Wang Han’s anecdote

From the early Tang Dynasty to the prosperous Kaiyuan Dynasty, the infringement of the Central Plains by various ethnic minorities on the border has never stopped, so the imperial court must repeatedly send troops to defend against the enemy. In addition to military attachés who lead troops in battles, the army also needs a group of civilian officials to accompany the army and take charge of document affairs. In this way, a large number of literati have the opportunity to go to the frontier fortress to participate in the war, and the development of "frontier fortress poetry" was born. According to a later poem by Du Mu, "Only Liangzhou song and dance music spreads to people all over the world." It can be seen that the poems written in the new Yuefu genre of "Liangzhou Ci" are not limited to Wang Han, such as Wang Changling, Wang Zhihuan, Many "Liangzhou Ci" written by Gao Shi, Cen Shen and others also brought an extremely exciting new atmosphere to the poetry world of the early Tang Dynasty.

Wang Han went to the northwest front as a member of the driving department. The "driving department" was responsible for transporting horses, grain and other military supplies to the front line. Yuanwailang was a deputy position and was basically held by civil servants, so even those who were not too busy still had time to compose poems. This poem by Wang Han was obviously written from the perspective of a general who was about to go to the battlefield - the general was drinking sweet wine in his cabin, and at this moment, a spy suddenly came to report the enemy's army. arrive. Before he could finish the rest of the wine, the sound of pipa played, urging him to go into battle. He put down the wine glass and got on the horse. At this moment, he seemed to feel that the alcohol was a little stronger again, and he was swaying. However, before leaving, he still joked to his subordinates: Maybe I was drunk on the battlefield instead of being beaten to death by the enemy. Even so, you can't laugh at me, because since ancient times, Originally, few people on that battlefield could come back. Yes, this is indeed a humorous writing style. The last two sentences of Shi Buhua's comment on the Qing Dynasty said: "If it is written as sad language, it will be easy to read, but if it is written as humorous language, it will be wonderful to read."

Wang Han's poems have been handed down. There are only fourteen poems and two and a half sentences included in "The Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty", plus one of his articles included in "The Complete Poems of the Tang Dynasty", that's all. The old and new Tang books say that he had ten volumes of collected works handed down, but no one has seen them since the Song Dynasty. Mr. Fu Xuancong once wrote an article "The Examination of Wang Han". After studying it for a long time, he came to the conclusion that "according to the materials currently available, it is still impossible to determine the exact year of his birth and death." He said something else and passed away. There are a large number of poets in the Tang Dynasty, but we don't know their birth and death dates. The old and new Tang books only have biographies of each person, but do not record their birth and death dates, especially their birth dates. Not to mention "The Biography of Talented Scholars of the Tang Dynasty", not only is this aspect rarely written, but even if it is written, many of it is full of errors. After all, Xin Wenfang is from the Yuan Dynasty, so it is difficult for him.

To understand Wang Han, you can only understand him in the middle. According to historical records, he was from Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, and had bohemian habits when he was young. He passed the Jinshi examination probably in 710 AD. At that time, there was a long history named Zhang Jiazhen in Bingzhou (today's Taiyuan) who admired his talent and always treated him "very politely". He was often embarrassed and wrote many Yuefu lyrics and music for Zhang. He ate, drank, and sang and danced at the banquet. There were actually two purposes. One was to express gratitude, and the other was to show off his talent. This move was indeed very effective. Even Zhang Shuo, who came to Bingzhou to replace Zhang Jiazhen as chief historian, also appreciated Wang Han's work and highly praised Wang Han. Within two years, Zhang Yue was promoted to the third rank of Minister of the Ministry of War, and he also promoted Wang Han to the rank of secretary of the ninth rank. Soon I found another opportunity and promoted him to the rank of seventh-grade Tongshiren. Three years later, he was promoted to the fifth rank of driving department Yuan Wai Lang.

At that time, Zhang said that there were powerful people in both the government and the public, and he was also in charge of Jixian Academy. He valued "people who studied poetry", so he often gathered around him such as Zhang Jiuling, Li Yong, Xu Jingxian, Wei Shu, Yuan Hui, Zhao Dongxi, etc. People, Wang Han is naturally among them. They were actually a tight-knit group of literati and bureaucrats at that time. They even arranged a ranking for the literary world, selected more than a hundred people, divided them into nine grades, and then wrote out the list in the form of a big-character poster and published it. Let's see. There are tens of thousands of people. Guess what, the result is that everyone is "gnashing their teeth". Why? Because of unfairness, people like Zhang Shuo, Li Yong, Wang Han, etc. are all ranked first, while many people who are recognized as talented and well-known are excluded from the list. It can be seen that he was quite hated for doing this. It is said that Wang Han was very rich at that time. He had several famous horses and a dozen singing prostitutes at home. He drank heavily and gambled for large sums of money all day long. He claimed to be a prince and was arrogant for a while.

However, since Wang Han was promoted due to Zhang Shuo's promotion, his unlucky demotion followed Zhang Shuo's successive demotions. After Zhang Shui was dismissed as prime minister, Wang Han was also demoted to the sixth rank of Ru Governor Shi and was sent to Henan.

After a while, it turned out that the demotion was not enough, so he was demoted to the sixth rank, Xianzhou Biejia. After Wang Han took office, he simply broke the pot and invited a group of literati from five places to six places every day to hunt and sing. It was so unhappy. Well-known scribes Zu Yong, Du Hua and others were also his guests. Du Hua's wife, Mrs. Cui, was particularly envious of the rich and talented Wang Han. She often said to her son, "I heard a story in ancient times about Meng's mother moving three times. Now I think we should move to be neighbors with Wang Han." Well, as long as you can be with Wang Han, I will feel at ease. "Listen, what's going on? I have no choice but to choose Wang Han. In this way, others would reflect, and their opinions would be reported to the imperial court. As a result, Wang Han was demoted to Daozhou Sima, and he was suddenly transferred from Henan to Hunan. After that, there was no news about whether Wang Han was dead or alive.