The Life Journey of Lu You, the Iron-Voiced Patriot of the Southern Song

Lu You (1125-1210), styled Wuguan, self-named Fangweng ('the Old Man Let Loose'), of Shanyin, was born in the year the north fell and spent eighty-five years wanting it back: barred from the examination lists by Qin Hui's wrath, then soldiering on the Jin front at Nanzheng — 'iron horses, autumn wind, Dasan Pass' — then twenty years of farming and nine thousand poems, ending with the line every Chinese schoolchild knows: 'When the king's armies recover the Central Plains, do not forget to tell your father at the family sacrifice.'

Timeline of the Journey

• 1125 · Shanyin — Born into an official family in the year the Jurchen took the north; carried through the family's flight as an infant, the resolve to recover the Central Plains set before he could write.
• 1153 · Lin'an — First place in the prefectural examination — above Qin Hui's own grandson. The chancellor's revenge: struck from the ministry list the next year for 'loving to discuss recovery.'
• 1155 · Shanyin — Meeting Tang Wan, his divorced first wife, in the Shen Garden; on its wall he wrote the 'Chai-tou feng' — 'Pink hands, yellow wine...' — the most desolate love lyric in the language.
• 1170 · Kuizhou — Down the Yangtze gorges to be assistant prefect of Kuizhou: the 'Record of Entering Shu,' six books of travel diary — ancient China's most detailed — and the Shu years begun.
• 1172 · Nanzheng — Into Wang Yan's staff on the Song-Jin front: pass-climbs at Dasan Pass, staff work on live operations — 'iron horses, autumn wind' — eight months that fed his patriotic poetry for the rest of the century.
• 1173 · Chengdu — The front dissolved, the staff dispersed: advisory post in Chengdu, the Flower-Washing Brook, Du Fu's thatched hall, wine with Fan Chengda — against the ache of 'my heart at the Tianshan mountains, my body aging among the coves.'
• 1190 · Lin'an — Last round at the capital: recovery proposals again refused, impeached for 'mocking wind and moon,' dismissed home to Shanyin for the long retirement.
• 1210 · Shanyin — Dying at eighty-five by Mirror Lake: the 'Testament to My Sons' — 'Dead, I know all things turn empty; only I grieve I did not see the Nine Provinces whole.' Chinese patriotic verse's last word.

'When the royal armies recover the Central Plains in the north — do not forget, at the family sacrifice, to tell your father.' Lu You wrote perhaps nine thousand poems and kept one promise through them all: he never stopped wanting.