According to accepted history, in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), rice cultivation was introduced and irrigation developed, and local farmers were able to grow four crops of ramie annually. Brocade woven by the Li women of Hainan Island became popular fashion items in central China.
During the Song Dynasty (907 AD - 1279 AD), which ruled the Southern and largest half of China, the famous Chinese Poet Su Dongpo, at the time an eminent scholar, was banished to Hainan Island, the outermost edge of the Empire. After a long period of political exile, Su received a pardon in 1100 AD and was posted to Chengdu, in current day Sichuan Province. The experiences of Su Dongpo add some illustration of the situation in this remotest of imperial pockets during the Song Dynasty as well as the now regular habit of exiling "criminals" or rather unwanted persons there. To understand what happened to Su Dongpo one needs to dig a little further into the life of the still famed and well-read Poet, something even most Chinese know little about. It is said that Chinese people are very familiar with Su Dongpo’s verses, but few seem to know about his life story or understand his attitude toward life, adding some mystery to the experience of reading Su Dongpo's works. According to some true fans Su Dongpo’s work stands out from his colleagues by virtue of his down-to-earth view on everything he had gone through in his life. They claim that this very attitude is often overlooked by the general public. Other than this Su is hailed for his free-spirited poetry and thus captivating works. Heroically, in his poetry, Su Dongpo refers to his failures, among which first and foremost his political exile(s) as achievements, once more capturing the imagination of more modern readers.
Su Dongpo (蘇東坡) is better known as Su Shi (simplified Chinese: 苏轼) was a writer, poet, artist, calligrapher, pharmacologist, and statesman and perhaps a revolutionary of the Song Dynasty. He was born on January 8th of the year 1037 AD in the town of of Meishan (眉山), near the well-known Emeishan (峨嵋山) the highest of the Four Sacred Buddhist Mountains of China, in central-eastern Sichuan Province. The baby Su was lucky enough to be born into a family of famous Chinese Literati, as unusually both his mother and his father were highly esteemed writers themselves.
Tutored by a Taoist Scholar, which may explain his later love for poetry, as well as drinking, Su married at age 17. In 1057, when Su was at the young age of 19, he and his brother passed the (highest-level) civil service examinations to attain the degree of Jinshi, a prerequisite for high government office (read more on the Confucian Exams at Court and the Jinshi in: "Confucius Temple", Dongcheng District, Beijing). This truly was an unusual achievement and it was noted.
Henceforth, the brothers were absorbed into the highest circles at the Song Court, Su himself being tutored by the Master State Examiner himself, Ouyang Xiu (simplified Chinese: 欧阳修)
Quyang Xiu himself was at the Time and elderly Chinese statesman, acclaimed historian, essayist and poet of the Song Dynasty Court. Although also known as the "Old Drunkard" by that time, Su Dongpo’s teacher Quyang Xiu is today similarly regarded as one of the great masters of prose of the Tang and Song era.
At court the boy Su’s talents were further nurtured and shaped among the best talents of the Era.
Beginning in the year 1060 AD and throughout the following twenty years, Su held a variety of government positions throughout the Empire, as was customary at the time.
Today his most noted deeds in official function include the erection of a pedestrian causeway across the scenic West Lake at Hangzhou (Zhejiang Province), a walkway that is now a famous tourist attraction bearing the poets name: suti (蘇堤, Su causeway). Su also served in Shandong Province and was governor of the lesser town of Xuzhou (Hsüchow, or Suchow) in Jiangsu Province (not to be confused with famous Suzhou the city of Canals more to the south). All in all it was a brilliant if not stunning career, especially on the Literary front, until Su Dongpo decided to embroil himself in political actions. Carrying forth literary tradition Su’s weapons of choice were his Poems and his considerable intelligence.
Although it is noted that in the year 1078 AD Su Dongpo wrote a petition to the Imperial Throne complaining about the troubling economic conditions and potential for armed rebellion in Liguo Industrial Prefecture, where a large part of the Chinese iron industry was located, a move that was eventually taken as an affront to the Emperor himself, in reality it was Su’s free thinking attitude, openmindedness and perhaps lengthy intransigence at court that got him thoroughly in trouble.
As a result of his political activism, or perhaps lack of cooperation where it came to corruption and abuse of powers, during his lifetime, Su Dongpo ended up being exiled several times. Su Shi's first remote trip of exile (1080 AD – 1086 AD) was to Huangzhou, in current day Hubei Province where he was sent to perform a lowly Government job which rendered him some status but no salary.
After 6 years the Emperor died, sounding in a new Era for the Nation. For the occasion, as was customary, Su and all other banished statesmen were recalled to the capital in order to pass the review of those now empowered and swear allegiance to the new Ruler. The odds were initially in favor of Su, who was allowed a second chance at a court career, however, it was proven that Su’s outspoken character had not yet been tamed.
As a result, but a few years later Su Dongpo found himself in disfavor again, this time banished to one of the remotest corners of the realm, first in Huizhou (now in Guangdong province) and then Hainan Island off the coast. This second stint would render him powerless and last almost until his death. Although there was no possibility of a come-back at court after such a disgrace, Su was still held in such high esteem throughout the nation that it was possible to establish the Su Dongpo (literary) Academy in Danzhou on Hainan, which was built on the site of the residence that he lived in whilst in exile.
Not many specifics can be given on the deeds and experiences of Su Dongpo while in residence on Hainan Island. The distinctive physical features of Su Dongpo were his tall stature and high cheekbones, which alike Admiral Zheng He some centuries later made him appear awesome and godlike to the native inhabitants of the island, all of whom were short in stature (as people are in South China until this day). Endowed with an almost unnatural intelligence and a wealth of wisdom and knowledge, Su Dongpo, as had others before him became a natural leader and person of guidance for the local community. As a remote outcropping of the Middle Kingdom most of Hainan’s populace consisted of illiterates, mainly desperately poor farmers, fishermen and hunters and pearl divers. Underdeveloped as it was, there was enough to improve for the poet Su and his newfound associates.
Exiled and away from his deceased wife. In Chinese tradition, husband and wife must be buried aside, lest they could not find each other and have comfort in the afterlife.
The Poem Chiang Tien Zhu (or Jiang chengzi (江城子)) is a heart rendering illustration of some of the sorrows Su Dongpo had in his exiled old age days on Hainan Island. Fearing never to return to the mainland and left to perish and be forgotten instead of having the chance to be buried adjacent his beloved wife, Su wrote the following lines :
Ten years living and dead have drawn apart
I do nothing to remember
But I can not forget
Your lonely grave a thousand miles away ...
Nowhere can I talk of my sorrow --
Even if we met, how would you know me
My face full of dust
My hair like snow?
In the dark of night, a dream: suddenly, I am home
You by the window
Doing your hair
I look at you and can not speak
Your face is streaked by endless tears
Year after year must they break my heart
These moonlit nights?
That low pine grave?
Su, then a withering old man, was pardoned in two years later in 1100 AD, rehabilitating him to some degree, and allowing him to return to his native home in Sichuan in order to die there peacefully. He died on August 24 of the year 1101 AD, about one year after his release from exile on Hainan Island, albeit not in his city of station, Chengdu, but in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province en route to yet another new Government posting. According to his wish his corpse was transported back to Sichuan Province in order to be buried adjacent his wife in the family grave.
Su Dongpo (Su Shi) is enshrined in Chinese Literary History as a true master of poetry, and counted as one of the Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song Dynasties (which includes 4 masters from the Song Era and four from the Tang Era). One his simplest and most elegant poems is the one named remembrance, which goes as follows:
To what can our life on earth be likened?
To a flock of geese,
alighting on the snow.
Sometimes leaving a trace of their passage.
Although the Island was nomainally part of the Empire by ways of allegiance of Clans and Families to the Throne, especially the Han migrants on the Island were loyal obedient citizens. The ethnic people on the Island remained at odds with mainstream (Han) Chinese society for centuries to come. In the Song and Yuan dynasties alone, the Lis in Hainan staged no less than 18 large-scale uprisings all of which were brutally supressed. It was a pattern that would become almost routine, a recurring event until the advent of The Peoples Republic of China, a feudalistic Communist Dictatorship that would be both militarist and totalitarian.
