Lu You
Lu You (1125-1210) was from Shanyin County, Yuezhou in the Song Dynasty. The Jin troupers invaded the country when Lu You was still an infant. His parents carried him to flee. He did not come back home till he was 9 years old. He could write poems and essays at age 12. Lu You came out first in an examination held by the Ministry of Rites in 1153. As Qin Hui, then prime minister of the southern Song Dynasty, hated to see his grandson was behind Lu You, he cooked up an excuse and dismissed the chief examination officer and dismissed Lu Yu. It was not until the 28th year (1158) of the Shaoxing Period of the southern Song Dynasty when Qin Hui died that Lu You had the first opportunity to be appointed the assistant magistrate in Ningde, Fujian.
When Emperor Xiaozong came to the throne, Lu You was granted by the emperor a title as Jinshi, the highest academy honor for outstanding scholars. He was promoted. As he advised the emperor to use the wise and the talented and keep the crafty and fawning officials at bay and as he championed military activities to repulse the invaders from the Jin Dynasty from the northern part of China, Lu You was detested by other politicians in power. He was dismissed from the court to remote posts. In 1166 he was dismissed again in the allegation that he talked about the wrongs of the government and advised Zhang Jun, a general, to get prepared to fight the occupiers in the northern part of China. Three years later, Lu You was appointed the subprefectural magistrate in Kuizhou. Later he served as a staff member for Wang Yan, the Sichuan pacification commissioner, assisting the governor in the affairs of repulsing the Jin troops. Later he was a petty officer in a number of places in Sichuan before he acted as an adviser to Fan Chengda, military commissioner-in-chief of Sichuan province. Lu You broke away from traditional rites in wine drinking, banqueting and partying, and called himself an overindulging old man. In 1178 he came back to the eastern part of China and took posts in Fujian province. In 1186, he was promoted to govern Yanzhou in Zhejiang Province.
In 1990, he was called back to the capital to supervise the writing of annals of the Emperor Gaozong. But he was accused of writing sardonic poems and dismissed. In 1202, he was appointed to write the annals of previous two emperors and histories of three emperors. In 1203, the annals were completed and he was promoted for his contribution. On December 29, 1210, Lu died at age 85. Lu You composed over 10,000 poems in his lifetime, but nowadays more than 9,300 still exist, including nearly 5,000 with a focus on retrieving the lost land and on love for his hometown. His anthologies of poems and essays are an important part of Chinese literature. The History of the Southern Tang Dynasty is a literary masterpiece. The Forbidden City Museum in Beijing has five of Lu You’s handwritings, which are very valuable.
Shaoxing has sites in Houshan and Sanshan where Lu You once lived. In the city proper of Shaoxing is The Garden of the Shens, restored in 1987. The garden is now Lu You’s memorial, a cultural relic unit under the provincial government’s protection.
Source: travelchinaguide.com
Editor: Wang Moyan
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