The Life Journey of Liu Zongyuan, Chronicler of Rivers and Snow

Liu Zongyuan (773-819), 'Liu of Hedong,' was famous in Chang'an before twenty, a core member of the hundred-day Yongzhen Reform, and then — for it — ten years a nominal 'idle officer' in Yongzhou and five a dying prefect in Liuzhou. Out of the ruins came 'River Snow,' the Eight Records of Yongzhou, and a prose partnership with Han Yu that remade the language.

Timeline of the Journey

• 773 · 长安 — Born in Chang'an into the Hedong Liu; composing at thirteen, at twenty the talk of the capital.
• 805 · 长安 — Vice-director of Rites under Shunzong, in Wang Shuwen's reform circle — palace markets and harsh taxes struck down, eunuchs checked — for a hundred days.
• 805 · 永州 — The reform fell; exile to Yongzhou as a supernumerary 'aide' with no duties, his mother dead within months in the Longxing temple. 'A thousand mountains, no flying bird; ten thousand paths, no footprint — one boat, one old man, fishing the cold river snow.'
• 810 · 永州 — A place of his own at last on the Ran stream — renamed 'Fool's Stream,' the Fool's Hall and Pavilion; 'the Rats of Yongzhou,' 'The Snake-Catcher,' statecraft gone into fable.
• 812 · 永州 — The fishermen of the Xiao, the Western Hills, the Lead-Mother Pool, the Small Stone Pool — the Eight Records, landscape writing invented in exile. 'The fish seemed to move through empty air.'
• 815 · 长安 — Recalled in spring with the other 'Eight Majors' — in Chang'an a month, in a faction's shadow, then re-exiled further: Liuzhou.
• 815 · 衡阳 — Parting from Liu Yuxi on the Xiang: 'at Hengyang we turn our backs, ten thousand misty waves' — the friendship that carried them both.
• 815 · 柳州 — As Prefect of Liuzhou among the hundred Yue: 'the city tower over four fellow-exiles' prefectures' — then wells dug, slaves ransomed, order made.
• 817 · 柳州 — Willows planted along the Liu river — 'I am laughed at, but the trees will shade ten thousand men' — and orange groves, and the city wall repaired.
• 819 · 柳州 — The recall edict still on the road when he died, November 819, at forty-six — his works and his young son entrusted to Liu Yuxi. 'I myself am laden and exiled; my brother too, ten thousand li, crossing the ford of parting.'

'A lone boat, an old man in straw cape, fishing alone the cold river snow.' The coldest and most complete poem in Chinese — written by the man who lost an empire's capital and made, of the losing, a new prose.