Po Chü-i’s “Government Ox”

T'angStudies 7 (1989) Po Chu-i's "Government OX" DENIS TWITCHETI PRINCETON UNIVERSITY The forty-first of Po Chii-i's 8 15~ "New Yiieh-fu" 1fi ~ Jif poems is entitled the Government Ox (Kuan-niu) 13 !F.1 It reads as follows: Government ox, government ox, yoked to a government wagon, Driven to cart sand from the banks of the Ch'an. A bushel of sand, how many pounds does it weigh! Morning to evening he carts the sand: what will it be used for? He is taking it west of the official street at the Five Gates, To be spread on the gravelled path under the shade of the locust trees. Yesterday a new Chancellor of the Righe was appointed, And they fear the mud in the roads will sully his horses' hooves. Oh Chancellor of the Right, Your horses may tread upon sand and remain spotless; But the ox's neck under your yoke will stream with blood. Oh Chancellor of the Right, Are you only able to benefit the people, bring the state to order, and harmonize the yin and yang? Can't you also prevent the galls on the neck of your governmentox ? Po Chii-i's own comment to the title of the poem says that it is a satire against "those directing the government,,,3 that is, on the Chief Ministers. It can, of course, be read at one level simply as an attack in general terms on an oppressive government's placing intolerable burdens upon the population in order to pay for unnecessary expenditures on behalf of the ruling elite. But it 1 See Po Cha-i chi (Peking: Chung-hua, 1984),4.85. 2 Literally the "Assistant Chancellor of the Right" (yu ch 'eng-hsiang:ti iE :m ). 3 See Po Cha-i chi, 3.54. 23 Twitchett: Po Chu-;'s "Government Ox" seems likely, particularly since its target, "the new Assistant Chancellor of the Right," is so clearly and repeatedly pinpointed, that it is also an attack directed against a particular individual. Ch'en Yin-k'o, in his brilliant and wide-ranging comnlentary on these poenls,4 also accepted this, and pointed out that in 809 (to which date he somewhat arbitrarily assigned this poem) there were five persons holding office either as Chief Minister (tsaihsiang ) or as one of the Senior Statesmen (san-kung, san-shih). One of these, Tu Yu tt 1ti, who had been Grand Minister for Education (ssu-t'u) since the fourth month of 806, was semi-retired , and had in any case already been the target of an earlier poem in the series, "The Royal Observatory."s Li Fan ~ flf (754-811t who served as ad hominem Chief Minister from the second month 809 until the second month 811, had replaced Cheng Yin ~tJ!] (752-829)7 who served from the end of 805 until 809. Neither they nor P' ei Chi ~ j:ft (d. 811),8 ad hominem Chief Minister from the ninth month 808 until the eleventh month 810 had, so far as we know, done anything to deserve Po Chii-i's harsh censure. This left only Yii Ti T~ (d. 818).9 Yii Ti, whose career I have dealt with in detail elsewhere,10 certainly filled the role. By the time Po wrote this poem, Yii was 4 See Ch'en Yin-k'o, YUan Po shih chien cheng kao (Peking: Chung-hua, 1955; rpt., 1959) 280-82. 5 Ibis is the eleventh of the New YUeh-fu. See Po Cha-i chi, 3.64. For a discussion and the identification of the poem's subject as Tu Yu, see Ch'en Yin-k'o, YUan-Po shih chien cheng kao, 179-81; also Margaret T. South, "Po ChU·i's 'The Observatory Tower'," Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 9.12 (1972-73), 3-13. 6 Biographies: CTS, 148.3997-4001; FITS, 169-5150-52. 7 Biographies: CTS, 159.4180-81; FITS, 165.5074-76. 8 Biographies: CTS, 148.3989-92; FITS, 169.5147-50. 9 Biographies: CTS, 156.4129-33; FITS, 172.5199-201. 10 See Denis Twitchett, "The Seamy Side of Late Tang Political...