Decryption: For what crime was the poet Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty sentenced to "exile Yelang"?

I was first impressed by the ancient place name "Yelang", firstly because of the idiom "Yelang is arrogant", and secondly because of Li Bai. When I was young, I accidentally read Guo Moruo's "Li Bai and Du Fu" and read that Li Bai was sentenced to "exile Yelang" for his crimes. I learned that the ancient Yelang Kingdom was in the area of ??today's Guizhou, and it was a very remote and wild land in the Tang Dynasty. , it is suitable for distributing reform-through-labor prisoners. Because of Li Bai, the place name Yelang, which sounds a bit ferocious, has an implicit connection with the poet in my mind. It seems that it is a place that can pour cold water on a fanatical poet, or even wake him up with a stick. I guess Yelang entered the history of poetry in an unexpected way.

Reviewing the history of poetry, how can we eliminate the Tang Dynasty? When browsing Tang poetry, how can we ignore Li Bai? When talking about Li Bai, how can we avoid the bad fate of being sentenced to "exile Yelang" in his later years, which was the biggest setback he encountered in his life. I remember that in the Jinluan Palace, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty personally served Li Bai with a spoon, and Concubine Yang also poured wine and asked Li Bai to write poems for herself. There are several poets at home and abroad who can enjoy this kind of "royal" treatment, and Li Bai really regards himself as such. He became the "first poet" of the Tang Dynasty. Unexpectedly, no matter how high you climb, you will fall hard. A few years later, you will actually become a prisoner. Not only can you no longer go to the capital, but you can't even stay in the provincial capitals or small counties in the mainland. You will be sent away on a broomstick. A labor camp in a backward border area. This is no longer an ordinary tragedy, fate has simply made a huge joke. Are you going to make fun of our self-esteemed romantic poets? It’s too outrageous.

This is how I remember the two most important and dramatic place names in Li Bai's life. One is Chang'an and the other is Yelang, like the two heavens of ice and fire. One is the highest peak of his career, and the other is the lowest point of his destiny. To put it bluntly, one is his heaven and the other is his hell.

Li Bai once rose through the ranks, won the favor of the dragon face, and favored the noble concubine. As a leading literary figure, he could occasionally show off to the emperor in Chang'an City: "The emperor couldn't get on the boat when he called me, and he claimed that I was a wine fairy." Even if he fell out of favor later and was given money to return him, he was still a celebrity. It won't be a problem to visit the acupuncture points in other provinces, eat and drink with state officials and county magistrates, and earn some writing fees. Traveling around the mountains and rivers, traveling in rivers and lakes, there are star-chasers everywhere, and living a cool life. But this time, instead of returning to the earth from heaven, we have to enter the eighteen levels of hell; accidentally becoming a political prisoner (equivalent to a public enemy of the country?) Not only will he be shackled, but he will also be escorted to a remote mountainous area like Yelang. , this is not as simple as going to the mountains and countryside and "receiving re-education from poor and lower-middle peasants". It is clearly leaving them to fend for themselves. Yelang lacks everything but a place to bury people.

After all, Li Bai was quite old, and he shuddered just thinking about it: How far Yelang is, the mountains and rivers are high and dangerous along the way, his old bones can no longer withstand the torment, can he It’s hard to say whether we’ll get there or not. Don't fall apart halfway through. Even if we do go there, who knows how long we will stay. Maybe the court would forget about him in the blink of an eye. Anyway, don't expect to come back.

To put it bluntly, it is all to blame for the Anshi Rebellion that broke out in 755 AD. Xuanzong's sixteenth son Yongwang Li You recruited troops and marched eastward under the banner of Jingnan. In fact, he took the opportunity to expand his territory and wanted to take advantage of the troubled times to become emperor. When he was passing through Jiujiang, he met Li Bai who was traveling on his own. He felt that his brand could be exploited, so he recruited him as an aide. Li Bai, who had little talent, thought he would finally be put to use, so he agreed indiscriminately, and thus became involved in the whirlpool of the battle for imperial power. As Xuanzong's third son, Prince Li Heng, came to the throne and restored national order with the authentic anti-Japanese army, the "fake" Li U was defeated and killed. Li Bai's political dream went bankrupt again and he was arrested for treason. He was originally going to be cut in half, but fortunately Guo Ziyi said many good things for Li Bai in front of Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty, so the sentence was changed to exile. Yelang's punishment for Li Bai was only slightly better than death. Let's use suffering to atone for his sins.

Li Bai, you are unlucky enough this time. If we really want to investigate, we cannot completely blame the Anshi Rebellion. Didn't Du Fu catch up, so it wouldn't be a big deal.

After narrowly escaping from death, Li Bai forgot about the pain even before his injury healed. He imagined that the imperial court could use him regardless of past grudges. In "Jiangxia Presents Weinan Lingbing", he praised the New Deal through private letters: "The heaven and the earth are new and wide, and the night man moves in with the frost and cold." Could it be expected that it would reach the ears of the emperor through officials at all levels? Now that we have entered a new era in which heroes can be useful, everyone, don't forget that I, a poet who survived, have nothing to do, so I should say hello when I can be useful. I have been active in Jiangxia for a while, trying to find a job through connections, but to no avail. Li Bai felt that he could no longer sit back and wait, so he went to Hunan to try his luck.

When they met in Yueyang, Li Ye, an uncle from the Lingnan clan who was demoted from the Ministry of Justice, was demoted from the official position. The two frustrated people traveled to Dongting Lake together, and they still had to drink to drown their sorrows. Li Bai wrote a lot of poems after drinking, such as "It's good to row the Junshan Mountain, and spread the Xiang River water flatly. There is unlimited wine in Baling, and the autumn of Dongting is killed by drunkenness." It was not just a drunken killing, it was a sad killing. Li Bai wished he could flatten all the mountains that were blocking his way. Another example is "The autumn water in Nanhu is smokeless at night. Can you ride the current up to the sky?" Yelang doesn't need to go, but he can't go back to Chang'an. Li Bai is unwilling to do so, but he is unable to turn around.

How irreconcilable is the cunning officialdom and the society that pursues fame and fortune. I'm not saying that Li Bai's character is very similar to the arrogant Yelang. I'm saying that the original poet, his original heart, and the original Yelang and the original landscape are the easiest to become friends with. . In my eyes, Li Bai is not suitable to be an official, nor is he suitable to do business. He is not even suitable to be engaged in secretarial, education, or nine-to-five jobs. He may not be very good at manual labor. He can drink well, but it is a pity that the people who accompany him are not suitable for drinking. She is a young lady, older men cannot do this...

Li Bai is not suitable for this society at all, but he is suitable to go to Guyelang Kingdom, where the sky is high and the emperor is far away, to run for the king of Guyelang Kingdom. Li Bai should be the king of Yelang Kingdom, the king of the Utopia, and the king of the Kingdom of Freedom. If Li Bai really went there, he might be able to live a freer, more relaxed, and happier life. If Li Bai really went there, Gu Yelang Country might become as legendary as the Peach Blossom Land.

I am as subject to fantasy as Li Bai. He even fantasized that if Li Bai had never been pardoned and released, he would have actually slept in the open and walked to Yelang. He might have written famous poems about many unknown landscapes along the way, and these landscapes would have become famous all over the world and become new famous mountains and rivers. If Li Bai really arrived at his destination, set up camp on the ruins of the ancient Yelang Kingdom, slashed and burned, and drank with the local indigenous people, he would definitely be in love. If the outcome was determined by the amount of alcohol, he would definitely become the chief. The people of Yelang must like a sweet-tempered person like him. On the contrary, if the officials of the Tang Empire, big or small, really go to Yelang, they may not be welcomed.

Li Bai's ancestral home was Longxi (today's Gansu area), and he was born in Suiye City in Central Asia (near Tokmak City in today's Kyrgyzstan). He moved to Shuzhou with his father when he was five years old, and settled in Mianzhou Changlong ( Jiangyou (now Jiangyou, Sichuan) spent his youth. After he was twenty-five, he left Minshan and drifted along the Yangtze River. A few years later, he married in Jiangling and became the son-in-law of Anlu, Hubei. Marriage did not tie his heart, and he was always thinking about Chang'an. It was not until he could no longer survive in the capital that he traveled across the country and around the world. Li Bai is definitely the most famous wanderer in the history of Chinese literature. Whether it is the Western Regions or the Central Plains, Hebei or Jiangnan, Jingchu or Wuyue, Li Bai has left deep or shallow footprints.

If there is any place in the Tang Empire that Li Bai has not been to, it is probably Yelang. He almost went to this place - whether he wanted to or not. Yelang is a possibility in his life (even a tragic possibility). Although it has not been realized, it makes his fate more dramatic. A breathtaking drama. Just this unrealized journey made him have so many emotions. If he really went to Yelang, maybe he could write more works in a new style and a new realm, and maybe he could live a brand new Li Bai?

When I think about it, I feel that my idea is quite cruel. As cruel as fate. In order to read fresh poems, I secretly hope that poets will encounter more hardships and thus trigger more inspiration.

I did not sympathize with the troubled Li Bai like Du Fu did, and I was glad and congratulated him for being spared from exile. However, I hoped that his experience would not leave any gaps, and that he would endure all kinds of hardships before he could become a master ( poet above poet). In order to appreciate the flying and mourning of the petrels, I called for the storm to come more violently; Li Bai was glad that he did not go to Yelang, but I regretted that he did not go to Chengyelang. Is this because I love watching tragedies too much? A spectator mentality to watch the excitement? No, it can only be said that I love reading Li Bai's poems so much and the various shapes (including painful shapes) the poet used in his works that I forgot that the twisted shapes were formed at the cost of great pain.

Li Bai, if you didn’t go to Cheng Yelang, just let me go for you. If you can also write poems for you, and write poems for you that you might have written but failed to write in the end, it would still be worth a visit. Poets tend to have this kind of trying mentality: "If I don't go to hell, who will go to hell? If I don't go to Yelang, who will go to Yelang?" Even if a poet goes to hell once, like Dante, his trip will not be in vain. When it returns, it will also bring a divine song that has gone through countless tempers. This is how the Divine Comedy was made.