December 16, 2021 (November 13, 2021) is the 1000th anniversary of Wang Anshi's birth. The weekly magazine "Micro History" invited Xu Tao, associate professor of the School of Letters of Nanjing University, to tell us about Wang Anshi in the history of poetry. The first part mainly talks about the influence of Wang Anshi's poetry and why different eras have different evaluations of him. This article is about Nanjing in Wang Anshi's poetry.
Reporter: How many poems does Wang Anshi have preserved so far, and how many are related to Nanjing? What were some of the more important life events that happened to him in Nanjing?
Xu Tao: Wang Anshi has more than 1,600 extant poems, some of which have yet to be examined when and where they were written, but according to my rough statistics, there are more than 500 poems related to Nanjing, accounting for about one-third of all poems.
Wang Anshi's birthplace was Linchuan, Fuzhou (in present-day Jiangxi), and he accompanied his father Wang Yi to Jiangning (present-day Nanjing) when he was seventeen years old in the fourth year (1037) of Emperor Jingyou of Song. Wang Yi was then the governor of Jiangning Province, and two years later he died of illness and was buried in the local area, and Wang Anshi's family settled in Nanjing. In the second year of the Qing Calendar (1042), Wang Anshi was admitted to the jinshi and began his career as a eunuch, during which, except for the occasional brief return home, he basically ran in office until the death of his mother Wu in the eighth year of Jiayou (1063), and only then did he return to Jiangning Dingyou. Originally, he should have returned to the imperial court after the funeral in the second year of Emperor Yingzong's reign (1065), but he refused several times from the imperial court and remained in Jiangning. It was not until the first year of the reign of Emperor Shenzong of Song (1068) that he should be ordered to enter the capital, and the following year began to preside over the change of law. In the seventh year of Xi Ning (1074), Wang Anshi resigned from Jiangning, re-entered the phase in the eighth year (1075), and resigned again in the ninth year (1076), and from then on, until april 6, the first year of the Yuan Dynasty (1086), Wang Anshi was in Nanjing, living a life of retreat.
This year is the 1,000th anniversary of Wang Anshi's birth, Jinggong's hometown of Fuzhou City has planned a large-scale commemorative event, in fact, Wang Anshi has a deeper relationship with us in Nanjing, he has "settled" in Jiangning since he was seventeen years old, that is, we Nanjing people. It is a matter of pride and a thing of remembrance that our city was once home to such a great historical figure. Moreover, Wang Anshi did not just "live" in Nanjing. During the years of Zhiping, Xining, and Yuanfeng, Wang Anshi set up tents to give lectures in Nanjing, and trained a large number of social elites such as Lu Tuo, Gong Yuan, Zheng Xia, Zheng Qiao, Shen Ba, Hou Shuxian, Wu Dian, Guo Fengyuan, Hua Zhi, and Wang Lan, providing a talent output for the political reform and academic development of the Song Dynasty. As for literature, the more than 500 poems created by Jing Gong here alone are a grand event in the history of Nanjing literature that deserves to be written in a big book. Moreover, in Wang Anshi's later years, many literati such as Guo Xiangzheng, Yu Zizhi, Yang Ji, Chen Fu, Ye Tao, Cai Zhao, wei Tai, etc. surrounded him to sing poetry and sing; in the seventh year of Yuanfeng, Su Shi passed by Jinling to visit Wang Anshi, and the two literary giants resolved their political grievances, talked about Buddhist papers, exchanged poems, and got together very happily; it is recorded that Huang Tingjian also went to Jinling to discuss poetry with Jinggong. It can be seen that a literary circle centered on Wang Anshi has been formed in Nanjing. So you see, throughout Wang Anshi's life, whether from the perspective of life history, academic history or literary history, he has a deeper relationship with nanjing.
Reporter: Wang Anshi has a poem "Jiangning Jiakou": Zhong Shan is buried by clouds, not to mention the South Tower and Hokusai. Last night, the moon was dreaming on the Ming River, and it went against the tide to Qinhuai. There is a commentary that the South Building and the North Pavilion, referring to the Nanjian Building and the Zhaowen Zhai, are both Wang Anshi's reading places in Nanjing. If you paint a picture of Wang Anshi's Nanjing travels, where did he go to Nanjing, or where did his poems write about Nanjing?
Xu Tao: The Northern Song Dynasty in which Wang Anshi lived has been around for a thousand years, and the natural geography and cultural landscape have changed too much, and many places are no longer clear. Li Bi, a Southern Song Dynasty man who is not very distant from Wang Anshi's age, from the death of Jing Gong to the birth of Li Bi, during which only seventy years have passed, everyone is still a Song Dynasty, but when he notes the Jing Gong poems, it is already unclear where the "South Building" and "Hokusai" are, and he speculates that "Hokusai" may be "Gao Zhai", which is also because Wang Anshi himself wrote many poems related to "Gao Zhai" such as "And Wang Weizhi Ascending Gao Zhai". As for the statement that "South Building" and "Hokusai" are "South Stream Building" and "Zhaowen Zhai", that is only the speculation made by the present people according to Wang Anshi's poetry.
The Places mentioned in Wang Anshi's poems such as Zhongshan, Qinhuai River, Xuanwu Lake, Qixia Temple, Bailuzhou, Qingliang Temple, Dinglin Temple, and Niushou Mountain are still in place, and many places are still tourist attractions. It is also worth mentioning the Mid-Levels Garden.
After Wang Anshi returned to Jiangning, he built the Mid-Levels Garden in the spring of the second year of Yuanfeng (1079), so the land was seven miles away from the east gate of the city and seven miles from Zhongshan, so it was named after "Mid-Levels", and Wang Anshi was also known as "The Old Man of the Mid-Levels" and "Wang Banshan". The place where the Mid-Levels Garden is located is homeless, only sheltered from wind and rain, and there are no walls, which looks like a hereditary for pedestrians to rest and stay, where it is like the "mansion" of the retired prime minister. On weekdays, Wang Anshi rode a donkey and took one or two servants to and from Zhongshan, sitting under the pine stone, or going to the field house, or entering the Buddhist temple, stopping to read when he was tired, and sharing bread with his servants when he was hungry. Some people advised him to ride on the shoulders carried by people, which was more comfortable, but he said that he "did not dare to replace animals with people"; when he saw a local official traveling, he called and shouted, that is, the messenger who led the way in front of him shouted to give way to pedestrians, and he satirized the people's "but strange summons to kill the scenery", which means that the official authority is too big to destroy the scenery in the mountains. In the seventh year of Yuanfeng (1084), Wang Anshi fell seriously ill, so he turned the Mid-Levels Garden into a Buddhist temple, and song Shenzong personally gave him the "Baoning Zen Temple", so the "Mid-Levels Garden" became the "Half-Levels Temple". The ruins of nanjing mid-levels park are still there, and there is also a "former residence of Wang Anshi" on its site, which seems to have been opened to the public now.
Reporter: There are historical records that Wang Anshi and his family were buried in Nanjing, but there is also a saying that Wang Anshi's remains were eventually moved to other places.
Xu Tao: In October 2009, General JiangNing discovered the graves of Wang Anshi's father Wang Yi and eldest brother Wang Anren, and Wang Anshi's mother, Lady Wu, brothers Wang Anguo, Wang Anli, zi Wang Yun, and others were also buried around Zhongshan in Nanjing. As for Wang Anshi, his tomb is also in Zhongshan, and the Song Dynasty Zhou Xuan's "Qingbo Magazine" clearly records that "Wang Jing Cemetery is in Jiankang JiangShanshan Sanli"; in addition, according to Lu Tuo's "Jiangning Province to Ren Sacrifice Xiang Jing Cemetery Text", Ye Mengde's "Tong Li Li Tour Jiang Shan Gurudwara Wang Jing Cemetery Late Past Caotang Temple Zhou Yong Former Residence" and other poems, can also prove that Wang Anshi's tomb is in Zhongshan.
However, by the Ming Dynasty, the traces of Wang An's stone tomb can no longer be said, which may be due to the construction of the capital Nanjing in the early Ming Dynasty, and the construction of the imperial palace ban has greatly changed the appearance of Nanjing City, so that "many relics before the Song Dynasty cannot be found."
According to the genealogy of the Wang clan in some places in later generations, The Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang once asked the descendants of the Wang clan to be buried for Wang Anshi, but it seems that no relevant records have been found in the historical materials. In the Ming dynasty Shen Defu's notebook "Wan Liye Obtained Compilation", it is recorded that during the Zhengde period, the eunuch Shi Yan in Nanjing demolished the nearby ancient tomb to take its bricks and stones in order to manage the Shou Cave for himself, and later turned out a tomb and found that it was Wang Anshi's tomb. Of course, the nature of this recorded wild history is also relatively large, and it cannot be fully accepted. During the Republic of China period, there were reports of Wang Anshi's tomb found outside the Qilin Gate of Jiangning, but there was also a lack of convincing and reliable evidence. Therefore, today we want to understand the real situation of Wang An's stone tomb, and we can only look forward to new archaeological discoveries in the future.
Intern Zhang Bojin
Yangzi Evening News/Purple Cow News reporter Zang Lei
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Source: Purple Cow News