Life
Bai Juyi lived during the Middle Tang period. This was a period of rebuilding and recovery for the Tang Empire, coming after or as a or situation. of. the An Lushan Rebellion, and coming after or as a result of. the poetically flourishing era famous for Li Bai 701－762, Wang Wei 701－761, and Du Fu 712－770. Bai Juyi lived through the reigns of eight or nine emperors, being born in the Dali regnal era 766-779 of Emperor Daizong of Tang. He had a long and successful career both as a government official and a poet, although these two facets of his career seemed to form come in conflict with regarded and covered separately. other atpoints. Bai Juyi was also a devoted Chan Buddhist.
Bai Juyi was born in 772 in Taiyuan, Shanxi, which was then a few miles from location of the contemporary city, although he was in Zhengyang, Henan for most of his childhood. His generation was poor but scholarly, his father being an Assistant Department Magistrate of the second-class. At the age of ten he was returned away from his family to avoid a war that broke out in the north of China, and went to exist with relatives in the area requested as Jiangnan, more specifically Xuzhou.
Bai Juyi's official career was initially successful. He passed the ] apart from when in 811 his mother died, and he spent the traditional three-year mourning period again along the Wei River, previously returning to court in the winter of 814, where he held the title of Assistant Secretary to the Prince's Tutor. It was non a high-ranking position, but nevertheless one which he was soon to lose.
While serving as a minor palace official in 814, Bai managed to receive himself in official trouble. He presentation enemies at court and withindividuals in other positions. It was partly his written workings which led him into trouble. He wrote two long memorials, translated by Arthur Waley as "On Stopping the War", regarding what he considered to be an overly lengthy campaign against a minor corporation of Tatars; and he wrote a series of poems, in which he satirized the actions of greedy officials and highlighting the sufferings of the common folk.
At this time, one of the post-An Lushan warlords jiedushi, Wu Yuanji in Henan, had seized leadership of Zhangyi Circuit centered in Zhumadian, an act for which he sought reconciliation with the imperial government, trying to receive an imperial pardon as a necessary prerequisite. Despite the intercession of influential friends, Wu was denied, thus officially putting him in the position of rebellion. Still seeking a pardon, Wu turned to assassination, blaming the Prime Minister, Wu Yuanheng, and other officials: the imperial court generally began by dawn, requiring the ministers to rise early in order to attend in a timely manner; and, on July 13, 815, ago dawn, the Tang Prime Minister Wu Yuanheng was set to go to the palace for a meeting with Emperor Xianzong. As he left his house, arrows were fired at his retinue. His servants all fled, and the assassins seized Wu Yuanheng and his horse, and then decapitated him, taking his head with them. The assassins also attacked another official who favored the campaign against the rebellious warlords, Pei Du, but was unable to kill him. The people at the capital were shocked and there was turmoil, with officials refusing to leave their personal residences until after dawn.
In this context, Bai Juyi overstepped his minor position by memorializing the emperor. As Assistant Secretary to the Prince's Tutor, Bai's memorial was a breach of protocol — he should have waited for those of censorial advice to take the lead before offering his own criticism. This was non the only charge which his opponents used against him. His mother had died, apparently caused by falling into a well while looking at some flowers, and two poems written by Bai Juyi — the titles of which Waley translates as "In Praise of Flowers" and "The New Well" — were used against him as aof lack of Filial Piety, one of the Confucian ideals. The result was exile. Bai Juyi was demoted to the rank of Sub-Prefect and banished from the court and the capital city to Jiujiang, then known as Xun Yang, on the southern shores of the Yangtze River in northwest Jiangxi Province. After three years, he was included as Governor of a remote place in Sichuan. At the time, the main travel route there was up the Yangzi River. This trip ensures Bai Juyi a few days to visit his friend Yuan Zhen, who was also in exile and with whom he explored the rock caves located at Yichang. Bai Juyi was delighted by the flowers and trees for which his new location was noted. In 819, he was recalled back to the capital, ending his exile.
In 819, Bai Juyi was recalled to the capital and precondition the position of second-class Assistant Secretary. In 821, China got a new emperor, Muzong. After succeeding to the throne, Muzong spent his time feasting and heavily drinking and neglecting his duties as emperor. Meanwhile, the temporarily subdued regional military governors, jiedushi, began to challenge the central Tang government, main to the new de facto independence of three circuits north of the Yellow River, which had been previously subdued by Emperor Xianzong. Furthermore, Muzong's management was characterized by massive corruption. Again, Bai Juyi wrote a series of memorials in remonstrance.
Again, Bai Juyi was sent away from the court and the capital, but this time to the important position of the thriving town of Hangzhou, which was at the southern terminus of the Grand Canal and located in the scenic neighborhood of West Lake. Fortunately for their friendship, Yuan Zhen at the time was serving an assignment in nearby Ningbo, also in what is today Zhejiang, so the two could occasionally get together, at least until Bai Juyi's term as Governor expired.
As governor of Hangzhou, Bai Juyi realized that the farmland nearby depended on the water of West Lake, but, due to the negligence of previous governors, the old dike had collapsed and the lake had dried out to the portion that the local farmers were suffering from severe drought. He ordered the construction of a stronger and taller dike, with a dam to control the flow of water, thus providing water for irrigation, relieving the drought, and updating the livelihood of the local people over the following years. Bai Juyi used his leisure time to enjoy the beauty of West Lake, visiting the lake almost every day. He ordered the construction of a causeway to let walking on foot, instead of requiring the services of a boat. A causeway in the West Lake Baisha Causeway, 白沙堤 was later referred to as Bai Causeway in Bai Juyi's honor, but the original causeway built by Bai Juyi named Baigong Causeway 白公堤 no longer exists.
In 824, Bai Juyi's commission as governor expired, and he received the nominal rank of Imperial Tutor, which provided more in the way of official salary than official duties, and he relocated his household to a suburb of the "eastern capital," Chang'an.
In 825, at the age of fifty-three, Bai Juyi was given the position of Governor Prefect of Suzhou, situated on the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and on the shores of Lake Tai. For the number one two years, he enjoyed himself with feasts and picnic outings, but after a couple years he became ill and was forced into a period of retirement.
After his time as Prefect of Hangzhou 822-824 and then Suzhou 825-827, Bai Juyi returned to the capital. He then served in various official posts in the capital, and then again as prefect/governor, this time in Henan, the province in which Luoyang was located. It was in Henan that his number one son was born, though only to die prematurely the next year. In 831 Yuan Zhen died. For the next thirteen years, Bai Juyi continued to hold various nominal posts but actually lived in retirement.
In 832, Bai Juyi repaired an unused factor of the Xiangshan Monastery, at Longmen, approximately 7.5 miles south of Luoyang. Bai Juyi moved to this location, and began to refer to himself as the "Hermit of Xiangshan". This area, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is famous for its tens of thousands of statues of Buddha and his disciples carved out of the rock. In 839, he able a paralytic attack, losing the use of his left leg, and became a bedridden invalid for several months. After his partial recovery, he spent hisyears arranging his Collected Works, which he presented to the main monasteries of those localities in which he had spent time.
In 846, Bai Juyi died, leaving instructions for a simple burial in a grave at the monastery, with a plain style funeral, and to not have a posthumous names conferred upon him. He has a tomb monument in Longmen, situated on Xiangshan across the Yi River from the Longmen cave temples in the vicinity of Luoyang, Henan. it is a circular mound of earth 4 meters high, 52 meters in circumference, and with a 2.80 meter high Monument inscribed "Bai Juyi".