Life
Su Shi was born on January 8, 1037, the nineteenth day of the twelfth month of the third year of the Jingyou era under Emperor Renzong of Song, in Meishan, Meizhou. His family claimed descent from the early Tang official Su Weidao, but according to Su Xun's own account, the genealogy linking Su Weidao to his great-great-grandfather could no longer be verified, and Su Xun's great-great-grandfather marked the limit of the reliable lineage. When Su Xun compiled the family genealogy, he treated Su Weidao as the founding ancestor of the branch, intending to unite people bearing the Su surname and share political and social resources; even at the time, some people disapproved of this approach.
The character *shi* in Su Shi's name refers to the crossbar or handrail at the front of a carriage, suggesting something inconspicuous yet indispensable. His father Su Xun explained the meaning in “On Naming My Two Sons”: “The wheel, spokes, canopy, and rear crosspiece all have functions in a carriage. Only the front rail seems to do nothing. Yet remove it, and I have never seen a carriage remain complete. Shi, I fear that you may fail to adorn your outward conduct.” His younger brother Su Zhe's name was also explained in this essay.
Su Shi received a strong family education from childhood. In 1048, the eighth year of the Qingli era, Su Xun remained at home because of his father's death, devoted himself to study, and taught Su Shi and Su Zhe through his own scholarship and conduct. Their mother, Lady Cheng, came from a prominent Meishan family and once used the story of the Eastern Han scholar Fan Pang to encourage Su Shi to cultivate moral integrity. Su Shi was broad-minded and candid by temperament, deeply influenced by Daoist ideals, fond of friendship, food, tea, and excursions among mountains and forests. He once said that he could keep company “above with the Jade Emperor and below with a beggar in the fields.” In 1042 he entered elementary school and studied under the Daoist Zhang Yijian. In the following year he entered a local school and took Han Qi, Fan Zhongyan, Fu Bi, and Ouyang Xiu as models.
In 1056, the first year of the Jiayou era, Su Shi left Sichuan for the capital for the first time to take the imperial examinations. Su Xun brought twenty-one-year-old Su Shi and nineteen-year-old Su Zhe down the Yangtze from western Sichuan, and they reached the capital for the 1057 examinations.
That year's policy-essay topic in the Ministry of Rites examination was “On the Consummate Loyalty and Generosity of Punishments and Rewards.” Su Shi's essay won the admiration of chief examiner Ouyang Xiu and assistant examiner Mei Yaochen. In it Su Shi wrote that when Gao Yao served as judge and was about to execute a man, Gao Yao said three times that he should be killed while Yao said three times that he should be pardoned. Neither Ouyang nor Mei knew the source. Ouyang Xiu suspected that the essay had been written by his student Zeng Gong and, to avoid favoritism, lowered it from first to second place. After the results were announced, Mei Yaochen asked Su Shi for the source. Su Shi replied that it came from an annotation to the biography of Kong Rong in the *Records of the Three Kingdoms*. Ouyang and the others checked but could not find it. Su Shi then said that he had merely drawn on Kong Rong's idea of treating something as self-evident. Ouyang greatly admired Su Shi's boldness and predicted that he was a man who knew how to read and use books and that one day his writing would stand alone in the world.
Ouyang Xiu's repeated praise quickly made Su Shi famous. Just as the father and sons were gaining renown in the capital, news arrived that Su Shi's mother had died, and the two brothers returned home with their father to mourn.
In the tenth month of 1059, Su Shi completed the mourning period. In the second month of the next year the “Three Su” returned to Bianjing. Su Shi was appointed Registrar of Fuchang County in Henan Prefecture and tested for the position of Proofreader in the Palace Library.
In 1061, on Ouyang Xiu's recommendation, the Su brothers sat the special decree examination for “men of worthy, upright, and outspoken remonstrance.” In the ninth month Su Shi's policy response was graded in the third class. Because the first and second classes were conventionally left vacant, the third class was effectively the highest grade. Only Wu Yu had previously received such a third-class grade during the Song, so Su Shi's result was described as “first in a century.” He was then appointed Dali Pingshi and Assistant Magistrate of Fengxiang Prefecture.
During his Fengxiang appointment, Su Shi had a very poor relationship with the senior official Chen Xiliang; each looked down on the other. By contrast, he became very close to Chen Xiliang's fourth son, Chen Zao. In 1065, the second year of the Zhiping era, he completed the appointment and returned to court to serve in the Historiography Institute. In 1066 Su Xun died, and Su Shi and Su Zhe escorted the coffin home and observed three years of mourning.
In 1069, the second year of the Xining era, Su Shi returned to court after completing mourning and served in the Edict Drafting Office while concurrently holding a post in the Ministry of Rites. The New Policies of Wang Anshi had begun. Many of Su Shi's teachers and friends, including Ouyang Xiu, disagreed politically with Wang Anshi because they opposed the new measures and were forced to leave the capital. Su Shi submitted a memorial discussing what he saw as defects in the policies. Wang Anshi became angry and had the censor Xie Jingwen report Su Shi's alleged faults to Emperor Shenzong. Su Shi therefore requested an outside appointment and in 1071 was made Assistant Prefect of Hangzhou.
In the autumn of 1074, Su Shi was transferred to govern Mizhou. From the fourth month of 1077 to the third month of 1079, he served as prefect of Xuzhou. The Yellow River breached its banks at Cao Village, and floodwaters accumulated below Xuzhou's walls, which were close to collapse. Su Shi said that if the wealthy fled the city, the entire population would be shaken, and that while he remained there the flood would not be allowed to destroy the walls. He compelled the wealthy to return, personally went to the Imperial Guard camp to request military assistance, and led soldiers in building an embankment to the southeast. He erected a small hut on the wall and lived there, not even entering his own home when passing it, and eventually preserved the city. He also requested that the following year's corvée labor be assigned to strengthen the old city walls and construct wooden river defenses, a request approved by the court.
In the fourth month of 1079, the second year of the Yuanfeng era, Su Shi was transferred to Huzhou. After taking office, he submitted a “Memorial of Thanks on Arriving at Huzhou” to Emperor Shenzong, saying that he was “foolish and unsuited to the times, unable to keep pace with newly advanced men,” and that “in old age, by not creating trouble, I may perhaps still shepherd common people.” Members of the New Policy faction used these lines against him, accusing him of mocking the court, arrogating status to himself, and harboring malicious intent. They selected passages from many of his poems that they considered to contain veiled satire, and opposition to Su Shi quickly spread at court. On the twenty-eighth day of the seventh month, only three months after he had taken office, clerks of the Censorate arrested him and escorted him to the capital; dozens of others were implicated. This became the famous Crow Terrace Poetry Trial of the Northern Song. The Censorate was nicknamed the Crow Terrace because cypress trees grew there and crows roosted in them throughout the year.
Su Shi remained in prison for about four months and narrowly escaped execution. Members of the New Policy faction pressed for his death, while efforts to save him arose both at court and beyond. Elder statesmen who shared his political views submitted memorials, and even some perceptive supporters of reform urged Emperor Shenzong not to kill him. Wang Anshi, then retired in Jinling, also submitted a memorial asking how a talented scholar could be killed in a sagely age. Through these efforts Su Shi received a relatively lenient sentence: he was demoted to Assistant Commissioner of Military Training at Huangzhou and placed under local supervision. Su Zhe was also demoted, to supervise the salt and liquor offices at Yunzhou, because he had tried to save his brother.
On the first day of the second month of 1080, Su Shi arrived in Huangzhou. He initially lived at Dinghui Monastery and moved to Lingao Pavilion in the fifth month. The office of Assistant Commissioner of Military Training at Huangzhou was low-ranking and carried no real authority. After the ordeal, Su Shi had become discouraged. He repeatedly visited the Red Cliff hills outside Huangzhou and wrote such works as the two *Red Cliff Rhapsodies* and “Nian Nu Jiao: Recalling the Past at Red Cliff,” using them to express his feelings during exile.
In 1081, his friend Ma Zhengqing secured a tract of wasteland east of the Huangzhou military camp for him. Su Shi farmed it personally and called it “Dongpo,” or Eastern Slope. In the fifth year of the Yuanfeng era, he built the Snow Hall at Dongpo and adopted the sobriquet Dongpojushi. While in Huangzhou he associated with Zhang Huaimin, befriended Buddhist monks, and frequently interacted with Foyin.
In 1084, Su Shi left Huangzhou under orders to take up an appointment in Ruzhou. His young son died during the exhausting long journey. Ruzhou was far away, his travel funds were exhausted, and he was grieving for his child, so he petitioned the court for permission to postpone the Ruzhou appointment and live first in Changzhou; permission was granted. Passing through Jiangzhou, he toured Mount Lu and Shizhong Mountain, composing “Inscription on the Wall of Xilin Temple” and “Account of Shizhong Mountain.” While passing through Jinling, he visited Wang Anshi.
In 1085, the eighth year of the Yuanfeng era, Emperor Zhezong of Song ascended the throne and Empress Dowager Gao governed as regent. Sima Guang was restored as chief councillor and the New Policy faction was suppressed. Su Shi was restored to office as Chaofenglang and appointed to govern Dengzhou, but after only five days there he was recalled as a Ministry of Rites official. Half a month after reaching the capital he was appointed Imperial Diarist and entered the Yanhe Hall as an attendant. Three months later he was promoted to Drafter in the Secretariat, and soon afterward to Hanlin Academician and imperial edict drafter, while also supervising the Ministry of Rites examinations.
When Su Shi saw the newly ascendant political forces fiercely suppressing members of Wang Anshi's group and abolishing the new laws wholesale, he concluded that they were no better than the so-called “Wang faction” and once again submitted remonstrances. He criticized corruption that appeared after the conservative faction took power, provoking strong opposition and renewed accusations. At this point he was accepted by neither the New Policy faction nor the old faction and again requested an outside posting.
In 1086, after Sima Guang died, officials were conducting the Mingtang sacrificial ceremonies. Cheng Yi stopped officials who intended to go to the funeral, arguing that one who mourned on such a day should not sing and asking how they could first celebrate an amnesty and immediately afterward attend a funeral. Su Shi mocked Cheng Yi, saying that this was ritual invented by a wrongly dead “Shusun Tong in the marketplace.” The two became enemies, and their followers later attacked each other, forming the Shu-Luo factional dispute.
In 1087 Su Shi was appointed Hanlin Reader-in-Waiting, and in the eleventh month he became Vice Minister of Revenue. In the third year of the Yuanyou era, while serving as Hanlin Academician and supervising the examinations, he reformed the Song special supplementary examination system. He submitted the “Memorial Arguing that Favor Shown to Special Examinees Was Excessive,” after which the court adopted his recommendation and established quotas and rank limits for special jinshi candidates and other examination categories.
In 1089, the fourth year of the Yuanyou era, Su Shi governed Hangzhou as Longtu Pavilion Academician with privileges equivalent to those of a serving senior official. Hangzhou suffered severe drought, famine, and epidemic disease. Su Shi asked the court to reduce the amount of tribute rice required from the circuit by one third and obtained ordination certificates for Buddhist monks, which he exchanged for rice to relieve the hungry. In the spring of 1090 he also sold grain from the Ever-Normal Granaries at reduced prices, had large quantities of porridge and medicinal broth prepared, and sent physicians through the neighborhoods to treat residents, saving many lives.
Su Shi observed that because Hangzhou was a hub of both land and water traffic, deaths from epidemics were often more numerous there than elsewhere. He therefore collected 2,000 strings of surplus public funds and contributed fifty taels of his own gold to establish a medical ward for sick commoners.
He saw that one river at Maoshan received the tides of the Qiantang River while another at Yanqiao received water from West Lake, and he dredged both waterways to improve navigation. He repaired embankments and sluice gates to control the storage and release of West Lake's waters. With the remaining labor force he restored the Six Wells. The mud dredged from West Lake was piled into a long embankment running north to south for thirty li, creating a causeway for travelers. Because people in the Wu region planted water caltrops and weeded them in spring, Su Shi hired laborers to plant caltrops in the lake so that other aquatic weeds would not grow, reserving income from the crop for future dredging. After the causeway was finished, hibiscus and willows were planted along it, and Hangzhou residents named it the “Su Causeway.”
Su Shi lived comfortably in Hangzhou and compared himself with the Tang poet Bai Juyi. In 1091 he was recalled to court and appointed Hanlin Academician-in-Waiting, serving in the Erying Hall. After returning, however, he was impeached by Jia Yi and others. In the eighth month he was sent out as Longtu Pavilion Academician to govern Yingzhou.
In 1092 Su Shi was transferred to govern Yangzhou, and in 1093 to Dingzhou. In 1094, the first year of the Shaosheng era, the New Policy faction returned to power. Su Shi was demoted to Deputy Military Commissioner of Ningyuan Army and assigned to Huizhou. While there he composed “A Quatrain in Huizhou,” writing that spring lasted all year beneath Mount Luofu, loquats and waxberries ripened one after another, and that if he could eat three hundred lychees a day, he would gladly remain a Lingnan man.
In 1097, the fourth year of the Shaosheng era, Su Shi, then sixty-two by traditional reckoning, was demoted again, to Vice Prefect of Qiongzhou and assigned to Changhua Army at Danzhou. Danzhou lay on Hainan Island and was then extremely remote. Su Shi established a school there, promoted learning, lived amicably with local residents, and produced many works, including poems written in imitation of Tao Yuanming.
In 1100, the third year of the Yuanfu era, Emperor Huizong of Song ascended the throne and Su Shi was pardoned and permitted to return north. On August 24, 1101, the twenty-eighth day of the seventh month of the first year of the Jianzhong Jingguo era, he died of illness in Changzhou at the age of sixty-five. During the Southern Song he was posthumously granted the title Grand Preceptor and the posthumous name Wenzhong. His tomb is in Jia County, Henan.