Question 1

Q: What did this one leave behind?

Accepted Answer

The greatest woman poet of classical China, from Jinan, who called herself the Lay Buddhist of Easy Peace. For half her life she and her husband Zhao Mingcheng collected books, paintings and bronzes and wrote lyrics to each other. In her forties the Jin invasion drove them south; he died on the way and the collection scattered, and she later wrote it all down in the Postface to the Records on Metal and Stone. This page leaves her poems aside and takes three judgements: when you cannot carry it all, decide the order of what goes; when money is tight, invent a game for two; to say the masters are wrong, show your standard first.

Question 2

Q: What actually happened?

Accepted Answer

After the court fled south she wrote a four-line poem: 'In life, be a hero among men; in death, a hero among ghosts. To this day I think of Xiang Yu, who would not cross back east of the river.' Xiang Yu, beaten, refused to escape and save himself. Readers ever since have taken the poem as her verdict on a court that kept retreating.

Question 3

The parts · Decide the order of what goes

Accepted Answer

Fleeing south, she and her husband shed twenty years of collecting layer by layer: replaceable printed books first, unique pieces last. It still filled fifteen carts. e.g. Moving with one suitcase: give away what shops sell, keep the handwritten letters.

Question 4

The parts · Make a game for two

Accepted Answer

Poor in their first years, they pawned clothes for rubbings. Later, over tea, they bet on which book and page a passage was on; whoever was right drank first. e.g. Quiz each other on film lines at dinner; the winner picks next week's film.

Question 5

The parts · Show the standard first

Accepted Answer

In On Lyrics she named nearly every master, Su Shi included, but first said what a lyric must do that a poem need not. Disagree, and you must refute the standard. e.g. Before calling the boss's plan weak, write down the test you are using.

Question 6

Q: How do I use it today?

Accepted Answer

Pick one thing you are about to give up, criticise or put up with, and write one line each: what can be replaced and what cannot; what game the two of you could play with what you already have; what standard you are judging by. She did all three in prose, and it is why her losses are still remembered.

Question 7

Lines to keep

Accepted Answer

In life, be a hero among men; in death, a hero among ghosts. Whatever is gathered must scatter. That is the way of things. The lyric is an art of its own, and few understand it.

Question 8

Q: What should I read alongside?

Accepted Answer

Su Shi — Her father was Su Shi's student, and she still wrote that his lyrics often missed the music. Both lived through exile and loss: Su Shi wrote the hard years as breadth of mind, she wrote them as an exact list of what was lost. Du Fu — Both were driven from home by invasion and both wrote one household's ruin more precisely than the history books wrote the war: Du Fu the family on the road, Li Qingzhao the library that scattered. Lin Huiyin — Two women writers driven from home by invasion, eight centuries apart. Li Qingzhao recorded a collection scattering on the road south; Lin Huiyin kept writing on a sickbed in Lizhuang while the society's drawings were moved from city to city.

Question 9

Further

Accepted Answer

Su Shi Du Fu Xiang Yu Tao Yuanming Lin Huiyin

Li Qingzhao

What actually happened?

Decide the order of what goes

Make a game for two

Show the standard first

How do I use it today?

Deep read

Read alongside

Further

Lines to keep