Hello, Su Dongpo

Meet China's Leonardo Da Vinci

The Book:

Listening All Night to the Rain: Selected Poems of Su Songpo (Su Shi)
By Su Dongpo (1037-1101)
Translated by Jiann I. Lin and David Young
2020

The Talk:

I picked up Listening All Night to the Rain because I thoroughly enjoyed David Young’s translations of Du Fu and Petrarch in recent years. I think I’m on my way to reading everything David Young has published.

In all three books, the poems are organized chronologically, which creates a kind of diary. Each poem is a fleeting moment, sometimes good, sometimes bad. We take a long, slow journey with each poet, watching their fortunes change, watching them steadily transform as they age. Their personalities gradually reveal themselves until by the end (or on the second or third readthrough) they feel like friends. This kind of book is very appealing to me because it seems to express how we grow to know other people, what life really feels like from the inside, and how we become, over time, ourselves.

What I didn’t realize when I picked it up, knowing nothing more than the title and translator, is that Su Shi (as a poet, Su Dongpo) is actually a really big deal, one of China’s most famous and influential cultural figures.

Pre-Renaissance man

Su Shi is sometimes referred to as China’s Leonardo Da Vinci. He composed approximately 2,400(!) poems in his lifetime. He also wrote prose and is considered one of the greatest prose writers of the Song Dynasty. A talented calligrapher and painter, his “Wood and Rock” painting sold for nearly $60 million at Christie’s in 2018.

Beyond his literary and artistic accomplishments, Su Shi is credited with expanding China’s iron industry under his leadership. He was also a notable food connoisseur. The Chinese dish Dongpo Pork is named in his honor. For centuries after his death, he was a favorite subject of painting (like the 17th Century “Su Dongpo at Red Cliff”).

Although he is celebrated in China today, his life was one of frustrated talent. As a member of the scholar-official class¹, Su’s fortunes were dictated by the political winds of the times. Once he was imprisoned, and twice he was essentially demoted and banished to management of distant regions, far from the center of power. He was famously charged in the Crow Terrace Poetry Trial for writing poems critical of the Emperor. (He was indirectly criticizing the policies of the opposition party.)

We all try to worship the moon

Accounts of Su’s life note that his periods of demotion and poverty were marked by prolific literary output. The 96 poems presented in Lin and Young’s translation capture some of the sadness and homesickness of these events for sure, but in general there’s an underlying cheerfulness and focus on the enjoyment of pleasures in the present moment. “Dongpo” means “eastern slope,” and it was the name of his farm after his demotion, a place he grew to love and cherish in his poetry. In other words, he took hold of his ill fortune, possessed it, and made it beloved.

Although Su dabbles in Buddhist detachment, he is no recluse or hermit. You can sense from his poems that he is a great lover of people and pleasure. He is sometimes alone, but often he is visiting a shrine or a temple and notes the large crowds of other tourists around him. In “Night view at Ocean-Gazing Pavilion (4th of 5),” he describes the scene:

What family
downstairs
is burning nightly incense?

Someone else is playing
a flute, sad music
that fills the cool of evening.

Yet another visitor
facing into the autumn wind
is chanting a poem on a fan.

We all try to worship the moon
but none of us seem to get
a clear view of her beauty.

We get the sense of bustle, of a crowd, of the unsettled minds of strangers.

Drunk, I climbed up

Wine drinking and inebriation is another common theme in the poems. The opening of “Climbing Dragon-Cloud Mountain” begins:

Drunk, I climbed up
through yellow cogon grass
to the high ridge

One of his favorite activities seems to be getting drunk on a boat on the lake in the middle of the night and watching the moon for hours with friends. But sometimes it’s day time and raining:

Back on West Lake once again
here in the rain
falling-down drunk

In one early poem, Su paints a picture of a party at the Green Bamboo Pavilion:

The valley birds are roused
by our shouts as we play chess;

the mountain bees are drawn
by the odor of our wine.

In a more meditative moment elsewhere:

in front of my wine cup
the wind scatters petals
from plentiful branches

Waves of light, rolling in fire

My favorite parts of the book were the striking combinations of imagery. Often a few different objects or observations are placed together to evoke a feeling of a very particular moment of time. In “Japanese camellias at Fanxing Temple,” Su describes visiting two trees:

Two camellia trees
facing each other
wonder who planted them?

I’ve come by myself
to visit them
in this fine drizzle

I wanted to talk with them
but that won’t happen
they are beyond language

Brilliantly, thoroughly red,
as if on fire
blooming here in snow.

The light drizzle, the flaming red flowering tree, and the snow—what a rich description of spring time, no?

In another poem he describes festival lanterns bouncing in the wind:

like precious pearls
like busy ants
carrying night into morning,

waves of light,
rolling in fire, bouncing around,
colliding —

fish in hot water
swimming and dancing
unafraid of the heat …

What lasts

In a few of Su’s poems there seems to be a kind of inversion of permanence. Worldly powers are transient, but flowers are eternal. Dynasties come and go, but nature remains.

Glory will flourish and decay
as transitory
as any wind or thunder.

What lasts can be
as simple as
red blooming flowers

What lasts can be as simple as red blooming flowers. Su’s poetry itself expresses this paradox. The politics of his time doesn’t matter to us anymore, but something as simple and fragile as a poem about flowers comes down to us, fresh and immediate.

why not come visit me
among these blossoming plums —
I’ll warm up some wine

we can watch the plums
turning ripe and golden
here in fine drizzling rain.

Related:

The horses of war are running again

The Tao Te Ching is a political document

The infinite field of Japanese poetry

China faces season’s strongest heatwave and torrential rains simultaneously (Global Times, 7/4/25²)

1. I doubt any historical period would be actually great to live in, but of all the times and places I’ve read about, the Song Dynasty is my fantasy pick. To live in a society where your rank and status is based on how many books you’ve read, how well you can argue philosophy, and your talent in poetry? You mean society could actually be structured that way??

2. “Major cities including Jinan, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing, and Nanchang are likely to record consecutive days of scorching heat over the next week, while Hangzhou could hit 40 C on July 6, potentially breaking the city's record for the earliest occurrence of such extreme heat.”