Qu Yuan, the Patriotic Poet


The misfortunes Qu Yuan ( c. 340-278 B. C. ) suffered drove him to take his own life, but also moved him to write some of the most beautiful poetry in the Chinese language. For his devotion to his State of Chu during the Warring States period, at later junctures in history Qu Yuan has often been recalled as a model of patriotism.

The State of Qin in the west was bent on annexing the other states, including Qu Yuan's Chu in the Changjiang (Yangtze) River valley to the south. Holding the office of " left ministry", second only to the prime minister, the nobleman Qu Yuan urged that the Chu, to resist Qin, ally with the State of Qi to the east . This was opposed by Zhangyi, a minister of the State of Qin who was trying to disrupt any anti-Qin alliances ( see " Two Traveling Diplomats " ) . He seized upon an incident with a jealous court official in Chu to get rid of Qu Yuan.

Qu Yuan had refused to let Jin Sheng, the chief minister to the King of Chu, have look at a rough draft of a decree he had been asked to draw up. In anger Jin spread the rumor that Qu Yuan was leaking state secrets . He said that Qu Yuan had boasted that withou5t his aid no decree could be drafted. This made the King of Chu feel that Qu Yuan was belittling him.

When the story of the incident in Chu reached the ears of Zhang Yi in Qin, he secretly sent a large amount of gold , silver and jewels to Chu to bribe Jin Sheng and the king's favorite concubine to form an anti-Qu Yuan clique. The result was that the king banished Qu Yuan from the capital in 313B.C.

The next year, as relations between Qin and Chu worsened, Qu Yuan was called back and named to a high office , but the clique continued its machinations against him.

In 299 B.C. after several unsuccessful forays against Chu, Qin invited the King of Chu over, ostensibly for talks. Qu Yuan feared this was a trap and urged his king not to go. The latter would not listen and he even blamed Qu Yuan for interfering.

On the way, the King of Chu was seized by Qin troops. He died in captivity three years later. Chu came under the rule of the king' eldest son, later known as King Qing Xiang. Under him the state administration deteriorated.

Qu Yuan hoped to institute reforms and in poems satirized the corruption, selfishness and disregard for the people on the part of dubious characters who had achieved trusted positions. Neither this nor Qu Yuan's resolve to resist Qin set well with King Qing Xiang , who was in fact married to a daughter of the King of Qin, In 296 B. C. Qu Yuan, then in his mid50s, was banish for the second time. Grieving for the condition of his homeland, for years he wandered about south of the Changjiang.

During this time he poured out his feeling of grief and concern for his state in the allegorical Li Sao, a long autobiographical poem in which he tells of his political ideal and the corruption and mismanagement of the court.

There is a story of how an old fisherman met Qu Yuan, haggard and distraught, wailing beside the Canglang River in Hubei province. When the fisherman asked Qu Yuan how he had come to this , he replied, " The world is foul and I alone am clean . They all are drunk and I alone am sober. So I was banished."

" The true sage does not quarrel with his surroundings , but adjusts to them," the fisherman said. " If the world is foul, why not leap into the side and make it clean? If all men are drunk, why not drink with them, Why should you be so virtuous as to get yourself banished?"

He rowed away singing a song:" When the water of the Canglang is clean and clear, in it I wash my headgear. When it is filthy more than met, I use it to wash my feet. " But Qu Yuan was unable to do this.

In 280 B.C. Qin launched an overall invasion of Chu and in 278 B.C. captured the capital. This news reached Qu Yuan while he was near the Miluo River in northeastern Hunan province. In frustration at being unable to do anything to save his state, he clasped a big stone to his breast and leaped into the river to end his life.

Qu Yuan's sufferings had gained the sympathy of the people of Chu. In memory of him, every year on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar, the day he drowned himself, dragon boat races, which are said to represent the search for his body, are still held, and the Chinese people eat zongzi, little packets of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves, thought to have their origin in the bamboo leaves, thought to have their origin in the bamboo tubes of rice thrown into the river as food for his spirit . Originally, to keep he river dragons from eating them, the packets were tied with colored silk threads which dragons fear.

A biography of Qu Yuan is included in Sima Qian's Historical Records. In recent times, the story of Qu Yuan was adapted by the poet Guo Moruo in a 1942 play of the same name, which he made a vehicle to express the feeling of the people against Chiang Kai-shek's reactionary rule.



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