His Stubbornship: Prime Minister Wang Anshi (1021–1086), Reformer and Poet by Jonathan Pease

In 1992, Deng Guangming 鄧廣銘, one of the most prominent scholars on Wang Anshi in the twentieth century, advised Jonathan Pease to seek a "living Wang Anshi." This advice set in motion a project that has now materialized in a hefty 647-page tome. Drawing on Wang's poetry, prose, and diary, as well as a wide array of other primary and secondary sources, Pease's book aims to achieve three overarching goals: (i) "to explore Wang's point of view," (ii) "to reconstruct a rudimentary autobiography for him," and (iii) "to illuminate his ten years of reflection at the Banshan house beneath Bell Mountain" (p. xii). All three goals are admirably accomplished.

Arranged in chronological order, the eighteen chapters of the book are evenly divided in three parts. Each part has a one-word title: Service, Reform, Retirement. Part I covers Wang's life up to 1066, when he served in various posts both in the provinces and in the capital. Part II chronicles Wang's career from 1067 to 1076, when he implemented a wide range of reforms while at the peak of his political power. Wang's retirement from 1076 to 1086 is presented in part III. There is no need to summarize each chapter here, as such a summary would be useless for readers who are familiar with the basic contours of Wang's life and meaningless for those who are not. Suffice it to say that the book is a gripping read. Its information-packed narration is frequently enlivened by a literary flare laced with incisive humor and vivacious imagination.

The liveliness of Pease's book derives in no small part from his imaginative speculations. A prime example is his treatment of the famous "Record of an Excursion into Baochan Mountain" 遊褒禪山記. Wang's piece describes a failed exploration into a mountain cave he took with four companions. The group came out before reaching the bottom of the cave because one of them got tired and urged everyone to leave on the pretext that their torches would burn out. The account has been appreciated for the lesson it offers on the importance of getting to the bottom of things for attaining true knowledge. Pease, however, spends four full pages (pp. 68–71) speculating on the identity of the person responsible for aborting the trek. While entertaining multiple possibilities, he zeroes in on Wang Hui 王回 (1023–1065) as the most likely culprit. His evidence is in the name. Hui 回 literally means "turn around" or "go back." Wang Hui's courtesy name, Shenfu 深甫, contains the word "deep" (shen 深), which appears five times in the text. Pease also sees hui 回 as a possible semi-homonym for hui 悔 (regret), which appears three times in the piece. He even brings to bear the name of Wang Hui's brother, Wang Xiang 向 (with xiang meaning "toward"). The given names of the brothers form huixiang 回向—literally "re-direction"—a Buddhist term that means transferring one's merits to others.

Pease is very frank that his work as a history detective is based on "tenuous" evidence, that the hui/return/regret hypothesis is "unprovable," and that "it would be excessive to claim that Wang Anshi built the piece around a pun" (p. 71). Nonetheless, he should be commended for offering a hypothesis that may open up new perspectives on a most frequently anthologized piece. When read as a "private joke," Wang's account assumes an additional layer of meaning. We get a tantalizing hint of his "sense of humor" (p. 69). Humor is a quality that has rarely been associated with Wang, whether in his personal life or in his writings.

Speculations spice up Pease's narration. Sometimes, however, they are based on evidence that seems flimsy at best, as when he imaginatively traces the genesis of Sijia shixuan 四家詩選 (Selected Poems of Four Masters) to Wang's interaction with Chen Yi 陳繹 (1021–1088) during his second stint in Kaifeng (1059–1063): "Sometimes the talking and laughing under that wagon-cover [used for the roof of a gazebo in Chen Yi's garden] turned to poetry. From his library, Chen Yi lent Wang the works of a few poets to make a selection, which Wang eventually published as a Four Poet Anthology (Sijia shixuan 四家詩選, now lost). It included works by Du Fu, Han Yu, Ouyang Xiu, and Li Bai" (p. 117). As Liu Chengguo demonstrates, however, the anthology was compiled in Wang's late years, most likely in 1082.¹ In any case, it would have been extremely unusual for Wang (or anyone else) to try to anthologize (xuan 選) Ouyang Xiu's poetry while he was still alive and well. The more serious issue here is not the persuasiveness of Pease's speculation, but his presentation of the speculation as a factual account.

Pease's work is biographical in nature (though he conceives of it as an autobiography written on Wang's behalf). Critically engaging with existing scholarship is not high on his agenda. Still, from time to time, he would venture an opinion that goes against common assumption. A case in point is his take on "Reply to Zeng Gong" 答曾子固書, which is considered one of the most important documents about Wang's intellectual open-mindedness (or syncretism), especially his receptiveness to Buddhism. It is generally believed to be a late work by Wang. Judging from its "tone, subject matter, and very existence," Pease asserts that the letter is "an early piece, probably dating from the first decade of their friendship" (p. 23). Scholars who have immersed themselves in the works of an author for a long time often develop a feel for that author's "tone" and should not be faulted for relying on that feel to make judgments. (Indeed, the tone of Wang's letter sounds as if it had been written in his younger days.) However, Liu Chengguo has made a reasonably compelling case that the letter dates from Wang's retirement.²

My concern here is not to argue about the dating of particular pieces of writing by Wang but to call attention to what may be deemed a scholarly lapse in Pease's otherwise solid and sophisticated work, that is, his failure to utilize or engage with the most recent relevant studies, especially those by scholars in China such as Liu Chengguo's massive six-volume nianpu 年譜 (year-by-year annals) of Wang—only a handful of entries (all in English) in the Bibliography of Pease's book were published in the decade of 2010s. I will give a couple of more examples here. With regard to "Climbing the Peak That Came by Flight" 登飛來峰, Pease writes, "The 'Peak that Came by Flight' is 'Feilai-feng', a mountain by Hangzhou's West Lake … The pagoda atop it extends it even higher" (p. 40). This taken-for-granted assumption about the location of the mountain is rather puzzling, given that Li Bi 李壁 (1159–1222), whose annotated edition of Wang's poems Pease adopts for his book, states that there was no pagoda on the mountain by West Lake in Wang's time, that one would not gain a distant view atop the mountain (which, as it stands now, measures 168 meters or about 551 feet high), and that therefore Wang most likely was describing a different mountain. Chinese scholars have long debated over whether the mountain was in Hangzhou or Yuezhou 越州 (modern day Shaoxing 紹興), with reasonably strong evidence for both cases.³ One may not expect Pease to settle the debate once and for all, but one would certainly wish that he had at least taken the trouble to make his readers aware of the existence of the debate.

Pease's assumption about the location of the Peak That Came by Flight does not affect his interpretation of the poem. The case of the following poem, however, is quite different (pp. 469–470):

FOR THE OWNER OF HELAN CREEK AT LUOYANG TO ANALYZE勘會賀蘭溪主How many pines cluster by Ho-lan [sic] Creek?South by North, East by West, how many peaks?Since you bought the place, how many days have passed?Who sits with you in leisure and languid peace?賀蘭溪上幾株松、南北東西有幾峰買得住來今幾日、尋常誰與坐從容

Li Bi states, without any evidence, that Chen Yi bought a piece of land to build a house at Helan Creek in Luoyang and that Wang sent the poem to ask Chen in Luoyang about it. Proceeding from Li's statement, Pease vividly envisions a much more elaborate scenario (p. 469):

After his year administering Jinling, Chen went off to Sima Guang's conservative bastion at Luoyang, probably as a retiree. … [Luoyang] includes a dozen living monuments to upright statesmanship, each encased in his own Luoyang garden. … Wang understood that [he] should keep a low profile. In order to be cordial but not reveal his thoughts to conservative eavesdroppers, Wang sent Chen a poem comprised solely of questions—one per line, adding up to a soft-spoken riddle: "Is your companionship there as good as what you and I had here?"

Li Zhiliang has cast strong doubt on the possibility of Chen ever buying land and building a house in Luoyang.⁴ Pease's extrapolation of the political undertone of the poem, intriguing as it may be, is left wobbling on shaky ground when the identity of "the owner of Helan Creek" (as well as the date of Wang's poem) is left up in the air. There are other minor errors, which are to be expected in a book as extensive as Pease's. Perhaps the only one that may be serious enough to raise some scholarly eyebrows is his seemingly matter-of-fact statement that Wang Anshi's wife was "the oddly-named Miss Wu Zougui 吳驟貴 ('Suddenly Ennobled') of Jinxi" (p. 18).⁵ The issue here is not Pease's romanization of 驟貴 as Zougui (rather than Zhougui) but his misreading of the source text, where 吳氏驟貴 means something like: "Madame Wu was suddenly ennobled."

No amount of minor errors should obscure Pease's impressive feat in composing an almost encyclopedic biography of the most consequential statesman and one of the best poets of the Song dynasty. Like an erudite and eloquent docent, he guides us, skillfully and with gusto, through Wang's life, work, and times. At the end of an informative and entertaining tour, we begin to have a sense of what a "living Wang Anshi" might look, sound, and feel like.