Rising star

Su Shi, the poet and essayist, who was also an accomplished calligrapher and public official, got off to a good start in adulthood, before things started to go wrong.

When he was 20, he took the court exam, stunning his examiners with the power of his words. At 24, he was already a rising star who looked to have a shining career ahead of him.

However, things started to head in a different direction in 1071, when the 34-year-old Su openly criticized a prominent minister's reform measures. Su then spent time in self-imposed exile away from the capital, during which he wrote the poem referred to at the start of this article, in which he wondered why the moon was always rounder when he was away from home.

Zhang said: "Su certainly had his complaints, but these are nothing compared with the woeful sense of disenchantment he expressed through another Mid-Autumn poem four years later, in 1080."

The previous year, Su spent 103 days in prison, having been found guilty of producing writing deemed libellous to the court.

"How many times in life have we experienced autumn's chill?" asked the poet, who went on to lament that "too often the moon's glow is obscured by the clouds". There is no mistaking what Su, who "lifts a cup and casts his mournful glance northward (toward the capital)", was alluding to.

During his time in exile in what is now Huanggang city, Hubei province, Su invented a pork dish named after himself, which is still hugely popular.

This free-spirited man never allowed fate to get the better of him. Two years later, on Mid-Autumn Day in 1082, the year Emperor Huizong was born, Su "ascended high and looked afar, gazing into a sky where drifting clouds have left no trace".

That night, he once again "raised my cup", not to bemoan his mistreatment, but to "toast the moon and invite her to dance with me and my shadow".

Su was paying tribute to Li Bai, whose poems on personal sorrows and joys are equally imbued with a sense of sublimity derived from imagination and individualism. Li Bai once wrote about finding company in the moon and his shadow cast by it.

Also in 1082, Su embarked on a nighttime escapade with friends. Climbing to the top of a cliff to release a "primal scream", he later documented the occasion in his literary masterpiece Second Ode on Red Cliff.

Zhang said: "By this time, Su had been through metaphorical revolving doors and ridden the emotional pendulum. But instead of becoming cynical and resentful, he was unflappable. That's why his writing from this point on was often infused with a powerful serenity, which reflected his inner strength and poise."

In the next two decades, Su was called back to the court, only to be assigned various positions in places increasingly farther from home, in the south.

In 1101, 64-year-old Su was called back again, but died during his journey north on July 28 of the Chinese lunar calendar, just two weeks before Mid-Autumn Festival.

In his 1082 poem, Su wrote:

Tonight, I know not what night it is

Yet I wish to ride the wind to the moon

Up there in the crystal palace

A single note from my flute will touch many hearts

The man who once had qualms about his ability to stand the chill of the moon finally made the trip to the palace of Chang'e.

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