13 AN ADVOCATE OF THE SIMPLE LIFE Autobiography by Liu Kai 柳開 (948–1001)
In the early years of the Northern Song, Liu Kai was an important figure in the Confucian revival movement and the effort to promote ancient style writing, linking him to such prominent Tang predecessors as Han Yu. In this piece, he provides a description of his personality and his scholarly and intellectual ambitions.
The period from the mid Tang (618–907) through the Song (960–1279) was a time of major political, intellectual, social, and cultural transformations. Among the most important changes was the resurgence of Confucian scholarship. Troubled by the dominance of Buddhism, political decentralization, and other problems, thinkers such as Han Yu (768–824) and Liu Zongyuan (773–819) in the Tang and Zhu Xi (1130–1200) in the Song gave Confucian philosophy new meanings, new structures, and a new textual basis in their energetic promotion of its centrality in Chinese culture. This intellectual movement resulted in the establishment of a “new” type of Confucianism, the Learning of the Way or Principle, better known in the West as Neo-Confucianism.
The author of the following autobiography, Liu Kai, was an important link in this movement. Liu was a native of Hebei, a region that had suffered greatly from political fragmentation in the wake of the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763) and continued to be known for its “knight-errant” culture in the first decades of the Northern Song (960–1127). Anecdotes and Liu’s own work portray him as an unruly young man who challenged the popular fear of ghosts. He once threatened to set fire to the family residence if his uncle did not give him money to aid a person in financial straits. Liu Kai earned the prestigious jinshi degree in 973 and served in over a dozen low-ranking civil and military positions, gaining recognition for his ideas on military and border affairs. Liu admired Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan so much that he later gave himself two courtesy names, Jianyu (supporting or standing on Han Yu’s shoulders) and Shaoxian (carrying on the cause of the predecessors, or Shaoyuan, continuing the mission of Liu Zongyuan), thus revealing his intentions to “clear a path for the Sagely Way” (Kai, the meaning of his name).
This autobiography clearly owes a debt to earlier ones, such as those by Bai Juyi and Lu Guimeng (selection 11). While in those cases we retained the original third-person voice in our translation, this time we have used the first person.
Biography of the Country Fellow of the Eastern Suburb
I, who refer to myself as the country fellow of the Eastern Suburb, have the personal name of Jianyu [lit., standing on Han Yu’s shoulders] and courtesy name of Shaoyuan [continuing the mission of Liu Zongyuan]. The reason why the sobriquet does not mention my clan name is because it is the same as my family name. I am a native of Wei [Hebei], but because I live to the left of one of the city wall gates, I use “Eastern Suburb” to identify myself as a country fellow.
Someone once said, “You live in a town but call it a suburb. You are a member of the scholar-official class yet call yourself a hick. Isn’t this misleading?” I replied, “What I consider a suburb, you call a town; what I take as a country fellow, you think a scholar. How could I not understand that a suburb is not a town and a scholar is different from a rustic? But do these facts have any connections to the real meaning of the terms? When I live at home, I call where I live the eastern suburb. When I am away, I call it the suburb of Wei. This is to distinguish being inside and outside.”
I am by nature an unsophisticated person. I am simple but not dull, innocent yet not ignorant. Although accommodating, I know when to move forward. Although tough, I know when to pull back. When pushed forward, I do not hesitate to advance. When called back, I do not resent the brave ones going forward. I do not refuse to see those who come to visit even if they are my enemies. Similarly, I do not chase after those who depart even if they are my intimates. Generally speaking, I focus on people’s good qualities and disregard their shortcomings. Profit does not tempt me. Potential disasters do not deter me. An introvert, I am as though without ego. Unbounded, I am as though lacking a sense of self. I do not consider the Heaven and Earth as the only things that are vast. I do not take the sun and moon as the only things that are bright. I am not troubled by ominous weather patterns. I am not in awe of the power of the great mountains and rivers. Nobody fully understands me. I do not approve or disapprove of those who associate with me. Nor do I doubt or envy anyone. Whether they are virtuous or foolish, of high or low rank, I figure that it is a matter of luck that I know them. The more they interact with me, the more they see my profoundness. Some rascals, thinking I was an ignorant person just like them, tricked me. After succeeding once, they tried a second or third time to swindle me for their gain. Even though they failed in the end, I did not change in the slightest how I treated them or expose their deceptions. In the end, none of them was able to fool me again. My family elders used these incidents to caution me. I laughed, “Those petty rascals were trying in vain. I once caught a tiger in its cave. I blocked the entrance with a sharp knife in my hand. The tiger, stuck inside, was not able to leap to a better position. What could it do when I was in control of the narrow exit? Why should I worry about those stupid people!”
When guests come from afar, I go all out to entertain them, eating, laughing, and napping with them, indifferent to status differences. My family elders thought this unwise: “Why do you act this way? Isn’t this taking things too lightly? Shouldn’t you pay attention to what sort of people they are? I countered, “They are human beings. So am I. What separates us? Besides, are the realms of Heaven and Earth divided into insiders and outsiders? All within the four seas are my kin. If I start drawing boundaries, won’t I end up treating my parents and brothers as outsiders? If I do not treat others as outsiders, will others treat me as an outsider?” My arguments proved persuasive.
In order to send my guests off with gifts, I do not hesitate to pawn my clothes for cash. Similarly, I cut back on my own food in order to help those struggling with hunger or hardship, worrying only that I cannot offer long-term help. By contrast, I give little thought to my own problems. Someone once said, “You are poor and of low rank but strive to be generous and upright. This is what Sima Qian ridiculed.” I replied, “Alas! The true gentleman worries about other people’s emergencies, not his own. When one is poor and lowly, it is difficult to be generous to others. For the wealthy and influential, it is easy. Besides, Sima was hardly the ideal gentlemen. The book he wrote is at odds with Confucian teachings. For example, he devalued recluses and celebrated villains, and he placed the Daoist Huang-Lao School above the Six Classics. I would be ashamed to act that way.”
In cases where people were feuding, I sometimes would get them together and ask them why they hated each other. “You schemed against him but resent him for conspiring against you in response,” I would say. “This cycle of retaliation has to stop for the animosity to end. You should not hate him for not being nice to you since it begins with your not treating him well. If you help others, they will want the best for you. Have you seen how robbers act? They commit cruel, dishonest, foul, and evil crimes, to the extent that even their parents cannot stand them. Yet, among themselves, their bonds are strong. They would sacrifice their lives to protect each other and stay loyal through thick and thin. There is no other explanation than the fact that they understand each other and commit to each other. If bandits can act like this, shouldn’t good people like you! Please change your ways.” Some previous enemies reconciled after hearing my arguments.
My family was so poor that there was often no food for the next day and no clothes for the next season. At fifteen or sixteen, I took up writing. The following year, Mr. Zhao introduced me to the work of Han Yu. I liked it so much I took to reciting it. At the time, no one in the world talked about ancient-style writing. In addition, I was young and my friends did not share my interests. But I held Han’s books in my hands all day long and on my own gradually deepened my understanding of them. My late father, seeing that I loved Han’s work so much, indulged me and did not question whether my passions fit the times.
When I reached fifteen, the age of capping, my father passed away. By then I had achieved a deep understanding of the strong points and marvelous passages of Han’s writing and was ready to pen my own compositions in his style. An uncle restored a bathhouse in a Buddhist temple in our hometown and asked me to compose an account of the deed as a test of my literary ability. Although at the time I was ill, one day I asked for paper and ink to be brought to my sickbed, then wrote the essay without having to make any revisions, to the amazement of my family. They circulated it among interested parties, who called it outstanding. Others, though, took offense. They laughed at me and said, “Foolish and arrogant boy, claiming, ‘I will restore the ancient-style prose by myself.’ How could his family be so indulgent?” Such carping was widely repeated. Upon hearing this, my uncles and brothers feared that the substance of my writing was not in accord with the time and urged me to follow the conventions of the day.
I completely ignored their advice and, if anything, became more determined to focus on the ancients. I talked exclusively about Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, and Yang Xiong, taking them as my models. Everyone thought I had gone crazy, the unconventionality of my writing taken as evidence of its inferiority. In the wuchen year of the Qiande reign period [968], I began to compose The Book of the Eastern Suburb (Dongjiao shu), in one hundred chapters, trying to make it amusing. I was halfway through when, one day, I burned everything I had written, saying, “My late mentors would not have approved of this. I originally studied the classics. How did I turn around and become a writer of random notes?” When people heard what I said, they found me even harder to comprehend.
I set my mind on transforming conventional practice. My followers considered themselves the disciples of Mencius and Yang Xiong. Those who wanted to study with me all said, “Two hundred years after Han Yu, you, our master, have appeared.” I always responded by saying, “I would not dare to refuse this mission and am willing to do my best.” Someone said, “Should you share the responsibility?” I replied, “This is what is meant by not leaving to others what one ought to do oneself.” Someone else asked, “Who was superior, Tuizhi [Han Yu] or Zihou [Liu Zongyuan]?” I replied, “Their writing is close, but their way is different.” When asked to explain, I said, “Liu’s ancestors were Buddhists. For this reason, he is inferior to Han Yu.”
In the early years of the Kaibao reign [968–976], I wrote the ninety-chapter Unofficial History and Biographies of Eastern Suburb (Kaibao yeshi zhuan). When someone asked why I wrote it, I said, “I took it as my duty.” When someone asked why I called it Unofficial History, I answered, “It gathers things that were not recorded in the state history.” When someone asked, “How do you compare with Sima Qian [145–86 BCE], Fan Ye [398–445], and Ban Gu [32–92]?” I answered, “Sima was concise and argumentative. His work was broad, disordered but comprehensive. Ban’s writing was refined in vocabulary and proper in its use of the classics. His work is remarkable, concise, and selective. The lowest of the three is Fan. His work is not as good as the other two and is profuse and in poor taste. My work falls closer to the two good ones.” When someone questioned the usefulness of the book, I said, “If it is read, it will be useful to the world. Like the works of the earlier masters, if it is not read, it just exists. It is up to the world to decide whether to read it or not. What do I know?”
I wrote “Differentiating Heaven?,” “On the Sea,” and “Explaining the Classics” because I thought that the ancients had failed to investigate the truths underlying Heaven and Earth, the capacity of the sea, and the foundation of the classics. The three essays analyze the issues and expose fallacies, achieving insights the ancient worthies had failed to attain. Later, my writing style gradually shifted from Han Yu’s and was modeled directly on the Six Classics. When someone asked, “Why did you first advocate then discard [Han Yu]?” I told him, “Mencius, Xunzi, Yang Xiong, and Han Yu were all disciples of the sages. They reached different levels by studying the masters. Those with less ability can choose one of them to reach his goal. That was the route I took. If you do what I did, you can get there too.”
At the time, I was just twenty-four. Two years later, I wrote another autobiography, in which I called myself Mr. Restoring What Was Lost.
The commentator says:
The Country Fellow of the Eastern Suburb referred to himself as Standing on the Shoulders [Jianyu] of something because he loved the way of the ancients. He called himself Inheriting and Continuing [Kai] something as he revered ancestral virtues. Tuizhi is greater than Zihou. So he used Yu [Jian-yu] in his name. Zihou is second [to Han Yu], so he used Zihou’s name [Zong-yuan] in his literary name [Shao-yuan]. In addition, because Han and Liu lived in the same era and followed the same way, he picked [the auspicious sign of] their accompanying each other, hoping that he would benefit from their good names. Having seen his writing and conduct, it is not an exaggeration to say that he matched the two masters.
SOURCE: Zeng Zaozhuang 曾棗莊 et al., eds., Quan Song wen 全宋文 (Shanghai: Shanghai Shiji Chuban Youxian Gongsi, Shanghai Cishu Chubanshe, Anhui Chuban Jituan, Anhui Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 2006), 6:127.390–93.
Further Reading
- Bol, Peter K. Neo-Confucianism in History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008.
- .“This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.
- Hartman, Charles. Han Yu and the T’ang Search for Unity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986.
- Zhang, Cong Ellen. “How Long Did It Take to Plan a Funeral? Liu Kai’s (948–1101) Experience Burying His Parents.” Frontier of History in China 13, no. 4 (2018): 508–30.