Li Yu was not a fool. A man capable of polishing ornate and intricate verse again and again could not possibly lack subtlety of mind.
It was simply that, from beginning to end, his interest in governing had never been particularly strong. After he once attempted certain reforms and encountered immediate obstruction, he quickly perceived the immense entrenched forces behind that resistance.
Rather than struggle pointlessly, he withdrew. He devoted himself wholly to poetry, the one field that genuinely stirred him.
As for his own fate, it was not difficult to infer from the scattered hints of later generations. He would most likely be confined in Bianjing by the benevolent emperor's good brother, spending his days composing mournful lines to ease his sorrow.
Yet at this moment, as he watched an era draw to its conclusion, something within him began to stir. Jiangnan was China, but so too were the northern lands of Yan and Yun. The poets of the High Tang had all journeyed ten thousand li and written of frontier vastness with heroic vigor.
If he, Li Yu, could leave his name through letters, and if destiny now shifted before his eyes, then he did not wish to be remembered merely as a delicate poet of private grief.
Li Bai and Du Fu possessed incomparable talent, yet who among them had witnessed with his own eyes the unification of a realm rising from chaos.
Now such an opportunity lay before him. If Zhao Guan could forge a unified Great Song, then he, Li Yu, would also share in the cultural prestige of a powerful Song and be praised by posterity.
[Lightscreen]
[After the fall of Song, some of the more interesting stories concern members of the Southern Song imperial clan.
Among them were those who understood how to adapt to circumstance, such as Zhao Yuqian and Zhao Yurui.
Zhao Yuqian had served as a professor in Ezhou. After Ezhou fell, he surrendered to Bayan and entered his service, advising him to win over the people rather than indulge in slaughter. Later he was summoned to Dadu to meet Kublai Khan. Their conversation proved congenial, and he was appointed a Hanlin Academician under Yuan. He served for twenty seven years before dying of illness, posthumously honored as Wenjian.
Zhao Yurui was more unusual. A tenth generation descendant of Zhao Kuangyin and the biological father of Emperor Duzong of Song, he surrendered and was granted the title Duke of Pingyuan, living out his life in Dadu.
More legendary still were Emperor Gong of Song himself and Zhao Mengfu.
Zhao Mengfu was an eleventh generation descendant of Zhao Kuangyin. He had served as a minor official under Southern Song, retired after its fall, and seven years later was recommended by Yuan ministers to enter service. He served under five reigns, rising to Hanlin Academician with the rank of Chengzhi. He excelled in calligraphy, painting, and poetry. His calligraphic style became known as the Zhao style and he was later ranked alongside Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing, and Liu Gongquan as one of the Four Masters of Regular Script. In painting he mastered landscapes, flowers, and birds, opening a new current in Yuan art. In poetry and prose he was celebrated for his rounded and refined diction. For this reason contemporaries called him the Crown of Yuan Scholars, a title Zhao Kuangyin could scarcely have imagined.
As for Emperor Gong of Song, his life was even more extraordinary. Unlike Li Yu, who lamented in poetry the day he hurriedly left his ancestral temple, and unlike the Chongzhen Emperor, who raged that the ruler was not the destroyer of the state but his ministers were, Zhao Xian was four when he ascended the throne and six when the dynasty fell. He scarcely understood what had happened.
After surrendering he was enfeoffed as Duke of Ying and, at sixteen or seventeen, married a Mongol princess, becoming an imperial son in law. At eighteen, however, Kublai Khan likely judged that the former ruler of a fallen dynasty was too sensitive a figure to keep nearby and decided abruptly that he should go to Tubo to study Buddhism.
Thus, barely two years after marriage, Zhao Xian departed Dadu to pursue enlightenment.
The Zhao clan of Song had long borne the reputation that aside from ruling as emperors, they excelled in almost every other profession. Zhao Xian began studying Sanskrit and Buddhist scriptures only at eighteen, yet he quickly distinguished himself. He became a leading figure at Sakya Monastery and translated works such as the Treatise on the Hundred Dharmas, the Introduction to Logic, the History of the Wish Fulfilling Jewel Tree, and The Feast of the Wise. He left a deep mark on the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism.
At that time the Sakya hierarch Phagpa had already aligned himself with Kublai, created the Mongol script, and was granted the titles of State Preceptor and Imperial Preceptor, overseeing both religious and administrative affairs in Tibetan regions in a form of combined rule. This effectively made the region a kind of inner preserve for Kublai. Sending Zhao Xian there also ensured convenient supervision.
What no one anticipated was that Zhao Xian's profound Buddhist learning won the respect of Tibetan adherents. Later, during the late reign of Yuan Yingzong, when Han officials began to be appointed in greater numbers, the court, wary of potential complications, issued an order and had the Buddhist master Zhao Xian executed in Hexi.
In the Xuande era of Ming, a Sakya scholar compiled the History of Han and Tibet. Whether out of sympathy for Zhao Xian or to magnify religious potency, the text recorded his final vow at death:
"I have never rebelled yet am killed. In my next life may I seize the Mongol imperial throne."
By this vow, it was said, he was reborn as a Han emperor of Great Ming and indeed took the throne. Since Zhu Yuanzhang had once been a monk, the tale felt almost too convenient.
Compared with the wild rumors of late Yuan and early Ming unofficial histories, however, this was mild. Some stories claimed that Yuan Mingzong sought a son from Zhao Xian, others that he favored Zhao Xian's wife and fathered a posthumous child, yet all shared one element, asserting that Yuan Shundi was Zhao Xian's biological son.
When Zhu Yuanzhang later bestowed the posthumous title Shun upon Yuan Shundi, praising his compliance, popular imagination embroidered the tale further, suggesting that a father reborn honored his son with a respectful title, proof of deep filial feeling.
Unofficial histories may not be reliable, but they are certainly bold.
After such absurd embellishments, how should one evaluate Song.
As the only partition regime later recognized as orthodox, and as a dynasty some scholars regard as having raised Chinese culture to new heights, Song undeniably possessed admirable qualities.
Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism converged, with Neo Confucianism forming the core intellectual structure whose influence endures to this day. The economy, technology, and maritime trade flourished simultaneously and advanced substantially. The educational system matured rapidly and even began probing the limits of the civil examination system. The number of large feudal cities grew steadily, and charitable institutions for the vulnerable appeared. These innovations provided important precedents for later generations.
There was also the oft praised ideal of sharing the realm with scholar officials. Though not without limits, it did dismantle the old aristocratic order. The difficulties encountered by Liao, Jin, and Mongol rulers after sinicization stemmed in part from ideological friction between their traditional nobility and Song's culture of literati equality.
Yet Song's failures were no fewer than its achievements. Repeated diversion of the Yellow River caused damage lasting centuries. Severe penal codes were enacted. The gentry class rose to dominance and inflicted harm of its own. Frivolous rulers and naïve ministers exposed the lower bounds of elite incompetence. Such examples were many.
It was an age of intense contradictions, and also an age long remembered by those descended from the Two Songs.
Wang Yanwu, who had urged Wen Tianxiang to accept death, never served Yuan. In old age he composed a poem in remembrance of the Song that belonged to the new gentry elite. Its tone differed entirely from the heroic vigor of Han and the towering grandeur of High Tang. It lingered instead in gentle cadences and restrained sentiment.
Modern historians politely describe the period as possessing the romantic elegance of the Two Songs. Yet if one surveys the whole span, perhaps the phrase romantic elegance of Little Song is more fitting.
The true grace of Song lay in Di Qing charging alone into enemy ranks, in Wang Anshi resolutely pressing reform, in Su Shi calmly boating after exile, in Yue Fei striking straight toward Huanglong, in Xin Qiji trimming the lamp to read his sword, in Cao Youwen dying in battle, in Meng Gong arranging his formations, in Wen Tianxiang sustaining a single breath of righteous qi.
It did not reside in silken robes and perfumed fans amid flower sellers' cries, nor in jeweled carriages of idle scions, nor in peach blossoms drifting across the southern river, nor in cups of wine followed by yet another cup of tea.]