Lu You

Career

Early life and marriage

Lu You was born on a boat floating in the Wei River early on a rainy morning, November 13, 1125. At the time of his birth, China was divided and the Song dynasty in the northern part of the country had been invaded by the Jurchens of the Jin dynasty in the Jin–Song wars. The southern part of China continued to hold out as the Southern Song dynasty for another 150 years, but during Lu You's entire life, the country was threatened by invasion from the north. He is known for his many patriotic poems.

One year after his birth, the troops of the Jin dynasty conquered the capital of the Northern Song dynasty; his family fled to the south. Lu You's family included government officials, and he received a good education. He was brought up to be patriotic, and grew up determined to expel the foreign Jurchen from the North and bring about the reunification of China under the Song dynasty.

Lu You grew up with his cousin Tang Wan (唐琬, courtesy name Huixian 蕙仙, 1128-1156), who was quiet but loved literature. They fell deeply in love and were married when he was 20. But they had no children, and his mother did not like Tang Wan. Though they had lived happily together, his mother forced them to divorce in order to make Lu You concentrate on studying to fulfill his aspiration of saving the Song dynasty. In traditional Chinese culture, children were required to obey their parents. Lu You loved his mother and reluctantly divorced Tang Wan. She later married a nobleman named Zhao Shicheng (趙士程), and he married a woman from the Wang clan (her personal name eludes most researchers).

Lu You was sad after his first marriage broke up. One spring day, at age 31, eight years after their divorce, he passed by Shen's Garden (沈園) and by chance encountered Tang Wan and her husband. Tang Wan asked her husband to let her send a cup of wine to Lu You. When her hands passed the wine to him, he saw her eyes brimmed with tears. His heart was broken, and he drank the cup of bitter wine to the bottom. He turned away and on the spot wrote the poem "Phoenix Hairpin" (Chai Tou Feng, 釵頭鳳) on the wall of Shen's Garden. After this meeting with Tang Wan, Lu You went to the North to struggle against the foreign Jin dynasty, before returning to southern Shu (蜀, today's Sichuan) to pursue his dream of unifying China.

When Tang Wan read Lu You's poem in the garden, she immediately wrote one in the same form in response. Less than a year later, she died. In the year before Lu You's death, at age 85, he wrote another poem called “Shen's Garden” to commemorate Tang Wan, his first love. A traditional Yue opera was written about Lu You and Tang Wan, and their love story is very famous in China.

Official career

At age 12, Lu You was already an excellent writer, had mastered the skill of sword fighting, and had delved deeply into war strategy. At age 19, he took the civil service examination, but did not pass. Ten years later, he took it again; this time he not only passed it, he was the first winner in the Lin An region. But this triumph brought him trouble. Qin Sun, the grandson of the powerful Qin Hui (秦檜, a notorious aristocratic traitor in the Song Dynasty), had also taken the exam. Lu You's win threatened Qin Sun's position, as Lu You was now likely to take first place in the next year's national examination. In fact, not only Lu You, but all the potential winners of the next year's nationwide competition were excluded, along with even some of the examination officers.

After Qin Hui's death, Lu You started his official career in government. Because he avidly insisted on fighting against the Jin dynasty and did not follow the mainstream official lethargy on the subject, he was dismissed from his job. In 1172, he was hired to do strategic planning in the military. Military life opened his eyes and mind; he hoped to fulfill his aspiration of bringing a divided China back together. He wrote many unrestrained poems to express his passionate patriotism. But the Song Dynasty was by now corrupt and indolent; most officers just wanted to make a nice living; Lu You had no opportunity to deploy his talent."Entering upon a public career by virtue of his father's services, he fell into disfavour with Qin Hui; but after the latter's death he received an appointment, and in 1163 the Emperor Xiaozong(孝宗) made him a Compiler for the Privy Council and conferred upon him the honorary degree of Jinshi(進士)."

He was unsuccessful in his official career: he adopted a patriotic irredentist stance, advocating the expulsion of the Jurchen from northern China, but this position was out of tune with the times. In 1175, Fan Chengda(范成大) asked him to join his party. They shared literary interests, and now behaved casually in official society. Lu You felt there was no place for him in official life, and started to become self-indulgent, enjoying drinking to forget his lack of success in his personal life and career pursuit. He gave himself the art name "Fangweng" (放翁), meaning "Liberated Old Man", and was sarcastic about himself in his poems.

After several promotions and demotions, Lu You retired in 1190 to live in seclusion in his hometown Shaoxing (紹興, now in Zhejiang province), then a rural area. He spent the last twenty years of his life there. Lu You enjoyed good health and liked eating pearl barley and wood ear mushrooms. This habit kept his vision and hearing keen until death. During his retirement, he still ardently supported fighting against the Jin dynasty, but without success. His wife died in 1197. On January 26, 1210, he died at age 86. His great regret was knowing that northern China was still in the control of the foreigners.