of verse was decided at Crow Terrace -
after the pulsar altered astronomy
and plague finished the three abundances
Wang Anshi was promoted Chancellor
since hordes had closed the steppes’ circumference -
yet comets and poets were cancellers
of currency expansion - his frontier
militias - prospects of a full war-chest -
in Hubei ringleader Su pioneered
on eastern slopes - his exile further pressed
to Hainan where the Gobi is so far
“the sea’s mine” he says watching the new stars
Blackwells
Oxford
Mid Autumn Festival
24 September 2018
Tonight is the mid-autumn festival for Chinese. Many thoughtful Chinese attribute the past millenium of invasions from the steppes and from over the sea and foreign occupation to the failure of the Song Dynasty. Some blame the aesthete Huizong Emperor ( reigned 1100-1126) for indulging his artistic genius before the Jurchens’ invasion and their establishment of the Jin state. Others note that the morale of the Song government had been already affected by plague in 1048, the subordination of the Western Xia Tangut state to the northern Liao, by Halley’s Comet in 1066 and by the failure of Wang Anshi’s ” New Policies”. The Crab Nebula, at the heart of which lies a pulsar, was first recorded by Chinese astronomers in 1054.
Wang Anshi ( 1021-1086) was of the Legalist School, and an economist. He served the Shenzong Emperor ( reigned 1067- 1085) who wished to reclaim hegemony over the steppes and give China the security that the Tang Dynasty had given it. The first line refers to the ” Rites of Zhou” classic, which was Wang’s core governance text. Wang’s opponent was the poet official Su Shi ( 1037-1101) who is known as Su Dongpo. The leader of a conservative faction of scholar officials, Su Shi is one of the great world poets. He was also an expert at metallurgic industry and hydraulics, and a friend of the scientist Shen Kuo.
Su was subjected to a trial at the capital Kaifeng known as the Crow Terrace Poetry Trial in 1079. He and his associates were charged with treason and lese majeste, under Article 122 of the Song Code, and their poetry investigated at the Censorate Office on Crow Terrace for sedition. He was sentenced first to exile near Huangzhou in Hubei, where he became known as ” Eastern Slope Su” on account of the plot of land on which he subsisted. He was later sent to the island of Hainan to Zhonghe on the Beidu Gulf/ Gulf of Tonkin where he founded an academy. He died, rehabilitated, on his journey to a new posting. It is a custom on this day to enjoy his verses.